Discuss the relationship between the emergence of the modern Indian Diaspora and the operations of the internationallabourmarket in the period marked by the rise of industrial capitalism.

Discuss the relationship between the emergence of the modern Indian Diaspora and the operations of the international labour market in the period marked by the rise of industrial capitalism.

From the earliest times, Indians made their way across the seas to settle in South East Asia, Arabia and East Africa. Perhaps some travelled to even more distant shores, in the Pacific Ocean and beyond. Except for the movement of Tamils from the extreme south of India into Ceylon, the emigration was conducted on a relatively small scale. Those who settled round the boundaries of the Indian Ocean included scholars, scribes, priests and astrologers, but most of the overseas Indians were merchants, teachers artisans, serving men and slaves. It was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that a mass migration was organised to meet the demands of imperial trade and development in the aftermath of African slavery.

The emergence of the modern Indian Diaspora was a simultaneous movement that coincided with the rise of industrial capitalism in Europe. The rise of industrial capitalism ended the period of African slave labour as the main mechanism of labour. The Indian Diaspora of the modern period was marked by the penetration of Industrial Capitalism in Europe, and was the most crucial phase of the diasporic movement of Indians.

Emerging out of Europe, capitalism became the dominant economic system of the modern era. Capitalism expanded under the concept of trade and mercantile negotiations, so much so that labour was integrated into the modern capitalist market. By the 1800’s, capitalism began to expand into a globalised system of economic activity, and besides trade in tangible products, labour became one of the characteristic qualities of the mercantile capitalism phase. The main form of labour allocations was un-free African labour during the period and it was consolidated during the fifteenth century to 1833, within the British Imperial system.

The displacement of mercantile capitalism with the rise and eventual dominance of Industrial capitalism by the 1833 witnessed a revolution in the operations of the international labour market. Industrial capitalism drive towards a more economic system of labour exploitations , was an important facet of the new face of capitalism. Industrial capitalism was based on the efficiency of production methods. Slave labour was deemed an unprofitable system. It had become outmoded and inefficient as it was only needed for specific periods of the year – the harvesting and production phases – and planters had to suffer the cost of maintaining a slave labour force for the full year. The cost of sustaining slaves throughout the year was more expensive than a wage labour force.

The rise of industrial capitalism forced out the institution of African labour; however, the need for a labour supply that replicated the sevile system of slavery endured. It was the rise of industrial capitalism that forged a new relationship with a modern Indian diasporic movement of servile, unfree labour, which came to be characterised as a system referred to as indentureship. It is in this period that the global capitalist development of Indian indentured labour became the mainstay of the international labour market of unfree, servile labour.

This was the genesis of the modern Indian diasporic movement. However, this need for labour by the mechanics of capitalism does not answer the question as to how come in the period of industrial capitalism, the indentureship system was expanded to territories that never employed the use of African unfree labour. Indian indentureship was taken to areas such as South Africa, Fiji and Australia where the institution of slavery never existed.

The answer lies in the fact that the construction of this system existed within, and yet independent of slavery. It was created to service the colonial need for labour throughout the world’s capitalist economies. The system was an international institution of labour exploitation; it was not refined to plantation enclaves, but it touched the shores of lands that never saw the existence of slave labour. The system had a global reach; it was created to fulfill capitalism’s operational need for labour. It was an organised system of labour exploitation rather than a transferring of British subjects from one part of the British Empire to another. It was a mechanism for supplying the international labour market with a source of servile, unfree labour.

This type of labour was ideally suited to the needs of industrial capitalism. It operated as a workforce under conditions of slavery. The vacuum created by slavery was filled by a more economic institution, according to the requirements of industrial capitalism. The maintenance of the indentured labour population was not the responsibility of the planter class. Instead, it marked a new development in the international labour situation, as a modern form of wage employment developed under a system of servitude. This system represented a transitory period between the rise of industrial capitalism and the emergence of finance capitalism in 1917. ...

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The modern Indian Diaspora emerged out of the labour needs of industrial capitalism, but it was facilitated by British colonialism’s policies within the Indian subcontinent. Their attempts to create a system of unfree labour at the exact time of the dismantling of slavery. This called for a pervasive discourse that would disguise the exploitative nature of Indian indentureship, which the international capitalist labour market required.

