Coolies: How Britain Re-Invented Slavery

[Music] in the early 19th century Britain was the most powerful Nation on Earth her Colony stretched from the Caribbean to the South

Pacific this was the largest Empire the world had ever seen But there is a lost chapter to that imperial history the story of of over a million people who were secretly

enslaved and transported to the farthest shores of the British Empire shipped under agreements that they could neither read nor understand

they didn't know where they were going and most of them never made it home yet what was one of the largest movements of people in the 19th century has now been

almost completely forgotten it is a story of greed Injustice and the abuse of power a story which implicates those at the very

highest level of successive British governments indenter immigration is one of the most remarkable episodes in modern history the systematic

Recruitment and migration of over 1 million people to all the corners of the globe Indians are one of the most dispersed

groups on this planet and have you ever stopped to think why Indians are found in these farf flung

places for hundreds of thousands of men women and children this was not just a voyage into the unknown it was a life sentence when you take the system of

coercion the system of the lack of Justice the meagerness of people's existence and the fact that they were just there to work to make money for the for the planter class then you can see

why indentor ship was called a new system of

[Music] slavery by the 1830s Britain's Empire was growing at a phenomenal

rate crops such as tea coffee cotton and sugar had become staple products for an increasingly prosperous population but the new and hungry Machinery required an endless supply of

raw material and the furnaces of progress were fueled by slave [Music] labor and while the empire was reaching

its peak it was also facing its greatest [Music] crisis liberals were demanding reform of the slave trade beginning the process that would lead to the abolition of

slavery principles of Justice humanity and sound policy it is in less than 5 years britan's plantation owners would lose their African slaves

forever the British liked to pre themselves on the morality of this decision that between 1833 1838 they end a system that they had in fact perfected and that had

the shipping of millions of Africans across the Atlantic for all kinds of complicated reasons the British turned their back on that in the 1830s mainly economic partly theological partly political but they turn their back on it

they decide they don't need it but that leaves them with a problem because the great economic system that they put in place on the back of slavery and that is sugar primarily sugar though other Commodities as well had to be produced

by someone Indians seem to fit the bill India might actually be a kind of replacement for Africa India and Indians might actually provide an answer to the labor void that had opened up in the old

slave colonies white Hall's answer came in 1836 publicly committed to spending Millions dismantling the slave trade the government secretly colluded in the

creation of a new system of slavery it was called indentured labor indentured labor is a man or woman putting the mark

on a document a legal document signing away their freedom to a particular employer for the duration specified by the indenture 5 7 10 years whatever you're no longer a free

man to trade in human lives so soon after the abolition of slavery required high level contacts but the man behind the plan was John Gladstone a former

member of Parliament and father of the future British prime minister he began by writing to one of his former colleagues in the slave trade you you will probably be aware that we are very

particularly situated with our negro apprentices in the West Indies and that it is a matter of doubt and uncertainty how far they may be induced to continue

their services on the plantations after their apprenticeship expires in 1840 in May 1836 Gladstone received the reply he

was hoping for Dear Mr Gladstone we thank you for your inquiry within the last 2 years upwards of 2,000 natives have been sent from this to the Marius the dangas are always spoken of as more

akin to the monkey than the man they have no religion no education and in their present State no wants Beyond eating drinking and sleeping and to procure which they're willing to

labor we're not aware that any greater difficulty would present itself in sending men to the West Indies the natives being perfectly ignorant of the place they agree to go to and the length of voyage they're

undertaking [Music] Gladstone was delighted and a deal was struck the first ships left the port of Kolkata in April

1838 carrying a human cargo of some 400 Indians they were called the Gladstone coolies after the Anglo Indian word for Manuel laborer these coolies would be

making the longest journey of their lives a voyage that would end on the sugar plantations of South America in Gladstone's day the remote colony of

British Guyana produced the best sugar in the world and the coastal plantations there had become a household name

[Music] demera my name is David dine even though the name means very little to me I know

very little by the name I teach literature at a university in Britain University of war and I've come to

