Indians in Mauritius and Fiji
(author of article unknown)
The experience of Indian indentured servants
in two British colonies reveals some similarities and
differences according to country. Mauritius was the first
colony to employ Indian indentured servants in 1834 after the
end of slavery in the British Empire. Fiji was the last colony
to bring in Indians to work sugarcane plantations in 1879. The
ignorance on the part of Indians regarding travel, actual work
involved, and plantation life was tempered by the Indian’s
tenacity once in country. Exploring the legacy of the past
along with the current situations leads to a better
understanding of multi-ethnic populations around the world.
The emancipation of slaves in the British
Empire in 1833 led to the replacement of this labor by Indian
indentured servants. Indian indenturement began in Mauritius
in 1834 and ended in Fiji in 1916. During this eighty-year
period, over one million Indians migrated into at least eight
countries. Was there any difference between slavery and
indenture? What were the social consequences to the Indians
themselves? The focus is on these and other questions in
regard to the first and last countries to employ Indians as
indentured servants.
More specifically, this paper explores 1)
the background of each country and why Indians were
introduced; 2) the similarities and differences in the systems
of indenture concerning recruitment, plantation life, and the
treatment of women; and 3) repercussions of the indenture
legacy in the 21st century and the political implications this
legacy has for both countries.
Mauritius
Mauritius was the first British colony to
import free labor from another part of the British Empire on a
large scale. The small, uninhabited island was first noted on
maps by Arab sailors and, by the sixteenth century, the
Portuguese had used it as a stopover point between India and
Madagascar. The Dutch and their slaves occupied the island
from 1658 to 1710 and named it Mauritius after Prince Maurice
of Orange.
The French acquired Mauritius in 1716, and
renamed it the Isle-of-France. The British Royal Navy realized
the problems inherent in control of this island by France when
trading routes to the Indian Ocean became blocked. The English
captured the island in 1810 and returned the name, Mauritius,
to the island. By the time England took over, Indian traders,
laborers, houseboys, jewelers, and shoemakers already lived on
the island.[1]
The abolition of slavery in the British
colonies by Parliament in 1833 was followed by a labor crisis.
The freed slaves were supposed to continue working, but as
paid servants for the first four years following emancipation.
The period was called "apprenticeship" and was
intended to teach the newly freed people some useful trade
before the restoration of full freedom. This scheme did not
work, as many freed slaves did not want to learn a trade or
wait four more years; consequently, many purchased their
freedom before the four apprentice years expired.
The introduction of indentured Indians was
the planters' response to this labor shortage. The contracts
for labor were read to the recruits before they put their
thumb-impressions on the agreements in the presence of the
Chief Magistrate. Thus, they appeared to accept the terms of
the agreement by their own volition. The planters were
accustomed to slave labor on a plantation. Now they had to
adjust to indentured labor on a plantation, and sometimes the
distinction between the two forms of labor was blurred.
Questions arose concerning the ability of
the Indians to understand these contracts of labor, but early
importation gradually developed into a steady flow. Between
1834 and 1839, there were 25,458 Indians introduced into
Mauritius, yet only 500 were females.[2] Governor Nicolay
(1833-40) attributed the disorder and mayhem on some estates
to this paucity of women. It was in this deceitful climate
that the beginning of Indian migration as indentured servants
began.
Fiji
The story of indentured servants in Fiji
begins with Fiji’s Deed of Cession to Britain in 1874. Fiji
was not a conquered nation; it asked to be ceded and was only
accepted with the condition that it had to govern itself with
its own means. This left the first Governor, Sir Arthur
Hamilton Gordon (1875-1882), scrambling to devise a scheme for
moneymaking that would insure the colony’s self-sufficiency.
Gordon was persistent in his attempt to preserve Fijian
culture and society; therefore, no Fijians would be asked to
work on plantations because that would contribute to the
breakdown of the village system and disrupt the balancing
scales between the Fijian Chiefs and Governor Gordon. He also
realized that native populations were more difficult to
control than an imported labor force. Gordon determined that
plantation agriculture was the answer; specifically sugar.
In 1876, the Colonial Office in England
allocated funds for Indian immigration to Fiji, yet the first
Indians did not arrive until 1879. The delay was principally
due to resistance from the planters. According to Gillion,
most planters had small estates (200-1,000 acres), were in
debt, and could neither afford the large initial payments
needed for Indian immigrants nor the hospital requirements
that were set forth in the draft Indian Immigration
Ordinance.[3]
Yet, despite protests from the planters, the
Leonidas arrived in May of 1879 carrying 464 Indians. Gordon
then contracted the Colonial Sugar Refining Company based in
Australia to run all the plantations in 1880. The planters had
to answer directly to the company effectively privatizing the
sugar industry and creating a monopoly. Due to Governor Gordon’s
effort, the colony would achieve economic solvency and
maintain traditional, hierarchical structures of the Fijian
chiefly system.
