An ‘ideal’ type of ‗Diaspora‘ refers to the exile of the Jews. The African experience of ‘slavery’ under the colonial rule had also created equally tormenting circumstances to those ‘slaves’. Soon after the abolition of slavery, a new system emerged that created a large amount of migrants to most of the British colonies. Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffins in their Post Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts explains When slavery was finally outlawed in colonial systems such as Britain’s, it was replaced by an extension of a system of employment called indentured labour. Although, as the term implies, indenture contracts were apparently voluntarily entered into, in practice this operated as a system of forced labour, with many of the labourers impressed rather than recruited. Indenture became the main means of securing cheap labour after 1833, supplying the workers for British colonial plantations in locations as widespread as Fuji, Malaya, Northern Queensland and of course the Caribbean. Many diasporic groups, notably Indians and Chinese were transported under this system. Consequently, even after the formal abolition of slavery, various forms of forced or contracted labour, such as indenture in English colonies, and debt peonage in Latin America, meant that oppressive labour habits died hard in these regions, where the forms of agriculture developed under the slave system required a continued supply of cheap and controlled labour, cheap and controlled labour. (215)
As stated by Professor Amit Kumar Mishra, University of Hyderabad, in his essay ―Sardars, Kanganies and Maistries: Intermediaries in the Indian Labour Diaspora during the Colonial Period‖, the British planters were worried about the problem of seeking labour searching after the abolition of slavery in the Parliament on 1 August 1834 which created a sense of anxiety and insecurity among them. Hence they started the new system of recruiting contract labourers for plantations. This new capitalist system in the nineteenth century became successful as large number of Indians migrated to the newly expanded plantations in colonies like Mauritius. The British had worked for the supply of contract labourers initially in African and East European colonies which ended up in failure. Only later they had turned towards the over populated Asian countries. To ensure the availability of migrant labourers in abundance, the plantation lobby preferred the contract system in contrast to free labour. Contracts ensured the availability of labourers for a fixed period with the possibility of further extension. To obtain labourers under such a system, there were some initial experimentations with African and East European immigrants. When these proved to be a failure, planters resorted to looking for a supply of contract labourers from the ‗densely populated‘ regions of Asia – China, Japan, India and few a Pacific Islands. Indeed, these regions did historically satisfy the demands stemming from the rapidly growing plantation settlements. (4). This new system of labour recruitments had been divided into two types accordingly. The first type was the indentured labourers and the second type was the Sardars, Kanganies and Masteries. Mishra emphasises that the nineteenth century had been a century of “men moving”(4) which has been recorded as the gigantic mass human displacement for labour across the nations. This system was brought to notice by other 128 European nations following the abolition of slavery in those colonies as well. Emigration of Indian indentured labourers was not confined to the British settlements. Following the abolition of slavery in French colonies in 1846 and in Dutch ones as of 1863, planters there also entered into agreements with their colonial governments to acquire labourers from India. Subsequently, the French Caribbean received 79,089 Indian labourers between 1851 and 1890 and Dutch Guiana (Suriname) received more than 34,000 Indian labourers between 1873 and 1916. (4). The labourers were sent from different regions in India. Their migration process was carried out under the government regulation only in three major ports, namely Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. The main regions supplying labourers were: tribal regions of Chota Nagpur in eastern India; Saran, Chapra, Shahabad, Champaran, Gaya, and Patna in Bihar; Banaras, Ghazipur, Azamgarh, Gorakhpur, Basti, Bahraich, Jaunpur in the United Provinces; Chingalpet, Tanjore, Trichirapally, South and North Arcot, Salem, Coimbatore, Vizagapatam in southern India; and the Ratnagiri region in western India. In the initial period, a mixed lot of emigrants embarked for different colonies where emigrants came from from diverse regions. (6).
