As sugar fades and its subsidy is challenged, it is useful to remember that during colonialism, the colonial state and the plantocracy were coterminous, and the struggle by the indentureds on the plantations for justice was a struggle against the colonial state writ large. The Royal Commissions sent down to inquire into the “coolie riots” and police killings invariably led to state initiatives that broadened the freedoms of all citizens. The Moyne Commission that recommended the universal franchise was in Guyana when four workers were killed during protests at Leonora in 1939.
September 30 will be the anniversary of the inaugural killing of protesting “coolies”: five indentured sugar workers killed and seven wounded at Devonshire Castle, Essequibo Coast in 1872. This exacerbated the already strained relations between newly-freed African and Indian indentureds, since the Police Force – the coercive arm of the state – was deliberately overwhelmingly African-manned by the state. In addition to the killings after reading the “Riot Act”, 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 they 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 indentureds arriving by 1869, 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 – earned criminal penalties of jail terms and onerous fines.
The 1869 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 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’s 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. One wonders if he was an ancestor of Minister Sonia Pariag.
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, killing five workers and wounding seven others. 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”, but their courage challenged the state and delivered independence. Leave sugar workers with some dignity.
