There is no lack of the once suppressed historical facts that are now being unveiled by researchers in the history of Indentured labour, or what we term as forced migration, or indeed human trafficking under British rule, from Bharat. The propagandist colonial history that people willingly migrated from Bharat, because of poverty and caste oppression, has now collapsed due to the concerted efforts of contemporary researchers, who look beyond the colonial spectacles, to unmask the concealed realities of colonial oppression and deceit.
The British atrocities and brutalities like blasting freedom fighters literally tied onto cannons; the en masse hangings on trees; the burning of villages; and the loot and imprisonment are known facts of what the British termed as ‘punishment’ and ‘teaching a lesson’ to those who rebelled against the British King. Britain adopted a heavy hand against freedom fighters and imposed amongst the death penalty and deportation, debilitating taxes as punishment on entire regions of northern Bharat for daring to gain Bharat’s independence. These freedom fighters and those facing the ire of British wrath, were therefore pushed into this colonial-era human trafficking via the deportation of freedom fighters thousands of miles away, chained aboard ships sometimes along with their families, which also served to replace the slave labour in the plantation colonies: an inhumane punishment cleverly concealed by colonial historians.
In spite of the records on forced deportations of these freedom fighters and the ship records clearly mentioning the ‘castes’ of those who were forced on the ships to avoid the British jails and ruthless persecution in Bharat, the colonial mindset insisted that it was the ‘low castes’ and the poor who left Bharat in search of a better life. But did these colonial apologists reveal why Bharatiyas would need to seek a ‘better life’? Did they reveal the direct role of Britain in not actually enabling willing Bharatiyas to flee, but rather by forcing them to do so? Furthermore, was this so-called life in the estates better or different from that of the earlier slaves in plantation colonies? Was slavery the life that Bharatiyas would leave their loved ones for? The working conditions, restrictions and whip were the same towards the Bharatiys. For the colonial ruler Britain, the desire to crush Bharatiyas, remained the same, whether in Bharat or overseas.
After the abolition of slavery, the British plantations were dying resulting in heavy economic loses to the planters who were mainly British aristocrats and wealthy merchants. They saw an opportunity to entrap labour for the colonies from Bharat who were in British eyes ‘rebels’ for waging war against the British King. On one hand were the Bharatiya Freedom Fighters sacrificing their lives for freedom and on the other hand, were these planters conspiring with the British authorities to convert Bharatiyas of all ‘castes’ into labourers to fill the vacuum of slave loss.
British records themselves reveal that planters in Trinidad alone had asked for 70,000 out of the vast unknown numbers of the Bharatiya freedom fighter soldiers from the War of Bharatiya Independence of 1857. This was British ‘justice’ for their offence of treason and waging war as they had committed the crime for daring to free their own motherland.
Cunningly, the words used were migrant and emigration. The Geoghegan Report on Colonial Emigration mentions that between 1858 to 1862, the number of migrants to Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad, Grenada, St. Lucia and Jamaica was 157,719. This report further mentions that many out of the 90,000 who had ‘migrated’ to Mauritius were sepoys/sipahis (soldiers). However, this brutal reality of human trafficking has not only been concealed in history books but was distorted that Bharatiyas had willingly migrated to avoid poverty and caste oppression. Even today, the colonial apologists carry forward this distortion under the garb of Migration Studies or Mobility Studies.
This loot of labour was concealed the same way when Queen Victoria had a share in the looted treasure that the British had amassed describing it as “war booty” during 1857-58. With such a jaundiced eye towards Bharatiyas from the monarchy itself, is it plausible that the same Britain devised Indentureship as a salvation for Bharatiyas? But historical realities and facts in spite of distortions and concealments, can never be erased. These “indentured labourers” carried with them not only their religion, customs and traditions but also the memories of their struggle against the British. Undoubtedly, these were not discussed overtly in the plantation colonies but there are several fascinating anthropological facts from southern Trinidad which bear testimony to these archival details.
Consider their township name of Penal. The word itself is related to, or used for, “…prescribing the punishment of offenders under the legal system”. Among the first such penal settlements for the Bharatiya freedom fighters of 1857, was the Andaman Penal settlement in the Bay of Bengal. However, there is no doubt that Penal town in Trinidad today, derives its name from where Bharatiya Freedom Fighters were transported and kept under surveillance. Penal incarceration was well practiced by the British, who meted it out even to their own subjects, by transporting convicts including women and children, to far-off Australia. Unquestionably, the Bharatiya freedom fighters were considered both convicts and rebels, for many of them were convicted for deportation either just after arrest, or in some cases, after a semblance of court trial for treason.
