Repatriation of Girmitiyas

By Ravi Dev

As we have emphasised, one integral part of the Indenture Contract, was a right to a return passage to India which was guarded jealously. Yet, out of 238,909 Girmitiyas arriving between 1838 and 1917, only 75,547 (32%) were repatriated after serving their indenture period. The first return ships – the Louisa Baille and the Water Ditch left in 1843 with 235 of the 396 who had landed in British Guiana on the Whitby and Hesperus. The last return ship was the Resurgent, which left in 1955 with 243 passengers.
The death rates on the return ships were frequently high and on the Sutlej that left in December 1929 with 920 persons from Jamaica, Trinidad and B Guiana, and arrived in January 1930, 44 died because they were old and the ship was overcrowded. In British Guiana, the planters always resisted paying the return passage because of the cost.

They adopted a welter of stratagems to avoid their financial responsibility: the first was to offer a $50 bounty to those who agreed to reindenture, but this was quickly discontinued. In 1895, a law was passed mandating that returnees had to contribute one-fourth of the passage money for males and one-sixth for females. This law was subsequently amended by Law 2 of 1899, which increased the portion of passage money payable by immigrants by one-half for males and one-third for females. They also offered land in exchange In one early sample period, between1850 and 1869; 5435 adults, 702 children, and 168 infants were repatriated with 379 deaths suffered.
The returning Girmitiyas however, invariably discovered that they had changed significantly during their stay in Guiana and they could not fit in with the India they had left or which some were discovering for the first time. They were fleeced from the moment they stepped off the return ship and the expense of Hindus performing the ceremonies to be reinstated into their community after crossing the Kala Pani (Dark Waters of the ocean) was the final straw. Many returned to the docks where they had returned and tried desperately to raise the money to return to Guiana. A slum developed near the depots of Calcutta at Marienburg where they scraped out a desperate existence. After a while, some philanthropists constructed a home of refuge for them.
In one instance, an individual by the name of Kainie from the loges of Uitvlugt who returned on the Resurgent wrote to his neighbours after a few months, “Send paisa na sa rassi” – send money or send rope to either pay for my passage or hang myself. They did send the money and he returned to De Willem to be taunted for the rest of his life by young boys like myself as “Paisa na sa rassi”!! He would curse something fierce.