Pe­ter Hanoomans­ingh

Pe­ter Hanoomans­ingh is a jour­nal­ist em­ployed with Guardian Me­dia Ltd.At a con­fer­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mau­ri­tius on De­cem­ber 5-7 2011, Hanoomans­ingh de­liv­ered an aca­d­e­m­ic pa­per which com­pared the sys­tem of in­den­ture­ship im­posed in Trinidad to that used in Mau­ri­tius at a in that In­di­an Ocean coun­try.Fol­low­ing is an ex­cerpt of the pa­per.

In 1867, high­ly re­pres­sive labour leg­is­la­tion was in­stalled in Mau­ri­tius aimed specif­i­cal­ly at the free In­di­an pop­u­la­tion in the colony. De­scribed as "a land­mark in labour re­pres­sion un­der British colo­nial­ism", the leg­is­la­tion was in­tend­ed to deal with what was termed the va­grancy prob­lem in the sug­ar-dom­i­nat­ed colony but gave li­cense to the colo­nial state to in­vade and ar­rest 'time-ex­pired' In­di­ans in their homes or on the streets and im­pound them at va­grant de­pots which dot­ted the is­land. The con­trast with what was tak­ing place at vir­tu­al­ly the same junc­ture in Trinidad is in­struc­tive: there, the colo­nial gov­ern­ment in­stalled and pros­e­cut­ed a range of moral or­der of­fences but there were no new leg­isla­tive or polic­ing ini­tia­tives for reg­u­lat­ing the move­ment of free labour­ers. The most note­wor­thy in­stance of colo­nial re­pres­sion in Trinidad dur­ing this pe­ri­od was in the sin­gu­lar event of the so-called Hosay mas­sacre where po­lice were de­ployed to force­ful­ly stop mass pro­ces­sions from en­ter­ing the towns. This was an in­stance in the ex­er­cise of ex­em­plary force, un­like the con­tin­u­ous polic­ing re­quired in a regime of con­tain­ment as seen in Mau­ri­tius. In Trinidad 'free pop­u­la­tions' be­came a sub­ject of moral­is­ing dis­cours­es which sought to iden­ti­fy the in­ner dis­po­si­tion of sub­ject pop­u­la­tions. In this pa­per I will ex­am­ine the con­trast­ing dis­cur­sive, in­sti­tu­tion­al and spa­tial con­texts which in­formed the dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es to the "free In­di­ans" in both colonies. Mau­ri­tius be­came the first of the British colonies to iden­ti­fy In­dia as a source of labour as slav­ery came to an end in the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. Its role as pi­o­neer in the new traf­fic out of the sub­con­ti­nent set it apart from the oth­er colonies that were soon to fol­low. For one thing, the pro­pos­al to im­port free labour in­to the colony came from pri­vate hands and re­mained so for a few years be­fore the traf­fic was tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed pend­ing its clos­er reg­u­la­tion. Work­ers both slave and free had been trans­port­ed to Mau­ri­tius from In­dia since the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry and so it was per­haps one of the first op­tions that G.C. Ar­buth­not con­sid­ered in 1834 when he con­tract­ed 75 Dhangar men to work in Mau­ri­tius for a pe­ri­od of five years on a sug­ar plan­ta­tion. Oth­er planters quick­ly took the cue and in very short or­der, ves­sels were sail­ing to Port Louis loaded with goods and labour­ers on deck. By the time the traf­fic was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed some 22,791 men had al­ready been pri­vate­ly con­tract­ed to the sug­ar plan­ta­tions of Mau­ri­tius.

