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Inside Indian Indenture Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Inside Indian A South African Story, 1860–1914 Indenture Ashwin Desai & Goolam Vahed Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Published by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa www.hsrcpress.ac.za First published 2010 ISBN (soft cover): 978-0-7969-2244-1 ISBN (pdf): 978-0-7969-2245-8 ISBN (ePub): 978-0-7969-2312-7 © 2010 Human Sciences Research Council The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Human Sciences Research Council (‘the Council’) or indicate that the Council endorses the views of the authors. In quoting from this publication, readers are advised to attribute the source of the information to the individual author concerned and not to the Council. Copyedited by Lee Smith Designed and typeset by Jenny Young Printed by Creda Communications Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver Tel: +27 (0) 21 701 4477; Fax: +27 (0) 21 701 7302 www.oneworldbooks.com Distributed in Europe and the United Kingdom by Eurospan Distribution Services (EDS) Tel: +44 (0) 20 7240 0856; Fax: +44 (0) 20 7379 0609 www.eurospanbookstore.com Distributed in North America by Independent Publishers Group (IPG) Call toll-free: (800) 888 4741; Fax: +1 (312) 337 5985 www.ipgbook.com Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Contents Preface vi Map of indentured recruitment districts, sea routes and settlement areas x 1 Shiva’s dance 1 2 The paglaa samundar (mad ocean) 19 3 From the Raj to Raju 39 4 ‘Master Coolie’ arrives 61 5 The interpreters of indenture 83 6 Inside the world of Uriah Heep and Jabez Balfour 103 7 Esperanza: a place of hope? 127 8 Bhen Choodh and the politics of ploys 149 9 Cast(e) on an African stage 173 10 Family matters 197 11 When the ‘coolies’ made Christmas 223 12 From heathens to Hindus 239 13 Coolies with Bibles 261 14 Bâdshâh Pîr meets Soofie Saheb 283 15 The many faces of leisure and pleasure: from China to ganja 301 16 The bodysnatchers (1899–1902) 323 17 The Virgin Mary and the three-pound cross 341 18 ‘Drawing blood from a stone’ 357 19 Resistance goes underground 371 20 The moral persuaders? 399 21 Africa calling 423 Glossary 439 Notes 442 References 463 Index 470 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Preface He has nothing to lose, he tells himself and so he reaches for the stars. For where do we go when it falls apart in our hands and we are left with less than we started with? Begin again? And with what? Where are the dreams to fill the souls of wandering exiles? JAMAL MAHJOUB 1 The landscape of KwaZulu-Natal in the early decades of the twenty-first century still bears the signs of indenture. Travel up the north coast, look for the pointer that says Kwa Dukuza, turn left, head beyond Mahatma Gandhi Street and you will end up at Kearsney. At the bottom of a hill you will come across a Baptist church. It is in this church that indentured labourers listened with rapt reverence to the sermons of John (the Baptist) Rangiah, who was especially brought from Nellore, Madras, in 1903 to see to their spiritual needs. Head down the south coast and you will see acres of land bristling with sugar cane and carrying the names of enclaves that signal the sway of British colonisers: Margate, Ramsgate, Port Edward. Before these vestiges of British imperialism, drive through Umzinto and you will see a sign for Lynton Hall. Once the home of the Reynolds brothers, it is now a venue for expensive cuisine and plush weddings. A visit is guaranteed to leave ‘a lingering memory of culinary extravagance’. 2 There are other memories of Lynton Hall too, clues of which linger more than a century later and point to the setting of one of the most brutal and compelling episodes of indenture. We travelled these roads and were moved to tell the stories of indenture, to turn the tombstones on the hill near Lynton Hall overlooking Esperanza, 3 with their stark date lines of ‘when-born’ and ‘when-died’, into real living people, and to turn the empty pews of the church in Kearsney into moments when they were filled with the faithful flipping through Bibles marked in Telegu. The stories we uncovered are an incredible slice of history, the impact of which resonates into the present. We are not the first to traverse this territory. A steady stream of writing on indentured labour has come our way over the past few decades. Much of this literature painstakingly details the number of indentured who came, where they came from, the regional variations, the caste designations, the system’s indignations, and so on. Inside Indian Indenture builds on this strong body of information, but also seeks to go beyond the numbers, trespassing directly into the lives of the