Neither Indigenous nor colonial: Identured Labourers at the boundaries of postcolonial categories
The term indigeneity can only be plausible within the context of colonialism: ‘Indigenous’ people are those who inhabited places before they were colonised. And yet this is precisely the problem with the term: who or whatever is denoted ‘Indigenous’ has been decided over a long period of time through the colonial and Western gaze.
The accompanying colonial racist dimension of the term only began to shift when anti-colonial movements began to reclaim it for themselves: thus, this caused a perspective shift from the colonial to the colonially oppressed across various political movements in the 20th century such as the Assembly of First Nations in Canada, the Māori Land March in Aotearoa-New Zealand or the Zapatistas in Mexico. Through this change of perspective indigeneity also denotes a history of oppression and thus also of liberation.
The visualisation of colonial violence that comes with this allows Indigenous folks to formulate a political privilege over the colonisers: hereby, political demands are accordingly ascertained; for example the return of stolen land, (financial) reparations, or the (state) protection of cultural identity.
Yet, as useful as this understanding of Indigeneity is for postcolonial struggles, it is also complicated to apply: since colonialism was carried out particularly through labour force – in the form of slavery or inhumane work contracts – many people impacted by colonialism have been displaced from their indigenous lands for generations. This raises the difficult question of how this shapes their relation to indigeneity: do their lands of origin demonstrate their true origins that were lost in their deportation/migration to the colonies? And then to which place does one’s own cultural identity refer?
Over 1 million people from the sub-Indian continent had to work through this tension between indigeneity and origins, having immigrated to foreign colonies such as British Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica, Trinidad, Fiji and South Africa through the British Indentured Labour program.[1] For many, this meant long-term estrangement from one’s indigenous environment since the promised free return trip to one’s homeland once the 5-year-contracts were up never materialized. Many were also denied acceptance back into Indian society: leaving the country meant breaking with their caste. Alongside this, many were outcasts even before they had begun their travel, as they were widows or members of lower castes. In the colonies, these virtually penniless and stranded folks were no longer Indigenous, they were foreigners: “Coolie” was their derogatory descriptor, which mixed their low social status as working class with a sense of the Exotic.[2]
While from an economical perspective the indentured labourerswere indispensible for the British colonies, their presence was a ‘problem’: in 1904 for example, the Governor of the British Colony of Natal (South Africa) described the Indians present at the time as “strangers, forcing themselves upon an community reluctant to receive them”[3]. As degrading as this description was, it very much captured the reality of the indentured, as they had no choice but to build a relationship with a place that they were forced to be and yet were not fully allowed to inhabit.
This phrasing also illustrates their fear of the Indian workers: because ‘forcing themselves upon a community’ implies their ability to insist on their presence with resistance.
The quote is in reference to the Indian folks in the south of the port city of Durban, whose resistance was in the form of bridging the tense relationship between indigeneity and origins; as such, they were a thorn in the side of the colonial city administration,who had a long term plan for the industrialisation of the city, as they successfully ran their own economy far away from the colonial factories in the outskirts of Durban. In order to achieve this, they used their cultural identity as a key resource.
When 150,000 indentured labourers reached Durban between 1860 and 1911, they were primarily placed as field workers onto sugarcane plantations and mills[4]. In order to retain them as workers in the long term, the colonialists often made empty promises – ultimately shooting themselves in the foot: the “crown land” which was meant to be remuneration for the extension of the indentured workers’ employment contracts was mostly withheld and in fact was unceremoniously leased out or occupied by the identured workers.[5]
Clairwood was one of the mosquito-infested wetlands outside of Durban’s municipal boundaries that was unusable for the colonial rulers tastes – much to the delight of the indentured:
They cultivated the land relatively undisturbed, built simple houses out of wood, corrugated iron and brick, and focused primarily on developing the gardens, which became their income source.[6]
The city council, who had long denied Clairwood the establishment of infrastructure, ironically only supported the establishment of a self-governing structure: after the construction of the first Hindu temple in 1880, the construction of their own schools, local clubs, cemeteries, sports facilities and even a medical center followed. It was managed by trusted individuals elected by the community.[7]
In the span of a few decades, Clairwood flourished, to the point that in the 1920s the Indians were not only serious competitors for the White traders, but were also greater in number than the White population.[8]
This was only possible due to the indentured labourers’ use of their cultural identity as a resource: through their trade with particular Indian vegetable varieties, spices and the need for religious traditions, they provided for their own community. Low income Indian families were given loans and business relationships were strengthened through social cohesion.[9]
Over time, this cohesion formed the material foundations that enabled the community in Clairwood to sustain their cultural identity – and by doing so, could partly evade colonial regulations for a time.[10] The identity formed here was neither just that of “Coolie” nor was it a linear continuation of the Indigenous. Instead, right from the start it was contextually anchored in South Africa: cut off from their land of origin and highly fragmented – as they came from a variety of different places in India – the Indian diaspora engineered something new out of these cultural fragments, their own efforts to ensure social cohesion and the bridging of cultural and linguistic differences.
Today, this new identity remains completely distinct from the cultural identity of India. Despite the tension with the Indigenous populations in the colonies, the colonially oppressed recognised that every identity oppressed under colonialism is equally worthy of protection. As such, the black consciousness movement in 1960s South Africa even declared that all people in the Apartheid system that were classified as not-white were recognised as Black.[11]
Indigeneity did not require rigid boundaries such as the idea of “Blut und Boden” (blood and soil) in Nazism – quite the contrary, as the term denotes a concept that is founded on its historical contextualisation in connection with the anti-colonial struggle. In this spirit, the Guyanese poet Rajkumari Singh declared: „Proclaim the word! […] Proudly say to the world: I am a COOLIE.“[12]
[1] Vgl. Bahadur, Gaiutra (2016): Coolie Woman. The Odyssey of Indenture. Hurst and Company, London. Hier: S. xx.
[2] Der Begriff „Coolie“ ist eine sehr abwertende Bezeichnung ähnlich zum N-Wort und sollte daher immer kontextualisiert werden. Siehe auch: Preface. The C-Word. In: Ebd.
[3] Vgl.: Pather, Juggie (2015): Clairwood. The Untold Story. Juggie Pather, Cape Town. Hier: S. 22f.
[4] Pather: S.15.
[5] Ebd.
[6] Ebd.
[7] Vgl.: Scott, Diane (1992): The destruction of Clairwood: a case study on the transformation of communal living space. In: Smith, D. M. (1992). The Apartheid city and beyond: Urbanization and social change in South Africa (1. publ.). Routledge [u.a.]. Hier: S.93.
[8] Vgl. Pather, S. 23.
[9] Vgl. Scott, S.94f.
[10] So merkt Diane Scott an, dass sich die (ex-)indentured durch ihre erfolgreiche selbstsuffiziente Wirtschaft, ihre eigene Proletarisierung verzögerten. Vgl.: Scott, S. 94f.
[11] https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2020-11-27-racism-by-and-against-indian-south-africans-poisons-our-land/
[12] Bahadur, S.xxi.