The colonial discourse that camouflaged the realities of the system of indentureship was based on the frivolous notion that indentured labour was voluntary. One of the most important justifications had to do with ideological justification of the system and the ability of the discourse to distinguish between the system of slavery and indentureship. The discourse characterised Indian indentureship as a system of free labour, and it utilised the notion of the wage to promote the idea. A wage is characterised as a product of the free operation of market forces, but the reality of the wage was not a reflection of market forces. The wage operated more as debt, and where indentures were paid, it was less than a shilling. This was not an expression of free labour. It was a mechanism of bondage. Within the plantation enclave, the planters had control of the credit facilities that provided basic amenities. Through this system, planters were able to keep indentureds in a constant state of debt.

Another mechanism that was employed was the notion of mobility, that was the idea that Indian labour that was suppose to be free and had the ability to dictate their movements. Labour that was mobile was considered free labour. However Indian Labour was anything but Mobile, They were faced by restrictive immigration codes and police laws administered by the imperial authorities. These mechanisms of control were behavioral laws that attempted to regulate the actions of the Indian Diaspora communities. These regulatory laws were very similar to those that were issued under the system of slavery of the African population. They included passes to leave the plantation and acts, such as the vagrancy laws, that placed the Indian population at the hands of the imperial structure of administration. It should also be noted that it widely believed that during slavery the method of subjugation was the whip, and under the institution of indenture the method of oppression was the jailhouse. Therefore, to classify Indian labour during the period of industrial capitalism as free, mobile labour would contradict with the fact of why Indians labour was the replacement for the institution of African slavery. As the operations of the international labour market called for a labour force that was un-free and servile to the needs of capitalism.

Marina Carter, states that neither wage nor mobility was a sign of free labour. Despite this reality, every effort was enabled to construct to this discourse to satisfy the roots of colonialism. This discourse of freedom of the indentured system was produced to allocate to the needs of the international labour market that existed under the rise of industrial capitalism as the dominant economic system, within the concept of free trade.

The system was a carefully planned and orchestrated system, of labour exploitation that facilitated the operations of the world labour market. While maintaining a system of bondage in scattered throughout the globe.

The reserves of the labour were organized as a system of exploitation that found it most suitable to obtain a supply from the Indian subcontinent. Despite the fact that as late as 1840, a commission report in India claimed the supply of labor was in no way abundant. This was so because the available un-free labourers were tied to elite classes. While in the throngs of the immigration schemes, in 1856 that is 30 years after the first shipment of Indians was sent to Reunion, the colony of Grenada requested a supply of labour but the response was once again that the abundant supply was not existent in Colonial India.

However, the needs of the Industrial Capitalist, labour market overcame the realities of the labour situation in India. British Colonialism had entrenched themselves from within India as the ruling power and had tremendous coercive force to mobilize labour in India. It was through coercive tactics of subversion that the international labour market received their supply of servile labour, that gave rise to the emergence of the modern Indian Diaspora, in the period marked by the rise and consolidation of industrial capitalism. .

Colonialism created an excess supply of labour in India, to ensure the continuance and survival of capitalism as a world system. They deliberately set about to produce a non-existent commodity to be traded on the international market.

To obtain this labour ,British officials enacted legislation as one of the main method of recruitment. In 1859, the Workmen's Compensation Ordinance, was issued that required a labourer who was in a situation of debt , and did not posses the means of repayment to choose between prison or indenture for a period of time, in order to repay his debt. This was a choice, but it was a choice between freedom and indenture ,it formed no existence of rational choice to the Indians, and many of them were forced under this system to indenture themselves .This Ordinance was part one of a two part piece of coercive legislation that facilitated the supply of Indians to the international labour market.

The forest ordinance of 1872, was the second part, and was applicable to those sections of the Indian Population that was not under the control of the elite Indian classes. At the time of British colonialism this accounted for 14 1/2% of the total Indian population and these groups were referred to as tribals, who maintained nomadic lifestyles in the Forest's of India. The British through imperial directives encroached on they traditional tribal area, thereby pushing them into small zones of alienation, in order to accommodate the expansion of commercial and plantation enterprises.

