Book Excerpt: Across the seven seas

Plaques of Indenture Memorial, Kidderpore, Kolkata. Photo: CC 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Indenture as a quest for identity has its origin in one of the greatest migrations in India’s history. The journey of indentured labourers from India to diverse destinations two centuries ago is an untold saga waiting for its chronicler. Slavery and indenture were two sides of the same coin. Like Hegelian dialectic, indenture’s origin was rooted in the abolition of slavery. Popular outcry, revulsion and anger resulted in the progressive abolition of one of the horrors of human history, by the United Kingdom (UK) in 1834, by France in 1848 and by the Netherlands in 1863. Only after the United States of America (US), through the 13^th amendment to its constitution on 31 January 1865, freed its vast enslaved population did the sugar plantations in far flung colonies finally fall silent.

The struggle to abolish slavery commenced from the early nineteenth century. Laws were adopted to reform the system. From 1 May 1807, British ships were not permitted to transport slaves. This was followed, on 1 March 1808, by the interdiction of the transportation of slaves by any ship to a British colony. The law was made more stringent in 1811, wherein offenders involved in slave trafficking could be punished under charges of transportation.

Efforts were made to persuade liberated slaves to continue working with their former slave masters. In fact, till 1834, former slaves were forced to work in the form of an apprenticeship, which implied that they actually remained in bondage. Emigration was difficult. Those liberated had nowhere to go. Gradually, many acquired economic freedom by farming their own plots in hitherto uncultivated territory.

The former slave masters were in a dilemma. The compulsions of sugar plantations demanded a form of labour synonymous with slavery. As Hugh Tinker, a reputed historian noted, ‘There is a symbiosis which links sugar and servitude together.’ Plantation culture induced servility and loss of one’s personality. The White servants were used as slave drivers.  Author Dr Eric Williams concluded: ‘White servitude was the historic base upon which Negro slavery was constructed. The felon-drivers in the plantations became without effort slave drivers.’

Servility and human bondage were the hallmarks of the plantation economies of the time. The economics of sugar plantations was based on layers of intermediaries, similar to the Permanent Settlement established later in India. The big landowners were not content to remain away from the delights of the metropolis, whether London or Paris. The money from plantation labour was used to buy estates and titles back home while the landlord became a respected member of the House of Lords!

The agents who were left in charge were merciless exploiters assisted by overseers who could also be free men of colour. Extortion was the name of the game. It was not surprising that freed former slaves were reluctant to continue working on plantations if any other option was available. Once the British Parliament adopted the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833—followed by a seven-year apprenticeship for former slaves, later shortened to four years—the former slave masters understood that if they did not rapidly implement another system akin to slavery, economic ruin awaited them.

The Indian indentured were the dialectic on which the sugar plantations moved seamlessly from slavery to indenture. It is noteworthy that the plantation owners made no effort to protect the most important commodity of exploitation, regardless of whether it was the slaves or the indentured. This unfortunate approach also bound the slaves to their successors—the Indian indentured. Both were desperate for their freedom and both were prepared to end their lives to regain their lost liberty.

The next stage came rapidly. The colonizers made their fatal choice in India’s east, where her vast and impoverished masses were at the mercy of man-made famines and driven from their lands by the infamous ‘Permanent Settlement’. Forced to cultivate opium, instead of food crops, to fuel the infamous Triangular Trade, the desperate and the marginalized believed that their salvation lay a short distance away, across the seas to a green paradise that awaited them.

Once again, in this tragedy-driven part of India, its suffering masses were deceived into undergoing the next stage of their servitude and destitution. The British Consul in Paramaribo, Suriname, quipped sardonically: ‘The Suriname planter found in the meek Hindu a ready substitute for the Negro slave he had lost.’3 He was mistaken! The so-called ‘meek Hindu’ actually was a born survivor. His ‘meekness’ masked an obstinate determination to cling to his culture, language and civilization despite all odds and to eventually return to his beloved Mother land.

For most, this yearning to return remained a dream. Of the 1.3 million Indian indentured labourers who left their Mother land from 1834 to 1917, when the Great Experiment ended, only about 21 per cent returned. The rest remained to seamlessly merge into the greater Indian Diaspora. That is another tale to be told!

As noted by Brij V. Lal, political thinker and well-known Girmitya historian from Fiji, ‘In time, their [indentured] labour would lay the foundations of new societies and economies, from Suriname to South Africa. Their descendants form a distinct part of the larger mosaic of a visibly growing community of the Indian Diaspora.’

Excerpted with permission from The Indentured and Their Route: A Relentless Quest for Identity by Bhaswati Mukherjee@2023 Rupa Publications