Chaman Lal

While at­tend­ing some pro­grammes on Au­gust 1, 2011, and around, in con­nec­tion with 'Eman­ci­pa­tion Day' cel­e­bra­tions, which came this year with the de­c­la­ra­tion of year 2011 by UNO, as 'year of the African De­scent peo­ple', I re­mem­bered par­tic­i­pat­ing in var­i­ous func­tions/sem­i­nars on the oc­ca­sion of 'In­di­an Ar­rival Day' in Trinidad & To­ba­go on and around May 30, 2011. In one of the in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences on the theme of 'South Asian Di­as­po­ra' or­gan­ised to mark the oc­ca­sion at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, dur­ing May 31-June 4, 2011, I pre­sent­ed a pa­per al­so on V S Naipaul.

Yet go­ing through the back­ground of the two events, some­thing did dis­turb me. African back­ground peo­ple, who were brought here in Trinidad as slaves from many parts of Africa, nev­er cel­e­brate their 'Ar­rival' in Trinidad or in many oth­er coun­tries of the world, where­as peo­ple of In­di­an de­scent cel­e­brate In­di­an Ar­rival day, not on­ly in T&T, but in near­by Guyana and Suri­name; al­so in Mau­ri­tius and Fi­ji, far away, may be in some oth­er coun­tries too. One rea­son could be that there may not be any record of slaves be­ing brought to Trinidad and many more coun­tries of the world. The ex­act date of slav­ery is al­so dif­fi­cult to iden­ti­fy, yet gen­er­al­ly slave trade is on record from 1440 AD on­wards in many Eu­ro­pean coun­tries. It took al­most four hun­dred years hard and harsh strug­gles, in­clud­ing many re­volts like that of Spar­ta­cus, to get slav­ery abol­ished.

While France un­der the Ja­cobins as First re­pub­lic abol­ished slav­ery as ear­ly as in 1794, lat­er re­in­stat­ed by Napoleon in 1804, but fi­nal­ly abol­ished in 1848; Britain did it in 1834/38, USA un­der Abra­ham Lin­coln abol­ished it in 1863; in Ti­bet, slav­ery could be abol­ished on­ly af­ter Dalai Lama left and Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Gov­ern­ment abol­ished it af­ter 1949, iron­i­cal­ly Arab coun­tries are the last to abol­ish slav­ery, thus Sau­di Ara­bia, Oman, Niger, UAE etc abol­ished slav­ery on­ly in six­ties and Mau­ri­ta­nia is the last coun­try to abol­ish slav­ery as late as in 1981. Even if there could be a record of Black/African ar­rival in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, I doubt that they will ever be will­ing to 'cel­e­brate' their 'ar­rival' as 'slaves'!

The ques­tion which dis­turbs me is: Is the In­di­an ar­rival in these coun­tries as 'in­den­tured labour' dur­ing 1834-1923, an oc­ca­sion for 'cel­e­bra­tion'? The con­di­tions of 'in­den­tured labour' in most of these coun­tries were more like that of se­mi-slav­ery and In­di­an de­scent peo­ple every­where went through most cru­el suf­fer­ings at the hands of sug­ar planters and colo­nial au­thor­i­ties of the time. Let us have a look at this phe­nom­e­non of In­di­an ar­rival in var­i­ous coun­tries.

As the eman­ci­pa­tion act was pro­mul­gat­ed from Au­gust 1, 1834, giv­ing six years of a time called 'ap­pren­tice­ship', mean­ing tran­si­tion pe­ri­od for clear eman­ci­pa­tion from slav­ery. On Au­gust 1,1834 Gov­er­nor of Trinidad ad­dressed few el­der­ly Africans to mark the oc­ca­sion at Gov­ern­ment house, there were slo­gans rais­ing-'no six years, no six years' and with­in four years, Trinidad be­came, in fact, the first British colony to be com­plete­ly eman­ci­pat­ed from slav­ery, oth­er colonies fol­lowed. Al­though as per Trinidad his­to­ri­an Brid­get Br­ere­ton, none of the 20,656 slaves eman­ci­pat­ed, was giv­en any com­pen­sa­tion to start new life, where as slave own­ers were giv­en mas­sive state fund­ing.

