September 30th was the 145th anniversary of the killing of five indentured sugar workers and the wounding of seven others at Devonshire Castle, Essequibo Coast. Today it is difficult to accept that sugar was once “king” in Essequibo also. It is a harbinger for what I believe Demerara will become within five years.
The killings signalled the confluence of the interests of the sugar planters and the state, since the highly armed police could be called in to settle labour disputes between workers and management. The Devonshire Castle incident also exacerbated already strained relations between newly freed African slaves and the Indian immigrants, since the Police Force was overwhelmingly African-manned.
Additionally, while most of the official violence was deployed to quell labour uprisings on the plantations, there were other daily humiliations inflicted on the immigrants. Police Force historian John Campbell noted: “Police were employed to levy rents and to act as bailiffs (and) East Indians quite rightly viewed the police as agents or allies of their oppressors”. Chief Justice Beaumont noted police harassment of Indians in the 1870s as “galling subjection”.
Since any protest of their working conditions on the plantations could be defined as an “overt rebellion” and result in lengthening of their indentureship term, immigrants did not lightly embark upon such actions. Yet, since the immigrants did protest, one could only imagine the provocations. The overall dire conditions on the plantations by 1870 can be gleaned by the bare population statistics. Of the 69,380 Indian immigrants that had arrived by 1869, some 6,523 had returned to India, but only 44,936 showed up in the census. It meant that, if not a single birth had occurred, 17,921, or 26%, had died.
The precursor to Devonshire Castle occurred in July of 1869, when forty workers of the shovel gang at Plantation Leonora disputed the wages for work done and allegedly “assaulted” a manager. The response was swift: the police and the 2nd West India Regiment were called in. After the “Leonora Riot”, the Guiana Police Force became “the most heavily armed Police in the British West Indies,” according to Adamson. Even though no one was killed, the protesting workers were arrested, convicted, and jailed in short order. The system had begun to perform a “one-two”: first the Police would use violence to maintain “order”, and then the judiciary would emphasise the condign lesson to the immigrant by applying the “law”. Where any claimed non-performance or underperformance of their tasks – civil violations – it earned the immigrant criminal penalties of jail terms and onerous fines.
The Leonora protests precipitated a Royal Commission, but not any changes on the unbalanced police-immigrant equation, which inflicted violence to “keep the Indian in his place”.
The underlying cause for the disturbance at Devonshire Castle was the mistrust of the Indians for the judicial system. On Sept 29, one Parag had been arrested for “assaulting” a Manager at Devonshire Castle, but was rescued from confinement. He cross-charged the Manager. The next day, Parag refused to appear at the Magistrate Court, where the accused, as a manager, would have been allowed to sit beside the Magistrate. Instead, he, along with 250 other immigrants, appeared at the Estate and prevented the Manager, or anyone else, from entering.
Twenty-three armed Policemen and the Magistrate appeared, and the latter ordered the Policemen to load their rifles. The Police were then ordered to charge. The immigrants stood their ground, and one policeman (Archer) discharged a shot. The other Policemen thought the order to shoot had been given, and nine other Policemen fired. Five workers: Maxidally, Kaulika, Beccaroo, Baldeo and Auckloo, were killed and seven others were wounded.
It is noteworthy that thirteen policemen, including the two Indian ones, did not shoot. At the Inquest, the Policemen’s actions were exonerated as “justifiable homicide”.
The Colonist, a paper friendly to planter interests, exulted, “the leaden argument has brought submission quicker than all honeyed words that could have been used.”
The “leaden argument” from the Police guns was to be made with terrifying regularity against Indian Guyanese sugar workers from then: 1896, Non Pareil; 1903, Friends; 1912, Lusignan; 1913, Rose Hall; 1924, Ruimveldt; 1939, Leonora; until 1948, Enmore. They were just “coolies”.
