hill the abolition of indian indentured emigration

188 Pages·2008·8.97 MB·English

HILL
THE ABOLITION OF INDIAN INDENTURED EMIGRATION
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NATlflNAL CON5CIO"~NF:~5 A"m JMPF:RIAL cnN~ctENCF.
THF. ARnLITIrl"I IJF INDIAN INnFNTUPF.n FM Jr,RATIO'"
by Karen Pay Hil l
Ahstract of a thesis in the Facultv of
sub~itterl ~raduate
and Pesearcl1, lJniversity, in oartial
~tudies Mc~il1
fulfillment Of the renuirements for the deoree of
Mas ter of Arts
Denartment of Historv
Aoril 1970.
The of Indian indentured emioration to colonies,
syste~ ~ritish
which had been estahlished to sunnlv the lahour needsl,'of colonial
olanters followinn was renarded with increasino
e~ancination,
disfavour bv thû Indian educated oolitical elite. To this nrouo
indenture svmbolizerl their low status in the Rritish F.moire and
\oJas resoonsib1e for the prejudice aaainst Indians disn1ayed hy
European co1onists. In their desire to rid themselves of the
"coo1ie" stioma, the Indian nationalists souoht the aholition of
indenture. Faced with oooosition powerfu1 colonial interests,
fro~
the anti-indenture forces tl1reatened Indià-wide anitation if their
demands were not met. They reinforced their arauments aaainst
indenture with such convincina evirlence of af>uses in the system that
many of the most sta1wart imoeria1ists became convinced that the
abolition of indenture was necessary to oreserve the intenritv of the
Rritish Emoire. A1tl1ouoh inrlentured was final1v halted
e~inration
in 1917, resentment had a1readv heen arouserl in Tndia h.v what waS'
reqarded as the precedente of colonial interests over India's, and
of the ootimism about the henefits oF in the
~uch ~articinatinn
Empire-Commonwealth was shattered.
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NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND IMPERIAL CONSCIENCE:
THE ABOL ITION OF INDIAN INDENTURED EMIGRATION
by
Karen Ray Hill
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies
and Research, McGill·University, in partial
fulfillment of the requirements of the
degree of Master of Arts •
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Department of History
McGill University, Montreal, P.O. April 1970
f 0
Karen Ray Hill 1970
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Preface
The issue of Ind1an indentured emiQration, as vital as it was
both to the development of Indian national consciousness and to the
position of India in the emerqinQ Commonwealth of Nations, has not
been studied. Althouqh there have been several excellent summaries
of the role of Indian immigrant minorities in the various colonies,
no work has yet been done on the political implications of the
indenture question in India itself. The issue had remained in the
stranqe hiatus which exists between British empire history and Indian
history .
The indenture issue reached its crisis durinQ the viceroyaliV
of Hardinqe, 1910-1916. Private papers and public documents for
this period have only been opened within the last two.,years, so a
comprehensive study was impossible earlier. The evidence of these
sources makes it obvious that the indenture issue was a crucial one
in India for five years. lronically, had there not been a timelv
resolution of the issue, and had Gandhi ca1led his first passive
resistance campaiQn over the indenture issue as he threatened,
historians would already have showered on the indenture issue the
attention which has qone to his later campaigns. In that case, this
writer would have been deprived of the excitinq experience of research
in a virqin field.
The paucity of secondary sources and the absence of any adequate
account of the evolution of the indenture system has qoverned, to sorne
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extent, the approach of this paper. In order to understand the
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the indenture crisis in the early twentieth century, it is necessary
to have sorne idea of the development of the indenture system, opposition
to it, and the attitude of the r,overnment of India. The
chan~in~
narrative of this interaction constitutes a necessary ba'ckground chapter
to a more detailed consideration of the development of the problem
in lateryears.
A diversity of a decision to include bioqraphical
person~prompted
footnotes for major characters, except 1n the chapter: The
back~round
names of well-known pers ons not intimately involved with the indenture
issue (e.q. Lloyd George) were left unembellished.
