Via Tipster BNB, a searing one-hour documentary, exposing the 19th-century British practice of Indentured Labour, through which more than 1 million Indian workers were transported all over the world — only to be told there was no provision to return. They were effectively only slightly better off than the African slave laborers they were brought in to replace. The latter had been emancipated in 1833, when the British government decided to end slavery and the slave trade throughout the Empire.
The documentary is brought to you by… who else? The BBC! (“The BBC: Bringing You… Post-colonial Guilt in Excruciating Historical Detail”)
Some of the speakers include Brij Lal, an Indo-Fijian who now teaches in Australia, and David Dabydeen, an Indo-Guyanan novelist who now teaches in Warwick, UK. I’ve watched about 25 minutes of it so far, and it seems to be pretty well designed — some historical overview, but not too much. Most of the focus is on the descendents of Indian indentured laborers, who are now trying to work out the implications of their history.
Incidentally, it looks like this video can be downloaded for free to your PC — in case you’re going to be sitting in a train or an airport for an hour sometime this weekend, and wanted a little “light” entertainment. (You will also need to download Google’s Video Player application.)
i once read that some guyanese brownz jumped the plantation and started hacking east through the jungle. their goal to was to get to brownland.
p.s. and of course indentured servitude has a long history. it was common in jamestown for example.
p.s. and of course indentured servitude has a long history. it was common in jamestown for example.
That I know — perhaps I should change the phrasing a bit to indicate that there was also a long history of white indentured labor.
I have always considered south Asians from Fiji, Guyana, or Caribbean islands to be essentially low class.
They must have occupied the lowest societal strata in India, in order to be “sent” abroad. Besides which those I know from said locations, tend to be not Indian at all, but instead have a freaky cultural mix of African slaves, white owned plantations, and generally low class traits. I find their sense of India confused to say the least. The only notion of Diwali, is that one turns on all ones lights.
As an ABCD, I hope this doesn’t happen to my offspring.
Trying not to be elitist.
keep trying….you’ll get there eventually…
I have always considered south Asians from Fiji, Guyana, or Caribbean islands to be essentially low class.
perhaps if low class = not in the top 10%. it says something that most well off south asians (my family included) tend to perceive the vast majority of brown people (the rural peasantry) as “low class.” if you are an identified brown person it seems a bit much to dismiss the majority of brownitude as trash.
p.s. gujarati trading communities in places like fiji and mauritius try and distinguish themselves from the majority of indentured laborers who came.
p.s. and of course real class implies a level of grace, as opposed to gauche comments about “those low class people.” true nobility of spirit manifests itself, no matter origin or wealth.
what is low class behavior? im not even sure what that means. is my love of street food “low class”? Am I “low class” because i dont have che che hobbies? am I “high class” because of education or income? pl define class.
Nice tip. I wonder if this is something they would play on the BBC channel on cable… Im sure the highest concentration of these indentured laborers went to the West Indies. Trini, Guyana, Surinam, Jamaica and other West Indian/Caribbean nations. Being in NYC you come across many West-Indians (Afro-Cariibbean/IndoCaribbean/Creole-Caribbean) who have South Asian ancestry from the Indentured Laborers. But not really do you come across Indo-Fijian or Indo-Australians of such ancestry. This should be a good educational piece on this specific type of “diaspora” (if that is an applicable term).
Elitist, those are snobbish comments. It’s certainly true that the people who agreed to leave on this program were mostly poor farmers, but it sounds like your elitism extends to their descendents today. Most of us know very little about our family’s circumstances in 1855, and I think most people would happily say they don’t particularly care.
BTW Plenty of Indo-Caribbeans read Sepia Mutiny, and your calling them “low class” is not going to be appreciated. Would you say the same of V.S. Naipaul or golfer Vijay Singh?
Fair enough. As South Asians, we do have a need to trample on others to elevate ourselves.
