Social Movements and the Indian Diaspora

Movindri Reddy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317478966
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

With the elevation of Islam and Muslim transnational networks in international affairs, from the rise of Al Qaeda to the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East, the study of Diasporas and transnational identities has become more relevant.

Using case studies from Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad and South Africa, this book explores the diaspora identities and impact of social movements on politics and nationalism among indentured Indian diaspora. It analyses the way in which diasporas are defined by themselves and others, and the types of social movements they participate in, showing how these are critical indicators of the threat they are perceived to pose. The book examines the notions of national and transnational identity, and how they are determined by the placement of Diasporas in the transnational locality. It argues that the transnationality intrinsic to diaspora identities mark them as others in the nation-state, and simultaneously separates them from the perceived motherland, thus displacing them from both states and situating them in a transnational locality. It is from this placement that social movements among Diasporas gain salience. As outsiders and insiders, they are well placed to offer a formidable challenge to the host state, but these challenges are limited by their hybrid identities and perceived divided loyalties.

Providing an in-depth analysis of Indian Diasporas, the book will be of interest to those studying South Asian Studies, Migration and Diaspora Studies.

1 Colonialism and indenture

Originating as a diaspora between 1833 and 1920 under the British system of indenture, Indians were employed as either a new source of cheap labor in colonies like Fiji and South Africa or scab labor to replace freed slaves in colonies like Trinidad and Mauritius. Over 1.3 million Indians were indentured over a period of 83 years. The system was abolished in 1914 but continued until 1920; the largest numbers of Indians were indentured to Mauritius (453,063), followed by Natal (152,184) and Trinidad (143,939), with Fiji (60,000) at the lower end of the scale. Currently Indo-Mauritians make up 68 per cent of the population of Mauritius, Indo-Trinidadians, and Afro-Trinidadians are somewhat equal in number, Indo-Fijians decreased in number through emigration from being close to half the population of Fiji to about one-third, and South African Indians are a small minority but are the largest in this diaspora. The implications of indenture on the social, political, and economic outcomes of former British colonies continue to be significant.

The objective of this chapter is to highlight the structural institutions and ideologies that enabled the passage of indenture. This is particularly relevant given that indenture was introduced immediately following the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and abolition, which followed a year later. Slavery and indenture were intimately connected through two main points of intersection: the West Indian slave owner and planter interests, and the agendas, ideology and characteristics of the anti-slavery movements. Of relevance too were the elevated position of Britain in India, the new wave of imperialism and empire, and the role of global capitalism. This chapter argues that while the post-abolition period was defined by a new sense of British identity, one that was associated with a sense of high moral and Christian purpose, it continued to rely on the racially framed assumptions of non-Western and non-European people as inferior and unfit for Western values of democracy and equality. To some extent these assumptions explain why the British anti-slavery movements did not push for equal representation in Britain and majority rule in the colonies. The emancipation agenda did not include a call for the freedom for self-rule, restitution for former slaves, or judicial protections and rights for all citizens. Significantly the anti-slavery movements did not call for the abolition of all bonded labor. These ideological and strategic moves were relevant for anti-indenture movements. First, indenture was positioned midway between slavery and free labor, making it seem as if the institution was more benign than slavery especially as Indians appeared to join contractual labor voluntarily. Moreover indenture involved a contractual period that was temporary rather than the lifelong arrangement that defined slavery. These ambiguities regarding the exploitative and oppressive nature of indenture affected the ability of anti-indenture movements to mobilize substantial support. Second, the anti-indenture movements situated their rhetoric within the discourses articulated by the pro-indenture lobby – the merchants, plantation owners, bankers, and a host of others who had direct interests in colonial production. Priority was given to profit margins, the competitiveness of British products, and the growth and sustenance of empire. Protests against indenture focused more on protections and oversight over indentured workers rather than on abolition and rights of Indian workers in the colonies. Hence British protestors also emphasized the shortage of labor, the need for expanding sugar production, and the desire to maintain British economic and political competitiveness.

Of significance too is the fact that indenture as an institution was historically well developed in England. Husbandry in early modern England was an arrangement whereby young people from poor families typically entered into annual contacts with more prosperous farmers in exchange for wages, food, and lodging. A form of this system was later employed in British America with the indentured servitude of young English men and women. In Britain at the time there was ongoing contestation over labor rights, and the lines between free labor and bonded labor were fuzzy. In the colonies indentured servants, slaves, and convicts provided labor. As Northrup says we should focus on how free labor grew out of bondage rather than how bondage fell short of freedom.¹ David Eltis observes that during this period it was wage labor and not slavery that was the “odd institution.”²

In the rapidly changing global arena during this period, states were continuing to construct themselves as nations, and competition among Western powers demanded access to novel and cheaper material goods. Production costs were lowered by using cheap labor in Europe and in the colonies, by growing and accessing raw materials, and by relying on rudimentary production processes in the colonies supplemented by machinery and factory-line mass production in the metropolis. The indenture of Indians to work in the colonies contributed towards cheapening the production process and enhancing profits.

