Culture and Emotional Economy of Migration

Badri Narayan

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429812606
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia de la India y el sur de Asia

This book studies how the act of migration is a motivating constituent in the production of popular culture in both the homeland and the destination. It looks at the formations of cultures in the process of identity-making of approximately 200 million Indians scattered across the world, from colonial to contemporary times. The volume is an in-depth exploration of the flow of cultures and their interactions through a study of north Indian migrants who underwent two waves of emigration – from the Bhojpuri region to the Dutch colony of Suriname between 1873 and 1916 to work on sugar, coffee, cotton and cocoa plantations, and their descendants who moved to The Netherlands following the Surinamese independence in 1975. It compares this complex network of cultures among the migrants to the folk culture of the Bhojpuri region from where large-scale migration is still taking place. The work draws on archival records, secondary literature, folk songs, rare photographs, and extensive fieldwork across continents – the Bhojpuri region, Mumbai, Surat and Ghaziabad in India, and Suriname and The Netherlands.

This second edition marks the 150th Anniversary of the Abolition of Indentured Labour. With a new prologue, an updated introduction and some revisions to the text, it will be useful to scholars and researchers of cultural studies, labour studies, sociology, modern Indian history, migration and diaspora studies. It will also interest the Indian diaspora, especially in Europe and the Americas.

1
Who migrated and why

The bidesia story

Piya Chawle Pardes, Bhejle Pati Na Sandes

Mora Jia Mein Anes Sunu Mori Sajni

(My husband has gone to pardes and has not sent me any message. My heart is filled with worry, O friend.)

(Bhairo)

(Singh 1958: 190)

The key persons in the migration story were the arkatiyas or recruiters of Indian labourers to work in the sugar plantations of Suriname, Mauritius and other European colonies. They were the Indian middlemen or commission agents who were hired by Indian sub-agents, who in turn were hired by an emigration agent, kept in Calcutta by the Dutch government for recruiting Indian immigrants for Suriname. William Frank Dowson, a partner of the house of Messrs Heoley, Dowson and Co., an emigrant agent company for exporting coolies from India to overseas colonies, revealed during the course of an interrogation by the committee appointed by the Supreme Government of India to enquire into the abuses alleged to exist in exporting coolies and Indian labourers of various classes from Bengal Hill to other countries¹ that it was a highly organized system that started around 1833 when the first overseas migration from the Bhojpuri region took place. The superior native agents were paid Rs 200–500 to defray the expenses of the coolies in mofussil areas. The commission per coolie varied from Rs 10 to 30 per man, and in cases where the agents made advance payment the commission was Rs 30. The amount paid to the native agents was usually given back since the native agents derived their profit from the coolies themselves who paid them at the rate of Rs 5 per man from the advance payment of six months given to them. The committee was appointed five years after the first ship left with immigrants, and it not only looked into the abuses but also looked into the method of recruitment of labourers in the homeland. Dowson, himself an emigration agent, admitted that the system was a vicious one, but was also very lucrative.

The arkatiyas were the direct recruiters of Indian labourers who had a wide network in the villages and kasbahs of North India and operated during feasts, melas, open-air traditional shows, pilgrimages and so on, where a large number of people used to gather. These arkatiyas also operated from railway stations where they were known to kidnap hapless young men and send them to far-off places across the sea (Majumder 2010: 19).

Etymologically, the word arkatiya may be derived from the word katiya meaning ‘bait’, since they baited the recruitees with their smooth talks. The most important attribute of these arkatiyas was their smooth tongue by which they used to entice candidates by telling them wonderful stories about the bounteous and plentiful life in a place that could be reached by sea. They would paint a rosy picture of the place, promising that they would be able to excavate gold from the gold mines existing there. They would pronounce the names of the places in such a manner that the candidate would think that it was somewhere close by and had strong links with Hindu mythology. For example, Suriname was pronounced as ‘Sri Ram tapu’, which aroused the idea that it was the land where Sri Ram lived. Most of these persons had never ever left their villages and had little idea about life outside. They were thus highly suggestible, which made them easy preys to the sales talks of the arkatiyas. They thus allowed themselves to go voluntarily since both at the subdepot and at the main depot the newcomer was asked whether he was leaving India voluntarily or not (ibid: 19–20).

The manner in which candidates were recruited by arkatiyas can be understood from the documentation of Munshi Rahman Khan, mentioned by Gautam (1995), who was taken to Suriname in the early twentieth century. Khan was an educated person who had studied to be a munshi. He was working as a teacher in a middle school in Maudha when he went to Chandpur to visit an uncle’s house. From there he decided to go to Kanpur to see a Ram Lila show. Before leaving for Kanpur, he was warned by his uncle to be careful since he had heard that many people were being kidnapped by certain people called arkatiyas who were sending them off to far-off islands. To this Khan replied that he was an educated man and would not be entrapped by their sweet talks (ibid: 21).

