Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour

Linking the Past with the FutureConference on Slavery, Indentured Labour, Migration, Diaspora

and Identity Formation.June 18th – 23th, 2018, Paramaribo, Suriname

Org. IGSR & Faculty of Humanities and IMWO, in collaboration with Nat. Arch. Sur.

Girmit: Peasants’ Understanding of the Indenture SystemAshutosh Kumar

Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library

Abstract

This paper explores ideas about the colonial indentured labour system from the perspective of

the rural Bihari communities from which many migrants came. In particular, it seeks to

position indenture within a longer history of labour migration amongst north Indian peasants

and workers, linking socio-cultural awareness of pre-colonial migratory behaviour to

nineteenth century understandings of indenture. Humanitarians, anti-slavery groups, Indian

nationalists and dominant historiographies have all argued that Indian labour migrants were

not well-informed about either the system of indenture, or the locations to which workers

were transported. Such accounts present indentured labour migrants as passive victims of

indenture. Revisionist scholarships have challenged this long-held perspective and argued

that indentured workers got benefitted economically under the system. Some historians such

as Brij V. Lal (1983) and Marina Carter (1995) have criticised the both extreme positions and

brought up new dimensions to the debate. By exploring into official sources with new

approaches these scholars have destroyed the stereotypes about the emigrants and emigration

under the indenture system. This paper follows further these scholarship and contributes to

this trend by drawing upon a range of sources to demonstrate that migrants had more

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information about the indenture system than is often assumed, and by exploring the complex

ways in which they engaged with and experienced the idea of indenture.

Keyword: Indenture, Bihar, Migration, Labour, Knowledge,

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, upwards of 1.3 million Indians migrated

as indentured labourers to European colonies around the world. At the end of their contracts,

some settled in these far flung destinations, laying the foundations of the modern South Asian

diaspora, while others returned to India, or remigrated elsewhere. Historiographical debates

on indenture have tended to focus on conditions and experiences in destination colonies in the

West Indies, Mauritius, Natal, Fiji and elsewhere, and on the vexed question of whether

indenture was a form of (albeit restricted) free labour, or simply a ‘new system of slavery’.1

What is often missing from these accounts, however, is a sense of the world from which the

migrants came, and the wider contexts which framed their decision to sign contracts of

indenture. This paper explores experiences of and attitudes to the colonial indentured labour

system from the perspective of the Bihari villages from which many of the migrant labourers

were drawn. In particular, it explores how attitudes to indenture were shaped by a wider pre-

history of long distance migration amongst north Indian peasants and workers, and attempts

to provide a link between this migratory behaviour and their understanding of indenture.

Humanitarians, anti-slavery groups, Indian nationalists and dominant historiographies have

all argued that Indian labour migrants were not well-informed about either the system of

indenture, or the locations to which workers were transported. Indeed, anti-indenture

literature, at the time and since, has often presented indentured labour migrants as passive

dupes, who were misled, lied to, or even forcibly coerced into signing indenture contracts.

Yet in doing so, such accounts elide the complex ways in which potential migrants and the

communities from which they came engaged with the idea and experience of indentured

migration. In contrast, some other scholars have suggested that migration entailed substantial

economic benefits. To quote P.C. Emmer, a leading revisionist, new research concerning the

government-supervised, long distance migration of indentured Indians has clearly revealed

that the considerable improvement achieved over time in living and working conditions made

this migration stream a small but important escape hatch for migrant labourers from India.1

1 P.C. Emmer, “The meek Hindu: the recruitment of Indian indenture labourers for service overseas, 1870-1916”, P.C. Emmer (ed.) Colonialism and Migration: Indenture labour

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But as Marina Carter has stated that a central flaw of both theories is their failure to analyze

crucial changes in recruiting strategies, which helped to maintain the dynamism of overseas

labour mobilization.2 Brij V. Lal and Marina Carter in their researches on Fiji and Mauritius

respectively have destroyed the notion that indentured emigrants had no prier information and

were totally unaware about the terms and conditions of the work on the sugar plantations.

Both scholars have forcefully argued that the indentured workers were not passive players in

the colonial drama.2 Although furthers these scholarships, this paper also underscores that the

above works essentially consist of monographs about particular colonies and look at

indenture from the point of view of those who are already experiencing it, whereas this paper

also looking at vernacular sources at the point of departure.

Hence, this paper seeks to offer a more holistic approach, by looking at the ways in which

migrants, potential migrants, and the communities from which they came, understood

indenture. In doing so it will highlight the role of longstanding traditions of labour migration

within India3, as well as the impact of family networks, returning migrants and experiences of

remigration in shaping the information available to potential indentured labour recruits. Of

course, uncovering a sense of nineteenth century peasant consciousness and awareness is a

difficult endeavour due to the paucity of direct subaltern sources. Yet a careful analysis even

of official colonial ethnographic reports can provide glimpses of their worldview, especially

when these are read alongside other sources, such as folksongs, proverbs, and migrant

letters.4 This paper, then, provides a critical exploration of two important enquiries of 1882,

produced by Major Pitcher in the United Provinces and George Grierson in Bihar, both of

which were major catchment areas from which migrant labourers were recruited.5 By reading

these accounts against the grain, and placing them within the context of a pre-existing mobile

labour market, this paper will elucidate the ways in which indenture was perceived by the

North Indian peasant communities from whence the migrants came. By doing so it will

problematise traditional assumptions about ignorant Indian labour migrants and suggest that

in many cases peasants were better informed in their decisions than is usually assumed.6

Indeed, in some cases at least, peasant migration followed established networks that allowed

migrants to use the indenture system as a channel through which to reach the colonies; the

peasants who put their thumb impressions on the ‘girmit’ agreement did not always do so in

before and after Slavery, (Dordrecht:1986).2 M. Carter, Strategies of labour mobilization in colonial India in Denial et.al, Plantations, Proletarians and Peasant in colonial Asia, Frank Cass, 1992, p. 122.

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blind ignorance, but, rather, often made informed decisions to go to the sugar colonies in

conscious attempts to seek a better life.

The Culture of Migration for Naukari

To fully understand north Indian peasant conceptions of indentured labour during the colonial

period, it is necessary to frame this within a wider pre-history of long distance migration

within India. The culture of peasant migration in northern India can be traced historically at

least to the beginning of sultanate rule in Delhi and throughout the Indo-Gangetic plain. As

Dirk Kolff has demonstrated, the military labour market of pre-colonial India involved

seasonal, long distance migration for peasant soldiers who might take service in the army of a

prominent potentate during part of the year.7 Eastern Hindustan, popularly known as purab,

was an important area for the recruitment of peasant soldiers (known as purabias) during

fifteenth and sixteenth century under the sultanate of Sher Shah, and later under Mughal

rule.8 Others might travel for trade, or for service in skilled or manual labour. Such

movement can be observed in the poetries and folklores of the period. Poetry and folklore

from the region dating back to fifteenth century suggest that separation of husband and wife

as the man left his house to serve a distant master was a popular and culturally resonant

theme. Virah (separation), familial dislocation and longing as a result of labour migration was

a widespread motif of poetries and folklore, which often depicted the experience from the

perspective of the wife who was left behind.9 The poetry of Abdul Rahim Khan Khana,

connected to the poetic form Barwai Chand, focuses on one such virah in the sixteenth

century. The original Barwai Chand was composed by the wife of a servant of Abdur Rahim

Khan Khana and expresses the love and longing felt by newly married wives when separated

from husbands who had taken service far away. The first ever Barwai, for example, offered a

warning to the migrant husband: prem pirit ka birwa chalev lagai; seenchan ki sudhi leejau,

murjhi na jay. (Away you go planting the tender sapling of love and desire; beware it needs

watering else it might dry up).10

Another set of songs that dealt with the issue of separation through labour migration is the

barahmasa, the song of twelve months. As Dirk Kolf has discussed, the barahmasa are

primarily songs of separation in which newly married women express their feelings of

abandonment and desire when left behind in the lonely home.11 Barahmasa poetry consisted

of songs of viraha (or separation) of husband and wife, or lover and beloved dated even

before 1600. The seasonal vagabondage of the husband is a constant backdrop to women’s

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lives in this poetry, for as Charlotte Vaudeville points out ‘in a pastoralist, mercantile and

soldiering society, the rainy season that brings home the husband is the season blessed and

looked forward to by women’.12‘All my friends sleep with their husbands,’ a song set during

Asadh (the first month of the rains) laments, ‘But my own husband is a cloud in another

land.’13 In another baramasa a woman eagerly waiting for return of her husband and

describes how she feels with the passing of each month:

Kuār kushal nahin pāwā ho, keu nā āwe nā jāwe

Patiya me likhi likhi pathaebo ho, dihe kant ka hath.

