A Journey to Fiji

As you will read in the following blog posts, you will find out more and more about the idea of ‘indentured labour’ in colonial India, how it affected the Indian people then, as well as in current times. The problems were manifold. The factors requiring consideration are related to their contracts, their travel, their working conditions, as well as their sense of identity during and after the colonial era. To understand the issue better, we first must acquaint ourselves with the context of that period. What was the state of the Indian subcontinent under British rule? What was the state earlier, and was it better for India as compared to colonialism? Why did indentured labour arise? And finally, why did Indians agree to the terms given by the British lords? Up until the early 1700s, the Mughal Empire was the ruling power in the Indian subcontinent. They brought about several systems and establishments that profited the empire. One of the main areas of improvement was agriculture. The Mu...

60965 emigrants to a place with a bunch of islands called Fiji. Displayed as an opportunity to gain some wealth and improve the standard of living, this indentured labor was no less than a trap laid for poverty-struck Indian people by the planters who were just hit hard by new law abolishing slavery creating a collapsing void due to a shortage in labors in their estates. And the ones who held this fishing rod were agents appointed by the recruiter to recruit the “well-built”, “healthy” and “agriculturally knowledgeable”. The job of these recruiters was to inform emigrants about the nature of work, destination places, and terms of indentured contract. But most of the time these recruiters were liars who give false hopes to the recruits that they can come home whenever they want, their job is so easy burden free, their wages will get inflated, and all. These emigrants were commonly called as “ Girmitiya ” which comes from the term “ Girmit” which was mispronunciation of the term “Agreeme...

  As you have already read in earlier articles about how Indian people were recruited, in this article I am going to talk about the journey and travelling conditions the people faced. It was in 1838, first ships left the ports of Calcutta carry about 400 people, Girmityas , in the ships. These people were taken to various different British colonies, such as Mauritius, Natal, Fiji, Jamaica and etc. These ships took on average seventy three days and the steamships took thirty days. During these long journeys the Indian people faced many hardships. Some of them being lack of medical, food and living conditions. There was high mortality rate in the ships were appalling. It is said that about one third of the Indian dies during the journey. Mostly these people died of measles, whooping cough and other illnesses. One of the ships carrying the Girmityas to Fiji was Leonidas. It was one of the first ships that took Indian indentured migrants to Fiji from between 1879 and 1916. After 3 mont...

The conditions under which Indian indentured labour worked were atrocious and unsparing. These indentured labourers were commonly known as ‘Coolies’. They were expected to perform exhausting tasks given by their superiors. In the beginning the death rate among coolies was high due to unhealthy working conditions but eventually it started reducing as better medical and sanitary facilities were made available. The coolies in Fiji witnessed many suicide cases as they could not withstand those working conditions and also because of mental exhaustion. In the article written by Eugene J. D’Souza, it is mentioned that 926 Indian laborers committed suicide in ten years ending in 1912. Working conditions were not the only problem, there was also a lot of sexual abuse among the coolies. This was because number of men who migrated from India was more than that of the women. Since women were less in number, they had to be shared among men which led to prostitution. As a result of this women were r...

But the newly established indentured labour system did not last long. The system was abolished within 75 years of its establishment due to huge protests from the labourers and national leaders. National leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Gopala Krishna Gokhale condemned the idea of indentured labour. Gandhiji's first interaction with Indian indentured labour was in South Africa when he was a barrister in South Africa. It was from there he realised the difficulties and challenges faced by the Indian indentured labour in British colonies and started fighting against it. During the home rule movement, Annie Besant and Lokamanya Thilak demanded the abolition of indentured labour. Also, the newspapers and journals in the madras presidency expressed their disagreement towards indentured labour. When we look at the colonial government initiatives that led to the abolition of indentured labour, we can see two important committees which examined the conditions of indentured labour. The first c...