Land acquisition by indentured Indians

By Harry Hergash

As Guyanese celebrated Arrival Day on May 5, I look at the acquisition of land by the ancestors of Indo-Guyanese and their early descendants, who built a successful future for subsequent generations through their development of the rice and cattle industries.
The first attempt at land acquisition came around 1869. In a September 8, 2012 article in the Guyana Graphic (an internet publication under new ownership), historian and former President of Guyana, Mr David Granger, writes, “After the first 30 years of the indentureship system, it was calculated that about 30,000 immigrants were entitled to free return passages to India at a cost of $250,000 after their contracts had expired. Within a decade, the number of claimants and the cost of their passages had doubled. In order to avoid their responsibility, the planters and the colonial Administration developed a number of land settlement schemes…to lure the immigrants into accepting land in lieu of their return passage.” In reality, forfeiture of return passage was payment for the land.
By the 1890s many Indians started to move away from the estates to nearby villages after their contracts expired. With the change in the country’s mining regulations in 1899 to allow gold mining by “pork knockers”, independent miners, a large number of African villagers started to leave their coastal villages for the gold fields in the interior region. In order to finance their new venture, many sold their ancestral lands to the Indian newcomers. Others offered their ancestral lands to the Indian as collateral for loans. Either by sale or when borrowers could not repay their loans, village lands were legally transferred to the Indians.
The legal transfer of these African ancestral lands were of great concern to African leaders at the time. In his book Tiger in the Stars, historian Clem Seecharan quotes a 1928 speech at Manchester, Corentyne, by Dr T T Nicholson, vice president of the Negro Progress Convention: “It must strike everyone forcibly that the land given to them by their forefathers were getting away from them, and their East Indian brethren were fast taking hold of these lands…”
While lands in the interior were opening up for gold mining in the 1890s, the sugar industry was experiencing a depression which was limiting the employment of Indians. Increasingly, crown lands along the banks of rivers were placed on sale for purchase by Indians. This led to Indian settlements along the banks of the rivers. In this regard the story of Jugdeo (Jagdeo), as reported in the book Tiger in the Stars by Professor Clem Seecharan, is remarkable. Jugdeo was born to indentured parents and acquired land along the Mahaicony River, whereby by 1922 he was cultivating 3000 acres of rice. He was the first person in the then colony to use machinery for rice cultivation, acquiring in 1916 the first tractor (a Caterpillar) in the colony to plough his fields and transport his paddy. Also, he used a steam thresher to separate the paddy from the straw and had his own rice mill to de-husk the paddy to produce rice.
With the depression in the sugar industry, the smaller estates found it difficult to survive. Many were acquired by larger operations and consolidated under one administration. Some, especially in the Upper Corentyne, were divided into large parcels and sold to individual Indians who went into large-scale rice cultivation and cattle rearing. Others, mainly in Essequibo, were sold to individual Indians who subdivided and sold or rented smaller parcels for rice cultivation while operating rice mills where the renters sold or paid a fee for milling their paddy.
In Essequibo, Rash Beharry, an indentured Indian, was a prominent community and Hindu leader, successful businessman, and prominent rice producer. He is recognised as a pioneer exporter of Guyana-grown rice, which he exported to Trinidad under the brand name RB Gold around the beginning of the twentieth century. Many years ago, I was informed by one of his descendants that he had owned the Johanna Cecilia and the Adventure estates.
In Guyana, McDoom village is a prominent village on the East Bank of Demerara. According to a Facebook post, Haji Muckdoom arrived in British Guiana in 1884 from Uttar Pradesh and was indentured to Plantation Peter’s Hall. After his contract ended he took ten acres of land in lieu of his return passage, started rice cultivation, and operated a grocery and a tailoring business. In 1921 he and his family purchased parts of Plantation Houston, subdivided and sold parcels, built a mosque and founded the village under the name McDoom Village.
The period from 1890 to 1930 saw many indentured Indians and their descendants making great strides economically through rice farming and cattle rearing. During this period the wealthier families were able to educate their children, and many Indians started to enter the medical and legal professions. Despite this breakthrough, many Indians remained poor, living under squalid conditions in logies on the few dozen operating mega-estates. There they had to wait until the early 1950s when the sugar barons were pushed to start a programme of better housing for those still in the logies.
Upon arrival in British Guiana, the indentured Indians were at the bottom of the economic and social ladders. Today, their descendants, termed Indo-Guyanese in an independent Guyana, are well represented in all spheres of life, including the independent professions of law and medicine, commerce, and politics.