The Odyssey of Indenture: Fragmentation and Reconstitution in the Indian Diaspora

Diaspora 5:2 1996 The Odyssey of Indenture: Fragmentation and Reconstitution in the Indian Diaspora Brij V. LaI The Australian National University No one who understands the historian's craft wouldplead seriously that all groups should receive equal time. We know more about some groups than others not only because of the predilection of historians or the nature of their sources but frequently because we should know more about some groups of individuals in terms of their importance and their effects upon others. The problem is that historians have tended to spend too much of their time in the company of the "movers and shakers" and too little in the universe of the mass of mankind. Levine ix "Indians are ubiquitous," reports the Calcutta newspaper The Statesman on 5 August 1980.' According to this article, there were then only five countries in the world where Indians "have not yet chosen to stay": Cape Verde Islands, Guinea Bissau, North Korea, Mauritania, and Romania. Today, according to one recent estimate, 8.6 million people of South Asian origin live outside the subcontinent, in the United Kingdom and Europe (1.48 million), Africa (1.39 million), Southeast Asia (1.86 million), the Middle East (1.32 million), Caribbean and Latin America (958,000), North America (729,000), and the Pacific (954,000) (Clarke et al. 2). The creation of this diaspora is a remarkable phenomenon. The resurgence of interest in overseas Indian communities, especially since the 1970s, has perhaps been inspired by the intensification of the great debate over the nature of slavery in the United States, the precarious political position of Indians in a number of former British colonies, and the increasing visibility of overseas Indians in the international labor and capital markets.2 Descendants of Indian indentured migrants constitute an important part of the mosaic of this Indian diaspora. This essay reviews some of the major aspects of their experience. Its principal focus is Fiji, but much ofwhat is said about the Indo-Fijians' experience is generally applicable to Indian communities in other parts of the world, especially in the Caribbean. 167 168 Diaspora 5:2 1996 Indian indentured emigration was started in the nineteenth century to meet the shortage oflabor supply caused by the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833. Colonial governments in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, Africa, and the Pacific turned to India after other sources of cheap labor supply had failed or were insufficient. Mauritius, in 1834, was the first colony to import Indian indentured labor, followed by British Guiana in 1838; Trinidad and Jamaica in 1845; small West Indian colonies such as St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Grenada in the 1850s; Natal in 1860; Surinam in 1873; and Fiji in 1879 (Tinker). During the eighty-two years ofindentured emigration, over one million Indians were introduced into these colonies. Larger numbers of contract laborers were also imported into Malaya, Sri Lanka, and Burma, but under a slightly different contract (Sandhu and Mani). The indentured migrants left home on a contract whose precise terms varied between the colonies and over time. But all stipulated the nature and conditions of employment on the plantations, remuneration for work, and an optional free return passage to India after a specified period, usually ten years, of "industrial residence" in the colonies. Most of the migrants had probably intended their excursion out of India as a brief sojourn, a temporary expedient to cope with some personal misfortune or economic hardship; it seems unlikely that many consciously opted for a permanent break with their homeland. Quite a few did return: by 1870, 21% of the indentured migrants had returned, and in the decade after 1910, for every two who had migrated to the colonies, one returned (Geoghegan 67). However, the majority, enticed by the prospect of better opportunities in the colonies, official discouragement ofrepatriation, inertia, and the dread of undertaking a long sea voyage again, settled permanently in the colonies. The life and struggle of these laborers and their descendants have bequeathed a legacy whose resolution still remain elusive. The odyssey ofthese "floating caravans of barbarian tourists," as someone once remarked uncharitably (Cumpston 174), has spawned a rich corpus...