Indian Indentured Research Articles

Alternative history of indenture: view from margins

ABSTRACT This paper departs from the prevailing approaches to studying the Indian indenture system and examines it from the perspective of marginalised social groups in India. While most studies on indentureship, from contemporary observers to historians and scholars, homogenise labourers’ experiences by neglecting the voices of lower castes and Dalits/untouchables within the Indian hierarchical social structure, this paper brings such marginalised voices to the centre of analysis. In the absence of writings by labourers from marginalised communities such as lower castes and Dalits, this study is based on the close reading of Indian nationalists’ writings, speeches, and memoirs of high caste girmitiyas, mainly Totaram Sanadhya, using the method of reading against the grain.

Empire and indentured labour: the Immigration Department, 1842–1920

ABSTRACT This paper explores the role of the British Empire's Immigration Department, which was a key component of the colonial administration that helped the empire in the move from slavery to Indian indenture. It also looks at the department's role in the imperial networks that connected London with Calcutta, and the labour-importing colonies. To distinguish indenture from slavery, which was the subject of much controversy among English intellectuals, the colonial empire implemented a number of procedures, the most significant of which was the formation of the Immigration Department. While this study delves deep into the overall working of the Immigration Department, it also explores the various interventions of the Immigration Department as a protector in the matters of indentured labourers.

The revenge of history: Indian indenture and its afterlife in South Africa

ABSTRACT The aftermath of the 150th anniversary in 2010 of the arrival of the first indentured migrants in Natal saw an explosion of family and community histories. While some academic historians question the credibility of such histories, carefully sifted and cross-referenced, they can provide a wealth of new information, allowing for deeper insights into indentured migration and Indian settlement in South Africa. Family histories help in building intergenerational histories that go beyond indenture. This expansion of the historical archive provides a fuller story of Indians who, for a large part of their existence, were written out of the history books or written in as a festering sore to be lanced from the South African body politic through mass repatriation. While digging deeper into individual family histories, the story is situated within the broader context of racist exclusion, showing how these boundaries were reinforced as much as they were challenged and trespassed.

Indentured Labour in South Africa

This essay traces the historiography of Indian indenture in South Africa, paying particular attention to shifts in approaches and interpretation and the evolution of the extant archive. Studies of Indian indenture in the 1970s focused on how the system originated and operated, the conditions under which migrants laboured, and their contribution to the colonial economy. Digitizing immigrants’ registers and quantitative studies followed in the 1980s and 1990s and laid the basis for (colonial) archival-based studies that focused on the agency of migrants, their resistance and resilience. The years since 2010, when Indian South Africans commemorated 150 years since the arrival of the first indentured migrants to the country, have witnessed an explosion of family histories and works of fiction. These publications have expanded the archive of indenture and enriched our knowledge and understanding of the system. Studies of indenture have been criticized for framing the system within a neo-slavery paradigm and suggest that works of fiction can best capture the stories of indenture. This essay demonstrates that historiographical developments since 2010 underscore the importance of personal contact, determination and imagination to take us beyond what is recorded in the official colonial archives, facilitating conversation across the oceans and bringing the individual and collective agency of indentured migrants centre-stage. It shows the richness of the work on indenture resulting from the expansion of the archives, the constantly changing view of the past, and different ways of communicating the story. This study contends that the Natal colonial archive remains relevant while acknowledging that writers of historical fiction and family histories are asking new questions about the past and broadening the lens through which we approach the story of indenture.

Indo + Caribbean: The Creation of a Culture – An exhibition review of the great experiment of Indian indenture

Indo + Caribbean: The Creation of a Culture – An exhibition review of the great experiment of Indian indenture

Girmityas' Portrayal in Ashwin Desai’s Inside Indian Indenture: An Apprehensive Study

