Page 4D SUNDAY STABROEK, March 19, 2017

deficiency, of which there is no indicationin their countenance, which is often one ofintelligence. They are also very docile andeasily managed, and appear to have nolocal ties, nor any objection to leave theircountry…

The best period for procuring and ship-ping the men is in our cold season,between the months of November andApril, and the instruction to procure themen should precede the ship about twomonths, to give time to collect them; weshould of course not be able to find acargo for the ship, but some morghy ricemight be sent, which with a little carewould keep for three years…

The Hill tribes, known by the name ofDhangurs [Dhangars], are looked downupon by the more cunning natives of theplains, and they are always spoken of asmore akin to the monkey than the man.They have no religion, no education, and,in their present state, no wants beyondeating, drinking, and sleeping; and toprocure which they are willing to labour.In sending men to such a distance, itwould of course be necessary to be moreparticular in selecting them, and some lit-tle expense would be incurred, as alsosome trouble; but to aid any object ofinterest to you, we should willingly giveour best exertions in any manner likely tobe of service.

Gladstone was an absentee planterwhose plantation would have been man-aged by an attorney, and who may, or maynot have known the real conditions thatexisted there. Whatever the case, the real-ity for the Indians who eventually arrivedhere was in no way related to Gladstone’sfantasy.

The first Indians arrived in BritishGuiana on board the Whitby and theHesperus – 396 men, women and children‒ two years later on May 5, 1838. Theyincluded ‘Hill Coolies’ from the ChotaNagpur plateau about 300 miles fromCalcutta. Even before this, Indians hadbeen indentured to work in other colonies,including the French territory of Réunionin the Western Indian Ocean, and eventu-ally they could be found in a range ofBritish tropical colonies, as well as in theDutch colony of Suriname.

For the next 79 years—a lifetime—except for twostoppages between 1839 and 1851, about 239,000 Indianswere brought to British Guiana, initially on five-year con-tracts, which included transport back to India at the endof their period of indentureship. However, only a minori-ty either chose to return or were actually able to go back.The stoppages came about following complaints abouthow badly the Indians were being treated and the Britishgovernment launched enquiries and then appointed immi-gration officials, who were to ensure that the regulationswere adhered to.

Nevertheless, the exploitation continued and inevitablythe Indians in due course were involved in disturbancesor went on strike on various plantations. Historians havedocumented disturbances and strikes at PlantationLeonora, West Coast Demerara in July 1869; at Planta-tions Hague, Zeelugt, Vergenoegen, Uitvlugt, Successand Non Pareil in 1870, and at Plantation Devonshire

Castle in 1872. The causes of these strikes were the wide-spread dissatisfaction with long hours of work, reducedpay and deductions from pay along with general ill-treat-ment and abuse. Many Indians were arrested and incar-cerated and some lost their lives.

According to Associate Professor Emeritus YorkCollege, CUNY, Basdeo Mangru, it was a campaign inIndia that set the stage for the abolition of Indian inden-ture. It began, he wrote in a letter to this newspaper, witha resolution by Indian nationalist, Gopal Krishna Gokhalethat was introduced in the Viceroy’s Imperial LegislativeCouncil in 1910 to terminate emigration to Natal. Thiswas passed the next year and Mr Gokhale then soughtanother resolution for the prohibition of recruitment ofIndian labour for colonial and inland employment. Helisted several objections to indenture: an unfair contractwhich omitted the penal sanctions, high mortality,absence of safeguards, mounting number of court prose-cutions, appalling number of suicides, the degrading posi-

tion of Indians who were disparagingly referred to as‘coolies’. This motion failed, but interest had beendrummed up and two years later, indentureship was abol-ished in Mauritius.

Charles Hardinge, 1st Baron Hardinge of Penshurst,who served as Viceroy and Governor General to Indiafrom 1910-1916, based on reports he received, con-demned the high death rate, the appalling incidence ofsuicides, mounting planter prosecution and the “inde-scribable sexual immorality” among Indian womenwhich produced a high level of Indian wife murders. Hecalled for the abolition of indenture “to remove a socialstigma” which was bitterly resented by Indian educatedopinion, Prof Mangru said. Lord Hardinge’s indictmentcoupled with an intensive anti-indenture campaign andthe outbreak of World War I which required Indian shipsand labour led to the suspension of indenture on March20, 1917. The system was officially abolished three yearslater.

How itstarted

From page 2D

Vegetable sellers in Georgetown circa 1900