Indian Researcher completes the tale of Indentured Labour

Jun 20, 2011 News

– donates collection to UG library

Researchers into the early days of the indentured labour system have long used texts written by local and regional authors but last Monday that field of inquiry received a donation of resources that could bring them full circle.
Indian historian and entrepreneur Leela Sarup gave a brief lecture on the Indian Indentureship System that encapsulated the almost 18 years of research that she has done into the system from the archives and libraries of India and Mauritius where she grew up. What started nearly two decades ago as a yearning to understand why her great grandparents would have migrated from their native India to live in Mauritius turned into a project that today consists of 14 volumes of transcribed archival material on the Indentured Labourer Trade. And the dynamic little woman is not finished yet either, she estimates that the entire collection will eventually come to some twenty eight or thirty volumes.

Mrs Leela Sarup (center) and her collected works which were received by Dept Librarian UG, Mrs Gloria Cummings (far left)

The collection stands in three distinct sets: The Acts (1837- 1932), Proceedings (1825-1913) and Annual Reports from the Port of Calcutta (1842-1932).
The Acts look at the Colonial Emigration Acts in detail. It tracks the legislation that shaped the lives of hundreds of thousands of Indians from 1837 to 1932. Proceedings is a ten volume set that lets the reader relive some of the history of the era as it chronicles the conditions and lives of the labourers once they were recruited into becoming labourers. According to Sarup, “there were instances of kidnappings, coercion, even instances of men being sent overboard as they were far too sick to travel, a rollback to the days of the slave ships from Africa. And Annual Reports from the Port of Calcutta will let the reader/researcher see the dynamic events which unfolded at the Port of Calcutta between Government and Labourers, where the laws were “upheld” and the effects that these laws had on the movement of the Indians as well as their lives.
Mrs. Sarup brought with her on this trip all of her collected works up to this point and presented the entire set of materials to the University of Guyana Library. Receiving on behalf of the Library was the Deputy Librarian at UG, Mrs. Gloria Cummings who thanked Mrs Sarup heartily for her kindness telling her that her donation has now brought research into the era and the history of indentured labour full circle because for the first time researchers would be able to see the trade from both ends – what went on here in the colony and what went on at the originating end, and it is no secret that the records in India are much more extensive and detailed than those kept here in the former colonies.
Mrs. Sarup herself is truly a renaissance woman having been involved in a number of fields over her remarkably busy life. She manages a pest control firm and has written a book called A Comprehensive Guide to Pest Control. Mrs. Sarup has also worked extensively in the rabbit breeding industry and has helped her Government set up almost eighty rabbit farms with software controlled breeding programmes to maximise yields. She has studied beauty therapy and designed her own line of botanical based cosmetics called Herbelle which she markets overseas. Not content with doing all of this and being a historian she also manages to find the time to design jewellery as well.