LAST week, I provided a journey on how savings from indentured Indians were remitted from British Guiana to India. Despite the well-defined regulations on how to remit savings, payees or heirs in India were not found to receive remittances from their relatives in British Guiana due to death or migration. Entire villages were wiped out from natural disasters such as famine and flood while payees were on a constant move looking for employment.

The challenge to find payees in India was also manufactured by the colonial government. When indentured Indians left India, they were told that communications between British Guiana and India would be established, and facilities were in place to remit savings and properties to their relatives should they die in British Guiana. This agreement was breached, and it was not until 1882 that the Immigration Department began to assist the Colonial Receiver-General on unclaimed balances of deceased indentured on various estates. Mr. Mitchell, the Immigration Agent-General for British Guiana, claimed that 266 Indians died in British Guiana between 1862 and 1879 leaving £3,336 to be remitted to India. In 1883, another £1,037 unclaimed funds were added to the list. These were only a couple of cases where funds were left unremitted. The actual unremitted funds were substantially higher. The table below shows the challenge of settling unclaimed balances and credits of deceased Indians in British Guiana in the 1880s.

Statement showing No. of Deceased Immigrants Credits Still Outstanding and Progress to Resolve Them
Being dealt with in office Heirs being traced in India Awaiting sanction of Court of Policy Remittances being made to India Heirs not yet traced Not identified No.   $ No.    $ No.     $ No.     $ No.     $ No.     $ 17     $648 91      $5,927 3         $405 22    $1,391 81      $2,754 46    $1,478 Source: Comins, D.W.D. Note on Emigration from India to British Guiana (Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press 1893), 38.

From the table, ninety-one heirs were traced while an almost equal number of eighty-one heirs were not traced, and more than half (forty-six) were not identified. What this meant was that at any given time during indenture more heirs were not traced or identified. This was rather unsettling to indentured Indians since one main objective of committing themselves to indenture was to remit savings back to India regardless of whether they were dead or alive. They expected their families to be the recipients of their savings, not the colonial government. One reason why payees were not found in India was that their names as well as names of indentured Indians were often misspelled. The colonial Registrar Officials, mainly British, were unfamiliar with Indian names and spelled them according to their own standards. For example, the misspelling of names such as Laallgee and Bhowammadeen appeared often on official lists of indentured names. These names did not exist in India. One colonial official stated that the spelling of Indian names was so transmogrified during registration prior to departure from India that it was no surprise that individuals and villages were not found in India. Even worse was that most indentured Indians also enabled the dysfunctional registration system. Many indentured Indians could not read and write and were therefore incapable of pinpointing the misspelling of their own names. Even if they had recognised the misspelling of their names, they would have not questioned it seriously because arriving indentured Indians to British Guiana were submissive to authority figures. Still, some indentured Indians deliberately gave Registrar Officials incorrect names to conceal their caste identity to start new upward associations in British Guiana. The result was that some Indians were difficult to trace

There was also a problem associated with the exchange rate which was lower than expected. Towards the end of the indenture system, the Indian government responded to the unfair exchange rate. The government stated that the number of orders was advised to the Bombay Post Office in Sterling money and the amount in Indian currency payable on each order was calculated by that officer in accordance with the rate of exchange current at Bombay the day the advice list was received from London. Consequently, the government could not in any case be previously determined what amount was payable in India. The value of the rupee was one-sixth and a quarter in 1888. The government subsequently declared that it was necessary for indentured servants to know that owing to frequent fluctuations in the value of the rupee no fixed rate of exchange for money orders could be declared. The rate of exchange agreed upon between the Imperial and Indian Governments was not applicable to the transactions with the Post Office. It is not precisely known how much savings were remitted through the Post Office, but the unpredictable exchange rate and the slow process were major disadvantages to waiting families of indentured Indians in India (lomarsh.roopnarine@jsums.edu).