And I agree that that sense in the “top 10%”, but these folks I think are a step beyond (help,or saving)
They ended up in places (locales) with little or no indigenous culture and were from an uneducated or uncultured strain to start with. Whereas those rural folks in India have a ladder to upward mobility,culturally speaking if not monetarily.
and btw I have never been dissed or dumped by a Fijian….
which makes your comments calling an entire population “low class” even more hard to understand…
what do these people need help with, or saving from? huh?
Just curious Elitist?,
Do you consider other south asian populations in say Malaysia or in Africa “low class” – I think most of them have been there for generations and brought there as indentured servants as well?
Please let us try and avoid being too PC in this matter, unless you reside in the People’s Republic or Berkeley (which btw I adore, please no offense) we know what one means by class. Even in the broadest terms we use phrases like trailer trash (Let him who is without sin cast the first stone) all the time.
Sir Vidia, much respect to. Throwing out one name surely isn’t an argument.
Vijay Singh, just an athlete puhleez.
.Im sure the highest concentration of these indentured laborers went to the West Indies. Trini, Guyana, Surinam, Jamaica and other West Indian/Caribbean nations.
no. malaysia. the west indian nations aren’t very populous remember. even the number of brownz in south africa is impressive set next to them even though browns are a small proportion in south africa.
They ended up in places (locales) with little or no indigenous culture and were from an uneducated or uncultured strain to start with.
if they had no culture though how could they have preserved their religion? in fact, brown non-christian folk in places where they supplanted blacks as the majority often looked down on blacks for not having their own indigenous culture, while blacks looked down on brownz for being heathens (as opposed to good christians). as a point of fact there were some upper caste people in these communities, brahmins (or people who claimed to be brahmins) organized counter measures against christian missionaries who went through the camps. the truncated nature of hinduism in the west indies is probably due to the fact that you couldn’t transplant india’s jati structure when these were people whose villages were fragmented.
—-what do these people need help with, or saving from? huh?
I suppose help inasmuch as we look upon people in red states that attend the rodeo or beleive Jeryy Springer is not staged. Don’t you feel the need to help them? Don’t you want them to read the NYT everyday?
Elitist? – WTF?! As a self-proclaimed ABCD I’m sure your sense of India is not all confused.
Angor Wat – You won’t find many of us Indo-Fijians in NYC, we’re concentrated in the Bay Area =)
–
This is kind of my point. As mentioned in my first post, the Diwali example.
They understand only the ritual bits of Hinduism (I haven’t met any Muslims so I can’t speak to that). There is no understanding of what is behind the curtain.
I suppose help inasmuch as we look upon people in red states that attend the rodeo or beleive Jeryy Springer is not staged. Don’t you feel the need to help them?
well, in T&T and guyana brown people dominate the private sector. in mauritius they’re political dominant. in fiji they dominate the private sector. the brownz who need help are in malaysia, who are screwed by the pro-malay new economic program but don’t have the social capital of the chinese (the singapore brownz have done OK).
They understand only the ritual bits of Hinduism (I haven’t met any Muslims so I can’t speak to that). There is no understanding of what is behind the curtain.
well, i’d like to see some data on this. most american hindus i meet, including “high caste” individuals, aren’t too well versed on the philosophical nuances of hinduism.
also, the analogy with slavery is problematic to me. the indentured servants were treated in some ways like slaves. but the fact that they preserved their culture (e.g., bhojpuri in mauritius, hinduism and islam in all the colonies, etc.) and didn’t go through familial fragmentation shows that there was a difference between it and genuine slavery. a contrast is with brown people who were enslaved and were absorbed into the general slave populations of various nations. e.g., the south african cape coloreds have a non-trivial south asian ancestral proportion, but they didn’t preserve brown languages or islam (the islam of the cape malays is southeast asian). they went through full-throttle chattel slavery.
