2020 has been dedicated to the commemoration of 100 years since the termination of the system of indentureship in the Caribbean. It is very well known, for example, that the Whitby, the first ship bringing Indian immigrants to British Guiana set sail from Port Calcutta on January 13, 1838 and docked in Berbice on May 5, of the same year. The second vessel was the Hesperus, which made the identical journey and arrived on the same day, bringing the first cohort of workers under the Gladstone experiment.
Since then 238,909 Indians “were transported in 245 ships which made 534 voyages across the Kaala Paani to British Guiana between 1838 and 1917,” according to Evan Persaud in “Coolie Ships”, published in 2009. The corresponding figures for the rest of the Caribbean were Trinidad – 143,939, Jamaica – 38,412, Surinam – 34,304, with much smaller numbers for the other West Indian islands, according to Verene Shepherd.
The last ship to bring Indian indentured immigrants to Trinidad and British Guiana was the SS Ganges, which landed 437 people in Guyana on April 18, 1917. “The ship had left India just four days before the Abolition Act was signed in the Indian Parliament on March 12, 1917,” according to Ryhaan Shah.
But the indentureship system also brought coolies (a Hindi word for hired labourers, used to describe all these workers) from China, Portugal, Ireland, Syria, Lebanon, and the continent of Africa. This is somewhat generally less known, as is the fact that the real end of indentureship was in 1920. After 1917, when the actual voyages by ship ceased, the workers were still serving out their contracts. There was mounting pressure to bring an end to this, and it was decided that all unfinished contracts would be terminated on January 1, 1920.
This important part of Caribbean history has been the source of a great deal of art and scholarship, including Gaiutra Bahadur’s narrative Coolie Woman and a public colloquium held by the Department of Language and Cultural Studies at the University of Guyana (UG) in 2017. This included the work of such scholars as Mark Tumbridge, whose research on indentureship covers both the Indians and the Chinese. Where the Chinese are concerned it was the COVID-19 pandemic that caused the cancellation of another symposium to mark the end of indenture by the Confucius Institute at UG.
However, among the latest and the grandest projects with connections to the Caribbean, Guyana, the United Kingdom and India, is the recent formation of the Ameena Gafoor Institute for the Study of Indentureship and its Legacies. This interesting new institution, a charity registered in England and Wales, was set up with funds provided by the Gafoor family in Guyana for research and scholarship around the subject of indentureship.
It is named for Ameena Gafoor who has been active in Guyanese culture and literature for many years and has already made considerable contributions in that field. Most recently, she published The Aftermath of Empire: The Novels of Roy AK Heath (2017) a comprehensive study of one of Guyana’s foremost novelists. Her work in literature also includes service as a member of the Jury for the Guyana Prize for Literature, and as the founder, publisher and editor of the literary organ The Arts Journal. This publication has covered a range of topics in Guyanese literature, the arts and culture with international scholars as contributors and guest editors. Importantly, as well, she was the founder of ‘The Arts Forum’, which curated a number of exhibitions, collections of works of art in the fine arts as well as literature, with a focus on the East Indian ethos in Guyanese arts and letters.
An institute bearing her name is yet another extension of all that work and inspiration. A number of Guyanese artists, such as Bernadette Persaud and Philbert Gajadhar, have been featured in the Arts Forum and a number of historians have been published in The Arts Journal. History has been as much a part of Gafoor’s projects and the manner in which she has facilitated research. The Ameena Gafoor Institute will most definitely expand upon this internationally, particularly since the Gafoor family has provided funding to facilitate further research into indentureship and its legacies.
The institute is directed by David Dabydeen, Professor Emeritus at the University of Warwick, and Professor on special assignment in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor at Warwick. He has also been Director of the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean studies and Guyana’s Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, as well as Guyana’s Representative at UNESCO. Dabydeen is a prize-winning poet and novelist with many international awards as well as the author of a number of works in literary criticism and scholarly publications. He has also produced documentary films and appeared on several broadcasts for the BBC. His considerable expertise on slavery and indentureship, allied to his post-colonial slant are assets to his directorship of the Gafoor Institute.
Also on its governing body are Yvette Hoskings-James, a UK-based lawyer who has worked with multinational and public sector organisations; Dr Roger van Zwanenberg, a former academic historian, lecturer and book publisher; Indeera Payne, a former lecturer at Lambeth College; Tumbridge, who lectures in the Department of Language and Cultural Studies at the UG; and Ian Marshall, a chartered accountant.