After spending a few days in Kanpur, when he was returning to the Kanpur railway station, he was stopped by two gentlemen who greeted him and asked him where he was heading for in such a hurry. On replying that he was returning to his village they told him that he seemed to be an educated person and would be better off working as a sardar in a sugar plantation. Khan became convinced by their glib tongue and allowed himself to be taken to a subdepot in Kanpur. After spending some time in the subdepot when the number of recruitees had reached sixty, he was sent with a group to Faizabad to another subdepot. There he stayed with the group for another three weeks. Khan narrates that while in Faizabad one of the persons of the group ran away across the Saryu River to Lakkarmandi. Khan was sent to bring him back. This incident shows that not every recruit was convinced by the sweet talks of the recruiters and motivated enough to go away to a far-off land. Many of them were also missing their wives and families and were longing to go back to them. Thus there were multiple ambiguities existing in the minds of people of the region about the overseas migration. Some went willingly to the depot with the arkatiya in the hope of getting a well-paid job, but after seeing the hard life at the depots they were disillusioned and wanted to leave. Others were willing to accept the hard life at the depot in the hope of the good prospects in the future. Many, who had been forcibly trapped, searched for an opportunity to run away (ibid: 21–22). In the entire Bhojpuri region at large also, there was a fear psychosis among the people that some smooth-talking persons called arkatiyas kidnapped men. This can be discerned from the narrative of Khan who wrote that his uncle had warned him that certain well-dressed persons were on the prowl to take people to far-off lands (Gautam 1995).

The arkatiyas presented an image of being gentlemen with well-starched clothes. They looked sharif (gentlemen), as mentioned by Khan. Often unfair means were also used by them since each recruit was worth a good sum of money. According to a report of a committee appointed by the Supreme Government of India to enquire into the abuses alleged to exist in exporting Indian labourers, which was placed in the British Parliament, the coolies were often exported by fraud and misrepresentation. Munshis or daffadars (a rank equivalent to sergeant in the cavalry of the British Indian Army), who were another kind of commission agents, induced them to come to Calcutta by persuading them that they would be given employment as peons under the company, to work on the public roads or as gardener, labourers and so on. What the system followed was that the daffadars went to the country, met people there and enticed them with promises of service, promising the upcountry men the services of porter (durwan) and the others work as labourers in Calcutta. They used to be brought to the city and kept waiting until they became impatient and asked for service. The daffadars then told them that they were sorry but the service they thought for them could not be obtained. Then when the coolies were about to go away, the daffadar told them to either pay him for his service or else go overseas.²

In the imagination of local people, recruiters were looked upon as schemers, liars and also kidnappers. They recruited people by giving them the wrong idea that they could return home for the weekend, promised easy work, inflated the wages the recruits would receive and painted a picture of a land filled with milk and honey. Chance encounters with strangers were discouraged in most households in the Bhojpuri region since the strangers exploited the misfortune of people and recruited them for migration. A narrative by Baba Ambika Sarju throws light on the modus operandi of recruiters. Sarju is a hundred-year-old Bhojpuri migrant who was transported to Suriname in 1912. He belonged to Raebareli and his father’s name was Sarju. The name of the ship on which he, along with the other indentured labourers, travelled to Suriname was called Matla Jahaj, Dui Lumber (Matla Ship No. 2) (Majumder 2010: 29).

The dishonesty of recruiters is also documented in colonial records, which validate the image of recruiters in the common imagination of the people. Many recruiters had their licenses revoked for various reasons like carelessness in the recruitment and registration of female emigrants, forcibly recruiting women against their wishes and making false statements while doing registration (Bahadur 2013: 38). Sometimes they forcibly made women spend the night outside their homes, and in the morning when they felt dishonoured and could not return to their father’s or husband’s homes they were taken to recruitment centres to be sent overseas (ibid: 39).