Please let us try and avoid being too PC in this matter, unless you reside in the People’s Republic or Berkeley (which btw I adore, please no offense) we know what one means by class. Even in the broadest terms we use phrases like trailer trash (Let him who is without sin cast the first stone) all the time.
Uh, no — it’s not about being PC, it’s about starting down a conversation track that’s likely to take us anywhere interesting. In this case, that’s not happening so far.
In this case, I’m more interested in history than in responding to your gross generalizations about people. I would prefer a discussion with people who’ve seen some or all of the documentary, or with people who have some actual knowledge or experience to share on this issue.
I don’t mean to attack anyone personally, many apologies if that happened. Just looking at the diaspora and doing a bit of mental ranking and rating.
Just looking at the diaspora and doing a bit of mental ranking and rating.
well, most people would agree that american brownz are an elite immigration stream. as opposed to west indian ones. but ranking and rating presupposes particular norms on what is and isn’t preferable. after all, many west indian brownz are arya samaj or christian. they don’t see any need to mimic in detail the character of south asian religious expression. and remember: the american brown experience is max 40 years old. perhaps you’re looking at us into the future? though the fact that we’re such a small proportion of the population means that there are going to be differences.
Elitist, I believe that the time honored convention to lend credibility to such bigotry is the statement “some of my best friends are fijian”.
For the record, I disagree with your statements that Fijians are low class. If you are talking about those dregs from the Solomon Islands on the other hand… Oops, I meant low-lying.
Seriously, when did understanding the deep philosophical discourse of Hinduism or the nuances of India become the marker of class? Personally, I like Deepavali for the sweets (so maybe I’m low class too).
really? who is this “we”? I certainly don’t use the term lightly as I grew up in a trailer and don’t consider myself to be trash. Yes, there are brown people among the rural poor of america (though, razib, I don’t have the numbers on this demographic.)
Just looking at the diaspora and doing a bit of mental ranking and rating.
The stupidity of that exercise speaks for itself.
Please, people, do not further respond to “Elitist” unless and until he or she starts saying something useful.
no worries Rahul, not plumbing the depths of the Advaita approach is certainly no bar to accessing the rarified atmosphere of the brown cultural elite of Elitist’s imaginary world.
my only exposure to uncertainty about cultural heritage came from reading Naipaul (every freaking book–i’m a mascochist) and he’s neither the most accurate nor impartial of observers. He would natter on and on in a nonspecific way about Pandits and religious knowledge that didn’t seem to be relevant to his own existence in the least.
Thanks, Amardeep, for the tip on this BBC documentary. I can’t wait to download it and watch it with my Trinidadian wife of 35 years. In fact, I’ll do better than that. I might burn a DVD and give it to her as an anniversary present on July 30th, our big day, which we are celebrating at our second home in Gurgaon with friends and relatives who are coming for the occasion from as far away as Mumbai and Patna. I am even thinking of hiring one of those “shaadi wallah bands” to make some serious racket, but the neighborhood might be a little too snobbish for my NRI boorishness. Oh well, a DJ then.
After I have seen the documentary, I might come back with a detailed comment on the topic of indentured Indian labor, which I have studied very closely. However, at this juncture, all I want to say is that the Immigration Ordinance that was drafted in the British Parliament to regulate indentured labor was extremely fair and human. The ground realities were obviously not. There were middlemen, not unlike some of the unscrupulous “body-shop owners” in today’s H-1B program, who misled and exploited these poor, rural folks. Then the plantation owners themselves, though routinely inspected by their own kind, the whites, to ensure compliance of the Ordinance, frequently crossed the boundaries of humane treatment of their laborers. The movie, “Guiana 1838,” shows the gut wrenching scenes of rape and beating of Indians by plantation owners who were still confused between indentured labor and slavery in the first few years of the program. But all in all, the system worked fairly well for Indians after the first ten or twenty years of growing pains. I will explain in greater detail if I come back after watching the video.