Though there had been many forms of migration, indentured labourer system 129 holds the mark in creating a large mass migration from India. This form of diaspora belongs to the colonial phase which had two options to decide from-either to return back to their homeland after the stipulated time of their contract for five years or to continue their stay by accepting another contract to work as indentured labourer and to buy a piece of land for themselves if affordable. As TLS Bhaskar explains it, the process of immigrating to the plantation was governed by an Immigration Ordinance which would be enacted in the country of destination, The prospective emigrants testified before a Magistrate in India and the terms of the contract as required under the British administration (Jain, Ibid). The recruitment process involved emigration agents, sub- agents and depots in the rural areas. The chief features of the indenture system, “…were five years of stereotyped state regulated labor, denial of the right to change the employer or employment, recruitment of labor units and not families, gross disproportions of men to women, changes for recruitment by the employer, and the denial of increased wages in spite of increased prices and profits. (5) Bhaskar also emphasises on the recruitment process as stated by Singh that the recruiters of the indentured labourer had instructions to choose them mainly from the agricultural background which would help them run the plantations well due to lack of enough labourers. The Ministry of External Affairs planned a High Level Committee on Indian Diaspora which published a report in 2000. It has demonstrated an analysis on Indian Diaspora regarding its culture. As mentioned by Oonk, the report says that the “Members of Indian Diaspora are deeply conscious of their rich cultural heritage. They are aware that they are the inheritors of the traditions of the world’s oldest continuous civilisation. Being part of such a rich legacy, they are naturally keen to maintain their cultural identity.” (403). The report further states that the survey, taken on Indian diaspora residing in their host lands shows that labourers did not experienced conflict with their fellow citizens of the countries where they reside which clearly according to the report is due to their commitment to the tradition and civilisation ethos of India which have been imbibed not only into the illiterate indentured labourers of highly qualified professionals but also by their descendants. Keeping in mind that the term Diaspora is a metaphorical term which derives its metaphor from the field of agriculture, associated with the dispersion of seeds or scattering of seeds the migration of indentured labourers in search of a livelihood cannot be seen in the same way as the initial ascription of the forced migration of the Jews from Palestine. As explained by Fernando Galvan in the article ―Metaphors of Diaspora‖, The first is an agricultural metaphor associated with the idea of dispersion, of sowing or scattering seeds (from the Greek diá ‗through‘, and the verb speirein ‗to sow‘, ‗to scatter‘). Moreover, its initial metaphorical ascription to the dispersion of a particular people, the Jews, after the Babylonian captivity, and then later, with the Jewish people being forced to leave Palestine, has been extended to other peoples and communities. Thus the classical, Jewish diaspora has carried over its meaning, extending it to other similar dispersions: we now view the African diaspora, the Asian diaspora, the Indian diaspora, and others, as equivalent to (similar to or 131 like) the Jewish diaspora. (114) Such has become the impact of diaspora across the world and it is important to note that the Indian Diaspora holds its own position of difference in it. It does not only represent the migration of people, but the world of culture as well. The essay by Ghosh, ―The Modern Indian Diaspora‖ – the huge migration from the subcontinent that began in the mid-nineteenth century- is not merely one of the most important demographic dislocations of modern times: it now represents an important force in world culture. The culture of the diaspora is also increasingly a factor within the culture of the Indian Subcontinent‖. (243) Hence, it is equally important to distinguish between the ‗forced‘ and ‗chosen‘ need based migrations. Diaspora which has come to represent the migrants has been categorised into ‗old‘ and ‗new‘ diasporas by considering the lives of the migrants and by the struggles they had to undergo under the British rule. As Ghosh explains the ‗old‘ diaspora has emerged well in the mid of the nineteenth century during the British colonisation. Though there had been a few Indian‘s who migrated for trade purposes a whole lot of people started migrating only during the nineteenth century which was the result of the trade undertaken by the British through India. As put forth by Dr. Vinay Lal in his essay, ―Living in the Shadows‖, the Indian diaspora as known and referred to by the people has started mainly into the countries like U.S.A., Australia, Canada, the Middle East and a little lesser in the U.K. A wide range of its global presence has been experienced in all these countries through various cultural phenomena like, ―Bollywood, Indian Writing in English, tandoori cooking and even the emergence of a new class of aggressive Indian business tycoons‖ (2)