Presence of Bharatiya soldiers in Trinidad
There is another compelling piece of evidence regarding the presence of Bharatiya soldiers in Trinidad. The name throughout most of northern Bharat for soldier or warrior, is sepoy or sipahi. This also explains why the Bharatiya community in Trinidad have long worshipped, ‘Siparia Maa’ also known as ‘Sipahiya Maa’ or ‘Sipahi Mai’: the Mother of sepoys/sipahis ie Mother Kali. She is known in Hinduism to be the Deity of War, particularly for soldiers, or sipahis. It is no coincidence therefore, that the place where Her form is worshipped, is in a town called Siparia, which is adjacent to Penal. She is dark in complexion, as are all forms of Mother Kali. It must be noted here that in every native, ie Bharatiya regiment of the East India Company, there used to be a temple wherein the soldiers not only worshiped Kali Maa, but which were also centers for planning the independence battles against the British. This tradition of Her worship was so revered among soldiers and fighters that almost a century later, it was still continuing, with a later generation of Bharatiya revolutionaries, including Subhas Chandra Bose, sought the blessings of Kali Mata, at Sri Ramakrishna’s temple to the Divine Mother at Dakshineshwar in Calcutta.
This practice had begun long before, as almost 90 years earlier, in 1770, Sadhus and Fakirs had fought against oppressive British rule for almost 30 years when 100 Sadhus had been shot in Bengal and Vande Mataram became the war cry for liberation in this ‘Sanyasi Rebellion’. Sadhus continued to play a major role not only in 1770, but in 1857, and tirelessly until the British were forced to leave Bharat in 1947.
Returning to the ‘open secret’ of the relation between place names in Trinidad and Bharatiya ancestral history, there are other striking examples. It was at Barrackpore in Bengal, a major British army cantonment, that Mangal Pandey fired the first shot against the British in 1857, and Fyzabad in Uttar Pradesh, (the ancestral state of a majority of West Indian PIOs), were the epicenters for this war for independence, for a year. Based on the memories of these battles, towns in Trinidad were likewise named: Barrackpore, Fyzabad, Calcutta Settlement, Delhi Settlement, Hindustan, Matura (Mathura), Patna Village or the street name Meerut: all centers of the battles fought against the British by the freedom fighters in Bharat.
Preserving identity
At the Moose Bhagat Temple (built in 1903 and consecrated in 1904), also known as the Kutiya, in Tableland, again in south Trinidad, one can easily see several paintings, including one of a soldier with a sword and shield in His hands and the other of Lord Ganesh with a Trishul (trident) and a Pharsa (Axe) in His hands. These paintings undoubtedly came from the memories of their Bharatiya ancestors who were from among the soldiers who had fought the British in Bharat, for it is unusual for a Ganesh temple to portray Him primarily as a warrior. What British historians, Marina Carter and Crispin Bates describe as a policy of “wholesale transportation of every mutineer” along with their families, we would describe as the British psyche based on the desire for profit and punishment. “If the families protested…,” it was suggested by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Hendry, “to…hang their dead bodies, headless, in chains, and plant the head in a conspicuous quarter, near the habitations of the living – the fashion will soon cease… Chains and fetters may be necessary in some of the islands… the hair should be cut in a particular fashion and the dress, of such a pattern, as to distinguish those under transportation from the free natives”. According to Philip Wodehouse, a British Colonial Administrator, these soldiers were “…liable to the heaviest punishment…if not for murder and robbery, at any rate for mutiny and desertion”.
Undoubtedly, many among those freedom fighters whom the British could not get hold of, went disguised as workers to the colonies to evade torture, imprisonment or the noose. Many were also those who had been imprisoned by the British for treason earlier, for daring to oppose British rule, and now had been liberated when compatriot freedom fighters broke open the jails: particularly in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar (the ancestral states for the majority of Indo-Trinidadians). The British could hardly catch them again, and it is acknowledged in the British records that many went to the sugar colonies.
