I recently read the Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh.While the book is primarily about the little known but extremely important role which India played during the Opium war between Britain and China, it is the role which Britain played in dispersing the Indian diaspora thousand of miles from their home land which got my interest. Interestingly enough last week's Economist also had a cover story of the Diaspora which focuses primarily on the overseas Chinese and Indian but viewed from an economic aspect
When slavery was abolished in 1833 , the British were faced with a dilemma as to how to staff their various plantations ,( whether these were sugarcane plantations in South East Asia or the Caribbean or Mauritius or Fiji or in places such " British Guiana " in South America or work in tea and rubber plantation in Sri Lanka and Malaysia ) and various projects such are railroads across the world. By this time Britain had already colonized India.However they were not to first to start the process of indenture. That " honor" goes to the French who in 1830 took indentured laborers from Pondicherry and Karikal to the French Indian Ocean Island of Reunion.
Theoretically the indenture was for a limited period after which they were supposed to be shipped back to India, but in a lot of cases that never happened. They were given some small amounts to forfeit the passage back or in places such as Trinidad allocated land . By 1870 almost 1.2 million Indians were shipped abroad. Their transportation conditions were marginally better than the slaves, although they were not shackled.
Where they appeared to have differed from the African slaves in the United States was that the Africans were from different regions and from different tribes. Once they reached their destinations they were dispersed and subsumed into and adopted a sub-culture of their own but which was aligned to the Christianity. There were of course areas such as Louisiana,Haiti, Brazil, where they retained some of their native culture particularly in terms of voodooism.
With regards to the Indian indentured laborers or coolies as they were referred to, it appeared that people were sent in batches from a particular province. These included a provincial mix and hence retained their own caste, religion and culture. This again was intertwined with the cultures of the people they interacted with. However what was interesting that even after many decades and in some cases generations later, their social norms , their language all seemed to be in a time wrap. Their home land India had changed and moved on, but their vision and memories were that of what their forefathers had left behind.
We are all familiar with slavery and how the Africans were shipped to the Americas and the Caribbean and the trials and tribulations they suffered.The discrimination which they have faced in the United States and which some of them feel they still face even though the President is black. There have been numerous books written, along with television shows and movies produced about the difficulties they had to go through.
On the other hand there appears to be very little literature in the common domain about the discrimination suffered by the Indian indentured laborers.Apart from some academic papers and historical records in the Archives in India and perhaps the respective countries, there has been very little written about the suffering and discrimination these " coolies " suffered The only thing I have read about the life styles of the descendants of these people are the books written by V S Naipaul such as A House for Mr. Biswas, The Mystic Masseur and so on and by his brother Shiva Naipaul. These were in a humorous tone rather than about the hardships suffered by their parents and grandparents.Yet they persevered and built a life for them selves and prospered in spite of being minorities and being treated as second class citizens.
It is interesting that the Indian academics and historians have not focused on this aspect of "Indian history" . I for one would be fascinated to read about the history of these migrants. Hopefully one of these days......
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