The institute will no doubt attract the attention of scholars in the UK and elsewhere. Maria del Pilar Kalideen, Associate Fellow of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, in her ‘Hidden Histories: Indenture to Windrush’, published on October 4, 2018, said:
“2017–20 marks 100 years since the abolition of indenture in the British Empire. With funding from the Gafoor family of Guyana, the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick recently initiated the annual Gafoor Lecture in Indentureship Studies. It is hoped that this annual lecture, as well as the events inspired by it, will go some way to advancing knowledge in the United Kingdom about the hidden history of indenture and the presence of the Indian-Caribbean community in the UK. I was pleased to hear recently that the government has pledged funding for the annual observance of ‘Windrush Day’ on 22 June. It is important that the stories of those who were part of the Caribbean’s indentured labour diaspora are also included as part of this remarkable migration history.”
Kalideen is a Joint Editor of the anthology We Mark Your Memory: writing from the descendants of indenture (2018), which places her in a good position to appreciate the work and the potential of the Gafoor Institute.
Dabydeen made reference to the scope and breadth of the interests of the institute, including its attention to the other nationalities and ethnic groups who arrived in the Caribbean under indentureship. Of note, according to Dabydeen, is the extent of African indentureship, not very well known in Guyana. African indentured servants worked on the estates. Most of them were so-called liberated Africans who were rescued from slaving ships operating illegally after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807. The authorities intercepted them and placed them in colonies in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Many were recruited from there to work in the Caribbean.
Between 1840 and 1860, 52,000 Africans were brought to plantations in the French West Indies and the Caribbean. Of these, 13,000 came to British Guiana.
According to historian Cecilia McAlmont, “Monica Schuler in Alas, Alas Kongo: A Social History of African Immigration Into Jamaica 1841-1865 stated: ‘Having officially forsworn slavery in 1834 and 1848 respectively, Britain and France cleverly exploited their own anti- slave trade efforts by ‘liberating’ Africans from the slave trade and requiring them to migrate to the plantation colonies as indentured labourers.’ Additionally, Colonial Secretary, Lord Stanley felt that the Africans liberated from slave ships would be ‘improved’ by a temporary sojourn on the West Indian plantations.”
Dabydeen expanded on this: “… on African indentureship which is almost completely unknown and which the Ameena Gafoor Institute hopes to pioneer in terms of research and publications. The same with the Chinese and the Portuguese… the institute will foreground research on these relatively neglected areas of indentureship studies.”
Dabydeen continued on the projected work of the establishment: “As Director of the Ameena Gafoor Institute for the Study of Indentureship and its Legacies, I want to make sure that our work is comprehensive. Hence our website (which is being added to on a regular basis) carries articles on African, Indian, Portuguese, Chinese and Irish workers. There will be new articles on American Indians and other hitherto overlooked indentured labourers. The website’s Bibliography is the most comprehensive in existence, covering all ‘races’ and ethnicities. It, too, is being augmented on a regular basis. The website welcomes people to write in with suggestions and additions. It was created four months ago, so there is a long way to go.
“Apart from the website, the Ameena Gafoor Institute will hold an annual International Conference on Indentureship and its Legacies, as well as publish a Journal of Indentureship and its Legacies (two issues a year, starting in May 2021). As soon as the UK National Archives are reopened, post-COVID-19, the Ameena Gafoor Institute will offer funding for young scholars to conduct research, since the overwhelming amount of materials relating to indentureship reside in such UK institutions.”
As it happens, October is a fitting time to celebrate the new institute. The month of October marks Mahatma Gandhi birthday celebrations in India. He was born on October 2, which is a national holiday in India – a day on which all bars are closed. It was declared by the UN as a Day of Non-Violence and led off a whole month of activities.
There were many factors that led to the dissolution of indentureship. There was no abolitionist movement, as with slavery in England; there was resistance among the estate workers; there were the effects of World War I; and there was Gandhi, who was one of the key protagonists in the termination of the system.
This connection deepens because Uma Dupelia-Mesthrie, who is Gandhi’s great-granddaughter is an Honorary Patron of the Gafoor Institute. She is a historian in the Arts Faculty at the University of Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa, where she was born. She is known to be associated with studies relating to liberation and brings that relevant element to the institute. In this way she is a part of the spirit of liberation associated with the indentureship studies. This also aligns with Pat Rodney, wife of Walter Rodney, being another Honorary Patron. Apart from being Rodney’s widow, she is also a strong post-colonialist associated with struggle.
It is fitting therefore to salute the rise of the Ameena Gafoor Institute of the Study of Indentureship and its Legacies. With its annual lecture, conferences and funding for research, it is poised to become another major catalyst to Caribbean studies and will widen the scope of investigations into indentureship. This is even more useful because it is covering the less known areas of this vital history. The Institute’s web site is https://ameenagafoorinstitute.org/. And its e-mail address is info@ameenagafoorinstitute.org.
