Except for the country’s First Nations, we are all here because of sugar. Our fore parents’ arrival on May 5, 1838 was the first of many voyages across the kalapani that brought 239,909 indentured labourers from South and Northeast India by the time the indentureship programme was ended by an Act of Parliament in India on March 12, 1917.
This year marks the centenary of that abolition and the date will be commemorated by Indian diaspora communities around the world. Guyana’s Indian community will be part of the global events that will include religious observances, cultural shows, conferences and symposiums.
Our families, wherever they are today, all stand on the shoulders of the earliest labourers, that immigrant generation who worked on the sugar plantations for a pittance of a wage.
They lived in the logies and worked in the fields doing the backbreaking work and, like the African slaves before them, rose up in revolt for various reasons. These included wage disputes, disagreements over task work, the sexual exploitation of Indian women, and the overbearing behaviour of the overseers.
The idea of Indian docility is belied by the strikes and disturbances that numbered over 100 during the indentureship period and which resulted in the death of some 41 labourers and injuries to many more.
The first recorded disturbance occurred at Plantation Leonora in July 1869 when the shovel gang complained that wages were being withheld because they could not complete a job on waterlogged soil. A confrontation between armed Police and the labourers was avoided, but the ringleaders were arrested, convicted and imprisoned at the Mazaruni penal settlement.
The following year, violence erupted at Plantations Hague, Zeelugt, Vergenoegen, Uitvlugt, Success and Nonpareil, and in 1872, a major disturbance occurred at Plantation Devonshire Castle.
This time, the colonial Police opened fire. Five were killed and several seriously injured. The dead were: Maxidally, Beccaroo, Kaulica, Baldeo and Ackloo. They were the first Indian labourers to lose their lives in the fight for workers’ rights.
In October 1896, another five were killed and several wounded by Police during a strike at Nonpareil. In 1903, six were killed and seven wounded at Plantation Friends, and in 1912, at the same plantation, one worker was killed. He was shot by the manager, RE Brassington, who was charged, but subsequently acquitted of the murder.
A year later, and just four years before the Abolition Act was passed, on March 13, 1913, resistance by Indian labourers at Plantation Rose Hall ended in carnage when the Colonial Police killed 15 and injured 39 in what was perhaps the deadliest outcome of any indenture-era revolt in the Caribbean.
The dead were: Badri, Bholay, Durga, Gafur, Jugai, Juggoo, Hulas, Lalji, Motey Khan, Nibur, Roopan, Sadulla, Sarjoo, Sohan, and a lone woman, Gobindei.
In 1939, at Plantation Leonora, a weeder named Sumintra, identified as a ringleader, was among three labourers who were shot dead during a protest for better wages and lighter tasks for pregnant field workers.
The next deadly confrontation occurred at Enmore on June 16, 1948 when five labourers were killed while demonstrating for better working conditions, fair wages, and for the recognition of a trade union of their choice.
The dead were: Lallabagee Kissoon, Pooran, Rambarran, Dookhie, and Hari. This tragedy has become better known because this was the brutal injustice that brought the young Dr Cheddi Jagan into politics as a champion for workers’ rights.
The colonial carnage continued even until 1964 when on March 6 at Leonora Estate, Kowsilla was mowed down by a tractor during a strike. The tractor driven by a scab was ordered to clear the bridge blocked by the strikers.
Kowsilla bravely stood her ground. She was crushed to death and 14 other women were seriously injured.
African slaves and Indian labourers fought valiantly for justice. Many paid the ultimate sacrifice with their lives in the struggle. They are our heroes.
Sugar has been our country’s lifeblood for centuries. It has shaped us like no other industry and is the very reason for the birth of this country we all call home.
Yet the Granger Government seems able to casually toss it aside along with the thousands of mainly Indian Guyanese sugar workers still on the estates today.
This shows a clear disregard and heartlessness for an industry that, more than any other, contributed to our country’s development.
Even if it faces a natural demise, there must be honour and dignity in its dismantling and in the treatment of the workers for history’s sake and for the sake of our heroes and their legacy of courage.
