by Moiz Mannan
Mauritian President Rajkeswur Purryag’s emotional visit to look for his roots in a tiny Bihar hamlet has once again reminded us of the strife of the ‘Girmitya’, a term defining the thousands of Indian indentured workers who were shipped out to distant lands by the colonial powers in the 19th century.
They toiled in sugarcane and rubber plantations and transformed the economies of Mauritius, Fiji, Trinidad, Suriname, South Africa and other colonies.
On the face of it, nobody had forced them to leave. A year before the indentured labour system came into place, Britain had officially outlawed slavery. Yet, forced they were by their circumstances and taking advantage of their helplessness were the ‘agreements’ they signed with the colonial masters. Unable to mouth the English word ‘agreement’, they called it ‘girmit’ and thus themselves came to be known as Girmityas. In May 1893, a 24-year-old-attorney named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, on a ‘girmit’ (contract) to fight a lawsuit, was thrown out of a train to Pretoria. He swore to deliver these people and called himself ‘Pehla Girmitya’ (the first indentured labour).
It is said the Purryag, who was invited by the Indian government to be the chief guest for this year’s annual diaspora conclave, the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas, was in tears when he entered Wajitpur village in Patna district. It was from here that his great grandfather, Laxman Nonia, had migrated around a century-and-a-half back.
Last year, Kamla Persad Bissessar, the first woman prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, paid an equally emotional visit to her ancestral village Bhelupur in Itarhi in Bihar’s Buxar district. According to an official record sent by the Trinidad and Tobago government to Bihar, Persad-Bissessar’s great-grandfather Ram Lakhan Mishra had left Bhelupur in July 1889. Their ancestors may have been compelled to migrate by poverty and destitution, but successive generations of Girmityas’ have emerged as outstanding statesmen, leaders and entrepreneurs.
People such as the legendary former Mauritian president
Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam are icons in their adopted countries. Often referred to as ‘Chacha’ Ramgoolam, he he led Mauritius to independence in 1968 and is known as the “Father of the Mauritian Nation”.
Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam often referred to as Chacha Ramgoolam, was a Mauritian politician and statesman, a leader in the Mauritian independence movement, and the first Chief Minister, Prime Minister and sixth Governor General of Mauritius. He worked for the emancipation of the Mauritian population.
His father, an Indian immigrant labourer, Moheeth Ramgoolam, came to Mauritius at the age of 18 in a ship called The Hindoostan in 1896. Moheeth worked as an indentured labourer and later became a Sirdar (overseer) at La Queen Victoria Sugar Estate. When he got married to Basmati Ramchurn in 1898, he moved to Belle Rive Sugar Estate. Seewoosagur was born here and had his early grounding in Hindi, and Indian culture and philosophy, in the local evening school of the locality (called Baitka in Mauritian Hindi), where children of the Hindu community learnt the vernacular language and glimpses of Indian culture. The teacher (guruji) would teach prayers and songs. Sanskrit prayers and perennial values taken from sacred scriptures like the Vedas, the Ramayana, the Upanishads, and the Bhagvad Geeta were also taught. Numerous other second generation Girmityas, who rose to lofty heights, have had a similar upbringing.
Sir Anerood Jugnauth was another. He was President of Mauritius from 2003 to 2012. Before that, he was Prime Minister of the country from 1982 to 1995 and again from 2000 to 2003.
When slavery was abolished by the British in their plantations, they needed cheap labour. They targeted the desperately poor Bihari former opium farmers generally now out of work because of the opium wars in China, who lived along the river Ganga and people from other parts of India.
The indenture system started from the end of slavery in 1834 and continued until 1920. Indians had been employed for a long time on European ships trading in India and the East Indies. Colonial British Indian Government Regulations of 1837 laid down specific conditions for the dispatch of Indian labour. The intending emigrant and the emigration agent were required to appear before an officer designated by the Colonial British Government of India with a written statement of the terms of the contract. The length of service was to be of five years, renewable for further five-year terms. The emigrant was to be returned at the end of service to the port of departure.
Since then, times are said to have changed. Migration and the plight of migrants has been placed on the global agenda. The International Labour Organisation and individual labour exporting countries have become more proactive in protecting the migrant workers.
Having said that, one is reminded of the saying that the more things change, the more they remain the same. There have been helpless and needy people. There have been people wanting to take advantage of the needy. There have been agreements and contracts. There will always be Girmityas, by some other name perhaps...