Indentured system was highly tormented form of slavery began when the Britishiers faced the lack of labourers at the sugar, cotton and tea plantation due to the end of African slavery . In this system millions of Indians were contracted to work in the 19 British colonies included Fiji, Trinidad, Guyana, South Africa on low wages.Girmityas refers to those bonded indian slaves who agreed to migrate to british colonies in order to escape from the poverty and famine of british india with dream of getting a life of roses without having any idea of difficulties that they were going to face .Some were also defrauded into Migration without any complete knowledge. They were recruited on different plantations by signing a contract of four to five years with the condition of providing the return amenities at the end of their contract however only seldom time it happened. Many died during the journey that took 10 to 20 weeks and many tried to return to their homeland however , failed. In Literature the representation of these turmoiled indentured labourers were first began in Caribbean literature by ARF. Webber, V.S Naipaul, Ashwin Desai etc. In Ashwin Desai’s Inside Indian Indenture we get the realistic and authentic portrayal of the biography of indentured labourers who were ignored by the history. This book seeks to give voice to those unvoiced people whose stories still remained unknown to the masses . This book is a journey through all those silenced, ignored indentured labourers who were tormented by the hardships showered on them by the proprietors.

The Influence of Bollywood Movies on the representation of Indian Indentured Labourers in Mauritian Media and Culture

This study explores the influence of Bollywood movies on the representation of Indian indentured labourers in Mauritian media and culture. The research investigates the ways in which Bollywood movies have impacted the depiction of Indian Indentured labourers in Mauritian society, and how this representation has changed over time. The study utilizes a qualitative method, including questionnaires, relevant literature reviews, and content analysis of popular Bollywood films and Mauritian media. The findings indicate that Bollywood movies have had a significant impact on the representation of Indian indentured labourers in Mauritian media and culture. While earlier representations of indentured labourers in Mauritian media were largely negative and stereotypical, Bollywood movies have played a key role in challenging these stereotypes and promoting a more positive image of the Indian community in Mauritius. The study highlights the importance of media representation in shaping cultural perceptions and argues that Bollywood movies have played a vital role in promoting a more nuanced and positive image of Indian indentured labourers in Mauritian society. The study concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for future research and for promoting cultural diversity in Mauritian society.

The Unwritten

Abstract For many years, having searched for the foods with which I had grown up within the pages of published recipe books, I realised that there was a lack of written representation around what I had understood as ancestral foods. Neither could I find the voices of the mothers and grandmothers who had fed our bodies and spirits. Through the lens of Indian indenture, a colonial system of servitude that had introduced my ancestors to South Africa, I attempt to understand why. While published recipe books offer multiple readings, they are also powerful forms of knowledge production, contributing to narrow formulations of identity. Power dictates what is published and how. By exploring how recipes live beyond words on the page, I suggest that the possibility exists to revisit hidden food narratives while recognising the creativity, ingenuity, and adaptability of many women, who are usually rendered invisible within food texts. Through poetry, story, and my mother’s handwritten recipe book, I search for my mother and the taste of home.

The Journey of Indian Diaspora as Indian Indentured Labourers in Fiji

Indian diaspora is the largest diaspora in the world. As we know, the basic reasons for diaspora are unemployment, natural disaster, forced migration, etc. In this paper,I would like to depict Indian diaspora in Fiji as an indentured labourers. Indian labourers brought to Fiji as indenturedlabourers to work on a sugarcane plantation. They signed a contract from labourers which was called ‘girmit' and who came under this contract called ‘girmitiya'. It was a five-year contract that contained rules and regulations for workers. They had to face many obstacles during their journey from India to Fiji and also,they had to suffer hardship on Fiji island as indentured labourers. With the passage of time, Indian indentured labourers and their new generation have got the identity as Fiji-Indians.There are many notable Indo-Fijians like James Madhwan who was one of the longest-serving parliamentarians in Fiji, Mahendra Chaudhary was the fourth Prime Minister of Fiji, Sidiq Koya was politician, opposition leader and statesman and so on. Indians brought as indentured labourers to Fiji island but with their hard work and intelligence they have got their rights and made a distinct place in Fiji

Coolitude

In this short essay, the author examines the influence of the concept of Coolitude on his understanding of the Indian indenture experience. Parallels between patterns of immigration are alluded to – whether the indentured immigration of the nineteenth and early twentieth century or post-colonial immigration from those sugar colonies of empire to their former metropoles. Coolitude’s recognition of the role of space and place is at the fore and the author asks us to take this into account in our exploration of the global indentured story, making the case for a more concentrated address of the geography of indenture.