Pus pāla gael ho, jāda jor bujāy

Nav man rupaiya bharaeto ho, binu sainya jāda na jāy.

Māghi ke siw teras ho, siw bar hoye tohār

Fir fir chitwa mandirwa ho, binu piya bhawan udas.

Chait fulen ban tensu ho, jab ke tund haharāy

Fulat bāla gulābwa ho, piya binu mohe n suhāy.

Baisakhi basāwa kataeton ho, rachi ke bangla chhawāy

Tohi se soete balamuwa ho, acharane ād.14

Translation: In kuār (Asin) I get no good news: no one comes or goes.

Writing, writing on a letter will I send it. Give it, I pray, into my love’s

hand. / In pus frost has fallen, and the cold makes its power known. Even if

I filled my quilt with nine mans of cotton, the cold will not depart in the

absence of my lord. / The thirteenth of the Māgh is the feast of Siv: may the

blessing of Siv [Lord Shiva] be upon thee. Whenever I turn and gaze upon

my dwelling (I see that) without my love my home is full of gloom. / In

Chait the Palās-trees are flowering in the forest and the barley crop is

whispering (in the wind); the jasmine and the rose are blooming, but without

my love they please me not. / In Baisākh I would have cut bamboos and

adorned and roofed a bungalow. My husband would have slept in it, while I

fanned him with the end of my body cloth.

Similarly, the pain of separation due to labour migration is a constant theme in the popular

songs of northern India. The songs sung by the peasants of Gangetic belt in the month of

Chait, called chaitar, for example, focus primarily on the painfulness of separation, as young

women share their sense of desire, loss and longing with their sisters-in-law, lamenting that

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home is not pleasant when the husband is in another land. Nineteenth century ethnographer

G.A. Grierson collected many such songs from the villages of north India.15 Similarly, the

Jatsar songs sung during the grinding of corn with hand-mill also dwell on themes of

separation from a husband who is away for reasons of trade or service. The following song,

for example, maps out the imagined geographies of separation:

Beri beri jāla saiyan purabi banijiya

Kaise kate din rāt ho.

Gādi je atakela chahal pahal me, baila atake gujrāt ho.

E dunu naina banāras atake, saiyan jahānābād ho

Talawa me chamakela chālha machhariya, ranawa me chamake talawār ho.

Sabhawa me chamkela saiyan ke pagariya, sejiya pe tikuli hamār ho.16

Translation: O my lord! Often goes thou to the East to trade: how can the days

and nights be passed? The cart gets stopped in muddy plain, and the bullocks in

Gujarat. My two eyes stopped in Benaras, while my husband was in Jahanabad.

As the Chālhwa fish shines in the lake, and as the sword shines in the battle, so

shines the turban of my lord in the assembly and spangle [of my forehead] on

the bed.

In another song a woman of Eastern Gorakhpur sings:

Āmawa mojarāi gaile, mahuiya kochiyāi goile

Kekara se badabo sanesawa? Āh re bedardi chhodi de nokariya.17

Translation: The mango trees have blossomed, and the mahuwas dropped

their flowers. By whom shall I send a message? Ah, heartless one, leave thy

service (naukariya).

As Dirk Kolff points out, because these songs primarily take the woman’s point of view and

focus on the emotive elements of separation, they tend to say relatively little about the

husband’s actual whereabouts, or the precise reasons for his departure.18 They do, however,

provide glimpses of cultures of migration that destabilise later colonial assumptions about

static Indian village society. Indeed, it is now well established that extensive patterns and

networks of migrant labour for military service, trade and skilled and unskilled work existed

in pre-colonial India19 When the British East India Company annexed large parts of India, it

was able to tap into a pre-existing migrant military labour market to man its army. In many

songs the separation of husband and wife is specifically referred to as being due to naukari,

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or service, which traditionally refers to long distance service, such as service in the British

East India Company’s Army.20

The above evidence suggests that village India, especially in U.P and Bihar, is unimaginable

without a constant outward stream of short, medium, and long-term migrant labour destined

for service in the military, commerce, agriculture and construction. North Indian peasants had

served in the army of the Delhi Sultanate and in other services from the fourteenth century

and had continued to serve in the British paltan as sepoys, despite supposed cultural and

religious fears amongst some of them about crossing the kala pani, or black water.21 Indeed,

the ubiquity of themes of separation due to service in the popular culture of north India

suggests that peasants were consistently on the move, looking for work or naukari.22 The

songs of separation confirm that many Indian peasants were seasonal migrants who would

travel sometimes very substantial distances for employment long before the arrival of the

British changed the socio-economic landscape of north India, and opened up new channels

for migration overseas. Although the movement of peasants for naukari in pre-colonial India

was primarily internal, such migrations created a social world in which movement, separation

and return were culturally encoded, experienced and understood, and provides the backdrop

to an important context for understanding decisions to migrate even further afield.

Becoming Coolie: Migration under the Indenture System

While the pre-colonial movement of peasants was limited to internal migration, British rule in

India opened up new possibilities for migration overseas. These possibilities emerged from

the need for labour on sugar plantations after the abolition of slavery in the British colonies of

the West Indies and Mascarenes in 1833-4. Emancipation was a humanitarian success, but it

created pressing economic problems, resulting in a trade depression throughout the British

Empire and rising costs of commodities such as sugar, rum and molasses. The planters had

been compensated to the tune of £20 million for the loss of their human property, but with

newly emancipated slaves reluctant to work for their former masters on the terms the masters

wished to offer, they faced an ongoing labour crisis. As one parliamentary committee put it

‘great distress undoubtedly prevails amongst all who are interested in the production of sugar

in the British colonies… The principal cause of the diminished production [of sugar] and

consequent distress are the great difficulty which has been experienced by the planters in

obtaining steady and continuous labour….’23

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Colonial planters, first in Mauritius and then in the West Indies and elsewhere, found the

solution to their labour problem in India, which had long been perceived as having almost

inexhaustible manpower reserves, and where labour was comparatively cheap, plentiful and

mobile. Between 1834 and 1920 Indians were recruited to work on the colonial plantations of

various colonies through the indenture system.24 Under that system, labour was recruited for

the planters by their agents on the subcontinent, and contracted to work for a certain period of

time (usually five years). During this time the employer was legally obliged to provide fixed

wages, medical attention and other amenities for the labourers, who were likewise tied to that

employer. After the contract had lapsed the labourer could either renew his term of

employment or return to his native land.25 The system operated in the same way across the

Empire, with minor variations between the different colonies. Before embarking, emigrants

had to sign an agreement, popularly known as a ‘girmit’, which set out the length, terms, and

conditions of service.26 Copies of these contracts found in archives in London, Mauritius, Fiji,

and Natal show that the terms of engagement were declared not only in English, but also in

regional languages such as Bengali, Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Kannada, and Telugu.27 The

agreement clearly stated the kind of work to be done, the hours of work and its remuneration,

and the availability of various other provisions including accommodation, healthcare and

rations. Another significant provision was the option of a return passage, at the migrant’s own

expense, on the completion of five years service, or free return passage to India after a further

five years of ‘industrial residence’ in the colonies.28, followed by British Guiana in 1838,

Trinidad and Jamaica in 1845, the smaller West Indian colonies such as St. Kitts, St. Lucia,

St. Vincent and Grenada in the 1850’s, Natal in 1860, Surinam in 1873 and Fiji in 1879.