Subdepot, train and journey to Calcutta

While many subdepots were scattered throughout North India located in key centres such as Allahabad, Kanpur, Lucknow, Faizabad, Banaras, Ghazipur and Buxar, the main ‘coolie depot’ was opened in Garden Reach on the banks of the River Hooghly in Calcutta. The subdepots were run by the sub-agents. At that time the labourers were transported to depots by both passenger trains and goods trains. The railway network had not been expanded, and trains travelled only short distances. In the first phase of laying railway tracks under the East Indian Railway in 1853, trains moved only between Calcutta to Mirzapur. Trains ran up to Bharwari station to carry materials to lay tracks, and construction work was in progress when the 1857 rebellion started. After peace was established, on 3 March 1856, train movement started from Prayag to Kanpur, but because there was no bridge across the Yamuna, trains used to run only up to the Allahabad fort. After the Tons Bridge was constructed in April 1864, trains started going on the other side of Mirzapur. Since 15 August 1865, when the Yamuna Bridge was constructed in Allahabad, trains started running up to the main station. In 1863 the line between Naini and Jabalpur opened, and in 1903 the railway line up to Bombay via Cheoki was opened. In 1905 the second line from Allahabad to Faizabad was opened, for which another bridge near Phaphamau was constructed. In 1922 a small railway line between Prayag and Banaras was built by Bengal North Western Railway, and for this a bridge was built across Ganga in Daraganj (Srivastava 1937: 202). Mr Legene, who was working in Suriname as a manager in a sugar plantation, once visited India and took some photographs of the lifestyle and migration process. One photograph contained in his family photo album gives a glimpse of a migrant’s journey to a depot, which shows a big open goods train with labourers piled into the bogies. The coolies have muretha (turban) tied around their heads, wearing long kurtas (shirts) and loin cloth up to their knees. Some of them also have a cloth wrapped around them. Some have long sticks with them. The women have their heads covered with their dhotis.³

Figure 1.1 Travelling Coolies. Photograph: Ds P. M. Legene 1914. Collection Tropenmuseum 60048465

A glimpse of the tidal wave of the migration process can be obtained from the description of folklorist Ramnaresh Tripathi who used to travel from place to place collecting folklores. He writes,

I was travelling from Jaunpur to Prayag. At Bhannor station, I saw some women probably belonging to the Ahir or Chamar communities, who had come see off some males and a few females at the station, weeping loudly. The train started moving, leaving the weeping women behind. By coincidence the men going to Calcutta were in the bogie in which I was travelling. With them there were three or four women who were also going to Calcutta. As soon as the train started moving they started singing and crying. I recorded the song being sung by them (Majumder 2010: 22). It went like this:

Puruba se aai reliya pachhun se jahajiya

Piya ke ladi lei gai ho.

Reliya hoi gai mor sabatiya piya ke ladi lei gai ho

Reliya na bairi jahajiya na bairi uhai paiswai bairi ho

Deswa deswa bharmaiwai uhai paiswai bairi ho

Bhukhiya na laagai piasiya na laagai humke mohiya lagai ho

Tohri dekhike suratiya humke mohiya laagai ho

Ser bhar gohuwa baris din khaibai piya ke jaibe na debe ho

Rakhbe ankhiya hajurwan piya ke jai na debai ho.⁴

Translation

The train came from the east and the ship came from the west

and took my husband away.

Railway has become my co-wife who has taken my husband away.

Rail is not my enemy, ship is not my enemy, money is my enemy

which makes my husband go from country to country.

I have no hunger, I have no thirst, I feel very loving towards him.

When I see his face I feel very affectionate.

I will make one seer of wheat last one year but I won’t let my husband go away.

I will keep him in front of my eyes and not let him go away.

The journey of a migrant from his village in the Bhojpuri region till the dockyard at Calcutta can be observed from the vivid narrative of Munshi Rahman Khan. He narrates that after spending some weeks at the depot at Kanpur he was sent to a depot in Faizabad where ninety more immigrants joined. From Faizabad via Lucknow and Mughalsarai, they were taken to Calcutta after a two-day train journey. During the train journey through the Bhojpur region, batches of immigrants were put on the train at various stations where the subdepots were located. During the train journey no one was allowed to go out without the permission of the watch keepers. At the Howrah railway station, the group was received by the Bengali workers of the Calcutta depot. They took the immigrants in batches of six persons in small boats to the Garden Reach depot (Majumder 2010: 23).

From the description of Khan it appears that there was a sardar or jamadar (the headman) who received the immigrants and looked after them. A strict vigilance was kept on them so that no one could escape. Most of the immigrants were farmers, but there were also smiths, barbers, weavers, carpenters, shoemakers, dhobis (washermen), shopkeepers and also educated people like teachers wh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Prologue to this edition
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Who migrated and why: the bidesia story
• 2 Bidesia and settlement histories in Suriname(With Maurits Hassankhan)
• 3 Double migration and the process of readjustment: Hindustanis from Suriname to the Netherlands(With Chitra Gajadin)
• 4 Bidesia folk culture in the triangle: Bhojpuri region of India, Suriname and the Netherlands(With Narinder Mohkamsingh)
• 5 Still they are migrating: contemporary migration from Bhojpuri region
• 6 Migration and cultural productions: documenting history of cultural practices
• 7 Migration and politics
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index