Professor Kapil Kumar to discuss book 'Revealing Suppressed Realities' at Durban workshop on Girmitiya diaspora
Image: Supplied
Professor Kapil Kumar from New Delhi will be discussing his book 'Colonial Plantations & Indian Indenturers: Revealing Suppressed Realities' virtually at the 'The Girmitiya Diaspora in 2025: Identity, challenges and shaping our future' workshop this Saturday.
The Global Girmitiya Centre of South Africa is inviting the public to attend the workshop which is set to take place on July 12 at L'Aperitivo - The Auroras, 9 Aurora Dr, Umhlanga Ridge, Durban.
The workshop will include participation from: Shri Ravindra Dev (Guyana) – Identity & cohesion,
Professor (Dr) Sandili Ramdial- Maharaj (Trinidad) – The psyche of the oppressed & oppressor: Girmitiya experience
Professor Kapil Kumar (New Delhi) – Revealing suppressed realities
Professor Ganesh Chand (Fiji) – The way forward
Bugsy Singh (South Africa) – Girmitiya in SA & facilitation
The Global Girmitiya Centre of SA (affiliated to the Global Girmitiya Institute) was established to highlight the South African Girmitiya's history, challenges, heroes and role in the pursuit of social cohesion and nation-building – and to liaise with Girmitiya populations in the diaspora.
The book, which Professor Kumar co-edited with fellow participant, Dr Sandili Ramdial-Maharaj from Trinidad, seeks to provide an alternative to the established colonial narrative on Indenture labour history.
The book highlights how the plantation economies, to save themselves from ruin after the abolition of slavery, re-packaged it in the form of indentured labour.
Professor Kapil Kumar from New Delhi will be discussing his book 'Colonial Plantations & Indian Indenturers: Revealing Suppressed Realities' virtually.
Image: Professor Kapil Kumar/Facebook
'To procure it, India was converted into the biggest market. Oppressive practices, deceit, manipulations, false promises and allurements - the established colonial tools were operationalised to facilitate smooth flow of labour under the garb of agreements, converting India into the biggest labour-recruiting nation.
'The agonies of this new human trading were not confined to economic aspects alone. It generated wider and serious social, religious and psychological implications for the Indian community in alien lands, which has been described as the trauma of the Indenturers by Dr. Sandili Maharaj-Ramdial,' a book summary reads.
'This trauma emerged from the recruitment methods, long hard ship journeys, betrayals of so-called agreements, separations from loved ones and the toiling conditions in plantations spread over in Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname, Mauritius and Fijil etc.'
Professor Kumar said the reason why he argues that indentured labourers were the same as slaves is that the working conditions did not change. He mentioned that the restrictions placed on them at the colony plantations were the same as that of the slaves.
'A labourer from one plantation could not move to the other plantation without permission.
'And also, the way that families were parted - The husband would go to another plantation while the wife would go to another plantation, and the children would likely be sent to some other place.
'So all these kinds of things, among others, were suppressed in colonial history and geography,' Kumar said.
He later added that one of the worst things was how, after its abolishment, when the indentured labourers wanted India to help them, 'they were denied it' and that they were told they 'are not the citizens of India, we can't help you.'
'And the question there is, none of them had given up their Indian citizenship when they went to the other countries, and none had gone on passports or anything. They were refused help.'
He added that history is not just the study of the past or the dead, but that it shows how the present has evolved.
'The idea is to let the present generations also know their ancestors toiled to make them what they are today. It is not that the present diaspora, and all its descendants, fell from the sky.'
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