indentured themselves. It explores the terrain of the everyday by focusing on the development of religious and cultural expressions, the leisure activities, the way power relations played themselves out on the vi Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za vii plantations and beyond, inspecting weapons of resistance and forms of collaboration that were developed in times of conflict with the colonial overlords. It is a social history that extends beyond the boundaries of institutions, yet is situated in the social web of indenture itself, especially the small intense world of the plantation. The writing that follows seeks to move away from seeing indenture as some Benthamite Panopticon in which the indentured were completely under the gaze and discipline of the master. We show that they ‘were as much agents as they were victims and silent witnesses’. 4 Indenture was a time in which old patterns of living could not simply be resurrected in a ‘foreign’ environment, while new patterns struggled to be born. We enter this world by showing real people in all their ambiguities and complexities as they danced the uncertain edge between improvisation and resignation. While the system was presented by the colonists as a fait accompli and the indentured as a tabula rasa on which the economic needs of late colonialism could simply be imposed, in reality, indenture saw its contours being established, resisted and renegotiated as the inden- tured and their white masters were constantly involved in a shared but uneven economic and political dynamic. In seeking the voices of the indentured, we faced an important methodological problem, as these voices were ‘filtered through the pens of others’. The testimonies of the indentured ‘were transcribed or recorded by official scribes. Most of the emigrants could not even read the deposition they were asked to sign, marking an “X” instead. Next to direct evidence, however, they come closest to revealing the voices of bonded labourers.’ 5 We have found this a fascinating story brimming with desire, skulduggery and tender mercies, as much as with oppression and exploitation. None more so than the 1913 strike, studies of which in the main have rendered the crowd largely anonymous as Gandhi, the master puppeteer, took centre stage. Yet the indentured participated in their thousands, more often than not outside the purview of Gandhi and the visible leaders of the strike, in some instances fighting violent hand-to-hand battles with the authorities, throwing up their own leaders and drawing on memories of previous struggles. In telling the story of the strike, we try to reveal ‘the faces in the crowd, their hopes, their fears and muddled aspirations’, 6 and show how the erstwhile puppets, the indentured, were in many cases pulling the strings of rebellion. Reclamation can, of course, lead to cultural chauvinism. So we aim not just to tell a story of the internal dynamics of indentured life, but to do so against the backdrop of white rule and its oppressive relationship with the Zulu. Inscribed in this unfolding narrative is the brutal and violent dispossession of the Zulu, and the callousness of the colonial onslaught that destroyed their indigenous economy and turned once courageous warriors against imperialism into ‘houseboys’ serving at the white man’s table or doing his laundry, and into dispossessed migrants tunnelling underground in the mines while their families struggled to survive. We try then to tell a broader history that does not, we trust, lend itself to reinforcing cultural and racial bigotry. But this is not done in a way that obscures the central narrative. In fact, it renders it more revealing. Those who ‘agreed’ to indenture were often propelled by desperation as the British Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za spread their tentacles throughout India. It is apposite in these contemporary times in which the British Empire is dressed up (once again) as a benign, progressive, modernising force, as cover for the ‘civilising mission’ in Iraq and elsewhere, to iterate, as Mike Davis has done in Late Victorian Holocausts: If the history of British rule in India were to be condensed into a single fact, it is this: there was no increase in India’s per capita income from 1757 to 1947. Indeed, in the last half of the nineteenth century, income probably declined by more than 50 percent From 1872 to 1921 the life expectancy of ordinary Indians fell by a staggering 20 percent… ‘Modernisation’ and commercialisation were accompanied by pauperisation. 