All the successful stories told by ―diasporic‖ Indians at large to other middle class Indians have centred on a clear image that such countries provide them a bright future and hence thrive to move to these destinations themselves. Such a painting would be stained by the real fact that the great mass of migration, the real diaspora of the Indian dates back to the nineteenth century and that their land of destinations were not the US or UK but to the southeast Asian countries, the Caribbean Islands and several other countries like Mauritius and Fiji. Mostly subjugated ancestral diasporic Indians had taken with them the agonies and struggles of their lives and being washed away from their familial bounds and to be left behind by working for the East India Company during the period of the first Governor General Warren Hastings in 1780. Though migration started during the period of the production of opium, many people fled to other countries for plantations and as farmers, thereby toiling too hard for a little amount of money paid to them. Several bonds had been made with these migrants either to stay in their colonies or to leave in a few years with whatever they are given. This agonizing era, has in turn changed and developed into an era of mainly of the professional elites who have migrated under various pull and push factors and have established themselves in different aspects and various fields of development. As a matter of fact, Dr. Lal explains how the Indian Diaspora cannot be written so easily based on the success stories and accounting to these few people‘s lives. He says, the story of the Indian diaspora can scarcely be written in the singular idiom of resounding successes, stories of the rags to riches, or of the entrepreneurial drive of people determined to make their mark in life. Certain elementary distinctions are the bedrock of understanding why some diasporic Indian Communities are more liable to suffer from political, economic or social disabilities than others, and what might be the systemic forms of exclusion or oppression which have operated to keep some diasporic communities on the margin. (2) This ‗old‘ diaspora of the nineteenth century is said to be a truly great saga of people who made their way as indentured labourers to various countries like Mauritius, Trinidad, Fiji, Surinam, Guyana, South Africa and several other places under the British colonies. These experiences and tumultuous voyages have attracted the recent scholars to delve deep into their lifestyle and had attracted a few, Indian writers who were interested to acknowledge their existence that still have serious impacts on the generations of the early migrants. Especially in the recent years it is being acknowledged officially by the Government of India and as a nation come forward to celebrate and respect the sacrifices by the early migrants by arranging the annual celebrations known as Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas in order to pay them respect from 2003 onwards. This sort of response by India towards its people, its own diaspora brings disappointment upon the country‘s government which yields all its possession to itself yet neglecting those historical moments and voyages of mass migration. It is much more surprising to have known the hidden fact through Ghosh‘s interviews that such migrations had happened not at the coastal areas of the country but from the interior parts of the country. The nation, ―Mother India‖ (2), as Lal calls India, has neglected its responsibility to safeguard and uphold its own divergent communities apart from their social, economic and religious differences. The earlier times had been much worse than this as the overseas Indians were given least concern by India during the crisis in Uganda and Kenya. Lal poses a doubt if ―the expulsions of Indians from Uganda and Kenya in the late 1960‘s might have been 134 overlooked had many of them not had British citizenship and considerable assets at their command‖. (2). When Ghosh discusses it in his essay ―The Diaspora in Indian Culture‖, he says, ―…, the relationship between India and its diaspora is very real. On at least two occasions – the Uganda crisis and the recent crisis in Fiji – the Indian Government did actually resort to real political brinkmanship on behalf of its diaspora. Its efforts may not have amounted to very much in either case – a fact for which the diaspora will probably of a poor and relatively impotent nation, it did what little it could. (247). Further he raises a question of ―why for the populations of Uganda and Fiji were not Indian citizens and India owed them no obligations‖. (247) As told by him, the Indian government has acted indifferently towards its own old diaspora, as the country, India is poor and has comparatively little political influence in influencing ―the conduct of other nation states‖ (2). The bitter fact is that the country is filled with its own cold war and politics to indulge in such aspects leading it to an inadequate or an incompetent situation, thus creating problems in retaining the country‘s old diaspora. Caste and cultural discrimination and differences themselves might have been the hurdles to embrace the diasporic communities away from their traumatic situations. Lal provides another perspective where in the other reasons for India to neglect the communities is because the diasporic communities were the indentured labourers who are just a level above the Africans who had been considered to be born as slaves carrying the burdens