Guyana to look for the origins of my great great grandfather who came from India in the 19th century one of hundreds of thousands of people who went overseas to

cut can in the plantations he's been totally lost in history and I just want to discover something about this bare back barefooted kly who stepped off the

planks stepped off the englishman's boat and ended up on these [Music] Shores I've been told that in our national archives there are various

lists of Indians in the plantation birth certificates Etc so I will just go through those as um diligently as I can to try to trace this man it'll be a

needl and a haast stack job I suspect I was looking for the first AB Who Came In 1855 and I don't know I don't know the

date you see so I was hoping to find the I know the name of the ship my mother told me it was the appoline if I look at

June 1855 would it be later than June 1855 you don't think this this would be it no our Reg would have the details but our ship records don't go back to 55

where are the records do they exist no um I don't think so my best bet is at the pr though in in London yes and then they're scattered um you know in various

offices as well so that even if the records did exist we wouldn't really necessarily know what location in Guyana or indeed in England they exist or

even in villages throughout India the British kept meticulous records as the Indians were recruited gathered into holding depos and

registered they would have been in all likelihood ordinary peasant Indians they would never ever ever have come across the sophistication of the

British Empire the bureaucratic sophistication of it until they went to the depot to be certified as fit and healthy immigrants and to be um to be

validated by the British as itial immigrants certified that we have examined and passed the above named woman as fit to immigrate that she is

free from all bodily and mental disease and that she's been vaccinated since engaging the immigrate there must have been a great

moment of drama when they were asked to sign this piece of paper and and having to press their thumb into the ink

and and and press it on this piece of paper their first contact with paper probably there must have been some kind of excitement perhaps despair but at least somebody's paying attention to

them to take their finger and press it on a piece of paper they would not have understood what pressing of pressing their thumbs in a piece of paper meant because um they wouldn't have known that

that was the equivalent of a signature this piece of paper is All That Remains of the life of this woman and she's one

there's hundreds in this book band Book hundreds men women children and this volume is one volume among 358 I believe

in this building alone so you get a sense of how many Indians came we know that about 239,000 people came from India to Guyana alone never mind to

Jamaica to Barbados to rest of the West Indies [Music]

for a long time the history of indenture was seen as a site of embarrassing history people

were reluctant to confront the truth of their past historian Bridge L is was also investigating his family's

past my grandfather was an iner laborer he came from the District of Bah he was in his early

20s and he told me that you know he was roaming around in the village and one day a man took him aside and said would you like to earn some money and my

grandfather a young man without employment said yes and he took him to a to a Depot and there my grandfather

encountered other men and some women we also recruited by the same arati recruiter and there he learned about

going overseas and you would become a wealthy man from this tiny

Depot in the village he and other people who had been recruited were taken to lakov and from there they're taken to a larger

Depot in a district called faizabad and from there he he went to um [Music]

Kolkata like all of these people he had no idea precisely where he was going uh it was a tapu an island but that was

about all that he knew so he said all right I I'll I'll go to this tapoo and and it's not too far away and I'll come

back after after 5 years or 10 years he didn't intend to leave his homeland for [Music]

good it was a traumatic experience to live in this confined spaces on the ships with people who spoke dialects they did not understand people from

different different casts religions social background and this terrible long Voyage

the traumatic 3mon journey across the dark Seas the kalapani traumatized the people many of whom had never seen water

[Music] before mortality aboard the kie ships was appalling during The Voyage of Juan

the soul set the Captain's Log recorded that over a third of the Indians died on Route March 26th A Little Orphan girl 4

years of age died in a state of great three coolies died a man a fine girl 18 who attended the little orphan

boy a little boy of 12 27 a fine little baby has died this mortality is Dreadful and without any means of being a great Reformation is required in the

system of koui immigration May 2nd one of the [Music]

twins by 1840 over 20,000 Indians had made the long ocean Crossing to South America after a voyage of 3 months and some 92,000 miles the Indians finally

landed in demera this is where they arrived they'll face this way and they're stepping ashore so all this would have been land it would have been

