Africa-Press – Mauritius. By Harry Booluck
Mass migration of Indians overseas is directly linked to the emancipation of slavery in 1834 in the British sugar producing colonies, mostly in Mauritius and the Caribbean colonies of Trinidad, Guyana, Jamaica and the islands of Barbados, St Kitts, Nevis.
. and, after 1876, in Fiji when it became Crown Colony. Emancipation wreaked havoc in the plantations and planters appealed to Britain to halt the ruin of colonial economies.
The British government decided to seek indentured labour (on contract) from the United Provinces and Bihar that had an abundant supply with the right profile.
Mauritius was the first country to try what later came to be known as the ‘Great Experiment’ as from 1834. The success of the ‘Great Experiment’ in Mauritius led to its adoption by other colonial powers from the 1840s.
Over the decades hundreds of thousands left India in search of greener pastures. Many returned home at the expiry of their contract for various reasons, but many more remained and settled down in the colonies.
Elsewhere, Indians were recruited for other types of manual work, as in South Africa, or skilled workers in the construction of railroads as in East Africa.
A total of over two million left India by the time indentureship came to an end in 1917 in the Caribbean and in 1925 in Mauritius following the Kunwar Maharaj Singh report.
After almost a century after the end of indentureship, what is the fate of the descendents of those Indians who ventured to leave their motherland for the unknown destinations they were lured to? The picture isn’t that rosy everywhere: in some independent former colonies they are safe and secure and progressing but elsewhere they have been harassed, aggressed and chased out.
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