Abstract
Chapter 2 focuses on nonfiction narratives from the laborers and their descendants: autobiographies, testimonials, and interviews. This chapter demonstrates the ways that laborers suffered under, perpetuated, and resisted categorizations along gender, ethnic, and class lines. In particular, it examines colonial legislation around marriage and the impact of that legislation. Marriage, the publicly recognized institution of a private relationship, was a flashpoint for religious, ethnic, and class tensions in the Caribbean colonies. To explore the broader implications of these tensions, this chapter analyzes autobiographies by Munshi Rahman Khan, a formerly indentured laborer, and Alice Singh, the daughter of an indentured laborer, as well as interviews with and testimonials by indentured laborers. These texts demonstrate that the British legislation of marriage, meant to impose Victorian ideals and justify imperialism, tended instead to support the view of women as contested property, and to solidify existing class and racial hierarchies in both the colonizers and the colonized. Further, these texts demonstrate a colonial anxiety around single female laborers, who challenged the justification that colonialism brought comfort and safety to the helpless and victimized colonized women.
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- 1.
The term “Munshi” is a sign of respect, translated as “teacher.”
- 2.
See Marina Carter and Shaheeda Hosein for explorations of these themes.
- 3.
Recruiter.
- 4.
Pleasure and Rest.
- 5.
A headman or driver.
- 6.
I refer to Alice Singh henceforth by her first name in order to distinguish her from her family members, who share her last name.
- 7.
Her handwritten diary is available at the University of Guyana library, and was typed up and published online by Sushila Patil and Moses Seenarine.
- 8.
The interview transcript and the Certificate of Exemption are held by the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. The Certificate of Exemption reports that she served her term at Plantation Brician Castle (most likely a misspelling of Brechin Castle) and that her name was Doolarie, of Brickfield Road, Central Trinidad.
- 9.
The interview is listed as taking place on September 18, 1992. However, as many other interviews in the series took place on September 18, 1982, it is likely that this is a typographic error, and this interview also took place in 1982.
- 10.
The quota system, in which ships were required to include a certain proportion of women to men before they could sail from India to the colonies, was impacted by this debate. The government of India tried to set the ratio at 1:2, but emigration officials argued that this would only worsen the problem by bringing in more immoral women, and so the ration shifted from 1:3 in 1857 to 1:2 in 1868, then 1:4 in 1878–1879 (Reddock 1994, 28–29).
- 11.
Gaiutra Bahadur similarly reports that her great-grandmother was given the job of minding the children because of her beauty and “‘because her feet were soft’” (Bahadur 2014, 148).
- 12.
He mixes Western and Hindi terms of admiration: “Queen,” as well as “Maharani,” meaning princess, “Bahadur,” a title conferred on Indians by the British to indicate respect, and “Sahab,” perhaps a feminized form of the respectful term “sahib.”
- 13.
Rosemarijn Hoefte notes that in spite of economic instability and political unrest in Suriname in the early twentieth century, the monarchy was much beloved—the king was given direct credit for positive developments, such as the end of slavery, whereas it was assumed that the only reason he had not interceded to end other abuses was because he did not know about them. All groups in Suriname, including the Creole population and those of Indian descent, saw the queen as “a protective mediator…the one person who transcended ethnic, class, and gender differences” (Hoefte 2014, 89).
- 14.
Couples were required to sign a declaration stating that no impediment existed, publish notice of the intended marriage, wait three weeks to ensure that there were no objections, obtain a certification from the District Magistrate, and then take that certificate to the Immigration Agent in Georgetown, who issued a marriage registration certificate for $2.
- 15.
The law also seems to have had little effect on the immigrants’ views of marriage. In 1883, H.V.P. Bronkhurst, a Christian missionary wrote of the Ordinance, “The marriage ceremony gone through by them is a perfect farce…at least, the coolies have repeatedly told me so” (Bronkhurst 1883, 337).
- 16.
As in the British colonies, Dutch authorities in Suriname did not officially recognize Muslim and Hindu marriages, and over 90% of Indian children were considered illegitimate (Hoefte 2014, 65).
- 17.
Rahman Khan’s autobiography also describes religious conflicts flaring up around marriages, and weddings in particular. For example, a ten-year conflict between Hindus and Muslims in Suriname was sparked at the wedding of Rahman Khan’s youngest daughter when a Muslim imam began arguing with a Hindu man.
- 18.
See Patricia Mohammed, Gender Negotiations Among Indians in Trinidad: 1917–1947.
- 19.
Sanadhya also indicates that the treatment of these women brings shame to India in the eyes of other men, suggesting that Indian men are not truly men unless they protect the virtue of their women and punish those who seek to damage that virtue (Sanadhya 1991, 61–62).
- 20.
Marina Carter points to a similar petition of Telegu men to the governor of Mauritius, requesting that authority be returned to them, specifically by “establishing the legitimacy of Indian marriages and punishing abductors” (Carter 1994, 237). The government responded by passing the Indian marriage regulations of the 1850s, which “placed immigrant women under the legal authority of their spouses, effectively marshalling the forces of the state against runaway or adulterors, and criminalising disobedient or disaffected wives” (Carter 1994, 9).
- 21.
See Carter, Bahadur.
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Klein, A. (2018). To Have and To Hold: The Role of Marriage in Nonfiction Indenture Narratives. In: Anglophone Literature of Caribbean Indenture. New Caribbean Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99055-2_2
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