Remembering Girmitiyas: tracing the past of indentured migrants in their homeland

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper looks at the reminiscence of the family members of girmitiyas from north Indian villages who, in post-slavery circumstances, were transported under an indenture contract to overseas plantation colonies during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While the memories and experiences of the departed migrants are extensively chronicled in history writing, historians have rarely looked into the memories of the family members who were left behind. This essay tries to address this gap in historical literature, by examining the memories documented in the colonial reports, as well as songs and narratives of the families of indentured Indians in their home communities. The paper makes the argument that the acute sense of loss and pain of family members recorded during the nineteenth century, no longer persists in the form of ‘communicative’ memory, but has instead become ‘cultural’ memory as time passed, and that the descendants now view this past differently.