16 Razib: “the truncated nature of hinduism in the west indies”
Contradicting Razib is a huge undertaking (how have you been, my li’l genius), but West Indian Hinduism is not in the least truncated. In fact, IBD’s find it too traditional, perhaps because of the time-warp factor which freezes highly archaic religious practices in the diaspora whereas the source culture has evolved to another plane.
The reason why SOME West Indians or Fijians or Mauritians may come across as truncated Hindus, or truncated Muslims, is a socioeconomic distortion. Unlike Indians, even the less educated and poor among them are able to emigrate to countries such as the US, Canada and UK. Comparing them to the typical IBD immigrants is, therefore, unfair. Why not compare the poor and uneducated West Indians to the poor and uneducated Indians? They won’t be very far apart. However, when you compare the demographic equals of the West Indies and India, I can tell you from personal experience that the West Indies Indians would be found to be far more immersed in Hinduism than the urban Indian.
I can’t believe I wrote so much. When a comment is longer than the post… well, give me a pass just this once.
is my love of street food “low class”?
if you voluntarily grace Bhai’s finger-licking, lip-smacking street food over fine Mughlai at the Taj then you are actually ultra high class, ultra cool. but if you eat at Bhai’s only because you cannot afford anything else (or won’t blend in with the crowd at Taj) then you are low class
oh, the layers of snobbery…
Contradicting Razib is a huge undertaking (how have you been, my li’l genius), but West Indian Hinduism is not in the least truncated. In fact, IBD’s find it too traditional, perhaps because of the time-warp factor which freezes highly archaic religious practices in the diaspora whereas the source culture has evolved to another plane.
point taken. let me reformulate what i am trying to get at: the baroque accretions which characterize south asian culture had to be paired down in a social context where indentured servants from various social and cultural backgrounds had to find common ground. to be specific, my understanding is that though a generalized sense of caste exists jati does not in the west indies. that to me is the sort of “truncation” which i mean. ideas (e.g., theologies and philosophies) travel well and easily in books, but whole cultural toolkits are more difficult to transplant. does that sound plausible? (my reading in this area is surely a drop compared to your sea 😉
They ended up in places (locales) with little or no indigenous culture and were from an uneducated or uncultured strain to start with.
How can any living, breathing human being be devoid of culture? How can there be no indigenous culture?
Did they eat, cook, hunt, gather firewood, collect pebbles, catch rainwater, fish, tickle their babies to laugh, teach their dog to hunt, raise chickens, collect wild duck eggs, plait their hair, make vessels out of gourd skins, build huts, make clothes, grow cotton, speak, grunt, beat their drums, hunted for medicianl herbs, herded goats? Then they were living their culture. Did the new arrivals talk, reminisce, sing songs, long for their home country, make love, inter-marry, adapt to eating the local foods, then they exhibited culture.
Whether you predefine it to be something you like/recognize/approve is irrelevant to people living their everyday lives so full and rich with living, cultural experiences. Such a prism of snobbery denies whole groups of people their rich, human experiences, their heritage because you decide that they don’t know bharat natyam or Mozart or Russian grammar or Diwali or Brhama or origami.
To Elitist: Who are you to judge and make such statements? I am an ABGuyanese and I know about the history of my people, why don’t you go learn about your own before you start making generalizations about others? You think that because my ancestors left india for a better life that they are somehow beneath you and your ancestors? See that kind of classist ignorant bullshit is probably why they left in the first place.
It’s hard enough trying to be brown and and american but people like you who look down on others because they are not exactly from your circumstances, are a disease on the the world. Go read up on your own people before you diss mine.
Razib #32: “my understanding is that though a generalized sense of caste exists jati does not in the west indies.”
Actually the caste system is the only significant dimension of Hinduism that was truncated, perhaps because everybody started out from the same economic level in the new land. I suppose it is hard to maintain a caste hierarchy if everybody is tilling the same land for the same masters. There was one hard core element that remained intact, though, and that was the brahmin pundit, who obviously had an economic interest in maintaining his caste. (I love the for-hire utilitarianism of the pundit in Hindu religion.)