The sud­den in­ten­si­ty of the "coolie traf­fic" to Mau­ri­tius de­spite its tem­po­rary halt­ing in the years 1838-1842 be­gan an equal­ly dra­mat­ic with­draw­al and dis­place­ment of the ex-ap­pren­tices from the plan­ta­tions. This in it­self held trag­ic con­se­quences with a strik­ing de­cline in num­bers from over 60,000 at eman­ci­pa­tion to an es­ti­mat­ed 48,330 by 1853. Mau­ri­tius "over­com­pen­sat­ed in labour im­por­ta­tion" which re­sult­ed in the com­plete dis­place­ment of ex-ap­pren­tices from the es­tates so that as ear­ly as 1846 In­di­an im­mi­grants com­prised 85 per cent of all agri­cul­tur­al labour­ers and 96 per cent of work­ers in the is­land's sug­ar in­dus­try. What there­after was ab­sent in dis­cours­es on gov­er­nance was any ref­er­ence to the ex-ap­pren­tices or cre­ole pop­u­la­tion many of whom had be­gun since the ear­ly 1840s to mi­grate to mar­gin­al dis­tricts. There rapid­ly emerges a rad­i­cal spa­tial sep­a­ra­tion in set­tle­ment pat­terns as In­di­an im­mi­grants come to mo­nop­o­lize work on the plan­ta­tions. As these ex-ap­pren­tices be­came mar­gin­alised both so­cial­ly and spa­tial­ly one finds lit­tle con­cern that reg­u­la­tion of one group may im­pact on colo­nial re­la­tions with oth­er groups. So that reg­u­la­tion and gov­er­nance of labour and crime be­come di­rect­ed im­plic­it­ly and ex­plic­it­ly at In­di­ans and not at a more gen­er­al colo­nial sub­ject. Planters con­tin­ued to ex­ert their in­flu­ence on the re­cruit­ment of labour­ers through the use of re­turnees and this cre­at­ed the sit­u­a­tion for ag­gres­sive com­pe­ti­tion for the ser­vices of In­di­an in­den­tured work­ers. An un­ex­pect­ed out­come of this was that by the 1850s a ma­jor­i­ty of work­ers re­fused to sign con­tracts last­ing more than one year. In the years 1860-64 less than 45 per cent of con­trac­tu­al work­ers re-en­gaged with the same em­ploy­er. The sit­u­a­tion con­tin­ued to be un­sta­ble in­to the late 1870s as short term con­tracts ac­count­ed for more than 85 per cent of writ­ten agree­ments. This volatil­i­ty in the terms of labour was one fac­tor that brought to the fore­front the ques­tion of the mo­bil­i­ty of the In­di­ans on the is­land and leg­is­la­tors in­tro­duced law to fo­cus en­tire­ly on the move­ment of this pop­u­la­tion away from the plan­ta­tions. This was man­i­fest in the con­tin­ued com­plaints from of­fi­cials and planters about va­grancy, de­ser­tion and il­le­gal ab­sence of In­di­ans be­gin­ning the late 1840s. It was al­so im­plic­it in dis­cours­es on crime on the is­land and in this we can see clear­ly how the dis­place­ment of con­cern from ap­pren­tice to In­di­an took place in colo­nial dis­course.

