Excerpts : Crossing the Kaalapaani
February 12, 2020
Overseas indentured migration from India was initially overwhelmingly male –dominated, and it came to a point where colonial officials had to forcefully mandate laws on gender-balanced voyages in the 1840s. This led to just a slight improvement as the share of female emigrants rose from next to nil to around 25 per cent. Women and men on indenture would be dubbed ‘coolies’, a word whose origins could either lie in the Tamil word ‘kooli’, which means ‘wages’, or the Turkish word ‘Quli’, which means ‘slave’, or even the Chinese words ‘ku’(bitter) and ‘li’(strength). Indentured migration would start with a recruiter, known as the arkati, scouting ‘markets, carnavanserais, railway stations, bazaars, temples and urban centers’ for likely candidates who could be persuaded to embark on the long journey. In the first few decades of indenture, this would often include extreme coercion, if not outright kidnapping, as the concept of overseas travel was still new to the labourers. To overcome this, the entire process of emigration was brought under legislation with lasting legacies. In the 1840s, legal provisions introduced a ‘protector of immigrants’ at the port of disembarkation and a ‘protector of emigrants’ at the port of embarkation. The latter now survives as a department in India’s ministry of external affairs. As per an act of 1844, the protector of emigrants would ensure that ‘no emigrant shall embark without a certificate from the Agent, countersigned by the Protector’ leading to a curious phrase that is now imprinted in Indian passports as ‘Emigration Check Not Required’. After frequent protests and a long-protracted debate led by Indian political leaders, indenture was abolished to give way to the emigration act of 1922, which was again replaced in 1983 to govern contemporary labour emigration.
In the late 19th century, with better regulations and word of mouth advertisement of returning emigrants, indenture transformed into a kith-kin based system of migration that would be the hallmark of the Great Indian Migration Wave. It is also worth emphasizing that indentured migration formed less than 10 percent of all work-related migration during its period of existence. Indenture has been seen as a ‘new system of slavery’ by some but was also an escape from an older system of slavery or domestic bondage induced by Caste, and other pressures. This is why the abolishment of the system did not stop migration from the key recruiting districts as they continued to supply migrants to different places for another 100 years.
This is take from the book India Moving : A History of Migration by Chinmay Tumbe
Excerpts is a series where we post thoughtful passages from different books which provide for a quick and easy reading.
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