Similarities and Differences
The systems of indenture pertaining to
Mauritius and Fiji shared some similarities and demonstrated
many differences, particularly in regard to the recruitment of
Indians, life on the plantation, and the treatment of women.
The competition for recruits between the
colonies was stiff. As the first British colony to import
Indians, Mauritius gained advantage among the Indians because
many had at least heard of Mauritius or already had relatives
there. Mauritius offered a short outward voyage, an
inexpensive return passage, and an indenture period of five
years.
This contrasts with Fiji where allotments
for specific estates had to be sent to the Immigration Office
before a fixed day of the year. This was a statement of the
number of recruits an estate owner was requesting. The number
of recruits received by a plantation, if any, was conditioned
upon the status of the estate. Situations such as a proprietor
in arrears, an estate without a hospital, or an unacceptable
Indian mortality rate were some reasons for the denial of
laborers to an estate.[4] Such restrictions were not a part of
the Mauritius system where laborers were allotted to estates
by the colonial government after their arrival in country.
Recruitment tactics used to entice Indians
ranged from promises of money and easy work to promises of
reuniting with family members. One example involves Devi
Singh, who was working in Calcutta when:
an arkatti came and told me I could get a
job working in the canefields but all I would have to do would
be walk around with a stick. And when I registered I was told
to give my age as 20 years. I was attracted because I was
offered a better wage of 12 annas per day. We were told Fiji
was 700 miles, and an island. Had I known the real distance, I
would not have come, it was too far from home.[5]
The conviction of the anti-coolie-trade
lobby that there was little understanding among the migrants
of the locations of colonies or of the lengths of the sea
voyages gained ground amidst evidence that, once confronted
with the ship, some migrants threw themselves overboard rather
than be carried out to sea. Traveling by sea was reserved for
only certain trading castes; so crossing the ocean, for most
Indians, meant the loss of caste followed by severance of
familial ties. Rajcomar, for example, jumped off the ship that
was to transport him to Mauritius. He had already been
employed in Calcutta for two years. Part of his job was
guarding Indians who were being transported from the depot to
the ship. On one occasion, after marching the Indians aboard
the ship, he turned to disembark, when he found he had been
included on the list of embarking emigrants. He protested in
vain, then, in his words:
about 20 persons from the ship came on the
dhingy [sic] and seized and dragged me on board the ship; and
the gentleman on board the ship struck me five or seven blows
with a rattan, and forcibly detained me on board; I again
remonstrated, and told him I would never go with him, as I was
not a Coolie, and having said this, I jumped overboard,
leaving all my clothes on board; but three dhingies being sent
after me, I was taken up by one of them, and was taken on
board ship with my hands tied; I then called out 'Dohoye' and
said That I would kill 20 men before I would submit to be
forced away. This was explained to the gentleman on board by
the serang of the ship; upon which he agreed to send me to the
European who came with us on board . . . the European . .
.ordered his servants to confine me; but having been detained
for about an hour, I was, after some consultation with his
sircar, released.[6]
Avoiding the ship and the inherent voyage
was a frequent occurrence in the indenture process. The terror
in the realization that Kala Pani, or black water, awaited was
tremendous.
Plantation Life
The plantation system and its farming
techniques were based on slave labor. For indentured Indians,
cultivation remained the same; everything was accomplished by
manual labor. The organization of an estate was generally
uniform in both colonies. Administration of an estate was
either under a resident proprietor or a hired manager.
Directly under the manager, and in charge of a certain number
of work gangs, were Overseers. Each work gang had a sirdar
(driver). The sirdars were usually Indian, although there were
cases in Mauritius of Creoles employed as drivers. In Fiji,
rations were provided for the first six months, whereas, in
Mauritius, rations were given the entire period, including any
renewed indenture period. This was to ensure that Indians had
food and would not starve themselves for the sake of saving
money. It should be noted that women were not indentured in
Mauritius as they were in Fiji and, consequently, did not
receive rations. [7] In Mauritius, housing consisted of
stonewalls usually four to five feet high or palisades made
from aloe stalks and thatched roofs with no ventilation except
for the doors. Housing in Fiji was referred to as "coolie
lines" and consisted of long, rectangular buildings, each
containing eight to ten small rooms divided by partitions that
did not reach the metal roof. A family, however large,
occupied a single room to live and raise any children. There
were no separate areas for cooking or latrines within the
building.
