By Bharat Mathoo

It was already dark when our plane touched down at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Airport in October last year. Outside, the sight of huge parking lots densely packed with yellow and black Ambassador taxicabs and crowds would make Toronto's Pearson Airport March-break crowds appear thinly scattered in comparison!
The drive to our inner-city hotel was a crawl with horns blaring as nearly every bit of the roadways lined with brightly-lit huge business establishments was being used up. On the sidewalks could be seen hordes of people busily going about their businesses nonchalantly, among them beggars, some grotesquely deformed. This sight in India's third largest metropolis, Kolkata, overwhelmed a fellow visitor of our touring party that he remarked to me: "Boy, I'm glad my forefathers left this place; I'd take Guyana over this".
The remark mentioned above resonated strongly in me ever since, for it was from the docks at 24 Garden Reach in Kolkata - the same docks I visited very shortly afterwards - beside the Hooghly River in 1867 and 1869 that my Bihar-born great grandfather and great grandmother respectively were hoarded before leaving their native land to cross the kala pani for British Guiana, a land and whose distance from India were both unknown to them.
This visit to India was my second three-week one within a couple of years and both were arranged through the International Foundation for Vedic Science (IFVS) which currently is undertaking a search for my ancestral relatives in Bihar. On both visits, I was accompanied mainly by descendants of indentured labourers from Guyana and Fiji who now reside in Canada. Through the efforts of the IFVS some have been re-united with their ancestral families.
With more spare time following retirement, the sentient nature of my being continually impelled me to dwell on my roots which inextricably tied me to Bharat Mata (India) - from the ancient, highly urbanized and sophisticated Indus civilization to the modern state. With its exquisite cuisines, the charms of Bollywood, its key historical and religious sites, its major works on Philosophy, and its emergence as a power on the world's stage, India has become for me a source of pride, comfort, security and reassurance even as it continues to transform itself.
How did my forefathers fit into the India of their time? What possible causes would have made them leave their homeland? The answers to these questions are not easy but certain inferences could be drawn from the context of the indenture period (1838-1917). The indenture system was the creation of the British whose influence grew in the subcontinent from around 1765 to the time of partition in 1947. Unlike previous invaders of India, the British did not go to settle there but rather to trade. As their trade increased so did their hold on the land which eventually became a private dominion of the British East India Company. Later on, by 1857 the British gained complete control of the subcontinent.
While British influence was spreading in British India in the first half of the nineteenth century, the British sugar planters in faraway British Guiana were being faced with the repercussions of the emancipation of the African slaves who were leaving the plantations. After experiencing failure with replacement labourers, the British plantocracy in British Guiana decided to turn to India for labourers.
The savagery of the recruitment methods employed by the British for Indian labourers destined for British Guiana is encapsulated in statements made by the recruiters who acted on behalf of the Gladstone's estates in the then British Guiana (John Gladstone, who owned the estates, was the father of William Gladstone who became the British Prime Minister twice, first from 1868 to1874 and later from 1880 to1885). These recruiters assured their employers that the Indians being recruited "have no religion, no education, and in their present state, no wants beyond eating, drinking and sleeping". In this way, it was easy for the recruiters to have the prospective labourers, ignorant country people easy to proselytise and to sign contracts that they did not understand. In addition, a British subcollector of the time reported the existence of a highly organized system of kidnapping at Negapatam , a recruiting station in South India.
Peter Ruhomon, a British Guianese-born intellectual gave a description of what the reception given to the first batch of Indians upon their arrival in British Guiana in 1838 might have been like: "No canon from Fort William Frederick boomed forth the great event; no strains from the city band greeted the landing of the newcomers; there were no outward demonstrations of joy as of a friend greeting a friend. Their coming was marked by a mute reception save perhaps by the rude jibes and taunts of Africa's liberated sons, drawn thither by idle curiosity to look with pitying if not wandering eyes, on those whom they could regard in no other light as the unfortunate victims of a new slavery".
Even though Governor Henry Light (1846) in British Guiana extolled the old Indian habits of industry, such industry in itself was not sufficient a buffer against Indian self-immolation brought about by the intolerable conditions that they were confronted with in the colony. Among the major difficulties the Indians faced were an intolerable sex-ratio, inhuman living and working conditions, and draconian laws promulgated by the authorities that favoured the planters.
In regard to the sex ratio, Gladstone was prepared to accept in 1838 one woman for every nine or ten men. Later, as the difficulty of procuring more women in India for the colony increased, he intimated that one woman for every twenty five men was good enough. This matter led to serious social problems, even murder at times. When British overseers intervened to allot a certain number of men to a woman in the hope of appeasing the Indians that course of action was seen as legal prostitution.
The general frustration experienced by the Indians drove many to alcoholism and worse others to suicide. Some of the Chinese who earlier failed at plantation work established rum shops to 'soothe' the Indian pain in the predominant Indian areas. Any slight infraction by the labourers was met with tremendous punishment, for example, the missing of a day's work in a week was met with a penalty of two to four days in jail while kept in chains. Protests by the Indians against the prevailing conditions took the form of riots, strikes, desertion and, sometimes even murder.
By the early part of the twentieth century the indenture system was beginning to feel a great deal of strain and was terminated in 1917. Indians who chose not to return to India became permanent settlers and like my forefathers began to purchase land to put to agricultural use. This practice created difficulties for the sugar planters to meet the labour demand for their estates. To address this need, the planters who recognized the Indian penchant for learning began to build schools and churches near the estates to woo the Indian children there, and in doing so, they not only succeeded in holding their parents close to the estates to provide the needed labour but also were able to proselytize many. Christian missionaries from Canada were brought to staff the schools and the churches – globalization is not a new concept! As a beneficiary myself of a Canadian Presbyterian Mission School education in Berbice, Guyana, I was invited to attend the centenary celebrations of the Canadian Presbyterian Mission in Guyana at the St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Toronto in 1986.
Many of us who succeeded in the colony, whether through the church or in other ways had our lives drastically changed during the dictatorship in Guyana between 1964 and 1992 to the point that forced us to uproot ourselves and migrate to western countries like Canada – a move that could be seen as a second migration. Some of us in that group like myself here in Canada find ourselves travelling with our children and even our grandchildren. I am still eagerly awaiting comments from our progeny, born in Canada, of their impressions when they visit Guyana over their parents'/grandparents' decision to leave that country.
South Asian History Month provides us a time to reflect on the past with all the events and people who shaped the course of our destinies. Not the least of these are our forefathers who made that daring journey across the kala pani many years ago. I admit now for the first time since I heard it - my concurrence with the sentiment: "Boy, I'm glad my forefathers left this place; I'd take Guyana over this". I would only add: thanks Canada! Where do you stand?