Indians resisted this system both overtly and covertly. In the public realm they initially relied on individual and community petitions, later engaging the colonial authorities through more organized social movements. From the beginning although they appealed to the Colonial Office in England or administrators in the colonies and India, social movements concentrated on local issues – working conditions, laws regarding rights, and personal trials. In all the colonies, Indians were isolated from indigenous peoples and other settled communities, and they did not activate transnational networks despite the similarities they shared with others in this diaspora. This kind of mobilization that focused on parochial and national issues became a definitive characteristic of social movements amongst this diaspora; it became what Charles Tilly refers to as a ‘repertoire of contention’ for mobilization and action.³ Most social movements operated separately from other racial or ethnic groups increasing the distance between Indians and other oppressed groups. Covert resistance included a closing of ranks to outsiders, go-slows, and other surreptitious forms of resistance that were practiced on a daily basis in the workplace. Further they celebrated religious and cultural festivals despite the distance and forced dissociation from India. For example although caste segregation and observances were undermined from the very beginning with the passage in ships and in other communal spaces, indentured Indians adapted practices which had been largely caste and regionally specific in India. The inherently weak position of Indians under indenture was also exemplified by the helplessness and despair they experienced – marital violence and suicides increased dramatically across the diaspora.

While the majority of indentured Indians who participated in social movements were focused on local issues, Indian leaders were keenly aware of the interests of Britain and India. This was particularly relevant in South Africa where the prominent South African Indian Congress (formed in 1923) represented the interests of the trader and professional classes, many of whom were non-indentured diaspora Indians, while the Colonial-born Settler and Indian Association (which held its first conference in 1933) sought to represent the interests of those born in the colony, many of whom were in the working and agricultural classes. Accusing the Congress of consisting of a “few wealthy Mohammedans and banias” who “sold our rights in the name of the community for their sole benefit,” the Colonial-born Indians strongly objected to the participation of Congress in the Colonisation Enquiry Commission. The main aim of this commission was to discuss the 1927 Cape Town Agreement, which included an assisted emigration scheme for Indians to voluntarily repatriate to India to reduce the population in the country.⁴

This chapter attempts to do several things. It will show that the international movement of labor with antecedents in English indentured servitude in the Americas and West Indies, the use of convicts, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the indenture of Chinese laborers, occurred because of the strategic position of Britain, Western elite notions of cultural superiority, and the subservient position of colonial subjects in the global economy of empire. It will also demonstrate that while the anti-slavery movement garnered substantial support in England, they failed to mobilize similar support for an anti-indenture campaign as both the leaders and public were ambivalent about indenture and were still grappling with the concept of free labor. Further it illustrates that with the internationalism spurred by a new wave of globalization, prominent leaders of social movements of Indians living in the colonies employed a cosmopolitan perspective to fight for local bread-and-butter issues, and this was to become a strong mobilization technique and strategy against strong and intransigent opponents. Rank and file Indians, however, continued to focus on local issues reflecting the growing long-term investment in their new homelands and further separating them from India and the diaspora.

India: the colonial state and indenture

Theoretical discourses on the British Empire have shifted from an emphasis on imperial economics and the official thinking behind British administrative decisions to a focus on knowledge. Bernard Cohn proposes that by defining and classifying space, British administrators constructed the nation-state of Indian subjects in a demarcated territorial place, with an official history and identity.⁵ He contends that the “metropole and colony have to be seen in a unitary field of analysis;” the British entered India with some degree of knowledge that to rule they had to know the region, and the knowledge they gained during their 200 years in India was in turn used to consolidate the British state during the period of imperialism.⁶ Tony Ballantyne sees empire as re-imagined not just as a “set of economic and political structures of dominance but as a cultural project.”⁷ Nicolas Dirks argues that colonial conquest was not only the “result of the power of superior arms, military organization, political power, or economic wealth,” but was also made possible (and sustained and strengthened by) “cultural technologies of rule.”⁸ Colonial knowledge both “enabled conquest and was produced by it: in certain important ways, knowledge was what colonialism was all about.”⁹

Ruling the vast and diverse regions as one country and from a centralized administrative system required a concerted effort, a multi-pronged set of strategies to codify and control. A cornerstone of this enterprise was the gathering of data – the census of 1881 solicited the help of 500,000 people to “list the names of what they hoped was every person in India but also to collect basic information ab...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Colonialism and indenture
• 2 Transnational locality: theories of diasporas and social movements in relation to indentured Indians
• 3 Challenging democracy: ethnicity in post-colonial Fiji and Trinidad
• 4 Mauritius and the Indian diaspora
• 5 Indians in South Africa
• 6 Culture and diaspora
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index