Arise Ye Coolies

When Ratunya Mochi opened her eyes on the second day, still racked with cholera and a disease of scabs on her arms and legs - she had no idea that where she lay was in Africa. She did not care. She had barely survived a forced journey of over 6 months from her birthplace in a village near Hyderabad and despite her wretchedness, fell a deep power now. Each time Ratunya's fever boiled her up from shallow sleep she felt again the moving, the shaking of the only power she had ever known; and her eyes would become gentle. (1)

She looked into the faces of the family crowded over her, sold also into sugar slavery like her, and murmured that she had "decided to die."

The family of Nagium, aged 18, her husband Davarum, aged 30 and their two young children had looked after Ratunya since their arrival in Port Natal two days before. Things were tough. It was mid-November in the year 1860 and the mats on which they lay were already steaming up the rain-water of the night before. New clouds had gathered.

Davarum had lost his caste. A brahmin, he sat, ate, spoke and slept rolled up next to untouchables. He saw Nagium - oblivious to this concern - spitting water into the mouth of the most diseased and decrepit woman he had ever seen alive. He was suddenly irrationally angry with both of then. He was impotent. He was scared. Had he known that she wanted it too, Davarum would not have felt so terrible when - not more that ten minutes after he found himself muttering. "I hope the sick one dies, so I can be with my wife" - Ratunya Mochi rose up in a long dry retch, a choking retch hollow and loud and lay down. There was no anguish on her face, or celebration either. Ratunya lay in the dirt of Africa, under colonialism's shameful sun and died with a look of concentration.

Ratunya Mochi's story is no sadder than most of the stories of dark-skinned people who have been forcibly taken from their continents, as slaves, in some or other European scheme. Like all indentured labourers Ratunya carried the marks of her story on the cage of her body.

Ratunya's husband, Buldeo, had been recruited to indentured labour in 1859 in a very strange manner. An attractive woman from Mapilla called Pathkutti, a typical arkatia (2) decoy, had made Buldeo 'and two male friends an offer of a high-paying job as an agriculturalist "not far away".

Eager to start again, never to let his family go hungry, Buldeo signed up. Signed away his life and freedom For after that Ratunya only ever saw her husband once again - on a train heading South to a port that ferried indentured labourers to the sugar crops of Mauritius. Buldeo's ship, the Shah Allum, like countless others broke up in high-seas. The Shah Allum started to burn. The life boats were quite insufficient for the 75 crew and 400 coolies. There had been a desperate struggle for the boats "and the captain and the crew pulled away leaving the emigrants to their fate." (3) The captain and most of the crew were picked up by the Vasco da Gama, but of all the 400 passengers clinging to broken timber and debris only one was saved.

While Buldeo had been lured, Ratunya had been brazenly kidnapped A month later Ratunya had been swapped for a sum of money at Madras. From here sailed boats to South Africa. Ratunya missed Buldeo terribly. She wept inconsolably one night when she realised that she could no longer remember the face of her daughter or husband; that she, Ratunya, was never going to be free again, loved again. It seemed, at first, no-one understood although many others cried like her softly at night. One evening a group tried to organise. They would attack the British guards and break the gate at night for its hinges were rusty. But still too strong. The British officers whipped the rebellion back behind the gate.

After 2 weeks at sea, Ratunya had forgotten so much about herself that even her hunger seemed distant. She gave her meagre food ration, secretly, to the two young children of a friendly couple and rather enjoyed the sense of herself becoming thinner and thinner; closer to death. When the ship was due to land, Ratunya chanced to look in a piece of mirror. She saw behind her the kidnap, the rapes, the smiling priests, the shackles, the groping British soldiers. And then... the dawning that in death there was resistance. For as she left the Truro her fever began. And so our future.

