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Vinson Kurian

For eighty years, between 1838 and until the abolition of indentures in 1917, the plantation economies in countries ranging from Sri Lanka in South Asia to Surinam (formerly Dutch Guiana) in South America survived by the hard labour of Indian labourers.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, April 18

AN enterprising filmmaker of Keralite origin is making waves in far-off Caribbean, having contrived a rare calypso based on an ensemble of strife, struggle and tribulations of the pioneering Indian settlers who left their footprints on these islands.

Jahaji Bai, a documentary film series on the history of migration and the evolution of Indian communities in the Caribbean, has been researched, produced and directed by Mr Suresh Kumar Pillai, a non-resident Keralite. Screenings of the film in the island nations have received rave reviews.

The mass migration of Indians under the indentured labour system is not so well documented as the slave trade. Jahaji Bai is an attempt to recapture the historical circumstances leading to large-scale displacement of the people of Indian origin and their evolution as distinct ethnic communities in the Caribbean, according to Mr Pillai. The series has three different films of 50-minute duration each.

The film starts with a cutback to the labour shortage in West Indian sugar plantations in the immediate aftermath of African slave emancipation in 1838 forcing the19th century European planters and British colonial government to engage in a large-scale labour trading. When the freed slaves demanded higher wages and better living conditions in the sugar plantations, the planters adopted a new strategy of importing cheap labour from other countries. After several aborted experiments in China, Portugal, Africa and the US, the planters turned their attention to India.

An impoverished India after the First War of Independence, or Great Mutiny in 1857, became the perfect source of cheap labour recruitment. A new system of contractual slavery termed `Indentured Labour Contract' was soon developed by the colonial administration to bring migrant labourers from the Indian subcontinent.

For eighty years, between 1838 and until the abolition of indentures in 1917, the plantation economies in countries ranging from Sri Lanka in South Asia to Surinam (formerly Dutch Guiana) in South America survived by the hard labour of these Indian labourers or `Coolies'.

As part of this huge labour migration, nearly half a million labourers came to various Caribbean islands and South American colonies. The Indian labourers came from areas stretching from the Punjab to Dacca (now Dhaka) in North India, and from areas of the former Madras presidency in South India.

Destined to live in barracks left by former African slaves, these indentured labourers struggled against several oddities. Several thousands perished during their journey through Kalapani, the dark waters of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and later on through the inhuman working conditions of plantations.

The descendants of these Indian indentured migrants today occupy a very important place in the socio-cultural and political milieu of the Caribbean world.

Known variously as East Indians, Indo-Caribbean, West Indian Indians, the people of Indian origin spread across several island nations such as Trinidad &Tobago, Jamaica, Grenada, Barbados, and St. Vincent, St. Lucia and in South American countries like Guyana (formerly British Guiana) and Suriname.

The extraordinary cultural fusion that took place between four great civilizations - Amerindians, Indians, Africans and Europeans - in these colonies gave birth to different kinds of Hindu, Islamic and Christian religious practices which provided a rich and vibrant canvas for the series.

Mr Pillai had worked as a journalist representing a leading Malayalam newspaper in New Delhi. He later on became the Editor and Publisher of a monthly journal on Indo-Arab relations called `The Middle East Perspectives From India'.

During this period, he became the only journalist from South India to attend the oil-well fire capping ceremony at Kuwait after Gulf War I as an invitee of the Kuwait Government.

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