Indian Trinidad

After the 1857-58 anti-Company revolts in northern India (or technically, Hindustan), the dominions of Awadh (or Oudh) and Bengal were left distraught. Extensive plundering and massacres at Cawnpore (Kanpur), Lucknow and adjoining areas led to severe political and economical turmoil. The transfer of power from the devastated East India Company into the hands of the Crown would officially take a couple of years but meanwhile another important series of event took place in India that somehow have slipped through the pages of history. Mostly because these events occurred outside the subcontinent and had less to do with the independence movement, but it involved millions of Indians and the concept of slavery was attached here as well. Interestingly, slavery was officially abolished in the 1830s but still there were several sugar and other plantations elsewhere that formerly required slaves - mostly those from the black community - that now were officially shut. And thus, the concept of 'immigrant slavery' or 'Girmitiya' came in.

Britain, France and Netherlands had their colonies all across the world. Particularly Oceania, Caribbean and South American countries, which had almost all the imperial colonists clubbed together. All the West Indies islands were colonized by some or the other European nation. But Indians were majorly migrated to the islands of Jamaica and Trinidad in particular, and the coastal fields of Dutch Guiana (Suriname) and British Guiana (Guyana). This map shall talk about the Indian migration in the tiny island of Trinidad.

When the island was first discovered by the Spanish explorer Christopher Columbus in 1498, he named it as Isla La Santissima Trinidad. In 1592 it became part of the Spanish province 'Guyana y Trinidad' and by 1717 it was incorporated in Nueva Granada (Colombia). For a brief while between 1781 to 1793, it was a French colony which later on went into British hands and between 1802 it became an official British colony. Some 5-6 odd years later started the Indian settlement since the British couldn't officially incorporate African slaves now. In disguise of 'contracted agreements', they filled the island (and other territories such as Fiji, Mauritius, Jamaica, Guyana, Natal etc.) with roughly 25,000 Indians.

Although the incoming of Indians increased tremendously after the 1857-58 rebellion, the first ship that transported Indians to Trinidad was in 1845, when a ship named Fatel Razack (Fath Al Razack) brought 225 Indians, the first indentured workers to Trinidad. Among these, 21 workers were female. In this first 5 year period, 5568 immigrants arrived in Trinidad. Emigration to the West Indian colonies was again suspended between 1841 and 1851 due to fraud and coercion in the recruiting process in India, and the abuses experienced by emigrants in the West India. Once emigration was allowed again, ships once again began bringing indentured workers to Trinidad. In total, 16,262 indentured workers migrated to Trinidad in this decade. Initially, the journey from India to Trinidad averaged at about three months, but became substantially shorter and less turbulent with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Conditions on board the ships were cramped and depressing and there were frequent outbreaks of such diseases as cholera, typhoid, dysentery and measles which led to high mortality rates on some of the journeys.

By the 1870s, Indians had proven themselves as the virtual backbone of the sugar industry in Trinidad. Between 1875 – 1917, 92,243 emigrants were brought to Trinidad, and 75% of these came from the United Provinces, 13% from Bihar, less than 4% each from Central India, Nepal, and Punjab. The Hosay massacre (also known as the Hosay riots or the Jahaji massacre) took place on Thursday 30 October 1884 in San Fernando, Trinidad when the British colonial authorities fired on participants in the annual Hosay procession (the local name for the Shi'a Festival of Muharram) who had been banned from entering the town. 

The Indian indentured system officially ended in Trinidad in 1917. But the Indian diaspora still lives on. Numerous towns and settlements are named after Indian (and south Asian) cities. The 'chutney music' is a fusion of Indian and Caribbean culture which was also used in a Bollywood film Gangs of Wasseypur (2012). Interestingly, according to the 2011 census, nearly 14.1% of Trinidad population has Indian origin out of which nearly 50% are Hindus. Places such as Fyzabad, Golconda, Hindustan, Madras, Chandennagore, Matura (Mathura), Malabad, Bangladesh, Delhi, Patna, Bombay Street, Calcutta etc. can be found on this tiny island. The map here is of today's Trinidad and all the place names derived from Indian origin are marked on it.