Pri­or Be­har­ry

The first set of In­di­an im­mi­grants who ar­rived in Trinidad be­tween 1845 and 1847 were not in­den­tured ser­vants. This is the as­ser­tion made last night by Dr Den­ni­son Moore who was the fea­ture speak­er at the In­di­an Ar­rival Day din­ner held by the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha.

Moore, a Trinida­di­an who now re­sides in Cana­da, said: "Most schol­ars and writ­ers on In­di­an ar­rival here have as­sert­ed that the first In­di­an im­mi­grants were in­den­tured." He said: "But the au­thors whom I have con­sult­ed, and they are le­gion, have not amassed a set of his­tor­i­cal facts that would sup­port their con­tention."

Moore used re­tired Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies his­to­ri­an Prof Brid­get Br­ere­ton de­f­i­n­i­tion of in­den­ture: "A con­tract be­fore they left In­dia which bound them to ac­cept cer­tain terms. For the pe­ri­od that their in­den­ture last­ed, they were not free. They could not leave their em­ploy­er. They could not de­mand high­er wages, live off the es­tate they were as­signed to or re­fused the work giv­en them to do." He ex­plained that when the British gov­ern­ment abol­ished slav­ery in 1838, the African ex-slaves aban­doned the es­tates in Trinidad and British Guiana in droves. Moore said: "Their re­fusal to work steadi­ly on the es­tates cre­at­ed a se­vere short­age of labour which spec­u­la­tors were ea­ger to fill." He said these "un­scrupu­lous spec­u­la­tors" conned the for­mer slaves in the small­er is­lands to en­ter in­to the "im­prov­i­dent con­tracts for labour to be per­formed in Trinidad and British Guiana."

Moore said when the labour­ers ar­rived in those colonies the spec­u­la­tors would sell the con­tracts to oth­er par­ties for prof­it. He said to put an end to this prac­tice, the British gov­ern­ment is­sued a num­ber of or­ders-in-coun­cil de­clar­ing in­valid in the Crown colonies–British Guiana, Trinidad, St Lu­cia, the Cape of Good Hope and Mau­ri­tius–all con­tracts for labour en­tered in­to out­side the lim­its of the colony in which labour was to be per­formed. "What this means is that none of the em­i­grants who left In­dia for the West In­dies in 1845, 1846 and 1847 signed any con­tract of ser­vice," Moore said. "But the im­mi­grants did sign a con­tract in In­dia...It was de­cid­ed­ly not a con­tract of ser­vice,"

he said.

"The gen­er­al en­gage­ment un­der­tak­en in In­dia to work for hire in the colonies was not a con­tract of in­den­ture. It nei­ther bound the em­i­grants to work for any­one for any set pe­ri­od of time nor did it es­tab­lish the re­mu­ner­a­tion they had to ac­cept for their labour nor con­signed them to es­tates un­der con­tracts which they could break." He has al­so dis­put­ed the ac­tu­al date in which the im­mi­grants ar­rived say­ing it was May 3 and not May 30 when In­di­an Ar­rival Day is cel­e­brat­ed. Moore said the num­ber of the first im­mi­grants who ar­rived was al­so not clear and he al­so said that the Fa­tel Roza­ck, the ship that brought them, may not have been the one de­scribed by schol­ars.