The almost century-long system of Indian indenture (1830–1920) initiated by the British after the abolishment of slavery in 1833 displaced 1.3 million Indians who were taken as cheap contract labor to work on the plantation colonies of the Empire. This paper will draw focus on the voyage undertaken by the indentured Indians across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans to the British plantation colonies in the Caribbean. It will deconstruct certain stereotypes and myths about the journey on the ships across the Kala pani (black waters of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans) that have for long been reproduced in the earlier literature written on indenture. The journey of the indentured Indians to the Promised Land, towards the American continent, was paradoxically not for adventure, or for a religious cause, or even to pursue a dream, but was, quite simply, a means to an end. The ship, and by extension, the voyage, would become the site of their coming together, and it is from the ships that would emerge the narratives of their origin. Through a growing body of work across diverse genres of poetry, fiction and prose, the succeeding generations of the indentured people have been engaged in interrogating and reclaiming the indenture experience of their forbears in order to mine the legacies of indenture. This paper will take a closer look at select narratives documenting the invisible and unvoiced ‘her’stories to reveal the several paradoxes surrounding the experience of the transoceanic voyage in indenture.
English