The contractual arrangements for work varied
as well. In Mauritius, immigrants were bound to work for seven
days a week, two hours on Sundays and nine hours on the other
six days. Work on the plantation consisted primarily of task
work. Task work consisted of a flat fee for a specific amount
of work, whereas "time" work was paid by the hour.
The task system was adopted almost universally for the
indentured East Indian as it had been for the African slave
before him, even in Fiji where no Africans had been used as
slaves. Over-tasking was endemic in this system.
For some Indians the work was not too
difficult, as was the case for an indentured Indian in Fiji
who was happy tending the horses, or another who, by his own
account, spent five years picking coconuts for a copra
estate.[9] These examples are certainly not the norm. For most
East Indian indentured workers, life on the sugarcane fields
was difficult to endure and, despite regulations regarding
work hours, the labor required was daunting. According to
Mahabir of Fiji, not only were the days long, but if the
indentured Indians balked at tasks, the overseer's response
was severe in order to deter other Indians from
complaining.[10] In 1865, eighty immigrants in Mauritius
complained that the tasks took too long to complete in the
time allotted. The Overseer’s reaction to this complaint was
to cut their allowance of rice in half. The complainers were
imprisoned, marked absent, and two days' wages were deducted
as if they were absent without leave.[11]
In Fiji, the burden of work on female
workers was heavy. They not only had to work on the cane
fields from the early morning to evening but also had the
added responsibility of taking care of the children and
preparing the family meals.[12] Endless work was not the only
problem facing these women. The fact that women were so
outnumbered in both colonies put a premium on a woman's body.
Many were forced into situations not of their choosing,
serving as "kept women". Arthur Gordon, the Governor
of Mauritius, noted when he took office in 1870:
Too generally the planters had mistresses,
usually half-castes, while the overseers and managers almost
invariably lived with Indian women; and I was assured that the
provision of pretty girls was almost a recognized form of
hospitality on a plantation when the visitors were young men.
The traditions of the time of slavery were retained.[13]
The chaotic effect of this arrangement
proved to be a dangerous one for women. This type of
relationship sometimes provoked plantation riots. On a more
personal level, the argument that women on plantations could
explore sexual freedom for the first time in their lives must
be tempered with the Hindu male's tradition of murder for the
sake of honor. It was not unknown for a husband to “chop,”
or brutally murder, a wife whom he believed to be unfaithful.
The Legacy
For most of the indenture period, the people
of India treated emigration with silent disapproval.
Recruiting was considered disreputable, and once relatives
left, they usually never returned. This disapproval would not
become active resistance until after the turn of the century
with the political awakening of India.
In the aftermath of the indenture period,
the indentured laborers actually conquered the land to which
they had been brought in such humble condition. Roughly thirty
percent of emigrants eventually returned to India, while the
remainder stayed in country. New ties and new families kept
them in their adopted countries, and possibilities after
indenture were void of caste restrictions. Indians comprise
sixty-eight percent of the current population of Mauritius.
The Indian population in Fiji has dwindled from over fifty
percent at one time to forty-four percent, ranking second to
the fifty-one percent Fijian majority. The resilience and
tenacity of indentured Indians and their progeny cannot be
overstated.
Mauritius is currently exalted as a shining
example of multi-cultural success. It is an independent
republic with a constitutional monarchy consisting of an
Indian President and an Indian Prime Minister. Its record of
peaceful co-existence within its ethnic populations is
attributed by Carroll and Carroll to: 1) widespread
consultations on policy with a civic network that incorporates
all interested organizations, 2) symbolic recognition of the
right of an ethnic group to play a full role in social and
political life, 3) power-sharing that includes all communities
and leads to a perception of social justice and government
legitimacy, and 4) institutional representation of the
communities by the party system.[14] They also note that
Mauritius had no indigenous population to proclaim land or
aboriginal rights.
On the other hand, Fiji's once shining
example was tarnished with the bloodless military coup in 1987
following the election of the first coalition government
involving the Indian influenced Labor Party. The situation
erupted again in May 2000 after the Labor Party again won the
election. Fijians have been characterized as friendly and
laid- back, but when democratic election results appear to
threaten aboriginal rights, usurping political power has
proven to be the modus operandi. Indians seem to be tolerated
as long as political ambition is not a factor. Within these
political scenes, the Indians in both Mauritius and Fiji have
maintained their cultural identity, and it is preserved today,
even with the bittersweet taste of sugar on their lips. |