Through this legislation, the British denied the tribal groups, their traditional settlement patterns and they constructed the situation of the reservation. The reservation was divided into agricultural plots, distributed to the tribal population, rents were issued at exorbitant prices, and this resulted in huge debt levels among the inhabitants of the reservation system. This situation resulted in the enactment of the 1859 Ordinance that compelled the tribals to choose between jail or indenture as a means of repaying there debts. It is estimated that 30% of indentures were brought through this system resembling the functioning of debt peonage.

British colonialism in India brought innumerable changes in the Indian economy, that facilitated the ability to produce a mass of servile labour to furnish the international labour market at the stage of industrial capitalism. Colonialism changed the land pattern in India from communal land holdings to private ownership. This created a vast body of unemployed persons, through the process of reliving them of their ability to produce thus impoverishing the masses.

Throughout the 19t century this impoverishment increased at a phenomenal rate. Famines were endemic during the economic transformation of India at the hands of British colonialism. India had one famine every two years involving millions of Indians. British economic policy created a pool of desperate starving, land less Indians. British rule had virtually bankrupted the Indian economy. The very devices, which caused under employment in India also, had the effect of assigning to the subcontinent the role of supplier to the world market of both raw materials and that commodity of, human labour

The devices including robbery, war and plunder, but certain economic and customs policies, the breaking up of village communities the dismantling of social structures and the neglect of public works. The fall into decay of the irrigation system which was a prerequisite for agricultural production and the simultaneous destruction of various handy crafts and nascent industries, are just two of the processes which have regularly committed famine to take hold of India since the end of the 18th century. Famine raged in 1770, 1784, 1804, 1837, and 1861 in Bengal and northern India and, in 1877,1878, 1889, 1892, and 1897 in other parts of India. In addition, at the beginning of the 19th century there were millions of Indians who no longer had access to the means of production and the numbers increased with each famine. It is estimated that the famine camps established during the colonial period contained 35000 to 45000 Indians, and were maintained as depots of labour exploitation1.

The situation in colonial India sprang forth the discourse, that the Indian immigrant labour that flooded the international market in the 19th century was a voluntary system. However, the idea of voluntary contracts was a farce as destinations were not revealed and incentives were falsified. The system was filled with purposeful lies and deceit by the imperial authorities. Instead, the system was more characterized by force and oppression trough activities that employed kidnapping and the use of 'bullyboys'.

1.Sydia,Potts,"The world Labour Market" pg. 69

The system contained rampant manipulations and contradictions to its discourse of free voluntary labour.

It was under these conditions that the modern Indian Diaspora movement emerged on the international market. This relationship produced the labour force needed for the consolidation of industrial capitalism on a global scale. The relationship that existed between the emergence of the modern Indian Diaspora community and the international labour market was one that was characterized by deceit and coercion in its justification. Eliment

The Diaspora was integrated into a globalize system of labour exploitation, as rulers of India. The English controlled the mechanisms of Indian immigration. They deployed their reservoir of labor power in their colonies in America, Asia, Africa, Australia, and their various plantation enclaves worldwide. During the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th century, workers from India were dispatched to every continent of the world with the exception of Europe2.

Over forty different countries imported India coolie labour. Indian labour was dispatched not only to British colonies in various parts of the world but also to colonial territories owned by France, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Belgium as well as the United States in Vancouver and her none self governing territories

Between 1834 and 1867, 366,000 Indian indentured labourers were exported to Mauritius and in 1924 there were 222,500 Indians living on the island of whom 23,000 who were still indentured. Between 1834 and 1918 430,000 Indian workers were imported into 7 British colonies in the Caribbean, including British Giuana. Colonial records reflect that 144,000 Indians came to Trinidad during the period 1845 to 1917. Between 1879 and 1916, 60,065, Indians were imported to work on the plantations of Fiji and between 1870 and 1900 700,000 to 750,000, Indian workers arrived at the tea plantations of Assam .3

Demographic divisions of the population groups reflect that 93% came out of the Bohjpuri region in northern India, this has been credited to the fact that this area was viewed as the nerve of the intellectual community in India. It was the center of the 1857-mutiny rebellion in India, refereed to as India's first war of independence. Thus as an act of retribution British colonialism set out to dismantle the nerve of the anti-colonial sentiment, by exporting the inhabitants of the area. Of this 93% of indenture laborers the overwhelming majority came as individuals and there was 20 to 30 individual males for every one female that came. This ratio castes serious doubt on the discourse that indentured Diaspora movements consisted of family units. Actually the colonial records reveal that less that 7% came as anything resembling the family unit and 90% percent of this 7% was single mothers with children.