‘A Matter of Doubt and Uncertainty’: John Gladstone and the Post-Slavery Framework of Labour in the British Empire

ABSTRACT The abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833 marked an important juncture in imperial and labour history. It led to the beginning of the government-sanctioned system of Indian indentured migration to British plantation colonies, and it fostered the circulation of ideas, arguments and debates about acceptable forms of labour. This essay focuses on the role and activities of British merchant-planter John Gladstone to investigate the trans-imperial nature of the indenture debates and the post-slavery framework of labour. It explores his personal and professional networks, his role in establishing and popularising the indenture trade, and his ideas of free labour to demonstrate that Gladstone’s intervention had two major effects. His activities ensured that Indian indenture became the primary legal labour movement that followed slave labour in destination colonies, and created a pre-emptive system for discussing indenture in terms of the twin rubrics of ‘free’ and ‘unfree’.

Indian indenture: History and historiography in a nutshell

The establishment of the academic study of Indentureship is a relatively recent development that has been led by descendants of indentured labourers from across the diaspora. This article highlights key moments in both the history and historiography of Indentureship. Looking first at the system established by the British on plantations across their colonies, it goes on to consider the variety of labourers' backgrounds and the process of social equalisation that was fostered by both voyage and plantation. Considering the injustices of the system, the author emphasises the ways in which labourers were able to disrupt the power of the plantocracy and analyses the particular perils the system held for women. The religious life of the labourers as well as the maintenance of the Panchayat and the importance of the Ramayana are also weighed. The historiography section of this article traces the attention paid to the system of indenture and the diaspora it created; from the initial attentions of missionaries and ‘benevolent’ organisations in the nineteenth century to the creation of a global network of scholars of Indentureship with roots in South Africa, Fiji, Mauritius, Guyana and Trinidad. It further emphasises key moments and publications during this period.

Reconciliation of Cultural Change and Economic Achievements of Descendants of Indian Indentured Labourers in Fiji

Reconciliation of Cultural Change and Economic Achievements of Descendants of Indian Indentured Labourers in Fiji

Subaltern Mobility and Labor Contract: Indian Indenture in New World History

Recent work in global history has defined the long-distance labor migration of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, following the demise of Trans-Atlantic slavery, as a global phenomenon. Though an important component of migration studies as well as the history of globalization, this framework struggles to consider the significance of indentured migration from India to the sugar plantations overseas. In the view of Adam McKeown, the indentured were insignificant to global historical change, given that they constituted less than ten percent of global migration between 1846 and 1940. In order to establish the significance of indenture, this essay highlights the uniqueness of the indenture system in terms of workers' rights and welfare as well as the legal framework that provided a new language of freedom and contract. Under this system, laborers bargained with colonial authority, a process, which was fulfilled through the amendment in the legislations. By highlighting this element of the history of indentured labor, this essay aims to inspire further research into the detailed legal history of the process.

Migritude and Kala Pani Routes in Shumona Sinha’s Assommons les pauvres (Let Us Strike Down the Poor)

The term migritude was first coined by French theorist Jacques Chevrier to characterize “extracontinental” francophone sub-Saharan literatures that have their roots in negritude and immigration. Kenyan cultural artist Shailja Patel later expanded the term to include South Asian “migrants with attitude.” This article further expands the current framings of migritude by linking it to the historical movement of kala pani, or nineteenth-century Indian indenture. The idea of kala pani migritude reveals an engagement with clandestine migration, identity, language, translation, and geography, both rooted in France and routed along treacherous seaways. Shumona Sinha’s novel Assommons les pauvres also focuses on the experiences of the privileged immigrant narrator whose story is a core part of the novel. Sinha has the privilege to narrate the stories of the migrants for them in her coveted role as a translator. Her stories are mediated by her ambivalence toward the migrants, for whom she feels shame and disgust, and her own tentative attempts to assimilate Frenchness as a normative ideal. This article offers a contrapuntal reading of Sinha’s novel through the lens of kala pani migritude to determine whether migrant subjectivity in a mediated narrative is an ultimately temporary, fleeting, or failed act.