fairly um Wild Land wouldn't it forests and M SW but still the excitement of Landing but you know they would have stepped back to have one last look and when you look you see nothing the ocean

just stretches endlessly you can't see India whatever the hazard of the journey it must have been a moment of great

excitement um these simple peasants some of whom might have never seen um water before landing here landing on a new

continent curious Spectators would have gathered to see these KES the first Indian Kes from uh the subcontinent they

would have been numbered in batches and properly [Music]

regimented they were delous they were made presentable for the inspection of the Planters

upstairs they met labor officers and downstairs they met the immigration officers so they came they were cleaned

up they were given a bath they were registered they were contracted formally having survived the long ocean

Voyage their ordeal was only just [Music] beginning these Indians didn't know it but they would replace the African slaves that Britain had so recently

lost the vast majority would never see India again and would end their lives working in canefields on the other side of the world slavery had been renamed and

reinvented it's an extraordinary phenomenon that you're shipping people out of Kolkata and shipping them all the way to the Americas to produce a commodity sugar which the west and

anyone could do without perfectly well but which uh in fact people become completely addicted to it's this great driving force of sugar and sweet taste in the Western World which needs labor

of some kind slave labor indentured labor whatever to produce it White Hall 1840 and Gladstone's experiment in South

America began to be questioned as reports of appalling mortality on the plantations filtered back to London the transportation of Indians was

debated in Parliament forcing the foreign secretary Lord John Russell to make his doubts public I am not prepared to encounter

the responsibility of a measure which may lead to a dreadful loss of life on the one hand or on the other to a new system of

slavery but the influence of the Planters on Parliament was too strong Lord John Russell found himself outvoted and the floodgates were opened over the

next 80 years Indians would be transported to every corner of the Empire Planters had always had throughout the 18th century a powerful

political hold in Westminster the Caribbean was the became the great jewel in the British um Crown I mean this was the the great Center of British wealth I mean India too of course but in terms of

political power in London planas the plantocracy the West India Lobby that represented both Planters and West India merchants and shippers they could Bend

the ear of politicians and Statesmen it's in the Planter's interest to continue in denture because they need the labor think of this from the Planter's point of view they live in their own particular culture where they

need outside labor first of all Africans later indentured Indian labor they're trapped by this system as much as other people they can't imagine a world that will deny them a source of Labor cheap

malleable labor their whole economic Enterprise would collapse without it so the Planters need to continue in the 19th century in ventured LA but much as in the 18th century they couldn't have

ever have imagined life without the slaves India was now the Empire's main source of cheap Expendable labor and sugar production had spread to every corner of the

globe in 1874 the Fiji islands became a Crown Colony the Planters turned to India to supply the Manpower and soon ships loaded with Indians began the long

Voyage to the South [Music]

Pacific this is Fiji picturesque and prosperous contented and industrious Tropical Islands with a fascinating mixture of the old and the new an

outpost of Empire at the crossroads of the [Music] Pacific when people think of Fiji I suppose they think of a Tropical

Paradise but a paradise haunted by a terrible past this is where our history begins my grandfather came as an

indentured laborer to this place and this is where he served his indenture so for about three generations sugar has been in our

blood [Music] bridg L is visiting the family home in [Music]

Fiji this is my place this is the place of my childhood we didn't have structures like this we had touched houses and in fact

it was in a touched Hut right here uh that I Was Born This Is Where My Grandfather's Journey

[Music] ended I remember him telling me that the most difficult thing for him in the early early days

was getting used to living in congested lines and having as his companions people from different parts of

India different social background rounds different Customs different rituals and ceremonies and sometimes even speaking different

[Music] dialects the kouis lived in tin Shacks they were called lines and built in Long rows beside the

[Music] plantation a single room 10 ft by 12 ft housed three single men or one man and his entire [Music]

family diseases including cholera malaria and typhoid regularly wiped out hundreds of Indians at a time bridge is going to meet one of a

handful of [Music] survivors foree speech forch

fore speech the Indians move into the old cabins the old living places of the former slaves or they're provided with similar in a

similar location I mean one particular Plantation that I know in the middle of Jamaica to this day has on the edge of its sugar Fields an area called India and it's where they located the first uh