The indentured system, was not the only method of Diaspora movement that emerged to facilitate the operations of the international labour market. Another type of

3. .Sydia,Potts," The world Labour Market" pg. 68

un-free labour movement that characterized the modern Diaspora movement was the 'kangany' system and the 'maistry' system. Employers in Ceylon and Malaya used the 'kangany' system to recruit their workers. A 'kangany ' was a foreman who in-charge of 25 to 30 Indians. He was an Indian himself under the control of the plantations head 'kangany.' Each 'kangany' acted as a middleman between the plantation management and the coolies. Parts of his job were to travel to India with the plantation owner's money to recruit new workers. The 'kangany' system practiced in Ceylon was oriented towards extended family structures, recruitment was organized on a family bases4.

In principle the 'maistry' system, also referred to as the contract system, was very similar to the' kangany' system. It too used advances to bind the indebted worker into coercive labour. This system was practiced for the requirement of Tamils to Sri Lanka and Burma.

The conditions which Indians were enforced to endure during their voyages to the numerous distant host countries hardly differed from those of the slave ship. In 1856 the average death for Indians in route from the sub continent to the Caribbean was 17%. Thousands of police perished when ships were lost at sea. The number of those who did not survive reduced in subsequent decades, but even when they reached the colony of their destinations Indians could not consider the danger passed.

The conditions under which coolies lived and worked barely differed from those which the former slaves had to endure. The received extremely low were wages faced with numerous fines, obstructed from leaving the plantations and they were not entitled to marry or have a family.

The Diaspora movement of the modern era resulted in, the displacement of millions of Indians throughout the globe. Giving rise to the largest era of the Indian Diaspora in all three phases of the Diaspora movement. The colonial era of the Diaspora movement relocated millions of Indians throughout the world, under systems of bondage to satisfy the operational needs of the international labour market. cocilatory

The operations of the labour market required an abundant supply of efficient and docile labour, which would be able to exist under systems of bondage much like slavery. Indian immigrants were viewed as ideal to accommodate the needs of industrial capitalism. However the indenture transport had political dimensions, it was not only the working of bourgeoisie theories of capitalist demand for labour and British colonialism's supply of it. The British policies in India with regards to their patterns of land settlement were implemented to break the strength of the Indian civilization. This was explicitly illustrated in the British activities in the Bohjpuri region, whereby colonialism implemented pollicies of neglect in the area and prohibited recruitment infrastructure in any other part of northern India.

The emergence of the modern Diaspora, was directly linked to the operational needs of the international labour market, in the period of industrial capitalism. The instances of the rise of the colonial Diaspora is much too coincidental to be dismissed as having no relation, to the needs of the operations of capitalism. British colonialism produced a system of bondage within the system of indentureship and contract labour of the 'kangany' and the 'miastry' systems. This gave rise to the largest phase of the Indian Diaspora movement in world history.

The relationship between labour and the Indian Diaspora of the modern era was forged after the displacement of the institution of slavery. And the need to replace the system with a similar system of un-free docile labour, that was more economic and in cohesion with the philosophy of industrial capitalism's free market and efficiency in operations and productions.

Through the capitalist need for labour the modern India Diaspora emerged after India's encounter with capitalism. This need to satisfy the requirements of the international labour market resulted in the first dispersal of the modern period. It was the first deployment of Indians on a globalized scale . It represented the pervasiveness of capitalism as an economic system throughout the world. As it was industrial capitalism and its operational needs that provided the vacuum, on the international labour market that resulted in the first Diaspora movement of Indian people in the modern era.

2.Sydia,Potts,"The world Labour Market" pg. 66

4.Sydia,Potts,"The world Labour Market" pg. 79