7 It was the very same British Empire that brought misery and subjugation and, ironically, created an opportunity for ‘escape’ to places like Natal. Many were filled with hopes as high as Mahjoub’s stars as they crossed the kala pani (the black water – the sea). Dreams of a better life and the opportunity to save money and return to the village as ‘success stories’ were not to be for many who returned ‘home’ with less than they had started out with, and who found that home was not the same place. Neither were they the same people. Caste had been transgressed, parents had died and spaces for reintegration closed as colonialism tightened its grip. Home for these wandering exiles was no more. A substantial number came to the realisation that the place of exile was the place of home. Like Mahjoub, they wondered, ‘…where do we go when it falls apart in our hands and we are left with less than we started with? Begin again? And with what?’ And so, many made the return journey. To Africa. To begin anew. This book tells a story about the many beginnings and multiple journeys that made up the indentured experience. The research for this book took several years. We shuddered and gasped as we found snippets of information tucked away on forgotten shelves and in boxes of musty archives. We felt proud and terribly sad as we read letters penned a century ago and more from distant ancestors, so dignified still in their anguish. And some of the photographs that we have included are beyond description. As authors we come from different academic backgrounds, one a sociologist (Ashwin) and the other a historian (Goolam). There are other differences, too, that are not necessary to go into, but which those who know both of us would find it easy to discern. They have no doubt made many jokes about how such an incongruous twosome has managed to survive the long period that has been the writing of this book. But this collaboration has been a wonderful experience. This is not simply a professional relationship but one of abiding friendship. Writing this story has been an emotional experience and an incredibly humbling one. The people who are closest to us bore the brunt of the long hours and of a project that seemed to have no end. To them we owe a deep gratitude and we hope that this story, when (if) they read it, will explain our mood swings between sadness, anger even, when we came across the depth of the humiliations and violence suffered by the indentured, and our smiles, joy and pride as we came across the remarkable ability of the indentured to confront and resist the system. The indentured viii INSIDE INDIAN INDENTURE A SOUTH AFRICAN STORY, 1860–1914 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Preface ix refused to be disembodied ‘coolies’ defined by numbers and fought many battles to ensure that they were recognised as people with rights, feelings and a permanent future in Africa. Ashwin’s father died on 11 November 2006 without seeing the final product. He was a history teacher and it is extremely sad that he will not pass judgement over this work. His influence, though, lives through the pages of this book. Goolam’s wife, Taskeen, and children, Naseem, Razia and Yasmeen, live many miles away, and they feel the separation intensely. This book, which in essence is about painful separations and multiple journeys, helps suture the wounds of long absences. We believe that you will feel enriched by sharing these stories. If even a little of the emotion and insight about being alive in South Africa today that came to us through researching and narrating the stories of indenture is transmitted to you, then the many hours of painstaking labour in producing this book will have been worthwhile. Acknowledgements We would like to thank friends and colleagues who took time out of their busy schedules to assist in different ways. Surendra Bhana, as always, gave liberally of his time. He has been a great support throughout and especially in reading early drafts of the manuscript. Joy Brain very kindly provided documents and photographs from her collection. Others whose help, comments, questions and encouragement are appreciated include Brij V Lal, Isabel Hofmeyr, Parvathi Raman, Paula Richman, Betty Govinden, Brij Maharaj, Sudesh Mishra, Mandy Goedhals and Karin Willemse. In the course of our research we relied on primary sources from many archives and libraries, and have been fortunate to have had their generous support. We owe special thanks to the staff of the South African Archives Repository in Durban, Maritzburg and Pretoria, as well as the Killie Campbell Library, who often went beyond the call of duty to help. We would like to mention Judith Hawley, R Singh, Mwelela Cele and Nellie Somers by name, though others also helped in various ways. We also thank Mr K Chetty and Emmanuel Narie (Siya) of the Gandhi–Luthuli Centre, University of KwaZulu-Natal, for their assistance. Finally, we thank the reviewers for their criticisms and suggestions. All errors that remain are our own. As is the tradition when sociologists and historians work together, the theoretical shortcomings are all Goolam’s and the factual errors are all Ashwin’s. Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za x INSIDE INDIAN INDENTURE A SOUTH AFRICAN STORY, 1860–1914 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za [...]... circumstance In tracing the biographies of the indentured, it becomes apparent that indenture was much more fluid than previously thought For example, some of the indentured, having completed their contracts, returned to India, married, and made their way back as ‘free’ Indians, or sometimes re-indentured Others, literally one step out of indenture, married those still indentured And so, while we see South... consolidated its grip on the subcontinent, in part by ceding some authority to Indians who were inscribed into its governance The fact that indenture was not a one-way phenomenon forces us to keep returning to India if only to take its leave.30 14 INSIDE INDIAN INDENTURE A SOUTH AFRICAN STORY, 1860–1914 The routine details about indenture, such as the numbers who emigrated, the ships on which they arrived,... wife to my master.’ Votti claimed in a deposition to Administrator Haden that it was ‘quite unusual’ to indenture an unmarried Indian woman to an Indian male employer, ‘several requests for such course of action by respectable Indians in and around Maritzburg having been refused’ She wanted her indenture to Nulliah cancelled, and to be ‘transferred to some respectable European person’ Votti’s allegation... 1893: 8 INSIDE INDIAN INDENTURE A SOUTH AFRICAN STORY, 1860–1914 Charlie Nulliah has been personally known to me for many years and I believe him to be, although an Indian, a thoroughly honest and respectable man I do not for one moment believe that he has been guilty of the charges brought against him…He is the owner of a considerable amount of property and is the registered employer of several indentured... transnational space, allowance too must be made for the fluidity between indentured and free Indians This study sometimes goes beyond the plantation to reflect the experiences of those who had completed their indentures It proved impossible for the authorities to impose an ‘iron wall’ between the indentured and the free because indentured labour was employed in a large number of settings besides sugar... Votti, highlighting ‘the great hardship and the rather unprecedented action of the Protector in allotting or transferring to another Indian the services of an unmarried Indian woman’, when he had refused this ‘in the case of Indians of higher caste and respectability than the Indian Charlie Nulliah’ Gallwey added that Nulliah’s brother had three wives and was in the process of marrying a fourth He considered... the indentured found all manner of ways to resist this and assert their humanity Shown here are Napaul Kaloo (7359), Neetye Peeroo (7360), Nathonee Sooraie (7366) and Chand Kahn (7367) 1 the indentured through letters, newspaper reports and anecdotes handed down through time, matching them with stories of the indentured in different locations Parvathi Raman lamented that ‘the early narrative of (indentured)... reference to Nulliah’s ‘lower caste’, insinuations of Indians being liars, and Orientalist ideas of Indians being unable to control their sexual urges This is not the last we hear of Votti She married Rangasami Damodrapilla (33126) on 11 October 1893 while still under indenture Rangasami, from Chintradipett in Madras, had arrived in November 1884 and served his indenture with Henry Shire Theirs was a violent... months prior to the murder John Arnold was sure that Dubar had come to Natal under ‘false pretences’: ‘We simply came to the conclusion that he had no intention of working under indenture and that he had come out 10 INSIDE INDIAN INDENTURE A SOUTH AFRICAN STORY, 1860–1914 under false pretences, which I told him when he returned.’ Nagishar was 24 and Dubar’s shipmate The four men were tried in September... folklore in Durban, though its authenticity has never been verified It is said that at the railway office, Sultan was 12 INSIDE INDIAN INDENTURE A SOUTH AFRICAN STORY, 1860–1914 Sultan Pillai Kannu Muluk Mahomed (43374), better known as Mulukmahomed Lappa (ML) Sultan, arrived as an indentured labourer and left the legacy of a great benefactor asked his name by a white overseer and he replied, ‘Muluk . Inside Indian Indenture Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za Inside Indian A South African Story, 1860–1914 Indenture Ashwin. www.hsrcpress.ac.za x INSIDE INDIAN INDENTURE A SOUTH AFRICAN STORY, 1860–1914 Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za xi Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za xii INSIDE INDIAN