Escaped or Tricked? Why Indian Women Crossed

Abstract

With tales little told and most deduced from official records, which included recruitment reports mostly from the colonizer's perspective, women's recruitment is an elusive history of non-strategic documentation, a neglected part of an already less-discussed section of modern Indian history—Indian indenture. Indian indenture is seeped with stories untold and women remain the most silent. Historians, in recent times, have suggested colonial migrations provided a means for women to escape social oppression and violence. They found an air of independence, a means of livelihood, even though it meant losing one's caste by crossing the Kala pani. It is commonly accepted that women who migrated were either single or prostitutes or disowned by their families. Every denomination here can be historically questioned. Back then child marriage was a prevalent practice and prostitution as a profession flourished in Bengal. Widowhood was another popular criterion. Could it be possible that women often were tricked into the ships to satisfy the 100:40 male–female ratio, without which ships would not sail? This paper discusses the scenarios in which Indian women were recruited and tries to draw a conclusion if women wilfully registered to escape social abuses or were these simple, silent, illiterate women tricked. I draw my arguments by examining the reports of Grierson and Pitcher and the works of Rhoda Reddock, Ashutosh Kumar, Brij V. Lal, and Gaiutra Bahadur. My purpose is to reveal the relevance of Indian women's lost stories and how and why they were recruited. As recording this history will largely, undoubtedly, shape their personal histories, as well as contribute to the discourse of Kala pani from the sub-continent.