They came in ships/From far across the seas/
…They came
At least with hope in their heart.
On the platter of the plantocracy
They were offered disease and death – Mahadai Das
This Thursday, the 178th Anniversary of that first landing of indentured labourers from India will be commemorated. One aspect of the entire Indian indentureship experience that hasn’t received its fair share of attention has been that of female indentureds. This omission spills over into the present in which Indian-Guyanese women continue to be generally treated as objects and even then, in footnotes. As a backdrop to considering the latter situation from an Indian female’s perspective, this week I will continue to examine its antecedents during indentureship.01
Arriving in Port Georgetown after a voyage of three months, the women were dispatched to the sugar Plantations along with the men. Because the planters wanted the indentureds to produce sugar, as with the African slaves, they also wanted them to reproduce – children. This would lessen the expense of shipping them all the way from India. So we see throughout the indentureship period between 1838 and 1917, planters pleading with the Indian colonial authorities to ship in more women beyond the one-third minimum.
Indian women were therefore in great demand in Guyana and this led to an early re-appraisal of their value by themselves as compared to their previous situation in India. Of the “one-third” women quota, less than half were married – and as we pointed out, some achieved this status at the depots while waiting for their ships to Guyana. So the Guyanese Indian woman-indentured was, in the main, a single woman for a variety of reasons.
A number were young widows, some with children like the grandmothers of Cheddi Jagan, while others would have been “put out” of their homes or ran away from oppressive situations. The historical record is heavy with planter requests for women of “good character”. While there would have been some women sent over by the recruiters (“arkatis”) from “the streets”, it is a sign of the times (to this time) that a single woman on her own without a man has to prove she is not “loose”. On the other hand, single men, who were the vast majority of indentured labourers, were never called “loose”.
Another reason for women’s poor reputation was their small numbers which led to men fighting viciously over them and “wife murders” were rampant because of suspected or real “infidelities”. Many could have been women not willing to put up with abusive relationships. Some overseers also used their position to extract sexual favours from female indentureds and this was a spark that led to several protests on the sugar plantations.
Apart from female scarcity obliterating caste distinctions in marriage, women with children were now not rejected any longer. My maternal great grandfathers on both sides of my family married women with children. In one case, one from an agricultural caste arrived with a child, married a Brahmin with whom she had two children (Sharmas) and then married a Muslim immigrant after the first husband died. She then returned to India after her second husband passed away and the children were adults. Phoolkoerie was an independent woman.
But indentured women still had to work in the cane fields – even during pregnancy – while not demanded, because of low wages, did so to help maintain their families. If the woman did not show up to work, money was deducted from the husband wages: shifting the task of “persuading” the woman to work to the husband. But it was women who played a key role to allow the Indians whose indenture had expired to achieve economic independence. They planted the “home garden” and “minded” the cows that could be sold to generate an additional income.