Sorne terminological explanations are in order. Aware of the
controversy over the implications of the word "nationalist" in modern
Indian history, l have used it with sorne trepidation and only because
other terms seemed more clumsy than appropriate. By nationalists l
mean those Indians involved in the o01itical orqanizat1ons
emerqin~
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth The term West
centu~v.
Ind1es; as used in this paper, means the British West Indies and British
Guiana. There is ample h1storical precedent for includinq British
Guiana in the West Indies, the precedent is followed in this caner
because the colonies are similar enouqh in qeoaraphy and economics that
continual differentiation is cumbersome and almost The
misleadin~.
words emiqrant and immigrant also pose a problem. l have used them in
the usual way : an emiqrant is a pers on who is leavinq a country
(India in this case), and he becomes an imm1gl"ant in the country to
wh1ch he 1s go1ng. In questionable instances l have used the term
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emigrant, s1nce the focus 1s on Ind1an attitudes •
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. Thanks are due to the patient staffs of many libraries,
esoecially the India Office Library (now officially the Commonwealth
Relations Office Library), the British Museum, particularly the
staff of the Oriental Manuscripts Room, and the Public Record Office,
all in London. Also helpful were the personnel of the Bodleian and
Rhodes House Libraries, Oxford, the Cambridge University Library,
and the McLennan Library of McGill University, Montreal, where the
process began. 1 was materially helped by the use of the facilities
of two other institutions and sincerely thank Taylor of the
~1ilne
Institute of Historical Research, London, and Cameron Nish of the
Centre de recherche en histoire du Canada
~conomique fran~ais,
Montreal, Without Nicole Bellemare, whose efforts a're much aporeciated,
this thesis would never have reached its final form.
1 am profoundly grateful to Peter Marshall for quiding a
fledgling student with diverse interests to a topic which them
~ave
coherence, and for criticism which was not less constructive for
being gentle. And to John Hill, who did not let his own scholarly
activfties and chairmanical duties distract him from his role as
Cl io.
K.R.H .
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Table of Contents
Preface ....................................................... 11
Chapter 1. COLONIAL NEED AND IMPERIAL RESPONSE ......•....••... 1
II. THE EMERGENCE OF NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS:
THE INDENTURE ISSUE IN THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS. 25
III. IMPERIAL CONSCIENCE : INDENTURE UNDER REVIEW ....•.. 49
IV. THE INDENTURE ISSUE IN THE INDIAN LEGISLATIVE
COUNCIL ..•.•.........•.....•...••......•........•.. 72
V. THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA AND PRESSURE FOR ABOLITION .. 104
VI. THE ABOLITION OF INDENTllRED EMIGRATION .•.........•.. 135
Epiloque and Conclusions ...•........•.•..•.......•......•..•.. 163
Bi b1 ; ography .................................................. 169
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Chapter l
• COLONIAL NEED AND IMPERIAL RESPONSE
The immediate impetus for the emiqration of Indian labour came
not from the pressures· ,of an overcrowded sub-continent, but from the
labour shortage caused by the emancipation of s1avery. Ironically,
the rise of the Indian in the West Indies corresponds with the decline
of the planter o1igarchy which imported him. In his classic work
on the fall of the planter class, ~aqatz states that abolition and
emancipation were merely factors to an otherwise inevitable
contributin~
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ruin for the planters. Obsolete production methods, restricted trade
and competition from beet suqar were other forces just implacable
~s
It is not surprising, however, that these factors were not apparent
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to the West Indian planter, and he blamed his woes on labour shortaQe.
The increase in wages in the decade fOllowing emancipation and the
improved bargaininq position of the were sources of concern
laboure~
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both to planter and to qovernment. Experiments were tried with
European labour. Scots, Irish, Welsh and Germans emiqrated, many of whom
did not survive, and many of whom returned to their native countries in
penury.4 An experiment with Portu~uese from Madiera was scarcely more
1. Lowell Joseph The Fall of the Planter Class in the British
Ra~atz,
Cariboean, 1763-1833 (reprint of 1928 ed.; New York, 1963), p. vii.
