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PANELS
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INDENTURED
SYSTEM OF LABOUR MIGRANTS
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RECRUITMENT
OF INDIANS
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CROSSING
OF KALA PANI
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LIFE
IN BARRACKS OR LOGIES
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INDENTURED
SYSTEM OR NEW FORM OF SLAVERY
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CONTEMPORARY INDIAN COMMUNITIES
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INDIA
AND DIASPORA
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FORMATION
OF MIGRANT CULTURE
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DILEMMA
OF BEING AN INDIAN IN
British Colonies, French colonies and Dutch Colonies
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When slavery was abolished in 1834, the freed Africans either opted not to work in the sugar plantations or asked for high wages. Coming out from centuries of slave experience Africans did not have any collective bargaining power or organized leadership structure for raising their demands.
The search for alternate cheap labor finally ended in India.
An impoverished India after the First War of Independence, or Great Mutiny in 1857, became the perfect source of cheap labor recruitment. A new system of contractual slavery termed "Indentured Labor Contract" was soon developed by the colonial administration to bring migrant laborers from the Indian subcontinent.
For nearly eighty years, between 1834 and until the abolition of indenturedship in 1917, the plantation economies in countries ranging from Sri Lanka in South Asia to Surinam (formerly Dutch Guiana) in South America have survived by the hard labor of these Indian laborers or "Coolies".
The decedents of these Indian indentured migrants today occupy very important place in the socio cultural and political milieu of several countries in the world. A substantial section of the people of Indian origin spread across in Caribbean, Americas, Fiji, Indian ocean islands, Europe, Australia and Africa are the descendents of these poor labourers. |
