Kala Pani Crossings

This book explores the multifarious histories of the system of indenture, the colonial arrangement through which more than one million Indians were transported to the sugar colonies between 1834 and 1917, after the abolition of Atlantic slavery. As it moves away from an exclusive diasporic lens in which India appears primarily as the land ‘left behind’, this companion volume to the first two Kala Pani Crossings co-edited volumes strives to reverse the gaze and foreground perspectives from the Indian subcontinent. The essays suggest new routes in the scholarship, propound fresh questions regarding the legacy of indenture and think through aspects in the labour migrations that may have been underestimated, caste and class in particular. To do so, they draw on sociohistorical data as well as on media, artistic, and literary works that highlight and interrogate the contradictions inherent within the indenture system.

Other crucial questions are raised that pertain to the very framework of Kala Pani Studies; the definition and scope of Kala Pani are reassessed. The volume stretches the boundaries to move beyond Indian migration to the Caribbean, Fiji, Reunion Island, or Mauritius. Adopting an interdisciplinary and comparative lens, it proposes to extend the study to other subsequent types of unfree or semi-coerced labour to countries such as South Africa, Malaysia or, more recently, the Gulf countries. Without erasing the specificities of 19th century indentured labour, the editors and the contributors invite us to reflect on Kala Pani as providing a blueprint for other regimes that depend on the trafficking of bodies from South Asia.

The volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of migration and diaspora studies, South Asian history, anthropology, postcolonial literatures, but also food, gender and film studies.