Thus the Re­port of the Pro­cureur Gen­er­al in 1851 not­ed that lar­ce­ny was the most preva­lent form of crime in the colony, con­tribut­ing to 4036 out of 6098 of­fences be­tween the years 1841 and 1850. But the Pro­cureur Gen­er­al would go on to point out that "the crimes and oth­er of­fences are rel­a­tive­ly more fre­quent among the In­di­an la­bor­ers than the oth­er labour­ing class­es". So the polic­ing and con­trol over crime in Mau­ri­tius be­came a ques­tion of how to man­age a pop­u­la­tion that in short or­der had be­come the largest group in the colony. But the fact of sheer num­bers does not by it­self ex­plain the pat­tern of crime in those years. The crimes com­mit­ted were those of a mo­bile and un­set­tled pop­u­la­tion that was large­ly out­side the realm of ur­ban cen­tres. In the 1850s for ex­am­ple a con­cern was reg­is­tered with the use of stra­mo­ni­um a plant, the de­riv­a­tives of which could be used to "stu­pe­fy its vic­tims". Stra­mo­ni­um ap­peared to sym­bol­ize the hid­den, lurk­ing dan­gers pro­duced in the minds of colo­nials by the pres­ence of an un­set­tled and spa­tial­ly dif­fuse im­mi­grant pop­u­la­tion. The prob­lem of stra­mo­ni­um was in­ter­pret­ed as de­rived from a deep­er prob­lem of va­grancy. Along with de­ser­tion, va­grancy be­came iden­ti­fied as both the symp­tom and cause of un­de­sir­able be­hav­iour amongst the is­land's In­di­an pop­u­la­tion. In turn, va­grancy was a fea­ture of in­nate ten­den­cies of In­di­an labour­ers such as their "idle and un­set­tled habits" and their "er­rat­ic char­ac­ter". Va­grancy in­creased marked­ly in mid-cen­tu­ry and this co­in­cid­ed with the in­crease in num­bers of time-ex­pired In­di­ans who had be­gun to set­tle and es­tab­lish them­selves be­yond the con­fines of the plan­ta­tions. Vil­lages which made a vis­i­ble ap­pear­ance by the 1860s were al­so con­sid­ered har­bin­gers of va­grants and oth­er crim­i­nal el­e­ments by planters who sought mea­sures to force these in­de­pen­dent el­e­ments back to field labour. This prompt­ed Mau­rit­ian ad­min­is­tra­tors to con­sid­er sig­nif­i­cant in­sti­tu­tion­al changes in or­der to man­age and con­trol what was ef­fec­tive­ly the grow­ing num­bers of Old Im­mi­grants In­di­ans on the is­land. In mid-cen­tu­ry the po­lice force was re­or­gan­ised to in­clude a corps of In­di­an con­sta­bles who it was be­lieved, would un­der­stand the "pe­cu­liar­i­ties of the In­di­an mind" and thus be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to de­tect va­grants and de­sert­ers. Po­lice sta­tions were al­so erect­ed in the coun­try dis­tricts, clos­er in prox­im­i­ty to where pur­port­ed va­grants wan­dered. In 1864, prison sen­tences for de­sert­ers were length­ened while va­grant de­pots were es­tab­lished for the de­ten­tion and sep­a­ra­tion of per­sons not claimed by a planter.

The most re­pres­sive ac­tion tak­en by Mau­rit­ian leg­is­la­tors was the no­to­ri­ous Or­di­nance 31 of 1867 the work­ings of which came un­der scruti­ny in 1872. Or­di­nance 31 ex­tend­ed and deep­ened the re­pres­sive prac­tices of the 1850s by in­stalling a new pass sys­tem which re­quired time-ex­pired im­mi­grants to ob­tain "tick­ets of dis­charge" as proof of hav­ing com­plet­ed the five year in­dus­tri­al res­i­dence. These tick­ets would not be is­sued un­less im­mi­grants were deemed to have a rec­og­nized place of res­i­dence as well as bona fide oc­cu­pa­tions. The Or­di­nance al­so em­pow­ered po­lice with the right to de­tain any In­di­an found out­side his or her dis­trict of res­i­dence as well as the pow­er of en­try in­to their huts and camps.

