KAPIL'S JOURNEY

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RECRUITERS AND MIGRATION

In Trinidad*, a British Caribbean island colony half way around the world, sugar plantations faced a crippling labour shortage following emancipation of African slaves in the island in 1838. Attempts to use Portuguese and Chinese labourers as successors failed. And so the planters of Trinidad like other planters in the British West Indies sought the recruitment of Indian labourers to satisfy the cravings of the British sweet tooth. They sought the transfer of Indian labour from one part of the British Empire to another. There is a substantial amount of literature* on the reasons for Indian migration to Trinidad. So the author will not examine it in great detail; suffice it to say that Indians began migrating to Trinidad in 1845 under contracts of indentureship. Such contracts provided for the indentured labourer to work for a minimum period of years on an estate. In return he was to be remunerated, provided with accommodation and given health care. The contracts were signed in India, and for the period of indenture the labourer was bound to work on the plantation assigned to him: an indentured labourer was not a free man.
Labourers migrated from two major depots in India: Calcutta and Madras. Trinidad employed an Emigration Agent in Calcutta - and in 1885 O.W. Warner was the agent, possibly the person in charge when Kapil left the depot in Calcutta. The Emigration Agent was in charge of recruitment. He had to explain to the immigrants the nature of their life in the West Indies and provide passage for them if eligible*.
The recruitment process started in Trinidad where the planters would make requests for recruitment of labourers. The Immigration Committee of the Trinidad Legislative Council would agree on a number of immigrants needed for the plantations. The Governor would forward the request to the Colonial Office in London*.
Recruitment occurred six to eight weeks before departure of the immigrant ship - for Trinidad departures were from September/October to March and recruitment commenced in August*. Agents commissioned licensed sub - agents who in turn hired licensed recruiters to canvas people from different districts. Kapil was duly recruited by one of these recruiters on the 7th August, before the autumn voyages to the West Indies.
Legislation was enacted in 1864 to prevent such recruiters being paid by commission. This was to prevent the mischief of recruiters resorting to underhand methods to recruit labourers, but malpractice still persisted in spite of the enactment.The recruiter was obliged to explain the terms of the contract, but this appears to rarely have been done. Instead the recruits were often enticed by promises of light labour and easy wealth; inveigled by reassurances that they could preserve the religion and traditions of their Indian way of life. The recruiter shrewdly drew graphic comparisons between these fabled paradises of the Indies and an India burdened by burgeoning overpopulation, starvation and disease. He is portrayed in the history books as a sweet tongued story teller cunningly preying on the weaknesses of minds besieged by hunger, debt, famine - the more intelligent ones acutely aware of the limitations of caste and village life.
Laws governing recruitment proliferated owing to the efforts of the paternal Indian government and welfare groups, watchful ayahs * over these children of the Ganges plain. Sadly, their effect was minimal. As usually occurs with ineffective legislation - it was not obeyed and it seems rarely to have been enforced. Recruiters were often accused of dishonesty, fraud and misconduct and procuring emigrants by intoxication or coercion. Some recruiters used duress, threatening to take away the recruit's personal possessions*. Some even resorted to kidnapping, a famous incident of which occurred in Allahabad in 1871. An official of the Indian Government in 1910 stated: " the recruiters are the worst kind of men they could possibly have (sic). They are generally very low class men.... they are paid by results...". Indeed violations against recruiting laws continued unabated until the end of indentureship in 1917.
In 1916 Pearson and Andrews reported that only if a recruit was intelligent were the conditions of indenture revealed and that: " the work was made out to be very light indeed, and the most glowing prospects were offered. Nothing is said about the penal laws, or the hard conditions of compulsory labour.*" Weller* indicates of the immigrants that "many... had only the vaguest idea of the future to which they were binding themselves; certainly very few could have had any conception of the location of Trinidad or the kind of life they would find there". The Sanderson Commission in 1910 found that not even 25% of the recruits could distinguish between the different colonies or had any concept of what working and living there would be like*. Recruiters often recruited in bazaars and city centres where villagers were sufficiently susceptible once severed from the ties of the village and the influence of villagers who thought the recruiter only told lies*. It was in Benares that Kapil was recruited, far away from his village, and completely on his own. One can only speculate what tales the recruiter told him or whether he knew where he was going, but it is very likely he had little idea of the harsh working lifestyle that lay ahead.

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P. Capildeo July 2003.
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