During the eighty-two years of indentured migration, over one million Indians travelled to

these colonies.29

Emigration under the indenture system attracted an overwhelming number of peasants, male

and female, but especially newly married males from northern Indian villages.30 The young

men who had become jawans and sipahis in the Sultanate, Mughal or East Indian Company

army now became the bidesia and girmitiya of the sugar colonies. Indentured emigration was

only one of the many vents for unemployed labour in the agricultural sector, of course. There

were many other streams of inland migration and people were always on move in search of

the work of any kind. Grierson found in Bihar that people often went to Nepal for work,

while large public, semi-public, or private construction works also drew in large numbers of

migrant labourers. Anand Yang has traced patterns of seasonal migration in the Saran district

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of Bihar, which saw many thousands labourers migrating to eastern Bengal and Calcutta

temporarily, only to return to their villages when agricultural work commenced.31 Large

number of people from the Saran were recruited as indenture labourers while they were away

from their place of origin. Thus they had already left their home to find employment, and

when they failed to find work within India, they sometimes chose to become indentured for

more distant service. Exploring the patterns of indentured emigrants to Fiji, Brij Lal provides

data which confirms that the majority of emigrants had already left their home before they

were recruited for Fiji. For example 61.2% single male Ahirs, 75.5% single male Brahmins

and 46.2% single male Chamars from the Basti district of United Provinces registered for

indenture outside their district of origin. Likewise 62.2% Ahir, 86.6% Brahmin and 45.1%

Chamar single females of Basti registered themselves outside of their original district.32 Far

from being plucked from static village communities, these people were already on the move

as part of internal patterns of labour migration, or economic displacement. Pitcher, during his

enquiry into the workings of indentured recruitment in United Provinces and Oudh, reported

on the flow of mobile labour to large urban centre and pilgrimage sites:

In all year, apparently, there is a stream of wanderers along highways

converging on large towns from which stream nearly one-half of the total

number of recruits is drawn. Amongst recruiters certain towns have a

reputation in that way and are known as nakas. Cawnpore, Delhi, and

Lucknow are great nakas; Allahabad, Fyzabad and Benaras furnish many

recruits from amongst their pilgrims, and Benaras from its Sadabarts. Agra is

a great naka for people from the Native states. Muttra affords many female

recruits, being a favorite place of pilgrimage with women.33

The nineteenth century saw an upsurge in the size of the north Indian labour market, although

the availability of labour for overseas recruitment fluctuated, depending on the local demand

for labourers. Pitcher found that the construction of the Oudh and Rohilkhand railway to

Maradabad had thrown whole villages of Kahars out of work, because their livelihood

depended on bearing palakis (palanquin). Similarly the end of the Second Afghan War

flooded the Punjab with men in want of work, leading one recruiter to inform Pitcher that any

number of men were available for the colonies in that region.34

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Between the mid nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century an

extensive recruitment system operated in the bastis, villages and towns of north India, in

order to channel labour to the colonies. The system was carefully regulated (as the first

regulation came in 1837) and various rules, restrictions and expectations framed the ways in

which licensed recruiters went about their business in the various districts of the United

Provinces, Bihar and Bengal. Legally, there were coolie recruitment offices in each district of

north India, with the head office being in Calcutta. Licenses were provided to the main

recruiters, although many of these also employed non-licensed men and women helpers to

obtain recruits. Locally, these non-licensed subordinates were known as arkati (a

Bhojpurisation of recruiter). Recruiters applied many strategies to recruit ‘coolies’ and the

modus operandi varied from area to area. Pitcher and Grierson found in United Provinces and

Bihar that the ‘ideal method of recruiting was that of recruiters going about in the towns and

village and enlisting people at their homes or near abouts’. However, many recruiters found

labourers in one district and registered them in another. Grierson found that in Shahabad in

Bihar emigration was so popular that prospective migrants came to the sub-depot to get

themselves recruited.

Although there were sometimes gluts in the available labour market, it was not always easy

for recruiters to obtain workers for overseas plantations, and they faced a number of

challenges. Overseas migration constituted a loss of labour for the local zamindars, who were

consistently hostile to the system and to recruiters working in their areas. Since Indian village

life was dominated by zamindars, recruiters in the countryside ran the risk of assault by the

zamindars’ servants. As a result they often opted for different strategies, frequenting the main

roads leading to large towns, where people often roamed in search of work. They could also

be found at railway stations, sarais (women’s garment) and wells outside towns, where

travellers congregated and where they could easily fall into conversation and asked men and

women if they were looking for work. Their usual first question was ‘Naukari loge?’ (Do you

want a job?). If there was interest in knowing ‘where’ and ‘what kind of job’ then they

explained the nature of the indenture contract. The various fairs were the best place for

recruiters to look for labourers to recruit. For instance, in Bihar, the Sonpur fair generally

offered a fruitful field for recruiters. 35 Thus recruitment for overseas migration tapped into

existing patterns of labour mobilisation, providing one of a number of outlets for

unemployed, underemployed, or displaced peasants in search of a livelihood.

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Awareness of the system and places of work

British Abolitionists, Indian Nationalists and later dominant historiographies have all

contended that the North Indian peasants who were transported to sugarcane fields on distant

islands around the globe had practically no knowledge of the places to which they were going,

or the working and living conditions they would find when they got there. Popular anti-

indenture accounts emphasise the idea that were being fraudulently recruited, being duped,

mislead and deceived by the emigration agencies, when they were not forcible coerced or

kidnapped. But minute details that appear in various official reports and non-official writings

indicate that the idea of indentured emigration, and the various sugar colonies that employed it,

must have been reasonably familiar to peasants by the second half of the nineteenth century , as

they had developed their own vocabularies for talking about overseas emigration under the

indenture system.36 For instance, the word arkotties (or arkati, for recruiter) and Mirich (for

Mauritius) were on the lips of the indentured workers who returned from Mauritius after

finishing their contract.37 These words were popular in United Provinces and Bihar during the

1880s when Pitcher and Grierson were interviewing peasants in order to ascertain their feelings

and thoughts on the indenture system, and both found that the destination points had already

been conceptually ‘peasantised’. A hierarchy of preference seems also to have been established.

For example, in United Provinces Pitcher noted that Trinidad, popularly known as ‘Chinitat’

was preferred to Demerara, popularly known as Damra or ‘Demrailla’. Jamaica was

considered a good place to go to, but little was known in the early 1880s of either Fiji or Natal.

This may be due to the late commencement of emigration in Fiji in 1879, whilst that Natal

received most of its labourers from South India. Mauritius, popularly known as ‘Mirich’, was

popular among North Indian peasants. Pitcher found that people were very much aware of how

the system worked, the nature of the passage and level of wages that could be expected in each

colony. For instance, Mauritius was preferred by the emigrants due to the shortness of the

journey, the lower cost of the return passage and the payment of monthly wages in place of a

daily labour. But Pitcher also found that Mauritius had acquired a bad reputation in some areas.

A recruiter at Gorakhpur said that ‘coolies would sometimes say that they are ready to go to

any colony but Mauritius’. Such feelings, which were occasionally apparent in relation to

Demerara or Mauritius, were more ubiquitous when it came to the ‘French Colonies’ – a

phenomenon that Pitcher attributed to the bad reputation incurred in the old days of ‘vagrant

hunts’ in the French possessions.38 Perhaps unsurprisingly, Grierson found that indentured

migration was popular in districts where returnees were settled. As Grierson put it, emigration

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was emphatically ‘Crescit indulgens sibi’, and every coolie who emigrated, on his return

became an apostle of it.39 He noted that in these areas very positive views of indenture

abounded, with people reporting that ‘a coolie goes out for five years; that if he stays for ten, he

gets a free passage home; that he is well treated, his caste respected, and comes home rich. The

climate of the colonies is delightful, work plentiful and highly paid.’40 Such glowing accounts

may not have been universal, but family and local networks were certainly important for

disseminating information about conditions in the colonies and for dispelling some of the

myths and fears that surrounded overseas emigration by keeping people in touch with distant

loved ones and their experiences.

If potential migrants had a more sophisticated conception of the nature of indenture and the

various destinations to which they might be transported than is usually assumed, this does not

mean that they were not also suspicious of the motives of the colonial state in allowing, or

encouraging this overseas migration. Pitcher found that many educated Indians thought that

recruitment was carried out primarily with the aim of populating various deserted colonies

that were now under the control of the Government of India, and that those who were

emigrating would never return.41 In areas with less direct connections to the colonies people

remained suspicious of a system, which seemingly ‘disappeared’ young men and women.