of their masters: And yet there may have been other significant considerations that perhaps explain why India was generally not keen to embrace its dispersed children around the world. If one recalls a well-known scholars‘ controversial characterization of indentured labour, which accounts for the bulk of early Indian migrations, as another name for slavery (Tinker 1947), one begins to suspect that the disapprobation with which many Indians have received this term has to do with much more than question of historical accuracy or even scholarly predilections. (3) This act of not considering the diasporic communities shows the fragility of the country which has been very much ready in submitting itself to the colonial rule, subjugating the whole nation and its people. Yet the same vulnerability has brought in strength to a few people of the country who had made use of the colonial rule for their own good and turning their lives into a bed of roses, thereby neglecting the impact that it would create on their countrymen. On the contrary, migration has also brought unity among the migrants who have left their families behind in forming new families and hope for the betterment of their lives in the land that they are destined to live in. Hence, by the mid – 1990s we begin to see the differentiation between the ‗old‘ diaspora and the ‗new‘ diaspora; the former comprising the labourers and the latter comprising the professional elites who have started developing themselves out of the fragility of the nation. In short, the ‗new‘ diaspora has been oblivious about the ‗old‘ diaspora to march towards progress among the various developments and conflicts between the nation and its people. The Government of India has turned its back to the ‗lost‘ history of the early migration, busying itself in the development of the country by joining hands with the professional elites who were unwilling to protect their own ancestors‘ history and their past. The ‗old‘ diaspora was no more an exclusively working-class diaspora than the ‗new‘ diaspora was a diaspora comprising only professional elites. The Pravasi Bharatiya Diwas gatherings in New Delhi were designed to invoke an ecumenical conception of the Indian diaspora that, as I have previously suggested, the government of India has almost always disowned. As I have also argued, the Indian government, and no less the educated elites of India, were oblivious to the presence of an older Indian diaspora and were predisposed towards viewing it as a reminder of everything that India had to leave behind if it wished to be seen as a nation marching towards progress and development. There was more than a touch of poverty in the older Indian diaspora, given its origins in the migrations of labourers often suffering from destitution, and most of all what India sought was to refurbish its image abroad so that India would not be indelibly stamped as a land of seething poverty. (3) The ‗old‘ had been left behind in order to march towards progress and development of the still developing ‗New‘ country amidst competitions and business or even due to political issues in the era of globalisation. The ‗old‘ remains ―as the reminder of everything that India had to leave behind if it wished to be seen as a nation marching towards progress and development‖ (3), says Lal by pointing at the cold hands of the country towards its own people who had brought miseries to themselves to make amends for their families and the nation they left behind to suffer destitution and lost deep within the image created by India as a land of developing prospects and not ―a land of seething poverty‖ (3). This attitude changed when it was demanded to have equal prominence and oppose discrimination openly.
Lal is of the opinion that ―The inescapable conclusion appears to be that Indians can be oppressed without much consequence to the oppressor.‖ (4), which proves to be accurate in the above circumstances. For, some people were taken as indentured labourers to various lands for plantation purposes of the British when India was in the hands British as British Raj to escape from their personal hardships. The people who opted for such a journey happened to settle in those foreign lands, though they longed to return to their homeland which was a miracle at times. Most of the migrants were from the North, Bhojpuri speaking people working in the sugarcane plantations. The Indian settlers of Trinidad and Fiji had never been much in touch with India, like the people who settled in Malaysia who were in contact constantly which may be due to the distance between the countries which are nearby to kindle their nostalgia for their homeland. Yet the Indians are outnumbered by the indigenous Malays and the Chinese who are the next great migrant people. Whereas, Trinidad and Fiji have the population divided, if not equally but smoothly between the Afro-Trinidadians and Indians and the Indo-Fijians. Indians settled in South Africa are classed as one among the four major groups which included the Europeans, and even the Africans who are categorised as ―‗coloreds‘‖ (4). The Indian diasporic community of each of these countries has its own pros and cons, as it is dominated by the host country‘s indigenous people or the already settled people. Trinidad had its own political and racial views and issues in dealing with the large group of Indian community. As per Lal, the Indians had first landed in Trinidad through sea in FatelRozack