As the eman­ci­pa­tion act came in­to ex­is­tence and thou­sands of slaves of African de­scent be­came free, large num­bers of them re­fused to work at their ex mas­ters, most­ly sug­ar planters, in many coun­tries, colonised by British, French, Dutch and Spain and Por­tu­gal. In Caribbean re­gion it­self, Trinidad, De­mer­ara(part of Guyana now), Ja­maica etc were British colonies, French Guyana, Mar­tinique, Guadalupe etc were French colonies, Dutch Guiana, now Suri­name were Dutch colonies-all hav­ing sug­ar planters, now fac­ing the lack of labour. Un­der the cir­cum­stances, In­dia be­ing a huge British colony with im­mense pop­u­la­tion, Eu­ro­pean colo­nial­ists looked to­wards In­di­an labour, then giv­en name of 'In­den­tured labour'.

British colo­nial Gov­ern­ment in In­dia made cer­tain rules called Colo­nial Em­i­gra­tion Acts V and XXXII of 1837 re­gard­ing 'in­den­tured' con­di­tions. Five years was the min­i­mum term of in­den­tured labour, af­ter which a labour­er could re­turn to In­dia at his or her own ex­pense. To earn a re­turn tick­et, he or she was to per­form ten years in­den­tured labour. Reg­u­la­tions dif­fered some­what in dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Though on pa­per some safe­guards were cre­at­ed, in prac­tice these were nev­er fol­lowed, the re­al con­di­tions of the in­den­tured labour­ers were just close to the con­di­tions of ex slaves. The mas­ters and their agents used to treat them in most cru­el man­ner, beat­ing-thrash­ing in blue for lit­tle things, rap­ing their women, mak­ing women work in most ad­vanced preg­nan­cies, some­time births tak­ing place on work sites, mak­ing women work even if the new born or grown child died same morn­ing.

Be­cause of these cru­el­ties, in­den­tured labour­ers in Mau­ri­tius use to com­mit sui­cide from a par­tic­u­lar hillock, which got the name of 'sui­cide hill', now turned in­to a mon­u­ment. Hun­dreds of in­den­tured In­di­an labour com­mit­ted sui­cide by jump­ing down from this hill dur­ing the pe­ri­od, when in­den­tured labour act was in force. The con­di­tion was no bet­ter in Fi­ji, though it may have been slight­ly less cru­el in Caribbean coun­tries. The first em­i­gra­tion from British In­dia start­ed to Mau­ri­tius as ear­ly as 1834, im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the abo­li­tion of slav­ery act was pro­mul­gat­ed on Au­gust 1, 1834.

First ship At­las from Cal­cut­ta, brought In­di­an labour to the shores of Mau­ri­tius on No­vem­ber 2, 1834. And till 1923, even af­ter the in­den­tured labour sys­tem was abol­ished from 1920 on­wards, Mau­ri­tius re­ceived the max­i­mum num­ber of In­di­an in­den­tured labour from the ports of Cal­cut­ta, Madras and Bom­bay. A to­tal of 453,063 In­di­ans land­ed in Mau­ri­tius, dur­ing 1834-1923, max­i­mum in any part of the world.

CON­TIN­UED ON OC­TO­BER 24.

Prof Chaman Lal is a vis­it­ing Pro­fes­sor at Hin­di Chair in The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus. He is on dep­u­ta­tion from Jawa­har­lal Nehru Uni­ver­si­ty (JNU), New Del­hi, In­dia.

He can be con­tact­ed at chaman.lal@sta.uwi.edu/prof.chaman@gmail.com ­or at 369-2687.