Indian indentured laborers conditions worldwide were as poor as they had been in the slave days in Guyana David dardine has managed to trace the very

last surviving witness I'm going to see somebody who I've been told was born into that condition of servitude was born into indentor an elderly lady I think she's

now in her '90s all right how are you yes you were born in

India B India and grew Guyana three hero old but your your father worked in cutting cane doing what working in can R the

trash [Music] Bank R the trash

[Music] we go to the yard go to the house to do

what place oh you could just go in go in as a child a child and what you see what you see way back at your house so you look at white man you peep and then you go

back home come back at your pleas what white man doing when you peep what was he doing n not

[Music] me as Indian men women and children toiled in the fields their colonial

Masters lived in the very height of luxury it is the closest to Paradise that you can get to be a planter I mean as a Hindu I hope I come

back as a 19th century planter you lived in terrific affluence you lived in a big white house sometimes on a level above the

Canfield so you can sit in your verander and sip your lemonade and be fanned by your servant and have your toenails cut at the same time by some Cy and you

could watch at your laborers working you know you could sleep with any woman you wanted to more or less yes um everything was done for you from the time you woke

up to the time you went to bed uh people looked after you people obeyed you people were afraid of you

your single word as a plantation owner um could deny life the men that had once cracked the whip

over the slave gangs heading for the slave Fields now do much the same over Indian indentured labor heading to do precisely the same work in the same fields at the same regime producing the

same commodities for the same [Music] markets this is an overseers house a Columbus house and it as you can see it

is situated on a hill and for a very good reason because the overseer would get a very good view of of the fields under his under his charge and here he

would the overseer would stand and Survey the field and get a good view of the work that was being done so he was in in a commanding position both

literally as well as metaphorically he would think for them he was a se he was wise in their behalf they just had to cut the cane and Obey him so that term overseer which is a

very paternalistic and patronizing term was still kept for the in the days of indentureship but worst of all was the term driver do you know how that term is pregnant with

Terror the memory of Terror because really what it meant in the days of slavery is that you were driven with a whip you were driven to work and many of

them viewed the the laborers not as human beings but as as but as as as units of work to be to be exploited we know that in the 19 century

Planters would shoot people beat them shoot them and nobody would arrest them you know so you're in a position of utter power and authority but the worst of all was the arrogance you would have

you know you you would know that you were Supreme of a supreme civilization you were high up the food

chain you at first and you at best and so therefore uh you were you were you were you were elevated in all ways above the cullies and your Authority and your

arrogance depending on their their um scrubbing and and and grubbing in in in the canefield man

time so you hide if you hear white man shooting there you you hide hide you hide so just get

the Indians were officially citizens of the Empire but even in cases of violent abuse the legal system was stacked against them in practice it was extremely

difficult for an indented laborer to succeed in a case against his or her employer partly because the cour houses were far away and the regulations

provided that you could not leave your plantations without the permission of the manager you could be punished you could be fined your

contracts extended but even when you went went to court evidence written evidence was

always on the side of the employer you get a sense of how terrible the situation was

was in 196 for example 62% of all babies

died made worse by the fact that the system blamed the mothers because overseer said the

government said that these Indian women lacked motherly instincts it was not the lack of

motherly instincts it was the Relentless pace of work on plantations the insanitary conditions where these people lived it was the system

itself that was responsible and six of them dead six of them dead big big one b b b

b b b and this D REM

bring the one Grand da God give me and so everybody de out and you left me left

me God you sent me this world mother father grow with very but goodness

for and you take for me and know me day turn to be me [Music]

back more than 150 years have passed since the export of the Indians began many of the records have been lost or destroyed and David's time is running

out his last chance to trace his great-grandfather is at the Old Post Office where a neglected pile of volumes lie exposed to the elements I believe that people don't

want to remember the past it's a past of Shame it's not something they want to preserve in a way that in England you would preserve castles and aruan

legends I just wish we could have a greater care for these ancient materials and have a greater sense of their value you know not just their commercial value obviously they have no commercial value