2. Despatch from Governor Liqht to Lord John Russell, 23 Oecember 1839,
Parliamentary Papers 1840 XXXIV (151), p.164.
3. The Cambridqe Histor*U0f the British Empire (3 vols.; Cambridge
University Press, 19 ), Il, p.499; hereafter cited as C.B.B.E.
4. Alan Burns, History of the British West Indies (London, 1954),
• p.662; and C.R.B.E:, p.397 •
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successful. These failures fostered the popular belief that Europeans
were unsuited to manual labour in tropical climates.
As ear1y as 1802 the p1anters had turned covetous eyes to the
seemingly endless labour supply available in the Orient,2 but for
mainly geographical reasons the first wave of Indian emiqration to sugar
colonies was not to the West Indies but to Mauritius. This Indian
Ocean colony, a 40 to 65 day voyage from Calcutta, had been importinq
Indi an "cooli e" labour under contract as early as 1830, al though there
had been no official cognizance or sanction of this. The emigration
to Mauritius called the attention of the Government of India to the
need for the regulation of emigration and indenture. Since many of
the precedents for Indian official attitude toward the indentured
emigration were established in early neqotiations with Mauritius, this
process must be considered as background to other emiqration issues.
The origin of governmental control arose from a preoccupation with
shipping. The Law Commission of the Government of India was considerinq
the problem of the protection of Indians while on sea voyages (Muslims
on the Haj to Mecca for instance) in 1836, when the Government of Mauritius
pointed out the necessity for requlations to assure the safety of emigrant
ships.3 The Government of India made use of this openinq to enquire
about the condition of Indians who had already emiqrated and were living
in Mauritius.
1. Eric Williams, History of the People of Trinidad and Tobaqo (Port
of-Spain, 1962), pp.97-98.
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2. Report from the Select on the Practicability and
Co~ittee Expedien~y
of supplying the West India Colonies with Free Labourers from the
East, Parliamentary Papers 1810-11 11(225), p.409.
3. Mr. Geohagen's "Report on Coolie Emiqration from India," India Office,
1874, Papers 1874 XLVII (314), p.432 (2); hereafter
parliamentar~
cited as Geohagen eport.
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Mauri'ti'us "ad been di'sposed at first to look on the Indian
immtgrants, who came to Mauritius under indenture to the suqar
plantation cwners, as having little more status than the slaves who
preceded them. In 1835 the colony had tried to pass ordinances so
repressive in their measures aqainst immiQrants that His Majesty in
Council had disallowed thern. By 1836, however, the Governor, Sir
W. Nicolay, was able to assure the Government of India that all was
proceeding satisfactorily. Indi ans l ived un der the same l aws as the
other residents of Mauritius, he said, and plantations had to get
the approval of the Government before importinq labourers. Certain
guidelines had been laid down for these plantations as to workinq
hours and conditions. Nicolay wanted the Government of India to see
that pers ons emigratinq were vaccinated and required to pass a medical
examination and that passenger lists of emiQrants be checked by police
and copies sent to the Mauritius Government to prevent fraud. He was
also anxious that only bonafide aqricu1tura1 workers be recruited.
These measures wou1d obvious1y work to the advantaqe of but
~auritius,
Nico1ay was wi11inQ, in return, to see that the Mauritius p1anters
guaranteed free passage to India for 1abourers who had worked out the
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term of their indenture.
In 1837 the Law Commission, in the immediate context of the f10w
to Mauritius, but obvious1y considering also emigration to more distant
destinations, submitted its report. This report revea1s the attitude
of the Government of India toward emiQration before mountinq pressures
in Britain forced further considerations .
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1. Geohagen Report, pp.2-3.