Or­di­nance 31 of 1867 was an at­tempt to place 'old im­mi­grants' un­der the same regime of sur­veil­lance and dis­ci­pline as their in­den­tured coun­ter­parts on the plan­ta­tions. Dur­ing the ex­pan­sion of the sug­ar in­dus­try in the 1850s there were more than 19,000 In­di­an males who had made their liv­ing as ar­ti­sans or traders while some 73,000 were still in­den­tured on the es­tates. How­ev­er, as an­oth­er cri­sis hit the sug­ar in­dus­try planters sought to re­verse the pat­tern of the 1850s when the con­tin­u­ous re­cruit­ment of 'new im­mi­grant' bands was em­ployed to check the de­mands for high­er wages from 'old im­mi­grants'. North-Coombs ar­gues that these 'old im­mi­grants' were al­lowed to ex­ist as a re­serve army dur­ing the pe­ri­od of ex­pan­sion. Once cri­sis hit the in­dus­try how­ev­er, the bond­ed labour on the es­tates came to be viewed as li­a­bil­i­ty and the on­ly op­tion per­ceived by planters was to force the re­serve army as it were back to the plan­ta­tions. By the 1880s the com­plaints about va­grancy di­min­ish then be­ing dis­placed by con­cerns over "idle­ness". This was a charge which Allen con­cludes sug­gest­ed a more set­tled agri­cul­tur­al work­force. As we will see with Trinidad, "idle­ness" was a more per­sis­tent com­plaint par­tic­u­lar­ly over the be­hav­iour of free In­di­ans.

At­lantic space

There had been lit­tle no­tice in Eng­land of the new­ly emerg­ing traf­fic in In­di­an in­den­tured labour to Mau­ri­tius apart from of­fi­cials at the Colo­nial Of­fice. Cump­ston ob­serves that the prox­im­i­ty of Mau­ri­tius to In­dia was one rea­son be­hind the lack of re­al op­po­si­tion in Eng­land to the traf­fic. The ear­ly traf­fic of con­tract­ed In­di­an labour was there­fore sub­ject to min­i­mal im­pe­r­i­al in­ter­ven­tion. It was how­ev­er an­oth­er mat­ter when In­di­ans were to be trans­port­ed to the West In­dies. Then the mid­dle pas­sage con­tin­ued to haunt the dis­course on labour of the "coloured races" on sug­ar plan­ta­tions. I've termed it an "At­lantic space" to sig­nal a shift in the terms of dis­course on labour and mi­gra­tion of coloured races. For, when it came to con­sid­er­a­tion on the trans­port of In­di­an work­ers to the West In­dies, a num­ber of oth­er is­sues came to the fore which were all premised on the dis­tance and sep­a­ra­tion that work­ers would have to en­dure. The sep­a­ra­tion sug­gest­ed a de­gree of per­ma­nence that hint­ed at a con­di­tion of en­slave­ment and the pro­posed du­ra­tion of con­tracts fur­ther added to this fear among hu­man­i­tar­i­ans and abo­li­tion­ists some who then held key po­si­tions at the Colo­nial Of­fice. The pro­pos­al for in­den­tured work­ers from In­dia then en­tered an At­lantic dis­course in which the vin­di­ca­tion of eman­ci­pa­tion hov­ered over the terms and con­di­tions by which a new sys­tem of im­mi­grant labour would be in­sert­ed in the West In­dies. In re­al terms it meant that the mi­gra­tion of In­di­an work­ers across the At­lantic be­came sub­ject to im­pe­r­i­al pol­i­cy al­most from the out­set. The re­ports of the fate of "Glad­stone's coolies" in British Guiana im­pelled the Colo­nial Of­fice to play an ac­tive role in the traf­fic.