The KES used to have commercial value but their records the records of their presence are obviously worthless I just wish we had a little bit more care and consideration for the ancient documents I don't think it takes too much money to

actually put these things take take them away from the window and the breeze and the Cockroaches I just lock them up in a vault somewhere well it's a scrap it might be somebody was born somebody was died but

whatever it is they're lying on the floor it just tells you about the difficulty of keeping records in a tropical country this looks as if it's somebody

demarara there's no name 31st of March and 451 I mean look at all those scraps over there somebody's blown in my direction somebody called Trevor Michael

has just blown it in through the window so this is Trevor Michael shaped like India in fact under the system of indenture Indians had been transported to every

part of the Empire South America maius sonon Burma

Malaya and the South Pacific but the system was about to face its greatest challenge as a new part of the world began importing Indians by the

[Music] shipload Africa the Dark Continent years ago Fierce wars were waged and the prisoners that were taken

were used as slaves after the coming of the white men slavery was abolished and slave Trails were replaced by iron [Music]

rails the Indian coolies were no longer confined to the sugar plantations in South Africa the growing Railway Network required cheap manual

labor to continue blazing its Trail across the African plains the train crawling across the vast African Countryside looks like a tiny

insect by the dawn of the 20th century over 100,000 Indians were working for the British in Africa on the railways and in the cane fields and the

mines but the status of Indians within the empire was about to [Applause] change in 1893 a young Indian lawyer arrived in der

and set up his first legal practice over the next 20 years this young man would change drastically from a middleclass lawyer to an extraordinary

political leader his name was Gandhi Gandhi got to know about indentured laborers very soon after arriving here his first major contact

with an indentured worker was in 1894 the man was beaten by his employer and had his front two teeth smashed and

the man was in terrible distress and came into gandi legal officers this encounter would Mark a turning point in the young lawyer's

life Gandhi began his campaign against indentured labor by exposing the plight of the Indians at public meetings but he quickly realized that the future lay in

unifying the isolated Indian Community the result was the first Indian news newspaper in Africa Indian opinion begins to Chronicle the

conditions that indentured workers lived under and the poor housing conditions the poor food that they had the treatment by employers it it is a rich

chronical of grievances Gandhi's newspaper exposed the realities of indentured labor worldwide but the written word was not his only

weapon it was meant that this paper would reach British India it would reach authorities in England that it changeed to become a paper of mobilizing

people it begins to take a very important role in motivating people to go to jail so it becomes a paper which says jail is an honorable place to be

when the laws are unjust the method Gandhi pioneered to end indentured labor became known as passive resistance a sustain campaign of

nonviolent protest based on the principle of Civil Disobedience it was the first time this technique had ever been used and it would bring the young lawyer into direct

conflict with the British legal system Gandhi and many of his followers ended up serving jail sentences at the prison fort in

Johannesburg his first imprisonment occurs in January 198 and Gandhi realizes that in in order to seek change one needs to go into

prison to protest these laws and by one's imprisonment to make the grievance come to the attention of the authorities and to secure its

removal if you think of the people who are coming to jail majority of them were traitors and Hawkers and many of them were fairly respectable middle class

Traders come from you know comfortable uh lifestyle and to suffer humiliation in the prisons

was very difficult for a lot of them Johannesburg 1908 the struggle to end indentured labor was building into a national

crisis Indian Merchants laborers and their families willingly went to prison in an effort to bring the system down within months Gandhi and his

followers had filled the Jails of South Africa to capacity over the next 5 years Gandhi would be imprisoned on four separate occasions but going to jail was only the

beginning of Gandhi's revolutionary strategy even from his prison cell he used his newspaper to keep up pressure on the authorities I shall have have no opportunity of writing for Indian

opinion as I shall be serving a sentence of imprisonment the hardships of jail life are mostly imaginary keep absolutely firm to the end suffering is

our only remedy Victory is certain it would be another 5 years before Gandhi's campaign to end indentured labor would reach its climax

