East Indian/West Indian: Racial Stereotype, Hosay, and the Politics of National Space

Why is Indo-Caribbean belonging in the Caribbean even an issue today? The answer lies in the particular circumstances of Indian arrival in the Caribbean. After the abolition of slavery in Trinidad in 1834, Indian and subsequently Chinese indentured labor was recruited from 1845 to 1917 to replace slave labor so as to keep the plantations functional. But indentured labor differed from slave labor in two crucial regards. First, indentured laborers were never considered property; their humanity was never in question. Second, at least in theory, their servitude was limited and contractual; the contract of indentureship lasted five to seven years, after which the colonial government was to pay for the laborers’ return passage to India. However, the working and living conditions of indentured labor were often comparable to those of slaves. Moreover, several features of the indentured contract system combined to make the Indians captive labor: the legal obligation to work, the promotion of indebtedness through unmeetable workloads, and the requirement that they fulfill the purposes of the employer during the period of indentureship in order to secure their freedom. 1 In fact, less than a quarter of the 144,000 Indian indentured laborers returned “home.” These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.