Shared struggles of indentureship and slavery—UWI historian

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er and his­to­ri­an Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh says Trinidad and To­ba­go’s strong tra­di­tion of re­li­gious tol­er­ance was forged through the shared strug­gles, suf­fer­ing and re­sis­tance of en­slaved Africans and in­den­tured In­di­ans un­der colo­nial rule.

Speak­ing at the Palmiste His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety’s In­di­an Ar­rival Day lec­ture at the Ram­bert Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Mon­day, Dr Teelucks­ingh said the Caribbean’s har­mo­ny among Hin­dus, Mus­lims and Chris­tians re­mains one of the re­gion’s most re­mark­able achieve­ments.

“Since in­den­ture­ship, the Hin­dus, Mus­lims and Chris­tians in the Caribbean have lived in har­mo­ny. This high lev­el of tol­er­ance is a re­mark­able fea­ture of the re­gion that must be ac­knowl­edged,” he said.

Ad­dress­ing an au­di­ence that in­clud­ed Palmiste His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety chair­man Apos­tle Ter­rence Hon­ore and for­mer House Speak­er Nizam Mo­hammed, Dr Teelucks­ingh re­flect­ed on the painful lega­cies of slav­ery, in­den­ture­ship and colo­nial ex­ploita­tion that shaped mod­ern Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to a mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­ety.

“One of the curs­es of colo­nial­ism and im­pe­ri­al­ism was a con­stant need for labour and the greed for wealth,” he said.

Dr Teelucks­ingh traced the ori­gins of In­di­an in­den­ture­ship to the abo­li­tion of African slav­ery in the British colonies on Au­gust 1, 1838, when plan­ta­tion own­ers faced se­vere labour short­ages af­ter for­mer­ly en­slaved Africans left the sug­ar es­tates.

He ex­plained that ear­ly labour ex­per­i­ments in­volv­ing Eu­ro­pean and Chi­nese im­mi­grants failed be­cause many work­ers could not en­dure the harsh plan­ta­tion con­di­tions or trop­i­cal dis­eases.

Colo­nial au­thor­i­ties then turned to In­dia.

Be­tween 1845 and 1917, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 147,900 In­di­ans were brought to Trinidad un­der the in­den­ture­ship sys­tem, while more than one mil­lion In­di­ans were sent across the British Em­pire to colonies in­clud­ing Guyana, Ja­maica, Fi­ji, Mau­ri­tius and South Africa.

Teelucks­ingh said many en­dured hor­rif­ic abuse dur­ing the jour­ney across the kala pani, or “dark wa­ters.”

“Whilst on the trip, an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of the fe­male pas­sen­gers en­dured sex­u­al as­saults and ver­bal abuse,” he said.

Yet amid the hard­ship, bonds of uni­ty emerged among the im­mi­grants.

“Some of you might have heard the ex­pres­sion ja­ha­ji bhai — the broth­er­hood of the boat. Friend­ships de­vel­oped on the boats and lat­er plan­ta­tions that were un­break­able,” he said.

Dr Teelucks­ingh de­scribed the dif­fi­cult con­di­tions In­di­ans faced up­on ar­rival in Trinidad, liv­ing in over­crowd­ed bar­racks or mud huts with­out prop­er san­i­ta­tion, clean drink­ing wa­ter or med­ical care.

“No won­der many of them were ill with anaemia, malar­ia and hook­worm,” he said.

De­spite the hard­ship, in­den­tured labour­ers pre­served el­e­ments of their re­li­gion and cul­ture, cel­e­brat­ing Di­vali with hand­made deyas and ob­serv­ing Ra­madan while work­ing long hours on sug­ar es­tates.

“Dur­ing in­den­ture­ship, there was no elec­tric­i­ty and in the night they used flam­beaux for light. At the end of a hard day’s work they would pray, tell sto­ries and sing re­li­gious songs whilst the women pre­pared meals,” he said.

Dr Teelucks­ingh al­so high­light­ed re­sis­tance among in­den­tured work­ers, in­clud­ing ri­ots, plan­ta­tion fires, slow­downs and the 1884 Hosay Mas­sacre, which he de­scribed as acts of de­fi­ance against ex­ploita­tion and colo­nial con­trol.

“That was ex­ploita­tion,” he said of labour­ers work­ing up to 15 and 16 hours a day on plan­ta­tions.

He not­ed that an­ti-in­den­ture ac­tivism, in­clud­ing ef­forts by In­di­an in­de­pen­dence leader Mo­han­das Gand­hi, con­tributed to the even­tu­al col­lapse of the sys­tem.

The his­to­ri­an al­so re­flect­ed on the im­por­tant role ed­u­ca­tion played in so­cial mo­bil­i­ty for In­do-Trinida­di­ans, par­tic­u­lar­ly through Pres­by­ter­ian mis­sion­ary schools es­tab­lished by Cana­di­an mis­sion­ar­ies.

“These se­mi-lit­er­ate and il­lit­er­ate In­di­ans knew the val­ue of ed­u­ca­tion,” he said. “They en­sured their chil­dren would re­ceive both a re­li­gious and sec­u­lar ed­u­ca­tion.”

He ac­knowl­edged crit­i­cism sur­round­ing mis­sion­ary con­ver­sion ef­forts but ar­gued that the schools sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proved ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

“If the Cana­di­an mis­sion nev­er set foot in Trinidad, what would be the state of ed­u­ca­tion in the 20th cen­tu­ry?” he asked.

Turn­ing to South Trinidad’s own his­to­ry, Teelucks­ingh praised the Palmiste His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety for pre­serv­ing rem­nants of the old Palmiste Es­tate, in­clud­ing its chim­ney, which now stands as a land­mark.

He re­count­ed the es­tate’s links to both slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship, not­ing that en­slaved Africans once worked the lands be­fore In­di­an labour­ers lat­er oc­cu­pied es­tate bar­racks.

“There were once cot­tages on the Philip­pine Es­tate where African slaves worked… lat­er bar­racks at Canaan Es­tate where In­di­ans lived,” he said.

Dr Teelucks­ingh urged cit­i­zens to pre­serve the coun­try’s es­tate his­to­ry and crit­i­cised the clo­sure of the Sug­ar Archives Cen­tre and the Sevil­la Sug­ar Mu­se­um.

“It’s a pity that there are no voic­es beg­ging for it to be re­opened,” he said.

He chal­lenged the Palmiste His­tor­i­cal So­ci­ety to ad­vo­cate for the re­open­ing of both in­sti­tu­tions.

In clos­ing, Dr Teelucks­ingh called for greater recog­ni­tion of in­den­tured labour­ers in re­gion­al dis­cus­sions about repa­ra­tions and his­tor­i­cal in­jus­tice.

“We must nev­er for­get these vic­tims of in­den­ture­ship who suf­fered at the hands of the Eu­ro­peans,” he said.

“Nev­er, nev­er for­get the shared lega­cies of slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship — a lega­cy of re­sis­tance, re­silience and per­se­ver­ance,” he added.