By Dr Lomarsh Roopnarine

The following essay examines the movement of Indians who had first indentured to British Guiana and returned for a second time. The contention is that second-term migration of Indians from India (not to be confused with re-indenture in British Guiana) demonstrates a larger pattern of migration as well as provides an alternative perspective other than indenture was a neo-slave system. The essay also examines the migration of time-expired Indians who served in non-Caribbean colonies (Natal, Mauritius, Fiji) and returned to India but chose to come to British Guiana instead of returning to their former indentured colonies—a movement that I termed trans-global indentured migration.

There has not been much scholarly attention paid to the second-term migration of time-expired Indians who returned to their homeland and then decided to come back to their former indentured colonies. This experience and aspect of indentured Indians in British Guiana has been undetected by analysts. Yet, every year during the latter part of indenture second-term Indians came back to British Guiana. Oliver William Warner, a colonial official, declared that when Indian returnees from the Caribbean and elsewhere arrived in India they would generally get back either to the colony they have left or to some other colony. They did not always go back to the same colony, but they certainly went to some other colony. Warner’s point is demonstrated in the table below when in 1881, 247 Indians returned to the Caribbean for the second time. One hundred and sixty-seven of them returned to their former indentured colony of British Guiana while those Indians who served indenture in other Caribbean colonies and returned to India chose to re-indenture to British Guiana. Table 2 shows that from 1872 to 1881, 1485 Indians returned to India and re-migrated or re-indentured to British Guiana.

Table one shows the number of Indians who were indentured in British Guiana and in various colonies and returned to India but chose to re-indenture to British Guiana.

Source: “British Guiana: Report of the Immigration Agent General for the year 1881”, Royal Gazette, Guyana National Archives, Georgetown, Guyana, p. 5.

Table 2 shows the number of Indians who served indenture in British Guiana and returned to India and re-immigrated to British Guiana between 1872 and 1881.

Total                                                                             1485

Source: British Guiana: Report of the Immigration Agent General for the year 1881, Royal Gazette, Guyana National Archives, Georgetown, Guyana, p. 5.

The aforesaid information challenged and contradicted the static view of Indians being non-migratory by exercising and acting upon their desire to indenture themselves to a colony of their choice thousands of miles away from their homeland with the obvious intent to profit from that decision. This action provides an alternative perspective to the commonly fraudulent recruitment practices of indentured Indians to overseas colonies. This action also provides the opportunity to declare significantly that Indian indentured emigration cannot be analyzed using solely a silo approach, for example, looking only at migration from India to the Caribbean, migration from India to Fiji or migration from India to Mauritius. Instead, I argue that Indian indentured emigration to British Guiana and elsewhere had a historical connectivity that was not only Trans-Atlantic/Indian but also Trans-Pacific.

I argue that out of an estimated 239, 939 who were brought to British Guiana, about 75, 000 returned, and of this figure, about 12,000 -15,000 Indians returned to British Guiana for the second time. I estimate that if 100-150 returned to British Guiana during 80 years of indenture, this would mean that about 12,000 returned for the second time. It should be stated that the figure of second-term migrants is much higher if we factor in that thousands went to Trinidad and Suriname that eventually re-migrated to British Guiana (intra-regional migration) as well as restrictions placed on them in India. The colonial officials admitted that if the emigration gate was lifted for re-migrants, a larger number of them would have come to the Caribbean for the second time.

The colonial officials in British Guiana pursued a rigorous anti-immigration policy towards second-term migrants, particularly after the uprising in British Guiana in 1872, and rejected them if they were suspected of becoming potential troublemakers in the colonies by challenging labor conditions because of their previous indenture experience. They also rejected second-term migrants if they were too old to be considered first-class immigrants. Some number of rejects got around these immigration restrictions by paying their own passage to British Guiana. Warner states again that certain numbers of Indians who had spent their money in India re-indentured themselves for the five years. Some of them, even with large sums of money, did not mind re-indenturing themselves. They would re-indenture themselves although they had the money really to pay for their passages. These dynamics of indenture are yet to be explored.

In 1921, 44 Indians served indentured contracts in Natal, South Africa and returned to India and chose to re-indenture to British Guiana. Small but steady numbers of them each year came from Fiji and Mauritius. However, Trinidad was the most favorite destination to re-migrate to because of better treatment and the possibility to own land through swapping of return passage or purchase. Mauritius was the place to avoid because of planters’ extreme exploitation. The indentured immigrants from Natal said that they liked British Guiana but also stated that they found work in the new colony much harder than what they were accustomed to. The fork and shovel were not used in Natal, and all work there was done with the hoe and cutlass. They were, however, pleased with the work assigned and wages received when compared to other workers in the colony. Their habits were seen as no different from other Indian immigrants.

Why Indians chose to re-indenture themselves for a second or even a third time raises one of the most fundamental questions of the entire indenture system—whether it was beneficial or belittling to the laborers. It also speaks to the risk Indians took to migrate over high seas to indenture themselves. Life in the depot, on the sea voyage, and on the plantations sometimes revolved around the extreme of life or death. The colonial officials provided a positive endorsement and argued that the return of time-expired Indians to indenture either in British Guiana or from India validated the view that the system offered some opportunities for personal and familial advancement.  They asked repeatedly: Why would these migrants come back to a system that abused them? By contrast, critics of indenture argue that the small percentage of second-term migrants does not negate the reality that the system was oppressive. Why these migrants returned for a second time has more to do with their personal experience while in the plantation system in the Caribbean. Dr. Brinsley Samaroo asserts that Indian migrants chose to return to the Caribbean because many of them were exposed to a different and robust lifestyle on the Caribbean plantations which made them challenge the basic aspects of their village life upon return. For at least five years under indenture in the Caribbean, Indian migrants were absent from their daily routine defined by caste ascriptions and were introduced to a semi-class system that allowed some flexibility for social mobility. This experience changed the identity of some Indians to a point where they had become mal-adjusted or had become bold enough to oppose their former social caste structure upon return to their respective villages. A number of children who had returned from the indentured colonies were born there and were for the first time seeing their ancestral homeland. These children could not adjust to India. The parents of these children chose to go back to the indentured colonies instead of dealing with the mal-adjustment of their children to their homeland. Other returnees refused to perform a costly purification ceremony to be reinstated into their caste and chose to live in other villages or urban areas or migrate to an indentured colony. Many Indians also returned for the second time to avoid sharing their savings with relatives, while others were simply living a migratory lifestyle, indenturing themselves from one colony to next, sometimes for twenty-years.

Lomarsh Roopnarine, from Upper Corentyne, is Professor of Caribbean and Global Studies. Dr. Roopnarine has been researching and writing on the Caribbean South Asian Diaspora for over two decades. His recent book, The Indian Caribbean: Migration and Identity Formation, will be published by University Press of Mississippi in January 2018.