Grierson heard in the countryside that ‘If any one’s son or brother disappeared after a family

quarrel and was not heard of again, it was at once concluded that he had gone to ‘Tapu’

(island), and nothing more is thought about it.’ ‘In this way’ he observed, ‘the colonies get

the credit of being a kind of limbo where everyone goes who is lost sight of, and hence they

got a bad name as a place where, once a person goes, ten chances to one he were never heard

of again’.42 In United Provinces Pitcher reported that in several places the feelings of the local

community towards indenture were very negative, and many people told him horror stories

about what they believed became of migrants once in the colonies, including that ‘the coolie

hangs with his head downward like a flying-fox, or is ground in for oil.’43 This refers to a

supposed substance popularly known as ‘mimiai ka tel’ (the oil extracted from a coolie’s

head). Rumours suggested that this substance was coveted by the colonial planters and it was

the fate of the young migrant to have this oil traumatically extracted.44 Such stories might

have arisen due to the preference for young and able bodied workers for the plantations,

rather than for more mature migrants, as it was believed that the oil was only found in the

juvenile. Stories about mimiai ka tel, along with some of Grierson’s insights and cultural

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linguistics, have been projected back into the 1830s by the novelist Amitav Gosh, on that

curiously populated ship that marks the site of his novel Sea of Poppies. Ghosh writes:

The most frightening of the rumours was centred upon the question of why the

white men were so insistent on procuring the young and the juvenile, rather

than those who were wise, knowing, and rich in experience: it was because

they were after an oil that was to be found only in the human brain – the

coveted mimiái-ka-tel, which was known to be most plentiful among people

who had recently reached maturity. The method employed in extracting this

substance was to hang the victims upside down, by their ankles, with small

holes bored into their skulls: this allowed the oil to drip slowly into a pan.’45

Reference to the stories of mimiai ka tel can also be found in the following woodcut, which

was given to Edward Jenkin by a Chinese schoolmaster in Georgetown while the former

was on a visit to British Guiana to write a book on the condition of coolie labourers.

13

Mimiai ka tel:life on a sugar plantation as seen through eyes of an indentured labourer.

Jenkins explained the cartoon as follow:

The picture is a tolerably fair representation of a manager’s house on its brick

pillars. To the left, at the bottom of the picture, is a free Coolie driving his

cattle. To the right a rural constable is seizing an unhappy pigtail to convey

him to the lock- up, being absent, as we see, from the band just above him,

with his arms unbound. This indicates that he is trying to avoid the restraints

of his indenture, and for this he is liable to punishment. Above him, on the

right of the picture, is a group of Chinese, and on the left of the steps a group

of Indians, represented with their arms bound, an emblem of indentureship.

They always speak of themselves as “bound” when under indenture. At the

foot of the steps, on either side, is a Chinaman and a Coolie, from whose

breasts two drivers are drawing blood with a knife, the life fluid being caught

by boys in the swizzle-glasses of the colony. A boy is carrying the glasses up

the steps to the attorney and the manager, who sit on the left of the verandah,

and who are obviously fattening at the expense of the bound people below

them. A fat wife and children look out of the windows. Behind, through a

break in the wall, are represented the happy and healthy owners in England; to

the right, under the tree, through a gap in the fence, are aged Chinese, weeping

over their unfortunate relatives. In the right-hand corner of the verandah is the

pay- table, with the overseers discussing and arranging stoppages of wages.

The smoking chimney of the kitchen and the horse eating his provender seem

to be intended to contrast with the scene in front. This, then, gives a

picturesquely sentimental and satirical aspect of the grievances likely to arise

under the Coolie system.46

Grierson also heard rumours of mimiai ka tel in some parts of Bihar – in Gaya, for example,

he found that ‘Jo log nahi jante hain’ (the uninformed) abused the coolies for leaving the

country, and repeated the tale about ‘mimiai ka tel’ – but in districts where returnees were

settled, he reported that people did not believe in the story and considered it all lies.47

Even for those who did not believe dark rumours of mimiai ka tel, there were other more

immediate reasons for approaching the idea of indentured migration with caution. Grierson

14

noted the peasants’ objections to emigrating, including the long-term commitment, the long

distance from home and fears about the preservation of family ties, and caste and religious

identities. Emotional attachment to one’s native land and immediate kin were frequently cited

as reasons not to emigrate. Some people told Grierson that it was very difficult to leave

‘Janam-bhoomi’, while others noted that once they went to a colony, migrants sometimes

struggled to maintain their ties with family in India. Another objection was the dread of

interference with caste. Pitcher noted in his diary for 15 March 1882 at Camp Bukas that

when he interviewed one Prag Singh the latter told him that it was only dread of the unknown

which deterred people from the journey, coupled with a general impression that emigrants

became “Bedharam” from being forced to eat out of one dish on board ship, along with

people of other castes, and that on arrival at the colonies they were forcibly converted to

Christianity.48 In United Provinces, Native Deputy Collectors and Inspectors of police shared

the belief that ‘Coolies are made to eat pork and beef; are deprived of caste in malice afore-

thought, and are forcibly converted to Christianity. Such opinion had also been

communicated to coolies in open court.’49 Likewise Grierson noted that there was a general

belief that ‘coolies in the colonies are made to eat beef and to become Christians, and that

they will never be allowed to return.’50 During his investigation Grierson came across the

widespread belief that recruiters deceived innocent women and made them prostitutes. An

educated person confided to Grierson that ‘the recruiters and their men entice away wives and

daughters from poor and even respectable families’.51 He found that such views were

prevalent in those areas where emigration was not well known.

Many people complained to Pitcher and Grierson and suspected the whole business was a

fraud on the grounds of the paucity of news of the emigrants who left India.52 Grierson

observed that the absence of a trustworthy postal system fostered such suspicions and

negative thinking. People complained to him that there was nothing to ‘jog the memories’ of

the emigrants with regard to their friends at home. Ray Jay Prakash Bahadur, the Manager of

the Dumraon Raj complained as follows:

When a man goes out, his friends never know when they will see him again.

Practically there is no communication by letter between the colonies and India.

Letters do arrive, but the very fewness of the arrivals makes evident in a

village the great number of coolies about whom nothing is known.53

15

Some returned emigrants said to Grierson that they used to send letters, but never received

any replies, as their families and friends in India did not know their address, and the friends

of ‘coolies’ who had not returned said that they had never heard from them.54Although

limited, letters and remittances were definitely being sent by the indentured from the

colonies.55. Grierson himself noticed the large correspondence between emigrants and their

relatives in India, but uncharacteristically choose not to provide specimens of such letters. He

did, however, provide a tally of the number of letters and remittances sent annually through

the emigration agent.56

Of course, sending letters did not necessarily guarantee their arrival. In a diary entry for 13

January 1880 Grierson reports that ‘two years ago a sonar (goldsmith) came back from the

Mauritius and told Mir Kungra that his son was alive and well. Mir then sent a registered

letter, but it was returned through the Dead-letter Office. People told him when he sent the

letter that it would never reach its destination, as such letters never did. He did not believe

them, but found they had spoken the truth.’57 Dead letters to and from Indian labour migrants

can be found in various regional and provincial archives, and provide fascinating glimpses of

migrant experiences and concerns. Below is a lost letter written in Urdu from Sirajuddin, a

girmitiya in the Ba district of Fiji, who originally came from Campbellpur (Attock) in Punjab,

whose letter remained undelivered due to mistakes in the spelling in writing his address.

16

This probably was not an isolated case, as Indian indentured labourers in Ba also signed a

petition to appoint someone who knew Hindustani writing to the position of clerk in the local

post office so that he could at least write the correct address on the post card.58 The letter was

signed by ‘57 Indians etc of Ba’ and reads as follow:

We the Indians of Ba district beg to state that there is a large population

of our people. We cannot conveniently send or get home letters parcels and

money orders.

Messrs Marks are in charge of the local Post Office and had two men,

one European and his Indian assistant. The later remained for six months, during

which period we had no trouble of any sort in mail but now only the European is

working and Indian is sent away. The former cannot understand Hindustani. We

give the names of district and Thana but he takes it down differently; thus great

inconvenience is caused in our home letter etc. without an Indian interpreter we

suffer much.

17

This is a big district consisting large number of free and indentured

Indians. Under these circumstances we request that the Government will direct

Messrs Marks to take necessary steps to remove our grievances or to make Govt

Post Office. As long as there was an Indian interpreter we had no trouble but in

his absence general dissatisfaction prevails.

In early twentieth century novelist Mannan Dwivedi Gazpuri in his piece Ramlal focuses on

the importance of letters and postal system for those whose kin had migrated:

Āj budh hai pardesiyon ke māta-pita aur patni chitthirasa sahib ka rāsta dekh

rahe hain. Sar pe lāl pagadi, pair me patti kandhe par chamade ka baig latak

raha hai. Yah baig nahi hai yah logon ki āsha aur nirāshāo ka khazāna

hai.dur desh Rangun, Canāda, Natāl aur Mauritius me garibon ke rakt ke

kamāye huwe rupaye bhi isi me āte hai.59

Translation: Today is Wednesday. Parents and wives of emigrants are looking

out for the postman. A red turban, band around the ankles and leather bag is

hanging on the shoulder. This is not a simple bag. This is a treasure of the

hopes and sorrows of the people. This very [bag] brings the money earned by

the sweated labour of the poor in countries as far flung as Rangoon, Canada,

Natal and Mauritius.