5 years of repeated beatings and imprisonments but did not persevere alone his wife and children including

uma's grandfather aged just 18 served prison sentences by his side so they said second cell one

[Applause] if you think of an 18-year-old boy who wants to go to London to study to be a lawyer who ends up sitting in

ch but I mean he did it willingly and he was happy to do it and he went again and over and over again yeah I think it's just a shock to see the solitary CS

the history of the Gandhi family's struggle in South Africa is well documented but in South America David dedine has yet to find a single reference to his indentured

great-grandfather from Kolkata starting with the Lord Hungerford 1845 and here you have the index and you're looking for the appal have the

appoline here because this paper's been around since 1845 you say when I turn the page in a minute I'm going to find this old man oh yes yes yes page 25 oh dear yes name he's not there is he

no what's this what's his name here this is the list of the Indians themselves in the ship yes but he's not there is

he think we got him yep I think we have him ship's from Kolkata aha he must be here W to the front see the index yeah app

appoline uhhuh yeah 50 look him look at him yeah we Trac them right God look at him

yes de coming when he came 14th of June 1855 so 14th of June yeah I tell you nobody in my family has

ever seen this you know Evan I'm grateful to you right his father's name

here p r r o w t y t y por that okay male male age 27 oh he was 27 when he came well he was 27 years yes

he was 27 yes uh and here he died um in 1912 his his um death uh certificate number

is four 79 of 1912 many time12 so what is that 479 1912 that's um the ID number so You' have to go the back and

look for 4 9 1912 and you'll find 49 youd find it the person is the date of his death you know cuz you always think you're going to find the old man you never really believe he

died because he's been such a memory such a kind of a a legend and a rumor in our mind you and until you see it says

dead in very heavy really sad heavy sad dark writing he cees to be a legend in the rumor in your mind CU he actually died in

[Music] 1912 I never expected this came as a shock to me I never expected that I would also see is

De so that this has been very shocking you know and the bluntness of it after all those years of cly work it just ends

dead 479 where did that number come from was he the 479 could he to die for that particular period probably

really well he chose an odd number there he is the year of the Titanic was the Titanic go down in

192 Titanic went down in 1912 so when the Titanic was going down in 1912 this little cly was also going [Music]

down while the Indian kolies continued to toil in the sugar plantations of South America and the West Indies it was events on the other side of the world that would finally turn the tide against

the whole system of indentured labor news of Gandhi's campaign in South Africa had reached London and the idea of an Indian Uprising became a very real

threat the Indian problem was the obsession of one man General smutz the prime minister of natal he demanded that his friends in Westminster rid Africa of

what he called the Asiatic cancer that they had introduced they began by enforcing an impossible tax on the Indians I think the intention of the Nel

government was to make the lives of the indentured workers hard um if they were not going to pay this tax then they would have to be perpetually indentured

if they were going to be free um they were never able to earn sub substantial amounts of money it was an impossible tax and it was meant to be an impossible

tax Gandhi didn't give up he continued to hold protest meetings and invited Indian political leaders to come to South Africa and see how badly the

Empire treated its Indian citizens in November 1913 Gandhi launched his biggest campaign to date he began by addressing

natal's coal miners persuading the indentured workers to come out in protest against the government soon over 15,000 indentured

workers from the nearby sugar Estates also joined the strike 20,000 people responded to Gandhi's call

these are the only surviving photographs of that protest in 1913 and show Gandhi himself at the moment of his arrest they also captured the birth of

Civil Disobedience many of the protesters were brutally beaten and imprisoned by British officers and Gandhi was sentenced to 9 months in

prison here was an Indian rising to prominence with a particular political message directed ultimately as we all know at India itself but

speaking to the condition of Indians worldwide and the condition worldwide was basically indentured labor and it's at that point and the kind of upheavals

which followed Gandhi's message that leads Imperial figures to speak out against indentured labor itself even from within the

establishment unlikely voices were moved to announce the indenture could not be allowed to continue one was Lord Harding the vicroy of