On 16 November 1860 the TRURO arrived at Port Natal loaded with a human cargo of indentured labourers from India. The first people listed as they disembarked from the TRURO, were a family of four. As the family of Nagium, aged 15 years, her husband Davarum, aged 30, and their two young children, made their way to the farm of Messers W.H. Savory and J.L. Crompton, they pioneered a path that was to be followed by some 150000 people over a 51 year period. (4)

Conditions on board the ships were horrendous. On hoard the BLEVEDERE, the ship that followed the TRURO into Port Natal, 29 passengers died. A further ten died on shore before being assigned to an employer. Women travelled under the constant threat of sexual assault, from both fellow passengers and the ship's crew. (5)

Those indentured labourers who survived the journey were immediately confronted by the harshness of the labour system. A 'hat-trick' determined where the indentured labourers would be assigned to work:

Tickets were picked and according to the dictates of chance, friends, relatives and members of the same family were parted and assigned to new masters. (6)

Indentured labourers worked and lived under extremely brutal conditions. They were overworked as much as a seventeen or eighteen hour day during the overlapping, crushing and planting seasons, malnourished and poorly housed..." (7). Labourers were often imprisoned on a spare diet and solitary confinement for minor infractions:

Gopeah - drunk, fined 10/- and locked up: Seerun - absent from work, to have good application of mustard and sand [rubbed dry on back]: Murugaser - refused to work, stripped and sent to hospital for one week. (8)

There were protests against these conditions; malingering, absenteeism, even suicide was used as a means to confront and escape the harshness of indenture. However, because people had been ripped from their communities in India, were still trying to find a sense of collectivity and whose world consisted exclusively of the repressive regimen of the compound their protests were mainly individualistic and generally did not require prior organisation. (9)

In the early 1870's the first passenger Indians made their appearance in Natal. They comprised mainly traders from India and Mauritius, who came to Natal of their own volition and expense. Many of the richer passenger Indians saw themselves as 'British' Indians and attempted to distance themselves on the basis of class and status, from indentured and ex-indentured labourers. (10)

By the time Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi arrived in Natal in 1893, Indian immigrants consisted of three groups which did not form a homogeneous or cohesive community, viz. 'indentured' immigrants who were under contract; 'free' Indians who had completed their period of indentureship and who had decided to remain in Natal instead of returning to India, and 'passenger' Indians who came to South Africa of their own volition and expense. (11)

By the early 1890's a virulent anti-Indianism from the white community, initially directed at the traders, had taken root. Editorial opinion in newspapers castigated the 'Asiatic trader' as a 'parasite', 'dangerous and harmful', 'the real cancer that is eating into our vitals'. (12) It was during the beginnings of the merchant class response to these attacks that Gandhi arrived in South Africa. He soon came to realize the need for a permanent political organisation to articulate the grievances and defend the interests of the Indian merchant.

Footnotes

1. . Mochi did indeed exist and a number of historical details contained in this introduction are verifiable truths. However, we learn of Mochi's existence and cruelties inflicted upon her (and many like) only through secondary sources. This vignette employs poetic license though, adding many details to her life-story that are not true, cannot be true. However they are historically plausible constructions. As all biography is fiction, this blend of fact and lie is intended merely to raise up the stories of those who can now never speak. I aim to put the desire and spirit of these anthropomorphisms to political use, trying my best not to allow the symbols of my own time to prompt closure.
2. . The front person/tout for the licsnsed recruiter.
3. . For further details refer Tinker H. 1974. A New System of Slavery, London, OUP, p. 166.
4. . Henning C. G. 1993, The Indentured Indian in Natal (1860-1917). New Delhi: Promilla, p. 30.
5. . Meer, F. 1969 Portrait of Indian South Africans. Durban: Avon House p. 10
6. . Ibid p.11
7. . Swan, M. Indentured Indians: Accommodation and Resistance 1890-1910. In Bhana, S. (Ed) Essays on Indentured Indians in Natal. Peepal Tree Press p. 121
8. . Meer, F. 1985 Indentured Labour and Group Formations in Apartheid Society. Race and Class, XXVI (4) p. 49
9. Swan op. Cit. P. 132.
10. . Padayachee, V. And R. Morrell, 1991 Indian Merchants and Dukawallahs in the Natal Economy: 1875-1914, Journal of Southern African Studies 17 (1) p. 80
11. . Bagwandeen D. 1989. Historical Perspectives. In Arkin, A. K. Et al (eds) The Indian South Africans. Pinetown: Owen Burgess p. 4

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