The importance of the remittances sent by the indentured labourers from overseas plantations,

and the unreliability of their return can also be seen in many of the letters sent by labourers

through the government postal channels. In 1880, for example, an Indian indentured labourer,

Sewpersad from Sultanpur, United Provinces to Durban, Natal sent £50, which was

acknowledged by the protector of emigrants and Emigration Agent at Calcutta after he sent a

letter asking for confirmation of remittance to his family in India, as it has not been received

after two years.60 In another case Kalli Prasaud in Natal sent a Bill of Exchange on the Natal

Bank for £10 to Auchaibur Singh of Arrah, Bihar. He sold it on to Moocond Lall, but Lall

could not cash it and sold it back to Auchaibur Singh. In a final attempt to get it cashed,

Auchibur Singh wrote to Ram Khelawon Singh at Calcutta asking him to get it cashed and send

money, for otherwise he would have had to send it back to Kalli Prasaud in Natal.61

18

The above letters and remittances confirm that many of the indentured Indians working on the

sugar plantations of the Caribbean, Indian and Pacific oceans were in touch with their family

members in India and for many families left behind, the remittances were a vital source of help

and support. Overseas migration was so deep in the everyday life of the north Indian peasant

that even Munshi Premchand, the famous novelist from Uttar Pradesh, touched upon the

anxiety of getting letters from those migrating to Mirich or Damra:

Gobar ne pucha dada ko kya huwa amma? Dhaniya ghar ka hāl kah kar use

dukhi na karna chahti thi. Boli, kuchh nahi beta jara sir me dard. Chalo

kapade utāro muh dho lo. Kaha the tum itne dinon tak is tarah koi ghar se

bhāgata hai aur kabhi ek chitthi tak na likhi. Āj sāl bhar ke bād sudhi li hai.

Tumhāri rāh dekhte dekhte ānkhe fat gayi yahi āsha bandhi rahati thi ki kab

wah din āyega or kab tumhe dekhungi. Koi kahata tha mirach bhāg gaya koi

damara tāpu batāta tha. Sun sunkar jān sukhi jāti thi kaha rahe itne din?

Gobar sharmate huwe kaha kahi dur nahi gaya tha amma, yahi Lucknow me

to tha aur itne niyare rahkar bhi kabhi ek chitthi tak na likhi?

Translation: Gobar asked, “Amma (mother), what happened to dada

(grandfather)”? Dhaniya did not wish to acquaint him with plight of the house.

Said, “nothing much son, just a little headache. Why don’t you change and

wash up? Where were you all these days? Does someone abscond from his

home like this? And that to without bothering to send even a letter. Today

after a whole year it has struck you to think of us. I nearly lost my sight

looking out for you. I lived on the hope that someday I would be able to see

you. Some said you have run away to Mirich [Mauritius], some said to Damra

[Demerara] tapu [island]. I nearly lost hope after all this. Where were you all

these days?” Gobar answered a little shyly, “not too far Amma, just close by in

Lucknow.” And you did not even bother to write us a letter staying so close

by?62

If letters provided valued, if sometimes unreliable connections between migrants and their

places of origin, fuller and more direct information was received from returned migrants

themselves, who were able to offer detailed accounts of the indenture system, working

conditions in the colonies and other aspects of the experience to their families and fellow

villagers. The returned emigrants acted as valuable conduits for knowledge of about the

19

destination colonies.63. The following table shows all the emigrants who had gone from

Calcutta to each colony, and all those who returned from that colony from the

commencement of operations up to 1883.

Calcutta Emigrants Proceeded to and Returned from colonies, from commencement to

1883.64

Colonies Emigrated to Returned from

Mauritius 232,802 80,007

Demerara 126,656 15,727

Trinidad 66,769 7,190

Jamaica 21,434 5188

Greneda 3,220 214

St. Lucia 2,534 162

St Kitts 361 -

St. Vicent 2,275 680

Nevi’s 342 -

Natal 14,214 517

Fiji 1,420 -

St Croix 312 250

Reunion 8,115 985

Suriname 6,792 708

Guadeloupe 13,854 169

Cayenne 1,427 -

Martinique 962 46

20

Total 503,489 111,843

In the course of his enquiry Pitcher interviewed a number of returned migrants, and his notes

in his Diary provide an interesting insight both into their experiences and their attitudes

towards indentured migration:

March 16th- At noon Ganga Din Misr of Adampur, the returned emigrant from

Demerara, came to see me and tell his story,…gave a curious account of his

voyage: how he went not only over the kalapani, but also a sufait, lal, nila, and

hara pani. Described St. Helena and the terror of the coolies at sea in storm:

how some of them used to cry. Highly eulogised the good and plentiful food on

board. Was very happy in Berbice, but got into a scrape over some woman,

who made away with Rs. 250 of his.

March 30th- interviewed the sub-agents… with regard to registration, the chief

complaint is that regarding the use by Magistrate of the words “kalapani”. Says

the coolie to himself, when he hears a Magistrate Saheb talking to him of

kalapani- “ ‘kya! Ham ne kya kasur kiya ke ham ko kala pani sunate hai?’ tab

bhag jata”.

December 23rd, 1882- Chhedi, the returned emigrant, spoke in equally glowing

terms about Demerara. Cheddi says that the only thing in Demerara is the lack

of women…he says that he was lucky, while in the depot before he started, he

picked up with a Mohomedan woman and contracted a sagay or irregular

marriage with her.

January 6th 1883- met also Nanhku, a return coolie from Mauritius. Was there

12 years; Mauritius finest place in the world; but rather a dearth of women. If

anyone says they tried to make him a Christian, he is a liar (great emphasis).

Plenty too much (Creole English for “plenty”) padres there, that is to say,

pujeris for the Hindus. A great many Bhagat there.

Grierson mentions that single male migration is a big drawback of overseas migration, but at

same time mentions how returnees assisted fellow villagers to emigrate to the plantations. He

quotes the case of a Rajput family of the Shahabad district of Bihar in which the entire family

migrated because of two Rajput returnees from Mauritius, named Ajodhya Singh and Swarika

Singh, who themselves re-emigrated with the family.65 Marina Carter and Crispin Bates, in

their writings have talked about such networks playing a significant role in shaping patterns of

21

migration.66 Indeed Carter has emphasised the role of returnees as a vital link between migrants

and their kin or fellow villagers in the colonies. Carter demonstrates with reference to

Ramasamy whose father Mecken [Makhan], had gone to Mauritius in 1843. Returnees visited

Ramasamy on several occasions bringing money and messages from his father. As a result of

the activities of returnees such as those who had contracted Ramasamy, new immigrants were

provided with a clearer objective in migration, and a chain or kangani style migration

effectively operated informally within the formal structures of indentured recruitment.67

Moving out from patriarchal and perennial bonds

Crispin Bates and Marina Carter have provided evidence of subaltern networks through which

indentured workers emigrated from India in order to find employment and take up jobs in the

colonies. They argue that historians who have depicted indenture primarily through a discursive

dichotomy between slavery and freedom have failed to understand the complexity of subaltern

migration strategies in which ‘returnees, sirdars and recruiters created out of indenture a

dynamic that operated clearly outside the planter/administrator world.’68 Experiences of

extreme hardship, including poverty, famine, and caste based oppression framed some

decisions to migrate within a context of structural coercion, making the suggestion of a clear

cut exertion of 'agency', or 'free will' problematic. Yet many migrants did find the scope to use

indentured migration creatively in order to circumvent the constraints and calamities of life in

nineteenth-century north India, or as a means escape from the perennial bondage experienced

by peasants in a hierarchical and often repressive rural society. This was especially true for the

lower castes, who found experiences on the overseas plantation marked by the loosening of

caste based obligations, expectations and oppressions. They were by no means the only ones to

migrate, however, and the indentured system also attracted many middling and higher caste

recruits. As one English-speaking zamindar of Shahabad put it:

The native Community in this quarter is perfectly averse to emigration. In this

district I humbly beg to state of my experience, and the enquiry I have held on

the subject, that the labouring class is not in want to work in any part of the

year; rather the demand of labour is very large in the months of Asarh, Sraban,

Kartik and Chait. Among the low class of people, as for instance, Dusadhs and

Chamars, inducement to emigrate may succeed, but the cases would be very

rare. People of higher classes who have caste prejudices would not like to leave

India for any inducement. The objections of natives to emigrate chiefly owing

22

to caste prejudices. Besides there is no want to work in this country; the people

do not like to leave it even when they can barely supply their necessities of

life.69

The stereotypical view of migrants as all coming from the lowest substrata of Indian rural

society was not true as the detailed caste data produced by Grierson on emigrants shipped to

colonies shows that two thirds of emigrants belonged to the either high castes or castes of

medium social higher strata.70

Likewise, Grierson’s investigation of the emigration registers of the Shababad district

showed the following higher and middle castes among those emigrating to the colonies:71

Hindu emigrants in Shahabad in 1881-82

51

321716

107

52

Chhatri Ahir Koeri Kahar Kurmi Brahman Others

Castes Number Registered Castes Number Registered

1. Chhatri 51 13. Pasi 3

2. Ahir 32 14. Nonia 3

3.Musalman 28 15. Bhar 3

4. Koiri 17 16. Hajam 2

5. Kahar 16 17. Oria 2

6. Kurmi 10 18. Teli 2

7. Chamar 9 19. Musahar 2

8. Brahman 7 20. Barhi 1

23

9. Dusadh 6 21. Kaesth 1

10. Kalwar 5 22. Dhobi 1

11. Gareri 5 23. Sonar 1

12. Bind 5 24. Gandharp 1

On the basis of the above data Grierson went on to argue that out of 185 Hindus, 133 belonged

to upper-medium social positions and only 9 belonged to Chamar and 6 belonged to Dusadh

caste of dalits or ‘untouchables’. Such findings have been reinforced by the analyses of

scholars such as Brij Lal, and Carter and Bates, who argue that the social, caste-based and

demographic distribution of indentured labour recruits closely mirrored that of rural north

Indian society as a whole.72

If indentured migration could offer a route out of difficult social, economic, or existential

conditions in India, it could also involve a range of outcomes and experiences, Grierson met

some returnees who had saved money of their remittances while worked as indentured. He gave

examples of men like Nabi Baksh, who came back after nine years in Jamaica with Rs. 1800

savings.73 One Gobardhan Pathak came back after ten years from Demerara with Rs. 1500,

spent Rs. 3-400 on ‘getting back into caste’ (ie giving gifts and throwing a feast for his caste

fellows), bought a house and garden, and with his large family became a successful grower of

sugar cane. Another example was Nanhku, who returned from Mauritius with Rs. 5-600, spent

Rs. 100 on regaining his caste status, and became a peasant farmer. Many others came back to

India and became successful recruiters, like Shaikhs Ghura (Ghura Khan) of Buxar.74 Marina

Carter has analysed the process by which a returned migrants such as Ghura Khan could

become recruiters and prosperous middle-men themselves. Carter sees this as an effective

strategy to mobilise the labour force in India from the perspective of both the employer and the

potential recruit. Not only was deputing returnees as recruiters a cost-effective measure, but it

was also a correction to the arguments given by the critics of the indenture system, as returnees

proved to be the best informants about the work condition and life in the sugar colonies.75 As

she puts it ‘by integrating new arrivals into Indian social and economic networks in Mauritius

which were increasingly independent of plantations, returnees fulfilled the functions of

attracting immigrants to the colony in spite of poor prospects for such workers’.76

If individuals from the middle and lower caste groups could see indentured migration as

a way to escape the caste based hierarchies of the village, female migrants might also see it as a

24

route out of patriarchal oppression. Historians have provided varied explanations on the female

migration under the indenture system. For instance, P. C. Emmer believed that indenture was

an avenue for women to ‘emancipate themselves from an illiberal, inhibiting and very

hierarchical social system in India’ where as Redda Reddock argued that the plantation setup

provided women an opportunity to live their life in their own accord. According to her ‘women

could now own their own accord leave one husband for another or have a parallel relationship

with more than one man.’77 Contrast to these Beall has argued that the indenture system ‘ did

not provide women an opportunity to flourish as autonomous social and sexual beings’ rather

women were the objects of sexual harassment by overseers and of competition between Indian

men.78 On a different plain Kelvin Singh has argued that the colonial legislations in Trinidad

underlined that women of indentured men are not dependant of their husband and hence, they

had to look their livelihood by their own. According to the legislation ‘an indentured woman

whose husband was either in jail or in hospital could not be given succour by friends or

relatives’. 79 Brij V. Lal has also emphasised the awareness of ‘veil of dishonour’ by

indentured women on the plantation and Kunti’s cry was a resistance against the stereotypes

regarding being women.80 But as Marina Carter has argued that even colonial planters did not

wish to establish an stable family life on the plantations as argued by John D. Kelly, it does not

mean that there was no family life. Indian indentured women recreated most often a stable

partnership and tranquil family life outside the official regime in the settlement areas.81 .

Enquiring into the kinds of women that became indentured migrants, Grierson found that there

were four classes of women enlisted to emigrate: first, wives of emigrants (generally of re-

emigrants); second, widows without friends, who were starving; third, married women who had

been socially ostracised for absconding from their husband's house, with or without a lover, or

who had been turned out of doors by their husbands; and fourthly, women regarded as

prostitutes, which essentially meant indigent poor women, estranged from their families and

without any other means of support.82 Widowhood was common due to the high level of

mortality and early age of arranged marriage, especially among the higher castes, who also

prohibited widow remarriage and economic activity outside the home and as a result often

viewed young widows as a burden. Many such women took shelter at pilgrimage sites such as

Benaras, Mathura, Vrindavan etc. Gauitra Bahadur in her recent study ‘Coolie Woman: The

Odyssey of indenture’ has provided a detailed reconstruction of the likely conditions of widows

in these circumstances.83 Indenturing for service in a distant colony might also represent an

opportunity for women who had escaped abusive relationships or run away with a lover – the

'abandonment' of husbands and cross-caste marriages both being taboo according to Indian

25

socio-cultural norms. According to Pitcher, indentured emigration thus afforded a means for

‘the girl or women who had strayed from virtue’ or had suffered misfortune.84 Picher found ‘a

very large proportion of the women who now emigrate are persons who have been turned out

of the home or have lost their friends by famine or pestilence, some were Hindu girls who had

been forced to become Muslims in some inter-communal quarrel; many were widows’.85

Pitcher therefore concluded that women might benefit more than men by emigration. Likewise,

the Grierson investigation indicates that the indenture system became an escape hatch for

women, especially those who had become widows at a young age, who had low social status, or

who had been abandoned by their relatives. He found in the district like Shahabad in Bihar,

where emigration was popular, that widows themselves searched out the recruiter, offering

themselves as emigrants as a last resort to escape difficult or intolerable situations. Indeed, he

asserted that the best sort of female recruit was drawn from those who had been abandoned,

and from 'absconded', or 'unfaithful' wives who could make a fresh start by leaving their home

environment, and might retrieve their good character by engaging to marry at the depot in

Calcutta or in the colonies.86 Otherwise, as Grierson observed, such women had only two

alternatives: suicide or prostitution. Many women of Calcutta’s Lal Bazar/ Chakla Ghar – the

‘red light’ districts of Calcutta - were the product of such a socio-cultural mind-set. Thus while

he acknowledged that in some cases recruits might seduce women into enlisting as indentured

migrants - a common theme in anti-indenture literature - for many women emigration offered

an alternative for women who had already been pushed onto the social margins.

