Story of Indian enterprise and exploitation of the indentured

Duncan Du Bois

Interest in the life and times of Indians as indentured labourers and as settlers during Natal’s colonial period remains constant.

Set in Alexandra County on the South Coast, Challenges in a Colonial County contextualises the challenges and experiences of the central character, Sarika Singh, within the evolving socio-economic developments of the location during the period 1876 to 1889.

As a 12-year old, Sarika arrived with her family in 1861 to commence indenture contracts. As was the practice at the time, no cognisance was taken of family unity. As a result Sarika, along with her father, was contracted to a sugar estate in Illovo and lost all contact with her mother and brother when they were contracted to an estate on the North Coast.

Sarika was fortunate in that her mistress on the Illovo estate spared her from arduous field work by employing her as a domestic helper. Over weekends she was given basic education and became her mistress’s secretary on completion of her 5-year indenture.

That grounding proved invaluable.

Sarika’s life is integrated with other characters, both fictitious and authentic, within the story. But historically all are drawn into the three themes which increasingly came to the fore. They were: social conventions and welfare, predatory capitalism and what was termed the Indian question.

The plot highlights the fact that while indentured labour was valued for its role in the expanding sugar industry, Indians were not welcomed as settlers. That issue is explored when Sarika seeks permission to buy a plot of land to establish a shop.

Despite Queen Victoria’s ruling that all settlers had equal rights, the modes of discrimination to which Sarika was subjected provide insight into the ways in which the queen’s directive was compromised.

Another social convention among white settlers was intolerance towards inter-racial sex and marriage. Sarika’s romance with the son of the county magistrate alienated him from his family and ostracised them as a couple.

Even white settlers who were sympathetic to the couple found themselves maligned by their fellow settlers.

Although Sarika’s emergence as a commercial competitor was made possible by the insurance benefit she received following the death of her common-law husband in a sugar mill explosion, her success as the owner of three stores was reflective of the growing commercial competition Indians posed across colonial Natal.

Her relative wealth enabled her to bid for a sugar estate which allows the story to explore the growth of predatory capitalism in the sugar industry.

On the South Coast it was dominated by the Reynolds brothers and later in by the Crookes family.

The historical record shows how the Reynolds brothers bought up one estate after another and became economic leviathans in the Alexandra County. A similar trend occurred in Victoria and Durban counties which gave rise to the term “sugarocracy”.

The dark side of the sugarocracy, particularly as far as the Reynolds were concerned, was their ill treatment of indentured labourers. Sarika and her then lover, Hugh Lawson, became involved in challenging that reality as a result of illegally harbouring an indentured fugitive named Janki.

Their humanitarianism was challenged in a high-profile court case during which the brutal treatment of indentured labourers was exposed in detail.

The ability of the “social lions” of the county to buy justice and to intimidate magistrates into turning a blind eye to human rights violations, infuriated Sarika and dominates a great deal of the latter part of the story.

Emerging from that theme was the blatant collusion between the sugar barons, the government and the press.

A curtain of silence prevailed in the press as regards the ill treatment of indentured labour. The same applied to speeches delivered in the colonial legislature. The influence of the sugarocracy was also strongly evident in the report of the Wragg Commission of Inquiry, published in 1887.

It concluded that the welfare of the indentured was generally satisfactory. In contrast, disparaging reports and letters published in newspapers reflected the attitude of white colonists towards Indians as settlers and traders.

Thanks to a reformist, wealthy, white colonist, the fictitious Victoria Snell, Sarika was able to address meetings of small groups of white women.

Responding to a question at one of those meetings she unpacked the collusion in high places with a simple statement: “follow the money”.

Through Victoria’s network, Sarika gained the notice of the then reformist editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, WT Stead, in London and of the Aborigines Protection Society.

But the success of her two-month speaking tour of England was cut short as a result of financial influence.

Advertising in the Pall Mall Gazette was threatened by sugar interests who were concerned that the India government might suspend indentured immigration in the light of reports of ill treatment of labourers.

Sarika and Victoria were ahead of their times. But their purpose in the novel is to educate readers on callous human exploitation for material gain by inserting credible experiences in the gaps and silences of the historical record. That is what is called critical fabulation.

The conclusion of Sarika’s role in the story was her establishment of literacy and craft centres for contract-expired Indians. She recognised that on completion of their indenture contracts, hundreds of Indians were ill-equipped to make a living as settlers.

As a tale of tragedy, love, drama, enterprise and political manoeuvring, Challenges integrates the history of the South Coast within colonial developments and the authentic characters of the period.

Du Bois is the author of “Sugar and Settlers: A history of the Natal South Coast”. “Challenges in a Colonial County” will be released at Durban’s Mount Edgecombe Temple on Saturday with the support of the Global Girmitya Centre