2 - Indians and the Colonial Diaspora

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Indian migration in the colonial period is chiefly identified with the massive exportation of labour throughout the British Empire, in the hundred years after the abolition of slavery. The figures, in order of numerical importance, are approximately as follows: Ceylon, 2,321,000; Malaya 1,911,000; Burma 1,164,000; Mauritius 455,000; British Guiana 239,000; Trinidad 150,000; Natal 153,000; French Caribbean 79,000; Reunion 75,000; Fiji 61,000; East Africa 39,500, Jamaica 39,000; Dutch Guiana 35,000; other BWI 11,000. Of these, by far the largest number were plantation labourers, and it is they, the migrant “coolies”, who have come to typify the colonial Indian labour diaspora. Less well known are the Indian slaves, lascars and convicts who criss-crossed the seas in the service of the Dutch and French, as well as British men and women in this and the preceding two centuries. These labour flows, moreover, were accompanied by significant migration of capital, and of service personnel. For example, it is estimated that approximately 5 per cent or around 1.5 million individuals left India during the nineteenth century to engage in commerce. While these migrations have resulted in the establishment of settled populations of Indian origin around the world, it is worth remembering that this was chiefly a circular migration since three quarters of all those who left, returned to India [some twenty four out of thirty million]. The term diaspora, itself, seems oddly inappropriate to describe a movement of people so heterogeneous — spanning as it does, life histories as diverse as that of slaves at the Dutch Cape, mutineer sepoys in the Andamans, sugar workers in Fiji, Gujarati merchants in East Africa, taxi drivers in the Gulf States, and IT consultants in the United States. This chapter explores the historiography of one facet of this broader diaspora — that of colonial Indian labour and suggests some general themes and linkages spanning the historical and contemporary migration streams.

THE INDIAN SLAVE DIASPORA

The chapter begins with a brief discussion of the slave diaspora which serves as a metaphor for the fragmentation, and regionalization, of the historiography of colonial Indian migration. The Dutch Indian Ocean slave trade was “urban-centered, drawing captive labour from three interlocking and overlapping circuits or subregions”, ‘Greater South Africa’, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Most slaves were acquired through purchase from local suppliers so that the trade itself was grafted onto pre-existing traditions of slavery and dependency within the subcontinent.