In a context where woman could not leave her house without the permission of her husband,

fears of labour recruiters spiriting away married women was seen as an attack on the fabric of

the family as a basic unit of society. However, it is important not to underestimate the agency

of the women themselves. As Amin puts it, the traditional Bhojpuri terms urhari, dolkarhi

etc. ‘are expressive of the not insignificant tendency of rural women to walk out of unhappy

marital homes, settling down with another male, with or without marriage’.87 Yet enticing

married women was rare, and was a dangerous game, because if caught the recruiter ran the

risk of being beaten to death, or of having a case registered against him and being

prosecuted.88 Many Magistrates refused to register an absconding wife, but Grierson

maintained women’s rights in such cases, and stated that if an alienated wife was determined

to go no officer ‘has the right to stop her’.89 This was a radical suggestion both from the point

of view of a conservative Indian society and Anglo-Indian officialdom. Grierson and others

cited equality before colonial law and the uniformity, without gender differentiation, of the

26

colonial Indian labour market. To quote the collector of Shahabad ‘women have at law a right

like men to go where they please, and I would not take it away’. Grierson for his part

recommended, ‘a native woman married or single has a perfect power to enter into a contract

binding on herself”.90 Support for female right to emigration may also reflect the colonial

concern with the gender balance and dynamics of the indentured population. This

preoccupation was made evident in the legislation for quotas of female emigrants; the Indian

Emigration Act of 1864, for example, provided a hard and fast rule for the fulfilment of a

32% (40:100) quota of women per ship sailing to the colonies. This may be because although

the pre-history of migration had almost always implied separation of the husband from wife,

as those who moved were usually already married, under the indenture system they were

transported with the explicit intention of weakening and displacing an indigenous or

previously-resident group by forming a permanent new community that could be utilised to

meet colonial labour needs. As a result, colonial officials were keenly interested in depot

marriage as a more stable form of union, and encouraged this rather than sending for, or

arranging women to satisfy the emigrant’s sexual desires in the same way as they provisioned

the cantonments in India with their ‘Lal Bazars’. In encouraging family regroupment and

settlement overseas, colonial emigration also represented a break from pre-existing patterns

of internal labour migration, which had offered migrants a stronger chance of eventually

coming home.91 Overseas migration on contracts of indenture entailed longer absences and

lower chances of return [What about those immigrants who elected to remain in the colonies

precisely because of the opportunities that might present themselves there?]. The more acute

familial separation resulting from the greater distances and longer contracts of service

involved in indenture, together with the potential for migrants to settle permanently in the

destination colony, may help to explain why the colonial government was so keenly

interested in and deeply anxious about depot marriages of emigrants, when many of the

emigrants going overseas were already married.92

Conclusion

To distinguish indenture from inland migration, north Indian peasants developed their own

vocabularies relating to the system and developed their own sets of beliefs and assumptions

about the destination colonies. These new vocabularies are evidence of their awareness of the

indenture system. Migrants sent letters and remittances to their family back home,

establishing important, if sometimes unreliable communication links between the emigrants

and the communities from which they came. Moreover, once emigrants served in the colonies

27

began returning home, they developed networks with their fellow villagers, channelling

knowledge about the indenture experience that helped to inform decisions to migrate. Thus

the north Indian village communities from which indentured labour recruits were drawn were

neither as static, nor were they as uninformed or passive as some anti-indenture accounts

suggest, but rather were engaged creatively with the opportunities and challenges posed by

indenture to find better outcomes for themselves and their families.

28

1 See, K. Gillion, Fiji Indian Migrants: A History of the End of Indenture in 1920 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1962); Hugh Tinker, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour, Overseas, 1830-1920 (London: 1974); Brij V. Lal, Girmitiyas: The Origins of Fiji Indians, (Canberra, 1983); P.C. Emmer, ‘The meek Hindu: the recruitment of Indian indenture labourers for service overseas, 1870-1916’ in P.C. Emmer (ed.) Colonialism and Migration: Indenture labour before and after Slavery, (Dordrecht: 1986); Marina Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers: Indians in Mauritius, 1834-1874 (Delhi: Oxford University, Press, 1995).

2 See Marina Carter, 1995; Brij V. Lal, 1983.

3 See for instance, Ravi Ahuja, Labour Unsettled: Mobility and Protest in the Madras region, 1750-1800, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 1998; 35:381. Claude Markovits et.al, Society and Circulation: Mobile People and Itinerant Culture in South Asia, 1750-1950, Anthem Press, 2006; Sanjay Subramanyam, Connected Histories: Notes Towards the Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia, Modern Asian Studies, 31, 3 (1997), pp. 735-762.

4 See for instance, Marina Carter, Lakshmi Lagacy: The Testimonies of Indian Women in 19th

Century Mauritius, Editions de l’Ocean Indien, Mauritius, 1994; Marina Carter, Voices from Indenture: Experiences of Indian Migrants in the British Empire, Leicester University Press, 1996.5 Revenue and Agriculture Department, (Emigration) Part A, Progs.1-12, February, 1883, Major D.G. Pitcher Report on Result of His Enquiry in to the System of Recruiting Labourers for the Colonies &c. (hereafter Pitcher Report); Revenue and Agriculture Department, (Emigration) Part A, Progs.9-15, August,1883, Major D.G. Pitcher and George A. Grierson Enquiry into Emigration (hereafter Grierson Report). The origins of Pitcher and Grierson’s reports lay in the proposal to amend the Emigration Act (VII of 1871). A bill was prepared and sent to the Secretary of State, but a number of objections were raised to certain provisions of the Bill, and Government of India was asked to suspend legislation until the opinions of the Colonial Governments, to whom the Bill had been forwarded, were received. The opportunity seemed a suitable one for ascertaining by local enquiry the way in which recruiting was actually carried on in the districts, ways in which the current system might be improved, the attitude of the people towards emigration, and the possibility of making it more popular among them. In the North–Western Provinces, Major D.G. Pitcher was asked to tour the catchments areas and report on feelings about emigration. He gathered important evidence about the impact of emigration upon the area between Delhi and Banaras, which was emerging as the most important recruiting ground for Calcutta agents. G.A. Grierson for his part was asked to submit a report concerning emigration from Bengal, and especially Bihar. Grierson was no run of the mill official; he was a scholar who achieved an international reputation for his ethnographic and linguistic studies. His study, then, contained much careful statistical information, as well as linguistic material of unusual interest. In the 1880s, he was the collector of Gaya, during which time he completed an enormous study on Bihar Peasant Life.

6 Lack of information about plantation colonies and the system was one of the central issues in the Indian nationalists’ campaign against the indenture system in early twentieth century in India, and recurs in the work of Tinker and others.

7 D. H. A. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450-1850, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

8 Kolff, p. 160. Mughals recruited peasants as sepoys especially from region of Baksar. These soldiers were popularly known as baksariya.

9 Culturally, a migrant who left home to find work had to be married.

10 See Shahid Amin, ‘Representing the Musalman: Then and Now, Now and Then’, Subaltern Studies Series, XII (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005), pp.21-22.

11 Kolff, pp. 74-75.

12 Charlotte Vaudeville, cited in Kolff, p. 75.

13 W.G. Archer, ‘Seasonal Songs of Patna District’, Man in India, 22 (1942), p. 247. This song is called caumasa, i.e. four months, but consists of six months.

14 G. A. Grierson, Seven Grammars of the Dialects and Sub dialects of the Bihari Language, (Calcutta, 1884), cited in Shahid Amin (ed.), A Concise Encyclopaedia of North Indian Peasant Life (New Delhi: Manohar, 2005), p.372.

15 Grierson, Seven Grammars, p. 383. As one song goes: A fresh, young, and coquettish maiden, yet mad with love, walking at random, went into the courtyard. Sometimes she stands in the court and sometimes outside, and begins to watch, to watch, for the coming of her lord. “O sister-in-law! To him who tell me (Ah Ram!) of the coming of my lord, will I give a golden bracelet.”

16 Grierson, Seven Grammars, p.385.

17 Hugh Fraser, ‘Folklore from Eastern Gorakhpur’, Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 52:1, (1883), p.5.

18 Kolff, pp. 74-75.

19 See for instance, Ravi Ahuja (1998), Marcovits et.al (2006)20 Kolff, pp. 74-75.

21 Kolff, pp. 74-75. See also Sita Ram Pandey, From Sepoy to Subedar: Being the Life And Adventures of Subedar Sita Ram, a Native Officer of the Bengal Army, Written And Related by Himself (reprint: Delhi: Vikas Publications, 1970); Madhukar Upadhayaya, Kissa Pandey Sitaram Subedar (New Delhi: Saransh Publication, 1999). The fear of ‘loss of caste’ was a concern only for certain high caste Hindus and did not apply to lower castes, Muslim or adivasi migrants. Its significance has therefore been exaggerated. Before 1856 it was however important as negotiating tactic to improve ‘battas’ or allowances for service overseas within the Bengal army.

