|
The abolition of slavery brought freedom to about 80,000 slaves; but this freedom would not have seen the light of day had it not been for African resistance. Major slave revolts in Barbados in 1816, in Demerara in 1823, in Jamaica in 1824 and 1831, in Antigua in 1831, together with the Anti-Slavery Movement, and fluctuating sugar profits, created the ingredients for the Abolition of Slavery Act in 1834.
The White plantocracy did not bring Indians, Portuguese, and Chinese to Guyana because there was a shortage of labor on the sugar plantations. There were 80,000 African ex-slaves available to keep the sugar mills alive. But the refusal of Africans to continue till the sugar lands at the end of slavery, and to focus their energies in developing a successful village movement, indeed, spelt the death of sugar. And by 1848, the African peasant class of villagers emerged.
However, plantation owners for some years prior to the end of slavery had yearned for a ‘controllable’ labor force. British plantation owners believed that India fitted the bill; India’s huge population provided a ready-made labor pool with agricultural skills; and India, then a British Colony, negated the need for negotiations, as the negotiators were all British. The 19th century Indian Diaspora was born, initiating in Hugh Tinker’s words, ‘a new system of slavery’.
Indentured laborers arrived in Guyana as an alternative source of cheap labor. Nonetheless, their replacement of the ex-Africanslaves in sugar, guaranteed the persistence of sugar. Around 1850, Indians replaced slaves on the sugar plantations, taking on the dubious distinction of being a new rural working class.
The first batch of Indians in the Caribbean arrived in 1838 in Guyana; during Indenture in Guyana, 238,909 Indians arrived and 75,236 returned to India by 1917; about 70.3% came from Uttar Pradesh, 15.3% from Bihar, and 4.4% from South India; 86.3% were Hindus and 16.3% Muslims. Between 1845 and 1917, 143,939 Indians arrived in Trinidad. The Table 1 shows other Caribbean countries, their Indenture years, and the number of people who arrived.
This indentured migration was different from the current migration of professionals to the Western metropolis. Mr. J.C. Sharma demonstrated the striking difference, thus: “These settlers to the Caribbean had usually carried with them on their way only their pots and pans, a few pieces of clothing, and perhaps a blanket. Yet, they managed to bequeath to their children and their grand-children the cultural heritage of their land of origin.”
Indians inhabited a dehumanized total institutional environment, with no mobility, enslaved by the tyranny of the rule of law, and reduced to a history of humiliation parallel to conditions of African slavery; in Hugh Tinker’s words conditions amounting to ‘a new system of slavery’. The neo-slave nature of indentureship was well established.
White planters, Coloured, and Black lower status groups loathed the Indian culture, thus: “Their language was ‘outlandish’, they knew no English; their clothes were strange and their religion was heathen. They lacked the cultural characteristics valued in the society, and in return the society withheld its rights and privileges from them.” Indians arrived in the Caribbean as outsiders and remained as ‘outsiders’ even today.
Given the harsh treatment meted out to Indians, how did they manage to maintain their culture? The answer has to do with the resilience of Indians. Their resistance to the White planters was a rallying point for cultural continuity and the genesis of Indian political evolution. Just a few examples would substantiate that Indian resistance was a characteristic feature of plantation life. Indians staged 88 strikes and disturbances between 1886 and 1888, and they received 65,084 convictions for labor contract violations between 1874 and 1895.
In 1881, 3,168 were labeled criminals because of their struggles with planters. In fact, compared to other British Colonies, British Guiana became the worst offender where planters used the criminal courts to enforce the labor laws, as evidenced for 1907: Rigid labor laws produced criminal convictions for the slightest violations. Medical doctors and magistrates operated in the ruling class interests, once they were paid off handsomely. Indian women became frequent targets for sexual assaults by White overseers. Interestingly, Indians did make active responses. Although arrests were common, Indians continued to
resist.
|
