As far as the beginning of mass migration from India is concerned, it began following the abolition of slavery in 1834 after the concerned act having been passed by the British parliament in the previous year. Migration thereafter was more or less steady over a long period. Though the volume of migrants remained high, the proportion of the population migrating was low compared with those of other countries of the world. Of the 30 million migrants who had left the country before independence, an estimated 24 million returned to the country. There are various causes attributed to their massive return; unfamiliar cultural environment and hostility from the natives are cited as some of the important causes (Vertovec 1995; Thiara 1995). Pre-independence migration may be divided into indentured labour migration (1834–1910), emigration under the kangani system (1910–1935), and free migration (1936–47). The following section furnishes some information on these types from India.
Indentured Labour from India
Indenture was a halfway between slavery and free labour, but also different from peonage and serfdom. It was peculiarly adapted, like slavery, to the recruitment of labour through migration. It enabled business enterprises to transfer labour to newly developing areas, and yet restrained that labour from immediately acquiring holdings on its own in places where unexploited land was available in abundance. Indenture was a less satisfactory arrangement than slavery because it was less permanent; nevertheless, it was able to attract persons who were too proud to become slaves. It did imply a social gulf between employers and labourers, but it held the possibility of eventual freedom for the latter.
Indentured labour migration to Mauritius, Natal, and Fiji was part of a global process of labour migration from India, which began after the abolition of slavery. During this period, the demand for cheap, unskilled, and pliant labour force in colonies primarily engaged in sugar production was at its pinnacle and the demand was significantly filled by indentured labour from several of the colonial settlements. During the 80 years of its existence, the system of indenture (which formally existed from 1830 to 1916) was responsible for the transportation of more than a million Indians to provide cheap labour required for the global development of British capitalism (Tinker 1974). Indeed, the sale of southern Indian slaves by the Dutch in the latter part of the eighteenth century to French planters in Mauritius and Reunion had been a precursor of indenture; in 1800 there were an estimated 6,000 Indian slaves in Mauritian estates while thousands were enslaved in Reunion. Later, Mauritius, having partly solved its labour shortage through the importation of Indians in the early nineteenth century, set a precedent, which led to the formalization of the indenture system. Thereafter, indentured labour was crucial both in facilitating the expansion of local colonial economies, by cutting labour costs and facilitating capital accumulation, until the early twentieth century.
A historical assessment of the conditions prevailing in India during the British rule reveals the existence of a crucial connection between British expansionism and the international commoditization of Indian labour (Thiara 1995). The transportation of a massive labour force from India under the indenture system was a direct result of complete British penetration into the social and economic fabric of the Indian society. The introduction of landlordism, excessive revenue demands, commercialization of agriculture, change in rent in kind to rent in cash, decline in indigenous handicrafts, discriminatory taxation on Indian goods, and persistent famines and pestilence were among the many reasons for migration, which offered the only avenue of hope to many. While all sectors of the Indian society were affected by these profound changes, it was the lower agricultural classes, which predominated among the recruits, which were the worst affected.
During the period 1834–1910, over half a million indentured migrants entered Mauritius; in Natal, 152,189 arrived between 1860 and 1911; while a total of 60,965 Indians landed in Fiji between 1879 and 1916 (Gillion 1962). Calcutta remained the main ‘coolie catchment’ centre and port of embarkation until 1870 after which the recruiters cast their net towards the United Provinces and Bihar. Increased demand for labour resulted also in the resumption of migration from Madras and Bombay in the 1840s (Tinker 1974). Often, colonies expressed a preference for recruits from particular geographical areas of India, as illustrated by the Caribbean, where a prejudice existed against workers from south India (ibid.). After 1880, the flow of indentured labour migration was deflected away from Mauritius, which by 1871 had an Indian population of 216,258 compared wit...