The Curious Case of Montowinie (Emigration Pass 887½)

ABSTRACT When the second indenture ship, Berar, arrived in Fiji on 29 June 1882, the names and particulars of the Indians on board were recorded in the General Register of Indian Immigrants. The ‘Indian Indentured Labour Series List’ in the National Archives of Fiji and later historical accounts conclude the head count of immigrants on the Berar with E-Pass number 887. Curiously, these records have omitted a minute historical detail captured in the General Register – the scrawled entry relating to an Indian woman called Montowinie hastily appended at the end of the records, after the infants. Although she was not assigned an Emigration Pass at the point of departure from Garden Reach in Calcutta, Montowinie was allocated a most unusual pass number, 887½. This historical account sets out to rescue this pass-less indentured woman from the margins and reclaim her as a missing body from Fiji's indenture history.

Cultural Change and Economic Achievements of Descendants of Indian Indentured Labourers in Fiji

The paper investigates the cultural changes for descendants of Indian indentured labourers in Fiji and Indians compared with where their ancestors originally came. It examines the standard of living and workforce participation in both jurisdictions. Furthermore, it tones down the different attributes of Indian culture and its reshaping in Fiji. The paper systematically explains the different approaches of India's culture as compared to the Indo-Fijian culture on various characteristics. Likewise, the article also investigates the changes in lifestyles of Indo-Fijians which whose culture is more inclined towards western culture. The research methodology adopted by the researchers is mixed method and the data collection was made through use of a questionnaire. The study concluded that there had been a paradigm shift in the cultural values of Indo-Fijians living in Fiji, as they have overcome many snagging practices of Indian culture.

Learning to Labour: “Native” Orphans in Colonial India, 1840s–1920s

AbstractTo this day, the history of indigenous orphans in colonial India remains surprisingly understudied. Unlike the orphans of Britain or European and Eurasian orphans in the colony, who have been widely documented, Indian orphans are largely absent in the existing historiography. This article argues that a study of “native” orphans in India helps us transcend the binary of state power and poor children that has hitherto structured the limited extant research on child “rescue” in colonial India. The essay further argues that by shifting the gaze away from the state, we can vividly see how non-state actors juxtaposed labour and education. I assert that the deployment of child labour by these actors, in their endeavour to educate and make orphans self-sufficient, did not always follow the profitable trajectory of the state-led formal labour regime (seen in the Indian indenture system or early nineteenth-century prison labour). It was often couched in terms of charity and philanthropy and exhibited a convergence of moral and economic concerns.

‘An evil thing’: Gandhi and Indian Indentured Labour in South Africa, 1893–1914

Between 1860 and 1911, 152,184 Indian indentured workers went to the then British colony of Natal to work primarily on the sugar plantations. They were followed by free Indian migrants. White settlers felt threatened by a settled Indian population and passed legislation to curb their immigration, trading, employment and residence rights. The struggle of Indians against this racist legislation was spearheaded by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The most contentious issues surrounding Gandhi’s South African stay between 1893 and 1914 are his allegedly racist attitudes towards Africans and his neglect of indentured migrants and their descendants. This article examines Gandhi’s attitude to, and relationship with, the indentured. While most academic studies have argued that Gandhi was oblivious to them until 1913, this article presents a nuanced picture, drawing on aspects of historical archives that have not yet been fully drawn upon, or re-reading those that have been consulted previously. It shows that Gandhi’s views underwent an observable transformation during the time that he was in South Africa, to the point that he came to describe the system of indenture as ‘an evil thing’. However, his reasons for wanting an end to the system were multiple and complex, relating not just to the plight of the indentured, but also the utility of ending indenture for non-indentured Indians.

Dance, music and cultures of decolonisation in the Indian Diaspora: towards a pluralist reading

ABSTRACTDecolonisation is a creative process, as well as a historical and political one. This article outlines key issues in researching the creative processes of decolonisation with reference to dance and music in the Indian Diaspora. It begins with Gandhi's ‘experiments with truth’, which first developed a political reach in the context of Indian indenture within the British Empire but left a fractured legacy in the decolonising era. Their conceptual import frames a discussion on participatory research, dialogic pedagogies and intellectual responsibility. The notion of dialogue contextualises examples of musical collaborations, as well as intellectual exchanges between Gandhi and two of his interlocutors: Ambedkar and Tolstoy. These shift discussion from an oppositional narrative of decolonisation towards more complex views of cultural and intellectual interactions in decolonising processes. The final section introduces the volume's case studies, which collectively encourage a pluralist reading of dance and music in the cultures of decolonisation.