The following article consists of excerpts from a Paper delivered by Dr. Cheddi Jagan to the Genesis of a Nation Activity in May, 1988, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the arrival of Indians into Guyana:
Indentureship was another form of slavery. In many respects, it was equally brutal. On 9th January, 1839, the BRITISH EMANCIPATOR, the official organ of the Anti-Slavery Society of Great Britain reported that “the British Public has been deceived With the idea that the coolies are doing ‘well’; such is not the fact; the poor friendless creatures are miserably treated.” Governor Henry Light, in a dispatch to the Colonial, Office wrote that “the immigrants had suffered much sickness and were in a filthy state”.
On 15th February 1840, he stated:
“I confess I should be unwilling to adopt any measure to favour the transfer of labourers from British India to British Guiana, after the failure of the former experiment. Admitting that the mortality of the Hill coolies first sent may have been accidental, I am not prepared to encounter the responsibility of a measure which may lead to a dead loss of life on the one hand, or, on the other, to a new system of slavery. Corporal punishment is not unknown to those poor people, and I have heard no argument used in favour of enabling the crowded population of India to take ad the high wage of Guiana, which remove the danger I apprehend… ”
Elizabeth Taylor, a worker of Plantation V Hoop,(owned by John Gladstone, who launched the Indian Indentureship program) told a Commission of Enquiry:
“The coolies were locked up in the sick house next morning they were flogged with a cat-o-nine-tails; the manager was in the house, and they flogged the people under his house; they were tied to the post of the of the gallery of the manager’s house; I cannot tell how many licks; he gave them enough. I saw blood. When they were flogged at the manager’s house they rubbed salt pickle on their backs.”
A Royal Commission in 1870 pointed out that indentured Indian immigrant was trapped by the law “in the hands of a system which elaborately twists and turns him about, but always leaves him face to face with an impossibility.”
Stoppages of wages were “everyday occurrences”. Severe penalties were imposed for absenteeism. The indentured labourer’s movement was restricted. The Vagrancy Law required a “pass” before he/she could travel more than two miles beyond the boundaries of the estate.
And like the slaves in the “Nigger yard”, the indentured immigrant was forced to live in the “Coolie yard”, or “Bound yard” in low-lying ranges, which were not uprooted until the 1950s.
I recall my mother, who slaved for 8 cents in the canefields and never had a chance of going to school remarking: “Bhaiya, ahwee prapa punish,” meaning: Brother we greatly punished. Under the plantocracy, sugar was really bitter. Though entitled to return to India at the end of his or her 5-year indenture contract, only a small percentage of the immigrants could afford the return passage.
The plantocracy created not only a wage differential, but also a division of labour. Cheap muscle power was needed. So the Indians were relegated to the “Backdam”, the canefields. To ensure an abundant supply of even children’s labour, the “Swettenham Circular” stipulated that Indians were to be exempt from the compulsory provisions of primary education.
And whenever the source of cheap Indian labour was threatened, the sugar planters wielded their considerable power. On more than one occasion, they used their legislative power to block salaries for the Governor and the top administrators. This was their way of demonstrating their power and displeasure with the British Government, which at times contemplated the ending of indentureship because of the scourge of malaria and the brutalities of the system.
But exploitation was not all. The new wage-slaves were also resented and despised. They were resented because they had been brought by their colonial/plantation masters to undercut the position of the freed African population. The Africans had the feeling that “the coolie takes bread from the Negro labourer and lowers the price of labour”.
The indentured Indians were also despised because they brought a culture alien to Western customs and values. The epithet “coolie” depicted the Indian immigrants’ situation.
Indentureship finally came to an end in 1920. But not before there had been numerous demonstrations, skirmishes, riots and uprisings against starvation wages, appalling conditions and the abuse of women. And the workers paid with their blood; for instance, in British Guiana at Devonshire Castle (September 1872) – 5 killed and 6 wounded; at Non Pariel (October 1896) – 6 killed and 58 wounded; at Friends (May 1903) – 5 killed and 7 wounded; at Lusignan (September 1912) – 1 killed; at Rose Hall (March 1913) – 15 killed; at Ruimveldt (April 1924) 13 killed; at Leonora (1939) – 4 killed; at Enmore (June 1948) – 5 killed and 8 wounded.
Those events clearly explode the caricature that Indians are uncultured and docile. Far from it, their culture was rooted in struggle – struggle for the common good. And the massacre of 13 at Ruimveldt in 1924 clearly demonstrated their proletarian intelligence. Despite their lack of formal education, their proposed peaceful march to Georgetown, the capital, signalled their realisation that the amelioration of their own abominable conditions depended on unity and solidarity – unity of rural and urban workers and solidarity which transcended the narrow confines of race. They were marching to the capital to lend support to the struggling urban Black workers on strike under the leadership of the working class champion, Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow. To them, Critchlow was “Black Crosby”, named after a white Immigration Agent General.
Indian/Black unity at the working people’s level in Guyana was manifested on several occasions when exslaves and Indian immigrants struggled together against the colonial exploiters and oppressors. It was shattered in the mid-1920s not only by police brutality, but also by imperialist “big stick” methods.
