Arrival: The more things change…

May 06, 2012 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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Quite recently, we had several spontaneous strikes by sugar workers on several plantations, complaining about agreements on their conditions of labour being violated. This is an old story…in fact, as old as indentureship itself. With the abuses of slavery still fresh in the public’s mind, the only way the planters could convince the British government to introduce indentured labour was to agree that such a system would follow overt and written rules.
Some have claimed these work rules – and agreements on housing, medical care etc –actually ‘pampered’ the indentured Indians! In reality, not surprisingly, the rules were observed more in the breach. When the workers protested, there were the standard responses: charging them with violating their labour agreement – which was a criminal matter – ejecting them from the plantations; docking their pay and ever so often calling in the police to shoot them down after ‘reading the riot act’.
The immigrants had very few partisans in authority to champion their cause – even though one of the ‘rules governing indentureship insisted that there be a “Protector of Immigrants” and his agents. After an 1869 protest by some immigrants at Leonora, a sympathetic magistrate (who at the time was posted in the WI) wrote a devastating critique of the abuses of immigrants. It led, as was the usual British response, to a Commission of Enquiry in 1870-71 – right before five protesting workers were shot and killed at Devonshire Castle in Essequibo in 1872.
But the abuses continued unabated and in 1896 at Pln. Non Pareil , another 5 immigrant workers –  protesting slashed wages – were gunned down and fifty-nine wounded. A champion of their cause came from an unexpected source.
Bechu was an indentured Indian who had arrived two years before, bound for Enmore. He wrote a letter to the Daily Chronicle that inspired other Indians in the colony to defend their exploited compatriots in the sugar fields.
Bechu wrote:
Sir,
Will you kindly permit me, through the medium of your widely circulated paper, to say a few words with regard to the official investigation which has been made concerning the rate of wages paid to the indentured workers on Pln. Non Pareil?
Being a coolie myself, and an indentured one in the bargain. I have up to now refrained from saying anything in the matter, but as I see it mentioned in last Saturday’s issue of The Argosy that the referees after due enquiries are satisfied that the wages paid for punt loading and cane cutting is ample, and that the price for weeding is only a trifle below the usual rate. I am curious to know on what they have based their decision.
Prior to registering myself for service in this colony, I, in common with the rest of my countrymen, had to sign an agreement which is printed in three different languages and which reads as follows:
[Bechu then reproduces in detail the terms of the agreement with reference to (1) Period of Service. (2) Nature of Labour. (3) Number of days per week for labour. (4) Number of hours daily for labour. (5) Monthly or daily or task work rates – for men, women and children. (6) Conditions as to return passage and (7) Other conditions. Bechu then delivered his indictment.]
It will be observed from paragraphs 4 and 5 above that every male immigrant above 16 years of age is entitled to a rate of wage of not less than one shilling per day and every male and every female under 16 is similarly entitled to a wage of not less than 8 pence per day for seven hours of work in the field and ten hours in the factory and when performing extra work shall be paid in proportion for every extra hour of work.
[Bechu details how these rules are violated preventing workers from earning even the measly stipulated wages.]
In this colony however, an agreement appears to be binding on one side only, for we constantly see coolies being brought up for ‘neglecting to attend work’, for ‘not completing their task’, and for many such trivial breaches in contract, but in not a single instance have I seen a Protector charge an employer for not fulfilling his part of the contract…Is this fair?
…[Bechu concluded] Verily ‘unto everyone that hath been given and he shall have abundantly; but unto him that hath not shall be taken away even which he hath.’”
It is really an indictment on our humanity that 116 years after Bechu, sugar workers still have to protest identical violations of their working conditions. What they have to be careful about however, that those who purport to speak for them, must first understand (like Bechu) their dilemma.
And secondly, that these ‘spokespersons’ are not just using them to further their own ambitions.

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