Why did the majority Indentured Indians remain in Guyana, and not repatriated?”

Jul 27, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – The following question was asked on a Social Media page, “Why did the Majority Indentured Indians Remain in Guyana, and not repatriated?” I feel many Guyanese will benefit from my brief research into this salient question.

Background: The total number of Indians introduced into British Guiana from May 5 1838 to the end of indenture in 1917 was 238,979; the total number repatriated to India by 1938 was 74,645. That is, almost 70% remained in the Colony. The indentures had to sign a legal document –contract – that took away their freedom (i.e. bondage, origin of the term “bound” collies) for a specific time period – five years) and for a stipulated pittance wage and other amenities (like living in the just abandoned “slave quarters” or Logies). This covenant skillfully shifted the financing of migration from the planters to the labourers.

There was a severe international economic depression in the latter part of the 19th century that precipitated several policies that incentivized the indentured to stay on in the Colony. During the depression, cane sugar had acute competition from beet sugar internationally, depressing employment and wages. Planters were under considerable pressure to pay attention to industries other than sugar.

The depression prompted a reform movement that pushed for minor industries and subsistence farming to ease the economic burdens of the Colony; the Colony should produce “alternatives.”  This movement led to constitutional changes in the late 1890s. A committee of the legislature investigated the problem of re-immigration. Discussion revolved around that of establishing settlement schemes where Indians relinquished their repatriation rights in return for free Land grants.

The government lowered both the minimum acreage of crown land that could be purchased and the unit price. Plots could be exchanged for their return passages. Many indentured who had nothing back home saw this as very lucrative deal. Lowering the minimum acreage that could be purchased by the indentured from 100 acres to 50 acres and at a cheaper unit cost made it possible for many who had saved to purchase large tracks of uncleared land. Thus began the initial impetus for Guyana’s rice industry. Settlement schemes soon sprang up for example in Berbice: Helena, Whim, Bush Lot; and in Essequibo: Maria’s Pleasure.

From the above incentives, rice as a staple crop became popular during the depression during which market demand in the colony switched from sugar to rice. The Indians restructured their own labour towards rice production and to a lesser extent other agricultural products (owning cows and selling milk). Eventually rice became part of the national economy of British Guiana and ultimately the Caribbean. Leased land and parsimony were the immediate causes of indentured labourers rise to economic independence damping any residual urges to return to their homeland.

Paradoxically, making land available to the Indians was a financial ploy used by planters to benefit planters. It also resulted in self-sufficiency for the majority of indentured labourers. Pressures to re-immigrate was further lessened when the law was passed that all immigrants arriving after 1862 were to be re-indentured for 5 additional years beyond the initial 5 years, AND they could only claim the free return trip after that total 10 years of indentureship! Additionally, such returnees to India must pay half of the return passage of $60; they had to fork out $30! Indentured males were working one shilling equivalent of $.24/day; for females half of that, that impossibility is a major factor for staying put.

Another factor is that many of the repatriates to India would have been viewed with suspicions even ostracized or excommunicated from their caste (suspicion that they were “contaminated” by marrying or had liaisons with persons outside their castes or ethnicities. Also, a potential repatriate must have had a terrified reluctance to re-cross the dreaded Kala Pani!

“The presence of the East Indians in the Colony was a great factor in its prosperity and one great thing they had done within recent years was to introduce their native industry – rice planning.” Sir Walter Egerton. And “The natives of India with their love of land and fondness for agriculture and pastoral pursuits will probably have a greater influence on the future of the colony than all the other races put together.” R. Duff, Immigration Agent. Both quotations appeared in historian Peter Ruhomon’s writings.

The West Indian novelist, George Lamming, on East Indians: “For those Indian hands – whether in British Guiana or Trinidad – have fed all of us. They are, perhaps, our only jewels of a true native thrift and industry. They have taught us by example the value of money; for they respect money as only people with a high sense of communal responsibility can.” And “…And so there can be no section of citizens with any greater claim to the citadels of power in our land.”

Sincerely,

 Dev Persaud,

Director Of Finance & Administration

National Student Nurses Association, Inc.

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