Vi­jay Ma­haraj

In­di­an In­den­ture­ship to Trinidad was of­fi­cial­ly abol­ished on Jan­u­ary 1st, 1920, when all con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions for the labour­ers were ter­mi­nat­ed. How­ev­er, it is to be not­ed that the last ship to bring in­den­tured labour­ers to Trinidad via the SS Ganges ar­rived on April 22nd, 1917.

The first batch of im­mi­grants land­ed in Re­union Is­land on April 13, 1828; in Mau­ri­tius on No­vem­ber 2, 1834; in Guyana on May 5, 1838; in Malaysia 1840; in Trinidad on May 30, 1845; in South Africa on No­vem­ber 16, 1860; and in Fi­ji on May 15, 1879.

Coun­tries in the Caribbean re­gion and else­where that re­ceived In­di­an labour­ers are Suri­name, Ja­maica, Grena­da, Be­lize, Guade­loupe, Mar­tinique and Sey­chelles, among oth­ers. The first batch of im­mi­grants shipped from Kolkata, via the Hes­pe­rus, was 155 men, five women, and ten chil­dren who were con­signed to the Glad­stone and Moss sug­ar plan­ta­tion in De­mer­ara, Guyana.

On the ves­sel Whit­by, there were 250 men, sev­en women, and ten chil­dren as­signed to Berbice (Guyana), in the care of James Matthews and John Cameron (agent to Messrs Gillan­ders & Co of Kolkata). The mor­tal­i­ty on board the Hes­pe­rus dur­ing the voy­age was 14, of which two com­mit­ted sui­cide by drown­ing. The mor­tal­i­ty on board the Whit­by was four. A to­tal of 419 im­mi­grants from both ves­sels land­ed in Guyana in 1838.

In Trinidad, the first ar­rival of In­di­an in­den­tured im­mi­grants was aboard the SS Fa­tel Raza­ck, 30 May 1845. This day is recog­nised as a pub­lic hol­i­day but we ob­serve the en­tire month of May as our Her­itage month. Our an­ces­tors ar­rived in Trinidad car­ry­ing tat­tered ends of the Ra­mayan and the Hanu­man Chal­isa, in what was re­ferred to as their, “Ja­ha­ji Bun­dle,” a sub­sti­tute for a mod­ern-day suit­case. The Ja­ha­ji Bun­dle was a square piece of cloth with the four ends tied to­geth­er and car­ried by hand or held on a stick across the shoul­der.

The Ra­mayan and Hanu­man Chal­isa, two Hin­du re­li­gious texts writ­ten by the saint Tul­si­das, sus­tained the Hin­du through­out this harsh pe­ri­od of in­den­ture­ship on the sug­ar es­tates of Trinidad. We pay homage to Goswa­mi Tul­si­das, the Hin­du saint and po­et who cap­tured Hin­du thought and phi­los­o­phy in these two mas­ter­pieces that are to­day stud­ied world­wide.

Mi­gra­tion has played a cen­tral role in In­di­an his­to­ry. In times of dis­tress, it is gen­er­al­ly be­lieved that peo­ple need at least two pil­lars to lean up­on, name­ly, re­li­gion and his­to­ry. It is al­so recog­nised that much of In­di­an Di­as­po­ra his­to­ry is con­sid­ered to be oral, and if this por­tion is not doc­u­ment­ed, it could be lost for­ev­er and thus weak­en­ing one of our pil­lars.

The his­to­ry of In­di­an (labour) mi­gra­tion to var­i­ous coun­tries of the di­as­po­ra is one that is filled with bro­ken dreams, hard­ships, chal­lenges, and sac­ri­fice, as well as ac­com­plish­ments against great odds. While In­di­ans were bat­tered and bruised, they nev­er fell and were al­so able to move in­to new fron­tiers.

The over­all net re­sult has been the emer­gence of a vi­able com­mu­ni­ty wher­ev­er they have set­tled. The In­di­ans’ rise in the pro­fes­sion­al, sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal, agri­cul­tur­al, and busi­ness ar­eas has been im­pres­sive, but their con­tri­bu­tion to po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments has been mixed, with pe­ri­ods of ‘highs’ fol­lowed by ‘lows.’

Mi­gra­tion from In­dia con­tin­ued for 86 years (1838-1917), dur­ing which time the press­ing so­cial, eco­nom­ic and health prob­lems that af­flict­ed the mi­grant pop­u­la­tion were ig­nored or treat­ed ca­su­al­ly. De­spite tight con­trol in the plan­ta­tion sys­tem over sev­er­al decades, the con­tin­u­ous ex­ter­nal pres­sures, in par­tic­u­lar, that were ex­ert­ed forced the planters to re­lent and the mi­gra­tion sys­tem was abol­ished in 1917.

Af­ter in­den­ture­ship, plan­ta­tions be­gan to de­cline in both so­cial and eco­nom­ic im­por­tance. The for­mer labour­ers be­came in­de­pen­dent farm­ers, some seek­ing em­ploy­ment in ur­ban ar­eas.

Mech­a­ni­sa­tion was in­tro­duced by plan­ta­tion own­ers but this failed as many crops were labour in­ten­sive and plan­ta­tions be­gan to be aban­doned, sold and di­ver­si­fied for oth­er agri­cul­tur­al crops.

The plan­ta­tions’ in­flu­ence over every as­pect of life, so­cial­ly, eco­nom­i­cal­ly, po­lit­i­cal­ly and ed­u­ca­tion­al­ly, rapid­ly ceased.

Al­though many In­di­ans had the right to re­turn to In­dia, on­ly a small pro­por­tion of them ex­er­cised that op­tion. The rest de­cid­ed to make their in­den­tured ter­ri­to­ry their new home.

Notwith­stand­ing the harsh re­al­i­ty of plan­ta­tion life, In­di­ans held on­to their cul­tur­al her­itage. Their re­li­gion, foods, mu­sic and cul­tur­al val­ues per­sist­ed de­spite at­tempts to neu­tralise these through the process of ‘An­gli­ci­sa­tion.’ West­ern- type ed­u­ca­tion was of­fered to the chil­dren of in­den­tured labour­ers on con­di­tion of con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty.

Re­flec­tion on our fore-par­ents’ re­silience and for­ti­tude con­tin­ues to in­spire this and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions of In­di­ans.