With the exception of the caste system, all other religious rituals, and the vast body of unwritten and presumably untransportable elements of the Hindu culture, were indeed transplanted with great success in the new world. As I said before, some of these practices have been long since truncated even in small-town India but persist in the West Indies.
A couple of observations on West Indian Hinduism. The Ramayan enjoys a far greater popularity among them than in India. In fact, most West Indian Hindus treat it like THE Holy Book, which, of course, Hindu religion does not really have in the same sense as the Koran or Bible. Secondly, the West Indian Hinduism has, in the last twenty years, been influenced by the Hindutva and all its various avatars. Since these right wing Hindus come to the west unencumbered by the political stigma that dogs them back home, they are able to find acceptance specially among the less educated Hindus hungry for some religious edification. Here I will state this categorically – the right winger’s work in these places is sufficiently modified and mainstreamed. They are only preaching pride in one’s religion, not hatred of other people’s religions. I know many of them personally. My brother-in-law in Trinidad, who is probably one of the most influential Hindu leaders in Trinidad, absolutely disdains any criticism of other religions and races in this multi-racial society.
Sorry, no more thread hogging from me. I’m done. Have fun, y’all!
Sorry, no more thread hogging from me. I’m done. Have fun, y’all!
for shame! the hog brings good bacon sometimes.
Man, the narrator sounds like the Goodness Gracious Me guy. Excellent link. Thanks BNB !
Amardeep, nice post, thought-provoking. Thanks. Will also be watching the video soon.
Floridian, enjoyed both your contributions to this thread. I hope you won’t feel inhibited in contributing more wisdom. My question – I would have also thought it hard to maintain caste hierarchies in indentured servitude – but how does Naipaul so confidently claim Brahmin-ness for himself?
Malathi – it occurs to me that your nice comment @31 would not be out of place, also, in the Maximum City thread – when it gets started up. The Taj Hotel in Bombay comes up on p.70, where I’ve just got to!
What ? Jerry Springer is staged ???
How can I feel superior to the folks on that show now? ( and now everyone knows I watch Jerry !!)
As Chachaji said on another thread, this is the Mutiny on vacation?
I’m going to watch the documentary this weekend when I have more time, but this whole topic has always fascinated me. It’s too bad Elitist? already ruined this discussion. Later on I’ll try to give my thoughts on this whole phenomenon (Indian indentured servitude of the 19th/early 20th centuries), but for now just the following, that people may or may not realise:
1)The majority of the Indians sent out by the British were from eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar, which can really be thought of as one region. Of these, the majority spoke Bhojpuri. In modern parlance we would call these people (informally) ‘bhaiyas’. So there was an intra-group cultural and ethnic homogenicity to these migrants comparable to that within groups such as ‘Punjabis’ or ‘Gujaratis’ or ‘Tamils’.
2)Although there was a tilt towards the lower end of the caste spectrum, a fair proportion of brahmins and rajputs made the migration as well. Muslims were also represented in numbers comparable to their share of the local population. Christians were largely absent (since that region of India had very few Christians), but today a large percent (up to 25 or 30%) of the descendants of these people are Christian.
3)Contrary to Elitist?’s stance, in my view these people did a remarkable job of holding on their culture and sense of identity…we’re talking 5th to 7th generation now in some of these places, yet that sense of being of Indian heritage remains. When you consider that most of these people were young, poor, uneducated rural folks only in their 20s, it’s all the more remarkable.
4)I don’t want to downplay the fact that although the majority were from U.P./Bihar, a significant minority were from southern India. And as Razib pointed out, in places like Malaysia and Singapore, the vast majority were in fact Tamil (and they’ve done an excellent job of holding on to Tamil language, culture, and identity).