22 Clare Anderson has also discussed that for the many communities, the different kinds of labour associated with colonial regime were considered as ‘service’. Hence, convicts and indentured labourers spoke of their recruitment of (East India) ‘Company’ or ‘government’ work. See, Clare Ander, Convicts and Coolies: Rethinking Indentured Labour in the Nineteenth Century, Slavery and Abolition, Vol. 30:1, p. 99. 23 L. F. Rushbrook Williams, India of To-day, vol. 5, Indian Emigration by Emigrants (London: Oxford University Press, 1924), p.6.

24 Rushbrook Williams. p. 7

25 Timothy N. Thomas, Indian Overseas: A Guide to Source Materials in the India Office Records for the Study of Indian Emigration 1830-1950 (Landon: British Library, 1985), p. 1.

26The word girmit and girmitiya is a term coined by those signing the agreement > agreement > garment > girmit (girmitiya) to designate those who were to labour in the sugar colonies, especially of Fiji, under such an agreement.

27 See, RA-341 National Archives of Mauritius; CO 323/733 National Archives of London.

28 Lal, Girmitiyas, pp. 37-38.

29 Brij V. Lal, Chalo Jahaji: On Journey Through Indenture in Fiji (Canberra: Suva Museum, 2000), p.42.

30 Culturally, in rural India, marriage is a condition of separation from family in search of work. William Crooke writes that between 15 and 19 there are 15 married females for each one unmarried, whilst at the end of that period only 60 per cent of the males have been married. By 24 practically the whole of the female population has been married… of men, considerably more than a fourth are married up to 24. William Crooke, The Tribes and Castes of the North- Western Provinces and Oudh, Calcutta, 1897, Vol- I, pp. cxci-vi. See also Brij V. Lal, Girmitiya, Chapter 4, pp. 129-148.

31 Anand Yang, ‘Peasant on the Move: A Study of Internal Migration in India’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 10:1 (1979), pp. 37-58. For seasonal migration because of the difference in the harvest time of rice-crop, which occurred much later in Bengal than in Biahr, see the important unpublished work, R.G. Heseltine, The Development of Jute Cultivation in Bengal, 1860-1914 (Phd Thesis, University of Sussex, 1981).

32 Lal, Girmitiyas , p. 142.

33 Pitcher Report, Para 65, p. 16.

34 Pitcher Report, Para 65, p. 16.

35 Grierson Report, para 71, p.15.

36 It is important to point out that the vocabularies recorded by Major Pitcher and George Grierson from villagers were built over a period of time. Hence, if Pitcher and Grierson heard some words indicating the indenture system and its process in 1882, it suggests a longer history of development of peasantised vocabularies around indenture possibly spanning decades.

37 See the Report of the Committee of Enquiry on Hill Coolies, British Parliamentary Papers, Session 1 (45), 1841.

38 Pitcher Report, Para 101, p. 32

39 Grierson Report, Para 81, p. 18. Crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops is a popular quotation meaning ‘the fatal dropsy gains on the patient from his gratifying his thrust’. See, David Evans Macdonnnel, A Dictionary of Select and Popular Quotation Which are in the Daily Use Taken From the Latin, French, Greek, Spanish and Italian, (Philadelphia: A. Finlay), 1810, p. 52.

40 Grierson Report, Para 81, p. 18.

41 Pitcher Report, Para 61, p. 15.

42 Grierson Report, Para 82, p. 18.

43 Pitcher Report, Para 60, p. 15

44 Grierson Report, Para 83, p.19.

45 Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies (New Delhi: Penguin, 2009), p. 340.

46 Edward Jenkins, The Coolie: His Rights and Wrongs, (New York, 1871), pp.10-13. This illustration is published also as frontispiece in Allan H. Adamson, Sugar Without Slaves: The Political Economy of British Guiana, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972).

47 Grierson Report, pp.17-8.

48 Pitcher Diary, p.66.

49 Pitcher Diary, p.62.

50 Grierson Report, Para 83, p. 27.

51 Grierson Report, para 131, p. 102

52 Pitcher Report, Para 82-5, p. 27

53 Grierson Report, Diary of 9th January, p. 42

54 Grierson Report, Diary of 9th January, p. 42.

55 On indentured remittances, see, Richard B. Allen, Slaves, Freedmen and Indentured Laborers in Colonial Mauritius, Cambridge University Press, 1999; Lomarsh Roopnarine, Indian Indenture in the Danish West Indies, 1863-1873, Palgrave, 2016. 56 Grierson Report, Diary of 9th January, p. 42.

57 Grierson Report, Diary of 9th January, p. 42.

58 CSOMP 10293/1914, National Archives of Fiji.

59 Mannan Dwivedi Gajpuri, Ramlal: Gramin Jivan ka ek Samajik Upanyas (Prayag, 1917), pp.26-7.

60 Emigration Agent Remittances from Natal, 1881-1884, Indian Immigration [hereafter I.I.], B1/8, Natal Archives Depot, Pietermaritzburg [hereafter NAD]

61 Ibid. I.I., B1/8, AD

62 Premchand, Godan (1936), (reprint New Delhi: Vani Prakashan, 2008), p.212.

63 See Marina Carter for details on returnees and their role in labour mobilization, Marina Carter,

Strategies of labour mobilisation in colonial India: The recruitment of indentured workers for Mauritius, Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 19, 1992, pp. 229-245. Marina Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers, 1995.

64Grierson Report, EP A Pros. 9-12, August 1883, Appendix, p. 10

65 Grierson Report, para 143, p.33.

66 Carter, Servant, Sirdars and Settlers; Crispin Bates and Marina Carter, ‘Enslaved Lives, Enslaving Labels: A New Approach to the Colonial Indian Labor Diaspora’ in Sukanya Banerjee, Aims McGuinness and Steven C. McKay (eds), New Routes for Diaspora Studies, (Indiana University Press, 2012).

67 Carter, p. 59.

68 Bates and Carter, p.91.

69 Grierson Report, Para 78, p. 17.

70 Grierson Report, Para 152, p.36.

71 Grierson Report, Para 78, p. 17

72 see Brij V. Lal, Girmitiya, chapter 3, p. 99-121; Marina Carter, Servants, Sirdars and Settlers, chapter 3, pp.77-119.73 Grierson Report, Diary for 27th December, p. 17.

74 Grierson Report, See Diary for 6th January, pp. 32-3; ‘Jati-bhoj’ is the common word for such performances.

75 See Carter, p. 59.

76 Carter, p. 59.

77 P. C. Emmer, 1985, p. 247; Reddock, Freedom Denied: Indian Women and Indenturedship in Trinidad and Tobago, 1845-1917, Economic and Political Weekly, xx,no. 43, 1985, pp. 84-5.78 J. Beall, ‘Women under Indenture in Colonial Natal, 1860-1911’ in C. Clarke et al (eds) South Asians Overseas, London, 1990, p. 73.79 Kelvin Singh, ‘Indians and Larger Society’ in La Guerre, From Calcutta to Caroni and Indian Diaspora, The University of West Indies, Trinidad, 1985, p. 4580 Brij V. Lal,Kunti’s Cry: Indentured Women on Fiji Plantations, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol. 42, no.1, 1985, p. 71; Brij V. Lal, Veil of Dishonour: Sexual Jealousy and Suicide on Fiji Plantations, Journal of Pacific History, Vol. 10, 1985, p. 154-55. 81 Marina Carter, 1994, pp. 4-5.82 Grierson Report, Para 131, p. 30.

83 Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (London: Hurst, 2013).

84 Pitcher Report, p. 32.

85 Pitcher Report, p. 32.

86 Grierson Report, Para 134, p. 31; also see Diary for 23rd December, p. 10.

87 See in this connection, the remarks of Amin, Concise Encyclopaedia, pp.47-8.

88 Grierson Report, Para, 130, p.30

89 Grierson Report, Para, 130, p.30.

90 Samita Sen discusses the issues that surrounded women's right to sign labour contracts in the context of the Assam tea gardens. See Samita Sen, ‘Unsettling the Household: Act VI (of 1901) and the Regulation of Women Migrants in Colonial Bengal’ in Shahid Amin and Marcel van der Linden (eds), ‘Peripheral Labour? Studies in the History of Partial Proletarianisation’, International Review of Social History, Supplement 4, (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp.135-156.

91 Anand Yang has shown how the Sarun district of Bihar experienced seasonal migration to Bengal and other adjoining states. Anand Yang, The Limited Raj: Agrarian Relations in Colonial India, Saran District, 1793-1920 (Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1989).

92 As the general age of marriage in north India for a male was 15 years and for a female was 10 years.