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The ship lurched and rolled with the waves. Its passengers, agog with an uncanny mixture of excitement and apprehension, cast their eyes to the horizon and watched with heavy lidded eyes, the shore line recede and fade into the night. For nearly all, this would be the last sight of Mother India. Ahead lay a long and arduous journey into the unknown. For some, their feet would never touch land again. This ship is the Hesperus. Its cargo is indentured immigrants destined for British Guiana, now known as the Republic of Guyana. My ancestors may have been on this ship. It docked at Plantation Highbury on May 5th 1838. History records that the first two immigrants to disembark from the Hesperus were Ram and Khan.
With the docking of the Hesperus, came the first phase of emigrants from the subcontinent to British Guiana. A country larger in area than England, British Guiana was part of a British Empire whose outstretched arms engulfed land masses so far-flung, that the sun never set on it. Altogether, a staggering 238,909 labourers from India were transported across the kala pani (black water) to work in plantations and estates owned and run by the British in that country. The only English-speaking country in South America and located on the coast, Guyana today aligns itself with the Caribbean community, having received instruments of independence from the British in 1966. The Caribbean islands, as do most countries with a colonial past, today carry with them an indelible mark of torrid history, the impact of British policies entrenched in inhumanity, avarice and power-domination, and an ongoing struggle to prosper after colonialism.
The Indian indentureship program started as early as 1834. By 1839, about 6,100 labourers, of whom only 100 were women, arrived in Mauritius, Australia and British Guiana. By 1916-1917, the period preceding the abolition of Indian indentureship, 1,194,957 labourers had left India on ships, many of which had been slavers, and transported to Mauritius, British Guiana, Trinidad, Jamaica, Grenada, St. Lucia, the Colony of Natal, St. Kitts, St. Vincent, Reunion Island, Surinam, Fiji, Australia, East Africa and the Seychelles. Those emigrants, departed for personal reasons, with a variety of dreams and aspirations, as immigrants do, that drove them to seek out a new life. They left loved ones behind forever, setting the stage for the evolution of a diaspora that today touches every corner of the world, and encompasses decorated and recognized professionals, prominent world leaders, entrepreneurs and academics, to touch on only a few professions in which they excel. With the passage of time, and 176 years between then and now, much has been forgotten, and little has been done to preserve that aspect of Indian emigration, apart from scholarly works and academic studies on the subject of Indian indentureship and the answer it provided the British plantocracy’s labour question during the post-abolition period. Until now.
The Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO), spearheading a initiative to create a Kolkata Memorial, has gathered major stakeholders and supporters in what is expected to be a truly significant first step in recognizing the far-reaching impact of the departure of those individuals 176 years ago, on the lives of their descendants all over the world today. In July 2010, the West Bengal Government, along with representatives of GOPIO, met to finalize, what was for the latter a culmination of years of relentless lobbying, and designate a suitable place for a memorial plaque. Moving along the Hooghly river by launch, they looked at various depots that had been used more than one and three quarters of a century ago for the docking of ships and the departure of indentured labourers. They saw many: the Suriname Jetty, the Demerara Garden Reach Depot, the Bhowanipore Depot and others, then finally decided on one that is still intact and in good condition. That place is at the Kidderpore Dock, Kolkata, where the Demerara Clock Tower stands. British Guiana was once called Demerara, and a river so named is one of Guyana’s
mightiest.
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