No apology has been offered for the system of indenture: Bhaswati Mukherjee

Newly arrived indentured labourers in Trinidad. Photo via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain

Bhaswati Mukherjee, retired Indian diplomat, has recently published The Indentured and their route: A relentless quest for identity. In it, the former Indian ambassador and international affairs commentator chronicles the system of indenture that replaced the Transatlantic slave trade in the 19^th century.

Between 1830 and 1917, an estimated 1.5 million people were transported by ship from the port of Kolkata to far-flung corners of the British, Dutch and French empires. They were taking the place of black African slaves who had been emancipated after slavery was abolished by European nations in their colonies.

What was the system of indenture? How different was it from slavery? Mukherjee answered these and other questions from Down To Earth in an interview. Edited excerpts:

Rajat Ghai (RG): How different was the system of indenture from say, the Transatlantic or Indian Ocean slave trades?

Bhaswati Mukherjee (BM): I begin my book with this very important question. Chapter 1 of the book is titled Slavery or Indenture: Dialectics or Inheritance? In other words, is there a dialectical relationship between slavery and indenture? Or did the system of indenture inherit slavery?

My answer to these questions in the book is that indenture flowed out of the abolition of slavery. That is because the colonisers who had colonised us (Indians) and had earlier colonised those whom they had enslaved (African peoples), were forced due to persistent pressure from the Anti-Slavery League to finally abolish slavery in 1868. The sugar plantations (in the Caribbean, Africa, Indian Ocean and the South Pacific) then fell silent. The only colonial country that did not immediately abolish slavery was France on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion (they did so a few years later).  

When the sugar plantations fell silent, the colonisers hatched this devious colonial plot to transfer the burden of slavery to their colonised subjects in India. Ultimately, 1.5 million people moved from India through the port of Kolkata to different destinations.

They moved to Mauritius and passed through Apravasi Ghat, which I have described. They moved to French-controlled Reunion, to the British and Dutch Caribbean (Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana and Suriname), to Africa (Kwazulu-Natal) and to the South Pacific (Fiji).

That is why I have described in my book that indenture and slavery were two sides of the colonial coin. On one side were the black African slaves and on the other, the Indian indentured labourers.

The most poignant incident is mentioned in the chapter on Apravasi Ghat (Chapter 7: Crossings). There are two UNESCO world-heritage sites on the island on Mauritius. One is the Apravasi Ghat, where thousands of Indian indentured labourers passed through before being led to the sugar plantations. The other is Le Morne Brabant, a promontory with brooding high cliffs, on Mauritius’ southwest edge, where escaped black slaves jumped to their deaths into the ocean to escape the horrors of slavery, always in the direction of their original country, their homeland, Madagascar. 

RG: Has the spotlight on indenture not been as intense as the slave trade?

BM: Indeed, yes. That is why I decided to write this book. Much has been written about the Transatlantic slave route (the Middle Passage and the Triangular Slave Trade) because the African groups got their act together.

In Chapter 7, I explain how the Mauritian government decided to pitch Apravasi Ghat as a candidate for UNESCO World Heritage Site status. I was India’s Ambassador to the UNESCO at that time and India’s representative to the World Heritage Committee.

Former Indian Ambassador to UNESCO, Bhaswati Mukherjee

During a meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in the Baltic country of Lithuania, the then Mauritian Minister of Culture, Mookeshwar Choonee, raised the issue. That is when the representative of the International Council on Monuments and Sites or Icomos — a organisation that gives advice on whether a site can be made a World Heritage Site or not — poked fun at Apravasi Ghat and the system of indenture.

She made some terribly racist remarks, comparing the system of indenture to Indian immigrants moving to Silicon Valley in search of a better life. She added that there was no need to grant World Heritage Site status to the Ghat since the system of indenture had helped ‘impoverished Indians’ to escape a life of misery.

At that point, Choonee sent me a message requesting me as the Ambassador of India to explain the horrors of indenture.

I then took the floor and in a 15-minute extempore speech explained how poor, innocent people from the Indian hinterland were lied to and deceived. They were told that they would have to go on a half-hour boat journey to an island that they knew as Tapas in Bhojpuri. The would-be labourers were sent in the same ships used to transport African slaves, though not in chains. Cholera-contaminated water from the Hooghly river was put in the ship so that most migrants contracted cholera. Many were thrown overboard, while alive, during the voyage. In Mauritius, they were asked to cultivate sugar which they knew nothing about. To compare them with suave, well-educated Indians going to make a great future in Silicon Valley is not only a travesty of history but poking fun at it.

My speech moved the representatives of Western nations to vote in favour of granting World Heritage Site status to Apravasi Ghat.

I wrote this book in an effort to raise awareness about India’s lost 1.5 million children whom nobody in our country seems to remember or has an idea about. I have dedicated the book to them too.

Writing the book was worth the efforts since I have received positive feedback from the descendants of indentured labourers from Mauritius, Fiji, Reunion, Guyana and other areas. They have appreciated the fact that an Indian has written about the system of indenture this time, rather than one of their own. They have also expressed a desire to translate it into several languages.

RG: Many nations are demanding reparations for slavery. Should the descendants of indentured workers do the same?

BM: I have written about this in Chapters 10 (Rise of India’s Diaspora: Culture as Saviour and Redeemer) and 11 (Old Sins Cast Long Shadows) of my book.

I have said that no apology has been offered for terrible tragedies of human history such as the Holocaust, the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the system of indenture.

In Reunion, the descendants of the labourers have been completely deracinated and cut off from the roots because French colonial policies banned them from speaking Bhojpuri or Tamil or even keeping names from their native cultures.

To an extent, the current French state, of which Reunion is an overseas department, has tried to make amends. It has introduced Yoga and classical Indian dances in Reunion school curricula.

Still, there is a long way to go before former colonial nations truly recognise and atone for indenture.

RG: Today, when immigration to Western nations has fueled the rise of the right, what does the example of indenture, ostensibly done to give the workers better lives, tell us?

BM: I see no comparison at all. Let me explain why. When the British colonised us, they brought in what is called the Permanent Settlement. Under this, those Indians who possessed land, became landless. The British also forced Indian peasants to grow opium instead of food crops. Indian farmers were forced to sell opium at low costs to the British who then forced it on a whole generation of Chinese in return for tea, which they took back to Britain.

As a result, Bengal and the eastern part of India suffered from a series of devastating famines. The impoverished populace was then lured by Arkatiyas (agents in Bhojpuri) to Kolkata harbour. They were lied to and sold a Golden Dream, in order to remove apprehensions of ‘crossing the Kalapani’. They endured terrible conditions during the voyage and when they reached, were made to work on sugar plantations, which they did not know about. Many died. But others survived and through their hard work and determination, built rainbow nations in the places they were taken to.

This is a totally different story from what is happening now. Right now, the West is in decline. There is now a tremendous demand for skilled and unskilled labour. India is one of the biggest donors of both.

Indian immigrants today merge seamlessly in their adopted lands. Resentment from native populations is mostly towards those immigrants who refuse to be absorbed or accept a culture as their own. In India’s case, we have always said cultures should co-exist. Whether it is France, which insists on ‘assimilation’ or other nations which believe in ‘accommodation’, Indian immigrants have never been a problem.

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