9.

The meek Hindu; the recruitment of Indian indentured

labourers for service overseas, 1870-1916
by

P.C. EMMER

Slavery and indentured labour are usually closely associated. The letters of the
British consular officers on the treatment of indentured labourers from British
India in the French and Dutch colonies were classified under the old heading
'Slave Trade'. In one of these letters the British consul in Paramaribo expressed
what many observers had always thought about indentured labour: '... the
Surinam planters ... found in the meek Hindu a ready substitution for the negro
slave he had 10st'l.
It is the intention of this paper to show that at least one aspect of indenturec
migration was quite different from the slave trade: the process of recruitment. III
describing the different phases of this process it will be argued that little evidence
exists indicating that fraud, deception and even kidnapping were widely used in
order to meet the yearly demand for indentured labourers overseas. On the
contrary, many precautions were taken, both by the Indian authorities as well a5
by the recruiting agencies, in order to prevent irregular recruiting practices.
In spite of all these regulations, however, the recruitment system remained
imperfect. It was simply impossible for the intending emigrant to imagine what
his future employment overseas would be like. After the indentured emigrant
had fulfilled his contract, a similar problem arose upon his return home: it wa5
impossible for her or him to imagine how the reception would be back in India.
The group of 'return coolies', who indentured themselves again to leave India
after their return, were the real victims of the system. They had failed to settle
overseas and, at the same time, they had become outcasts in India.
The shortcomings of the indenture system, however, do not make it compar-
able to the slave trade. The relatively low percentage of runaways between the
moment of first registration and embarkation indicate that indentured emigration
was usually the result of a choice made by the intending emigrant himself, albeit
not always based on rational grounds. In this respect, indentured emigration had
more in common with the 'free' emigration out of Europe during the 19th century

Emmer P.C. (ed) Colonialism and Migration; Indentured Labour before and after Slavery.
© 1986 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers,
Dordrecht/Bmton/Lancaster.
ISBN 902473253 O.
188

than with the slave trade during the preceding centuries c.

The effects of colonial emigration on India were relatively small. Demograph-
ically it meant a loss of mainly young. unmarried males. but - unlike the impact of
the slave trade on West Africa - the consequences of this loss did not substantially
affect either the contemporary or the future population of India. since the
emigration was very small in relation to India's population.
A discussion of the economic and social consequences also yields an unclear
result. Colonial emigration must have improved living standards for some emi-
grants. However, India was saddled with the returnees, some of whom came back
as paupers. Again, the socio-economic effects of overseas emigration on India
seemed more comparable to the effects of emigration on 19th century Europe
than to those on 18th century Africa.
At first sight, the protests against the emigration of Indian indentureds seemed
to have had the same humanitarian basis as the movement against the slave trade.
By taking a closer look. however, the situation turns out to be quite different. The
slave trade was stopped against the wishes of most of the plantation owners. but
probably with the full consent of the slaves. while the decision to end Indian
indentured emigration not only injured the planters overseas, but also the mi-
grant workers themselves, since they continued to migrate in spite of the abolition
and never staged any concerted action against emigration overseas. The abolition
of overseas indentured emigration was advocated by the Indian middle class. who
had nothing to do with emigration themselves. Their feelings of national pride
were hurt, however, because the colonies of white settlement had closed their
border to Indian indentured emigrants in order to stop competition between low-
wage Indians and high-wage Europeans. In order to justify their actions. Canada.
Australia and South Africa resorted to blatantly racial arguments, and these
aroused widespread indignation among the educated Indians.
In the conclusion, it is pointed out that the humanitarian movement among the
Indian nationalists might have been aided by the economic motives. The Indian
landowners had always been opposed to emigration, and, around 1914. the rising
interests of the Indian capitalists also clashed with the system of overseas inden-
tured emigration, since it reduced the competition on the supplyside of the Indian
labour market both in agriculture and in the newly developed industrial sector.

1. RECRUITMENT

The system of indentured emigration to overseas colonies was based on a push.

There existed a tradition of labour migration within India and the regulated
emigration via Madras and Calcutta to overseas colonies only constituted a