The Emigration and Status of Indians in the British Empire

Abstract

HE emigration and status of in T foreign counties in general and in the regions within the British Empire in particular have attained a significance in India far greater than their numbers may warrant. No question has given rise to so much bitter criticism as this, and the very mention of the subject of Indians raises in India a unique resentment, for it affects the self-respect and dignity of India as a nation. Before we inquire into the genesis, growth, the present position, and disabilities of the numerous little Indias abroad, the basis of the present resent-complex in India must be explained briefly. The explanation lies largely in three historical factors. India is not a sovereign nation. Perhaps this is the most galling of all the factors that hurt the nationals of India. India is, as well known, neither a Colony nor a Dominion. Her constitutional status is as yet unknown though officially she is often described as a semi-Dominion or a quasi-Dominion. She has a large measure of internal autonomy but her external status as a dependent country has not changed, and it is this dependent status that counts when an Indian goes abroad. He is not a citizen of a free republic but the subject of Britain. India's long, bitter, and vain struggle for her own constitutional independence has shown that she cannot expect any equality of treatment or status for her children abroad when her nationals are not free even on her own native soil. Naturally the British Government which is unprepared to concede freedom in their own country can hardly be expected to champion the rights of in foreign countries, even if some of those countries are within the British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations. This has been demonstrated frequently in recent years. Whenever a conflict arises on any particular issue of rights of citizenship between the India Office and the Colonial Office, both in London, the latter has always gained the point. The second factor is the charge that is often levelled against the Indian immigrants by the receiving countries, or rather the countries that once received them. It is that Indian immigrants as a whole are of a low class and social status, being laborers, and as such they cannot expect to be accorded the same reception and status as accorded to Indian visitors of social dignity, intellectual worth, or economic consequence. This charge is only partially true, for Indian emigration had its origins in the demands of the Colonial Government and private colonial estate owners for Indian indentured labor to develop certain of those undeveloped regions. But once the emigration of indentured labor ceased, there was free emigration of people who were not laborers but who belonged to the merchant and other commercial classes. The charge that the original Indian immigrants were not men of learning or decent bank balances can be levelled against practically every other immigrant community. It is not the successful intellectual or the economically stable individual that seeks to emigrate from one country to another. Emigration implies a desire to better one's economic position or social status or escape some undesirable feature of the home country, be it religious intolerance, racial persecution, or economic disinheritance. The purpose of voluntary emigration being, therefore, some form of betterment, the Government of India must satisfy itself that betterment is likely to result when it assumes the power of permitting emigration. Emigration, unlike water, flows from a country of low level of living to a country of high level of living. So the charge levelled against Indian immigrants can be said against the nationals of any European country, who have sought to emigrate to the United States. The British that went to Australia, the Dutch that went to South Africa, and all the nationalities that came 1 By is meant nationals of India. Sometimes, as in the United States, they are called Hindus, irrespective of their religion, apparently to distinguish them from American Indians. In Canada, they are called British to distinguish them from indigenous Canadian Indians. In the West Indies they are called East to distinguish them from West who are Negroes. Throughout this article the correct term-Indians-is used, and whenever necessary the term has been qualified to distinguish them from other ethnic groups.