Don’t be bothered by Elitist’s comments, “it” seems to be upset that it is just another Bay Area Ivy League desi.
There is an economic class divide between Indo-Fijians in the Bay area and the rest of the Indian community. I think it would look less pronounced to Brit-Indians who started off 80% working class but whose kids went to university and into the professions. I see their kids working hard at low paying jobs and putting themselves through school. There is nothing common or low about that. I do see some layabouts who I am told start fights at parties, but you will see the same kind of behavior amongst a certain segment of the “mainstream” ABCD youth
Christians were largely absent (since that region of India had very few Christians), but today a large percent (up to 25 or 30%) of the descendants of these people are Christian.
there is variation by region. e.g., trinidad & tobago has the highest christian population followed by guyana then suriname. also, when i had full access to the world christian database i noted that tamils converted at far higher rates than north indian groups in south africa and mauritius.
Well, the Ramcharitmanas by Tulsidas has always had huge religious and cultural influence and been a very strong force in eastern UP and western Bihar. So I think the roots of the Ramayan’s popularity stem from that.
Naipaul is only three generations away from India…his parents were 2nd gen. The Indo-Caribbean community was much closer to its roots at that time, and many people could still speak Bhojpuri for that matter. The caste system was breaking down by his childhood, but brahmins were the last to lose that consciousness (they haven’t lost it completely even today). Because they filled a particular, perceived to be vital role. Most of these Indians lived on plantations that were Indian-majority…so it was like a self-contained Indian universe, in which Indian traditions took a long time to fade…now today, if you go to Trinidad for example, and look at young Indian kids, you’ll find that the ‘creolisation’ process is largely complete…but that was definitely not true when Naipaul was young.
I watched it and I liked it. Nice to see footage of things I’d previously only heard about. Who knew that there were people alive today who were born into the indentured servitude system. It was also fascinating to hear the old lady interviewed by Dabydeen speak in her Caribbean (pidgin?) english. And the narrator was in fact Sanjeev Bhaskar of GGM.
Thanks for the link Amardeep, is the narrator the guy from Goodness Gracious Me?
Thanks for this, Amardeep. I am super excited about this topic, and I can’t wait to watch the doc this weekend. I have a question for those who are more familiar with the Indo-Caribbean story, were there good articles/resources/movies/books you enjoyed that traced these histories and the contemporary state, aside from those already mentioned? It seems that there’s a relatively robust body of lit coming out of the UK, and a growing amount of lit coming out of the US re: music (esp. chutney), but I’m interested to know if there’s more comparative work being done.
Also, one of my really good friends is ABGuyanese, and the beginning of our friendship started with lots of discussions about our different perceptions of “Indian”-ness, especially in the context of religion and pop culture. I really enjoy it, and I find she blows my mind every time just because her diasporic experience is so profoundly different than mine. I think this is part of the beauty of learning more about the diaspora beyond our own (regional) understandings. I also think the mixing (culturally and ethnically) in the W. Indies is fascinating and has created so many different (and beautiful) variations of cultural expression. Maybe I’m exoticizing, but, speaking anecdotally, I love that folks who are mixed or Indo-Caribbean or Afro-Caribbean are comfortable claiming the many different cultural elements brought to the table, especially via festivals, music, and dance. That kind of freedom of cultural exchange and ownership is really refreshing, for me at least.
No more sugar for me. I am hurt once more.
Lisa Ling should see this. Did the Brit practice of removing people from their homelands with promises of a better life, but actually to provide years of free labor, set the stage for luring children from their villages to become indentured sex workers today?
It is a not an infrequent perception amongst west indians that desis often look down upon them. But don’t believe me do your own poll. How many of you dare agree?
it’s because of their color, accent, educational status, and caribbean influence( yea you know what i am insinuating). i wonder in what proportions do the above factor into the desi mindsets. please view this as a rhetorical question if you are feeling uncomfortable.