Kala pani revisited: Indian labour migrants and the sea crossing

This article examines the reconstruction and deconstruction of the concept of काला पानी or kālā pānā, meaning the ‘black waters’, which all Indians must cross when migrating overseas. From its origin as a Brahmanic text warning about the dangers of oceanic voyages, through its dissemination as a more generalised stricture against emigration and its use and abuse as a British colonial construction, to its recasting as a historical trope and a literary device, the ever-changing influence and meaning of kala pani is interrogated and assessed. Contextualising the kala pani trope against the setting of sepoy, convict and indentureship voyages, this study also evaluates its historical validity and importance in colonial and nationalist realities. Finally, the symbolic value of the kala pani and its reworking as a literary device are explored.

Changing Caribbean geographies: connections in flora, fauna and patterns of settlement from Indian inheritances

There can be no doubt that Indian immigration to the plantation colonies changed the geography of those colonies. However, most analyses have dealt with the sugar industry in the colonies after the abolition of slavery. This paper will argue that, apart from the sugar industry, Indian labour and ingenuity made other significant contributions to plantation economies. The girmityas (agreement signers) were well aware that they were going to agricultural occupations so they took with them an amazing array of dried fruits, seeds and cuttings, which survived the long crossing, adding to the flora of the plantations. Armed with this foreknowledge, the jahajis packed these items into their jahaji bundles alongside the Tulsi Ramayan and the Holy Qu'ran. Animals too formed part of this international trade. Sheep, goats and poultry which were not eaten on the outward voyage were sent to the estates, where they multiplied. When dangerous snakes threatened plantation security, cages of mongoose were dispatched to the Caribbean where they bravely tackled venomous creatures. At the urging of Indian labourers with long experience in the sugar industry, the plantations' owners imported Brahma bulls and Zebu cattle, which revolutionised transport on the estates and provided leather, manure and meat to the wider population. There is also the amazing story of the importation of hundreds of water buffaloes (bhaisa) from the Indo-Gangetic plains. Some nine breeds were imported and in the twentieth century Caribbean bio-geneticists were able to blend the best qualities of those Indian animals and created a new hybrid, the buffalypso, which combined the scientific name with Trinidad's fame as the land of the calypso. The buffalypso became a prized animal for haulage, meat, milk and leather and an item of export to Venezuela, Colombia, Miami and the wider Caribbean. Indian cultivars were continuously exported to the botanic gardens in the Caribbean and Indian forestry experts were sent to the region to advise on forest rehabilitation in the wake of large-scale deforestation, which sugar cultivation required. In these and other ways the physical character of the Caribbean underwent permanent change, which manifests itself today.

kreoling sisters: (un)intimate relationships, child marriages and women spirits

The non-fiction piece, ‘kreoling sisters’, explores the overlapped histories of slavery and indenture in the Indian Ocean context, Mauritius in particular. It merges memoir writing, indenture studies and Black study and theory to discuss antiblack/antikreol racism and unfreedom during the critical historical time between the beforelife of indenture (that is slavery) and the afterlife of slavery during indenture. ‘kreoling sisters’ unearths a personal story that touches on the (un)intimacy or unofficialised intimacy between Black mothers and men of Indian descent and their Black-Indo/Kreol children. The aim is to discuss the entanglement between freedom, intimacy, slavery, antiblackness and indenture and disrupt the official, institutional, colonial and patriarchal narratives. The question the piece finally asks is how intimacy and love can exist, with the thought of what freedom could have been in the colony and could be in contemporary times. ‘kreoling sisters’ wishes to envision how Indenture studies can engage with a Black philosophy of freedom and abolition, that is the abolition of the plantation police, prison and property, inherited from colonialism.