Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:34 AM
May 15, 2010 News
Poor archival recording in the past is what has made it difficult for East Indians to trace the roots of their ancestors who came to this country under indentureship.
This is according to Pro Chancellor of the University of Guyana, Dr Prem Misir, who on Thursday hosted the second in a series of lectures planned for the month of May to commemorate the 172nd anniversary of Indian arrival to Guyana.
The lectures are being hosted by the Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO) Guyana and the Indian Commemoration Trust.
In his lecture, delivered at the Pegasus Hotel, Dr. Misir examined the similarities and the differences between the Indians that arrived in Guyana and Fiji.
He used Professor Chandra Jayawardena’s work as the basis for reviewing indentureship in both Fiji and Guyana. One of the differences that Dr. Misir focused on between the Fijian Indians and the Guyanese Indians was that when they disembarked in both locations, both Fijian Indians and the Guyana Indians arrived with immigration passes; nonetheless, the Fijian Government maintained a good archival system of these passes, but this was not the case with Guyana.
The Indians who arrived in Guyana brought their passes with them. However, there was poor archiving, he said.
The problem of archival recording of these passes in Guyana commenced in the colonial era, he noted, and the pass was the only document that contains comprehensive data on the demographic character of the indentured labourers.
According to Misir, the pass contained the migrant’s depot number, sex, name, caste, father’s name, age, district of origin and registration, besides the certification of the authorities in India about mental and physical fitness for manual labour.
Dr. Misir added that the document also enabled the historians to trace the roots of the Fijian Indians as well as see what became of them after the indentureship system was abolished.
Another interesting fact about Fiji, Dr. Misir noted, was that following the end of indentureship, Fijian Indians did not stay on the sugar plantations; rather they settled in other far flung parts of Fiji where they leased and rented lands from the colonial plantation owners and the indigenous Fijians, where they subsequently became rural farmers and acquired peasantry status; later, the colonials provided 10-acre plots of lands to Indians.
This is totally dissimilar to the Guyana situation where the Indians remained on the plantations after 1916 to till the land, becoming proletariats on the plantation, but those who did leave the sugar plantations cultivated rice on a large scale and enhanced their economic status.
Dr Misir noted that another significant detail about the Fijian indentured labourers was the large part that the indentured women played, especially those in Fiji, in the movement to abolish the indenture system, though this was unwitting.
Indentured women were subjected to abuse and molestation on the plantations; and the campaigns in India to stop the degradation of Indian women in the colonies ‘received wider public support than any other movement in Indian history.
Examining the caste system that was inherent in the Indian culture all over the world, Professor Misir stated that the Fiji Indians, unlike that of the Guyana Indians, placed a lot of emphasis on the caste system.
However, in the post-indentureship period in Fiji, the caste system began to wane in significance.
Culturally, another glaring and startling difference is noted among the two groups of Indians.
Dr. Misir pointed out that due to the geographical distance between Fiji and India, the Indians in Fiji were more able to sustain the language and culture of their mother country than that of indentured Indians in Guyana and other parts of the Indian indentured world, which were further away from India.
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