on 30 May 1845, just a decade after the abolition of the term ‗slavery‘. They had been the large yet cheap group of labourers who were supposed to provide profits for their landlords and the oppressors. This highly appreciable hard work has been paid attention to and praised by one of the greatest Afro-Trinidadian novelists, George Lamming (1989) who has written that the Indians ―humanised the landscape. Tilled the soil, and put the food on the table (Lal 1996:133-42)‖ (4). He has not only spoken about the landscape and agriculture but also about the human values on humanitarian grounds. This has changed in time over two or three generations, let alone the common celebration of Muharram, the Shiva festival which in due course became a common festival for the people of all religions. This attitude has changed gradually when the new generations stepped out of agriculture and educated themselves that led to ―greed and exploitative nature‖ (5) which was brought to control politically. In the later period, the Indian community became the victims under the Afro-Trinidadians who have become indifferent to their sufferings, which is the present situation of the country. An important aspect to be noted is that the Trinidad Indian community holds the pride of becoming the first diasporic community to mark their presence with an Indian Arrival Day which was established in 1995 after various clarifications and proposals. The confusions did not stop here since the government of Trinidad & Tobago declared 1 August, the Emancipation Day, as a national holiday, as though the country had only the black community. ―Suddenly it seemed that both Indo-Trinidadians and AfroTrinidadians were rivals to laying claim to the history of Trinidad, with little or no recognition in the part of either that they were, perhaps, equally interlopers in a country whose native inhabitants had been exterminated‖. (6). Though the abolition of slavery in 1835 resulted in the arrival of the Indians to Trinidad, it also resulted in the arrival of the Africans who behaved in a ―diabolical‖ (6) manner in exterminating the native inhabitants of Trinidad. After the arrival of Patrick Manning as Prime Minister the national holiday ‗Arrival Day‘. It was changed again as the ‗Indian Arrival Day‘ with the help of Basdeo Panday, the former Prime Minister. The situation was almost the same even in Fiji, where the Indian community was left to struggle among Fiji‘s population. The Indians were brought to the land of Fiji as indentured labourers to work in the Australia based sugar plantations in 1879. The circumstances of the people changed from bad to the worse as the women who thought to have attained the economic freedom in the new land had only been pushed into violence in extreme forms of displacement, as they were unaware of the social and political system of that country. Women were forced into sexual abuse and the living conditions according to them were ―narak (hell). (Voigt-Graf 2004: 179)‖ (6), which is termed by a scholar as ‗prison-like‘ (Naidu 2004). Indian labourers have been the reason behind the development of Queensland and New South Wales through their labour which brought profits on the farmed lands. This historical event of the Indians in the land of Fiji has been concealed by certain forces of the ethnic Fijians and Europeans, leaving behind the Indians estranged to suffer in their hands ―… as though any recognition of the suffering of Indians undermines our understanding of the manner in which ethnic Fijians (or Melanesians) were deliberately confined by the colonial state to their native villages under the threat of draconian sanctions,…‖ (7), which is a trick followed by the British to isolate themselves from a modern economy. The Indians living there still till the soil apart from not being given more lands for their purpose and for various reasons that still prevail. South African Indian communities of labourers immigrated to the land first in 1860 in Natal. Their presence brought a drastic change in the production of sugar and even in other forms of agriculture which resulted in strong objections on account of their removal from the land. They have been accused of being violent on the rest of the South African community which was eventually rejected by the South African Human Rights Commissioner ―taints an entire community‖ (10). The Indian indentured labourers were taken mostly from the South India, especially from Tamil Nadu. A large number of Indians were brought to Malaysia between 1911 and 1930. Being a multicultural society, Malaysia has been dominant in holding the Government jobs for itself while the Chinese diasporic community held the business to itself. Indians were left alone with the plantations in which they cherished until recently providing them the income only through the available crops. Such had been the condition of the Indian diasporic community that migrated to Trinidad, South Africa and Southeast Asian countries whose predicament has been uncertain. Though the democratical Government of Fiji was held by an Indian there was no room for the Indians to be strong against the crimes and discriminations committed upon them and to uphold them away from being kept on the margins of the civil society. Indians are the majority in these countries and yet they are treated as minorities for their fragility and yet they make a difference in their confidence; i.e., the minorities with confidence as the majorities.