How­ev­er, what is al­so to be not­ed is that un­like the Mau­rit­ian ex­pe­ri­ence where In­dia rapid­ly be­came the on­ly source of im­mi­grant work­ers, there was an equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant flow of labour from neigh­bour­ing is­lands in­to Trinidad. The ex­pe­ri­ence with each group in­formed how the Colo­nial Of­fice reg­u­lat­ed and treat­ed with new en­trants. It was in as­sum­ing its pa­ter­nal role as pro­tec­tor of ex-slaves mi­grat­ing from oth­er West In­di­an is­lands that the Colo­nial Of­fice in­tro­duced the Or­der in Coun­cil of 1838 which re­quired that con­tracts be con­clud­ed in the re­ceiv­ing colony and ad­di­tion­al­ly, that these con­tracts were to be lim­it­ed to a sin­gle year's du­ra­tion. This leg­is­la­tion had the ef­fect of strong­ly dis­cour­ag­ing planters from im­port­ing labour pri­vate­ly since work­ers would have been un­der no oblig­a­tion to work for these em­ploy­ers once they had land­ed in the colony. Ul­ti­mate­ly what this spelt for West In­di­an colonies was that any im­mi­gra­tion from dis­tant lands would have to be fi­nanced from pub­lic funds but that meant that planters them­selves would have less di­rect in­volve­ment in the re­cruit­ment of labour in Trinidad than they did in Mau­ri­tius. In Trinidad gov­ern­ment had dis­cre­tionary pow­er to al­lot or with­hold labour to any es­tate based on cri­te­ria premised on colo­nial pol­i­cy. This of course placed con­sid­er­able pow­er in the hands of colo­nial au­thor­i­ties in par­tic­u­lar, the Sur­geon Gen­er­al and Pro­tec­tor of Im­mi­grants. These two of­fi­cials were ac­cord­ed roles as leg­is­la­tors since they were both mem­bers of the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil. The au­thor­i­ty grant­ed med­i­cine in Trinidad is un­ri­valled in any of the colonies I have stud­ied; nei­ther was the Pro­tec­tor of Im­mi­grants so patent­ly pa­ter­nal­is­tic as it was in Trinidad.

The role of Pro­tec­tor of Im­mi­grants ar­guably was de­vel­oped first in Trinidad. It was in that "isle of ex­per­i­mente" that was first pro­posed the Pro­tec­tor of Slaves in 1812. In con­trast, the at­tempts to im­pose sim­i­lar of­fi­cial po­si­tions in Mau­ri­tius were met with near vi­o­lent re­sis­tance by colo­nial elites and planters in that is­land. Trinidad how­ev­er could be re­gard­ed as unique in terms of how pa­ter­nal­ism was con­sti­tut­ed through dis­course and ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­ture. The Pro­tec­tor was an ap­point­ed ex of­fi­cio in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil and was re­quired to sub­mit an an­nu­al re­port on the con­di­tion of the im­mi­grants to the Sec­re­tary of State for the Colonies. He al­so ad­vised on the an­nu­al re­quire­ments of in­den­tured labour­ers for the colony and had the pow­er to de­ny al­lot­ments to es­tates con­tra­ven­ing cer­tain reg­u­la­tions. He had the right of en­try to all plan­ta­tions which em­ployed in­den­tured work­ers and there­by make in­spec­tions of es­tate hos­pi­tals, the homes and sur­round­ings of im­mi­grants. Med­ical su­per­vi­sion al­so de­vel­oped in­to a crit­i­cal func­tion in the sys­tem of in­den­ture­ship pro­vid­ing a mech­a­nism for the im­pe­r­i­al in­ter­ven­tion be­tween em­ploy­er and labour­er. Or­di­nance 13 of 1870 re­strict­ed the al­lot­ment of in­den­tured im­mi­grants on­ly to those es­tates which had pro­vi­sions for hos­pi­tal ac­com­mo­da­tion. Gov­ern­ment Med­ical Of­fi­cers were re­quired to pay reg­u­lar vis­its to the es­tate hos­pi­tals. Gov­er­nor Gor­don who presided in both colonies in se­quen­tial terms not­ed that whilst it was un­law­ful in Trinidad to in­den­ture an im­mi­grant to an es­tate with­out a prop­er hos­pi­tal, in Mau­ri­tius there was no such pro­vi­sion. The in­sti­tu­tion­al po­si­tion ac­cord­ed pa­ter­nal­ist fig­ures in Trinidad widened the terms of dis­course on im­mi­grant work­ers. Pa­ter­nal dis­cours­es were rou­tinized means of le­git­imiz­ing in­den­ture­ship: in so do­ing what was need­ed to be shown was not on­ly the suc­cess of the new sys­tem of labour for the plan­ta­tions but some demon­stra­tion that In­di­ans had them­selves been im­proved in their moral dis­po­si­tion , cul­tur­al habits and state of mind.