This year marks the 200th anniversary of the arrival of Tamil indentured laborers in Sri Lanka (November 1823), and this milestone was recently commemorated in Colombo with an event called Naam 200. There he gave a speech about this woefully under-discussed aspect of our nation’s policy. colonial history. I have often said that history is in the past, but it is our duty in the present to understand it. There are millions of Indians and Sri Lankans alive today who remember and mourn the depredations of the British Empire on our country. Britain may have fallen into imperial amnesia, but its former colonies are far from it. So we should remember again and again the forces that have shaped us and nearly wiped us out.
The British imperial project began as sanctioned plunder in the service of capitalism’s crudest forms. Britain greedily depleted the colonies, stripping them of resources, economic power, and political freedom, until the colonies were reduced to a state of poverty and ruin. In India, they destroyed our textile industry, put millions out of work, and impoverished thousands of Indian farmers by seizing land for opium cultivation. Their policies created legions of poor, landless, and hungry people who needed work to survive.
new form of bondage
Ironically, as the British began plundering India, a wave of liberal humanism drifted across Europe. Slavery finally came to be seen as reprehensible, and Britain formally banned it in its colonies, but in its place another type of slavery, euphemistically called “indentured servitude”, was introduced. Ta. The economies of most British territories have traditionally been run by slavery. And the labor crisis that followed the abolition of slavery led to a surge in demand for Indian workers to work on plantations and infrastructure projects in the Caribbean, Fiji, Réunion, Natal, Malaysia, Singapore, and, of course, Sri Lanka. Indentured servitude by the press corps was the answer.
The destitute Indians sent to these distant lands had little idea of the fate that awaited them, as they were misunderstood about the work they would undertake, the wages they would receive, the rooms they would live in, and surprisingly even the countries they would sail to. I couldn’t even do that. To. Most workers who survived the dangerous voyage arrived at their destination in debt, as they had to pay the exorbitant fares themselves, a diabolical rule that remained in place until 1922. No changes were made.
As soon as they arrived in a strange land, they were trapped in vast plantations and construction sites. Many Tamils who arrived in Sri Lanka died during the arduous journey from the coast to the central highlands. Those who made it were forced to live in deplorable conditions, without access to sanitation, running water, medical facilities, or schools for their children. It was not without reason that the British historian Hugh Tinker called indentured servitude “a new kind of slavery.”
Sri Lankan tea and Indian Tamil
Although Sri Lanka is today an undisputed producer and exporter of tea, its first plantations were coffee, not tea. In the 1870s, the rapid spread of a fungal disease caused an epidemic that wiped out coffee from Sri Lankan plantations, paving the way for more prolific and profitable crops. Coffee requires only 3 workers per 10 hectares of cultivation, while tea requires at least 8 people, thus requiring much more intensive and permanent field work. This increased demand for workers, combined with the labor shortage caused by the abolition of slavery, led to a large-scale organized migration of Indian Tamils to Sri Lanka.
Of course, the first Tamil migration to this island nation took place long before the arrival of plantation Tamils in Ceylon in the 19th century. However, what distinguished the Plantation Tamils from the ancient Tamil immigrants was the fact that the British denied them even the most basic rights and services. They faced discrimination as soon as they set foot in Sri Lanka. Like earlier communities of South Indian origin, Plantation Tamils developed a distinct Sri Lankan identity, but colonial practices and policies deemed them “foreigners” and resulted in their became stateless and the well-trodden path to assimilation was blocked. The colonial state made it difficult for plantation Tamils to assimilate into Sri Lankan society by placing them in the category of “foreigners and resident strangers” and subsequently referring to them as “Indian Tamils” . So too did independence, and the Citizenship Act of 1948 rendered them stateless. Few were paid a fair wage or knew the privacy of their own rooms. Women who picked tea worked all day long on plantations with no toilets. Forced eviction and disenfranchisement was their fate.
Moreover, compounding their hardships was the harmful influence of subcontractors, labor recruiters, and supervisors called kangani, who played a dominant role in the recruitment, management, and exploitation of Indian workers on the plantations. It was a system. Once hired, the worker unknowingly relinquished his autonomy to Kangani, who accompanied him on his trips to the plantation and acted as an intermediary between him and the plantation manager once he began working on the plantation.
Unlike indentured servants, who are technically entitled to request return home after their period of indenture ends, plantation Tamils were not freed from the horrors of the Kangani system even after their period of service had ended. . Ambiguous contracts with the kangani allowed further abuse by the recruiters, who often persuaded them to borrow money and saddled them with debts they could never repay. The plantation Tamils were also unable to buy land and build houses. This was because colonial law restricted land ownership to those who were “resident” in Ceylon, which British planters and officials interpreted to exclude them.
A journey of identity and integration
Plantation Tamils found that the local conditions in Sri Lanka helped them form an identity rooted in the Tamil language and literary tradition, as well as in Tamil values and ideals. They identified themselves linguistically and regionally rather than with a pan-Indian nationality or religion. However, over several generations they strove for further integration into mainstream Sri Lankan society and encountered several artificial obstacles in the process, such as the Citizenship Act of 1948, which made them stateless. .
With admirable fortitude, the Plantation Tamils faced the challenges that befell them and carved out a place for themselves in Sri Lankan society. Thanks to the efforts of democratic parties such as the Ceylon Workers’ Congress, they are now citizens with democratic voting rights, and the government has removed plantations to make workers owners of the land they work on. We’re talking about splitting up. This project is still in the planning stages, but has great potential. By reaffirming their identity as descendants of people sent to Sri Lanka from India, they reclaimed their heritage as plantation Tamils who were also equal and distinguished citizens of Sri Lanka. Their struggle is a brave and noble struggle for equality and self-determination, and just thinking about it fills me with admiration.
It is important that postcolonial countries take effective steps to liberate their colonies from the practices, laws, and attitudes of our imperial masters. Postcolonial states very often employ the same measures introduced by colonizers to continue systematic oppression. In some cases, there may be little difference between the two systems, just a change in skin color and the name of the ruler. Decolonization must be at the heart of Sri Lanka’s economic and social recovery and the integration of all communities. Building an inclusive postcolonial identity for all its people remains an unmet challenge in Sri Lanka’s nation-building.
Shashi Tharoor, a third-term Lok Sabha Member of Parliament (Congress) from Thiruvananthapuram, is an award-winning author of 25 books including; Dark Ages: The British Empire in Indiaand recently, The less you preach, the more you learn: Proverbs for our times. The author acknowledges the assistance of Bawa Sayan Bajaj in the preparation of this article.
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