India Indians in South Africa have violated these laws with full knowledge of the penalties involved in all this they have the sympathies of India deep and burning and not only of India but of

those who like myself have feelings of Sympathy for the people of this [Music] country whiteall was

outraged increasingly frantic internal Communications warned that Gandhi's Kies were becoming Martyrs the cabinet discussed Harding's immediate recall but didn't want to

agitate an already delicate situation indentured immigration was suspended pending further investigation as Britain entered the first World

War [Music] who in 1914 could say that this system makes any sense in the world of the 20th

century it's it's as anti- deluvian as slavery had once become in a century earlier [Music] while Britain turned its attention to

other more pressing matters the man who had arrived in South Africa as a young middleclass lawyer Was preparing to leave a completely changed

man we were all coish I was an insignificant hly lawyer take Gandhi the lawyer in 196 in

a western suit and take Gandhi on the eve of his departure from South Africa dressed in very Indian traditional dress but very simple rustic

dress in his dress in 1914 when he's leaving he's signaling his identification with an indentured working class that this is the identity

that he wishes to be associated with this is a Gandhi who has managed to find a mass following and the nut shell of what is Gand gism is very much in shape

in 1914 and it's in India that he then begins to apply whatever he has learned in South Africa to a bigger project the

freedom of India the British scattered a million and a half Indian people to all corners of the globe with all kinds of consequences right down to the present

day if you consider many of the Great political upheavals of the last 30 years in the old British Empire the tensions in Fiji between fijians and Indian

peoples the extraordinary expulsion by I mean of Asians from Uganda the extraordinary demographic confusions of South Africa brought about by people

settled there by the British all of this a direct consequence of British Imperial and economic policy in the World At Large the Indian Kies may have become a

distant memory but their legacy refuses to go away freed from indenture they forged their own communities and abandoned colonies around the world

becoming lawyers doctors entrepreneurs in countries from the Caribbean to the South Pacific India formed the majority of the population and in some took political power but

they have now become victims of their own [Music] success what started as a peaceful prayer meeting in central serva turned into violence with the arrival of about

100 angry fijians armed soldiers and police stood by as the fijians went on the Rampage from the relative safety of the Suba Travel Lodge journalists watched as fijians beat

Indians in 1987 ethnic violence and rioting in Fiji led to a series of coups which ousted the Indian dominated government today 10 Rebel soldiers

stormed inside the Parliament building and marched them all off at gunpoint the Prime Minister Dr Timothy badra along with the Deputy Prime Minister one of 19

Indians dominating the government since last month's election in racially divided Fiji now more than a century after they were first transported around the Empire

the legacy of indent labor has come back to haunt the Indians of Fiji the new Fijian nationalist government is enforcing archaic British

laws dating back to the period of indenture laws which prohibit Indians from owning land as land leases come up they are not being renewed thousands are being

displaced and impoverished stranded in refugee camps with no country willing to accept them the cause of their plight the British

system of indentured labor has been quietly forgotten by the rest of the world if you look at all that and think of this as a kind of function of grand

British Imperial design all designed for British betterment for our wellbe but who so much knows about it now who so much thinks about it there is an

extraordinary uh discrepancy between what the British did and what they remember they did I

hope to ensure that the hardship that they have endured the

difficulties that they have encountered in their long and hard journey from India to the

plantations and from plantations to now is remembered by [Music] posterity okay boys and girls I will

read to you one poem which I learned in class three R and

Syria was the worst disaster in the history of Indian indentured immigration to Fiji 57 people

died at nasai in the image of wreck resonates with the experience of my people

today more than 120 years later they feel that their Shipwrecked in this

place Syria reminds me of history repeating itself I have devoted most of my adult life trying to understand the experience

of Indian people in Fiji it's very emotional because I'm not talking about a group of people in the abstract I'm talking about

people from whom I am descended I found it haunting the ghosts of the past haunting the

place reminding us of the sacrifices the difficulties our

people faced

[Music]

[Music] I