IN 1936, 16 years after indenture was abolished, the Indian population was 140,718 with 74,087 males and 66,231 males. Of this total, 55,630 were living on the estates while 85,088 were off the estates, according to the Immigration Agent General report of 1937. This gradual movement off the estates suggested that some Indians had given up the idea of going back to India and chose to stay in British Guiana permanently. Their decisions were encouraged by the prospect that they could survive on their own accord or with some government assistance.
They also stayed in British Guiana because some returnees had to first adjust to the conditions of plantation life in sugar colonies and upon returning to India, they had to adjust for the second time, to their own homeland. Their overseas experience, according to Mahatma Gandhi, had transformed them into strangers in their own land of birth. Gandhi said they all looked famished and were from the lowest ebb of human misery. They were neither Indian nor Colonial. They lacked the Indian culture and encouraged them to stay in their new colonies.
What came out of this movement to stay in British Guiana was the formation of a cluster of Indian communities along the coastal belt with large extended families which engaged primarily in the cultivation of sugar, rice, and small-scale farming as well as the rearing of cattle and poultry. In 1927, for instance, there were about 150 rice mills in various parts of British Guiana that produced 25,752, 411 pounds of rice worth $732,871. On 32 sugar estates, 6,018 Indians owned 17,582 heads of cattle and an unknown number of goats and sheep and poultry.
Some 768 Indians had licences to sell milk, according to the Immigration Agent General report of 1928. This figure is most likely higher since many Indians sold milk illegally. Thousands of Indians were also actively involved in fishing in the trenches of irrigated rice fields (sweet water fishing) and in the rivers (saltwater fishing). Soon after indenture, Indians participated in the open markets as buyers and sellers of fish, meat, vegetables. Various Indian shops– provisions, bread, and liquor– sprung up throughout British Guiana.
Although most Indians, probably about 80 per cent, remained in the villages working the land, there were a noticeable growth and involvement in huckster, horse and donkey cart trading and transporting of commodities as well as market vendors, artisans, and other occupations of commercial life in urban areas. Some Indians were shop owners selling medicine, spirits, and provisions. Other Indians were pawnbrokers, milk, and vegetable vendors. Indians, especially women, could be seen in these urban areas carrying basket of vegetables on their heads and milk cans slung over their shoulders, selling these items from door to door.
The Indian Opinion, a weekly newspaper, in 1945, ran an advertisement “Buy Nirmal Ghee British Guiana Foremost Dairy Produce” because “Nirmal Ghee is 100 per cent pure manufactured locally under expert supervision. If you want your own puree, manbhug, mithai and other Indian dishes made more tempting and nutritious, use Nirmal Ghee… which can be used at Jag, Katha, Puga and other ceremonies”.
The movement from rural to urban areas followed a step migration. Indians moved first from the plantations to settlements and then to urban areas, although some moved directly from the plantations to urban areas. The latter movement was always less common and more irregular than the movement from the settlements to urban areas. The rural-urban movement was based on economic success and individual aspirations. As some Indians experienced steady progress and accumulated wealth, they transferred their economic activities to urban areas with relative ease, although they had to compete with other ethnic groups, which resulted in ethnic tensions between Indians and Africans, Indians and Portuguese and Africans and Portuguese.
Some Indians moved from their rural base because of Christian religious influence. Christian missionaries offered rural Indians opportunities for western education. While this form of education was met with resistance from Hindu community leaders for intruding on their faith, a small number of mostly young males attended Christian-administered schools and received Christian religious teachings and western forms of education. This exposure to Western education and skills prompted Indians to seek stable opportunities beyond their rural agricultural belt. They were now prepared to compete for urban-oriented jobs in the civil service and private sector; jobs that offered year-round stability when compared to the seasonal employment and lower wages in rural areas. In 1911, about eight per cent of the Indian population lived in urban areas, and by the 1940s, that figure increased to about 20 per cent, principally in Georgetown and New Amsterdam.
The rural-urban migration produced an elastic relationship among Indians in British Guiana. Migratory Indians did not abandon their former living base. Instead, they returned regularly. The short distance between the rural and urban environments encouraged continuous contact. Their common immigrant plantation experience provided a natural medium for them to facilitate the flow of trade, ideas, conversations (roadside talk) and customs.
In some ways, Indians had re-discovered the common heritage that bound them together in their former homeland, despite the vast distances and differences that separated them. There were also signs that they were beginning to live better than in their former homeland. The massive famines and endemic poverty many encountered before migrating from India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were unheard of in British Guiana (lomarsh.roopnarine@jsums.edu).
