Comment and Controversy

The Editors:

My thanks go to David Northrup for his review of my book on Indo-Caribbean indenture.¹ I feel compelled, however, to respond to his critique. Northrup began his review by pinpointing my knowledge of the historical literature on Indian emigration to the Caribbean but quickly fixated on the migration aspects of the book with which he is most familiar. Northrup essentially ignored the rest of the chapters that examined and analyzed resistance or agency under British colonialism, cultural continuity and change, and gender relations under indenture and imperialism. He, therefore, does not seem to understand the approach of the book, which deals with resistance and accommodation. Instead, he believes that my view of Indo-Caribbean indenture is based on a “materialistic perspective” and on a “philosophical argument.” He may be correct, so far as migration is concerned, since I argued, from a Marxist perspective, that world capitalism rather than domestic socioeconomic challenge in India was mostly responsible for the movement of Indians to the Caribbean. But Northrop’s interpretation does not remotely explain cultural change—in particular, the breakdown of caste structure, as well as the techniques of resistance under domination. Missing from Northrup’s interpretation is how the oppressed coped with structural dominance.

Northrup’s review of Indo-Caribbean indenture takes a proimperialist stance, which was more common in the early twentieth century with supporters of imperialism and colonialism. But this school of thought retains currency only with those who hold that imperialism and colonialism comprised a natural and inevitable part of world history that affected the most underprivileged in the world, including Europeans. It is not surprising that Northrup finds nothing unsettling about nineteenth-century governments’ inability to establish a favorable atmosphere for Indian indentured servants. After all, the colonial powers maintained that the populations under their control, including Caribbean indentured Indians, would benefit from exposure to Western democracy, economics, and religion. In the final analysis, this encounter with the West would help them to meet the challenges of the modern world.

Northrup concludes that “Roopnarine attributes British failure to racism alone, but a more meaningful explanation would have to take into account the difficult social and economic conditions that existed among British industrial and agricultural workers during this era or among the huge numbers of contemporary European emigrants.” No one can seriously deny the racist nature of European indentured policies in the Caribbean; the very people who instituted slavery also, for the most part, instituted Indian indentured servitude. Nonetheless, I never said that racism was the whole story. European colonialism was also driven by balance of power, national status, and economic expansion, which I mentioned consistently throughout the text: For instance, “Caribbean society was based on the organization of the production for imperial and international markets” (4).

More troubling is Northrup’s rationalization that equates Indian Caribbean indentured exploitation with the plight of the European working class. Both groups were certainly subject to the indignity and mistreatment to which the lower ranks of society were heir—for example, the deprivation of labor rights and representation. But were Europeans ever transported across the high seas (Indian slave trade) to harvest sugar cane despite the most inhumane conditions conceivable? The indenture of Europeans in the Caribbean failed after a brief attempt precisely because of the suffering that it caused, but the hard work, inadequate rations, and abuse that were considered unbearable for Europeans were apparently tolerable for Indians.

Northrup might be happy to know that I also analyzed the British working class under domination to grasp the wider reality of Indo-Caribbean indenture. As I reported in the book, “Richard Hoggart, in his study of British working class culture, finds evidence that when groups of people feel they cannot do much to change their life situation they usually “‘adopt attitudes towards that situation which allow them to have a livable life without a constant and pressing sense of the larger situation’” (47). Northrup’s careless approach to writing his review makes me question how much of the text he actually read. Witness such sweeping statements as “Roopnarine’s approach is at variance with the current standard of the...