14
NATIONAL HISTORY DAY 2016
From Calcutta to the Canefields
of the Caribbean
How Exploration, Encounter, and Exchange Shaped
the Indo-Caribbean Experience
O
Murali Balaji, Director of Education and Cirriculum Reform, Hindu American Foundation
ne of the most underdeveloped areas of study in world history is the legacy of the journey of Indian laborers during
the British colonial era to far-off parts of the empire. The migration, which began shortly after the colonies ended the
enslavement of Africans, ensured cheap labor for the British Empire. From 1838 to 1917, more than one million Indians were
taken as laborers by the British to work for colonial plantations, of whom about half arrived in the Caribbean.1 But the story
is more than just migration. It is a complex, sometimes painful, and often nuanced
story of acclimation in a new world—one that many Indians would call home by the
late nineteenth century. It is a story about the encounters, exploration of new lands,
and exchange of cultures that shaped (and continues to shape) the unique history of
the West Indies. National History Day participants interested in a largely untold and
overlooked part of world history will find a plethora of resources to help guide them
in researching the Indian Diaspora.
World history educators often express surprise that the Diaspora in countries such as
Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname, Mauritius, South Africa, Fiji, and Malaysia is prominent
and well entrenched, or that the importation of Hinduism to regions such as the
“Today we are fairly strong.
We have fought a great
battle to prevent our
absorption....The time
is ripe to spread Indian
West Indies actually allowed Hindus to define the religion on their own terms. The
literature. We must know
understandings about identity and the development of a hybrid culture that influences
and our tradition.”
interactions between colonial administrators and Indians also shaped new ideas on
governance, cultural exchange, and in many ways the rules of conduct among various
colonial populations. The story of Indians in the Caribbean also has created new
the world today.
W
more of our culture, of our
religion, of our customs,
—Balgobin Ramdeen, 1949
From Calcutta’s Shores: The Origins of the Indian Migration
hen Europe’s major colonial powers announced the end of sending enslaved Africans to their colonies in Latin America,
the British and the Dutch sought to fill what they believed would be a void in cheap labor. The abolition of slavery
by the British in 1834 did not end the practice in some British colonies, where African slaves were bound into indentured
servitude. But by the start of the 1830s, the British control over the Indian subcontinent brought with it a ready supply of
labor—and for thousands of Indians, the movement from their ancestral homes to shores that stretched from one end of the
empire to the other. By the end of that decade, Indians (and people from modern-day Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan) began
leaving the subcontinent to work in British colonies.
“Forced Labour,” Black Presence: Asian and Black History in Britain, 1500-1850, The National Archives of the United Kingdom, accessed January 13, 2015, www.nationalarchives.gov.
uk/pathways/blackhistory/india/forced.htm.
1