Origins

The term “Indo-Caribbean” best describes the descendants of people who left India more than a century ago to live in the Caribbean. There is no connection between Indo-Caribbean people and the indigenes or aboriginals of the Caribbean and the Americas – the so-called Indians, as they were misnamed by Columbus at the end of the fifteenth century. “Indo-Caribbean” is best understood within the context of European colonial history as it impinges on the Caribbean region. During the nineteenth century, the imperial, colonizing states of Europe, particularly Great Britain, transported large numbers of people from India to its other colonies, such as Fiji in the Pacific Ocean, Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, and Trinidad in the Caribbean Sea.

Caribbean region applies both to the islands surrounded by and the mainland territories that border the Caribbean Sea. Those territories range in size from the large islands of Cuba and Hispaniola to tiny ones like Curaçao or St Kitts, and to mainland territories in Central and South America like Belize (formerly British Honduras), Guyana (formerly British Guiana), or Suriname (formerly Dutch Guiana). Historically, these islands and mainland territories were settled, administered, and developed through the same colonial process, and they were shaped by broadly similar social, economic, and political influences.

Before the voyages of Columbus at the end of the fifteenth century and the advent of European colonialism, the Caribbean was inhabited by several groups of aboriginal peoples such as the Arawaks and Caribs. European settlement resulted in the virtual elimination of these indigenous peoples, particularly in the islands. In mainland territories, the aboriginals were able to survive somewhat better, in large part because they could find refuge in the forests of Central and South America. The conquest and destruction of peoples in the Caribbean region involved all the major European seafaring states – Spain, France, Britain, and the Netherlands – whose rivalry with each other widened the scope of conflict and intensified the brutality of their competitive colonial enterprise. The diverse linguistic, cultural, and ethnic origins of Caribbean society are therefore inescapably associated with violence, exploitation, and political rivalry between European powers.

Whatever diplomatic, political, or strategic advantages the Caribbean region may have possessed, the compelling European interest in the region was economic in nature. For Europeans, the Caribbean’s particular value lay in the production of sugar and other minor crops. Although for an initial brief period some European labourers – chiefly Scottish and Irish prisoners – did work on Caribbean sugar plantations, in the end it was to Africa that European plantation owners turned for their chief source of labour. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century it is estimated that between three to ten million African blacks were brought as slaves to work on European-owned sugar plantations in the Caribbean region and the Americas.

By the nineteenth century, the broad outline of Caribbean society had become well established. It was patterned on the values of a plantation hierarchy, with the wealthy, white landowners being socially and economically the most dominant; the intermediate, brown or mixed (European and African) peoples coming next in influence; followed by the black, African-descended majority which formed the poorest and lowest social stratum. It was into this three-tiered social structure determined by historically sanctioned values of race, colour, and class that people from India were brought following the abolition of slavery in British territories in 1834.

After abolition, the freed Africans did not work as reliably or consistently as wage labourers on their old plantations; hence, it was necessary for plantation owners to find a new source of labour if sugar production was to be maintained. At first, Portuguese (from Madeira) and then Chinese labourers were brought to territories like Guyana and Trinidad, but they did not adapt well to plantation work. Consequently, beginning in 1838 hundreds of thousands of labourers were brought from India. These newcomers left their homes for a variety of reasons, including famine, lack of steady employment, chronic poverty, and general economic distress.

The indentured labourers were recruited from several geographical areas and levels of society in India. Since their main port of embarkation was Calcutta, most initially came from this city and its immediate surroundings. By the 1850s and 1860s, however, a majority was drawn from India’s northeastern provinces of Bihar and Bengal, especially from those districts where Bhojpuri (a form of Hindi) was spoken. Later, the search for recruits shifted in a westerly direction towards the northwestern provinces and Oudh (present-day Uttar Pradesh). Others came from southern India, chiefly from Tamil- and Telugu-speaking districts around Madras. Most emigrants were driven by social and economic distress. There were also sepoys fleeing imprisonment after the Indian Mutiny in 1857, and individuals who simply wished to escape domestic problems or creditors.

Since lower-caste groups saw emigration as a convenient means of evading restrictions of the caste system, it was traditionally believed that most indentured labourers were of low-caste origin. Recent research suggests, however, that social and economic distress was so widespread in India that people from higher castes, including Brahmins, were also recruited. In terms of religious affiliation, Hindus predominated, although there were also Muslims and a few Christian recruits.

Asian Indians came to the Caribbean region as indentured immigrants under a scheme of fixed, usually five-year, contracts. If they completed two five-year terms, they were entitled to a passage back to India or to a grant of land. It is estimated that, between 1838 and 1917, about 750,000 indentured Asian Indians, both men and women, came to the Caribbean as labourers on sugar plantations, and of this number about one-quarter returned to India at the end of their contracts. Therefore, the overwhelming majority remained and settled in at least thirteen territories. More than half of those who originally came, about 430,000, remained in British territories: 239,000 in Guyana; 144,000 in Trinidad and Tobago; 37,000 in Jamaica; 4,000 in St. Lucia; 3,000 in Grenada; 2,000 in St Vincent; and 337 in St Kitts. It is the descendants of these Asian Indians who today form the cultural group described here as Indo-Caribbean. (See also GUYANESE; JAMAICANS; TRINIDADIANS.)

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Caribbean society consisted mainly of whites (northern Europeans), browns (mixed Afro/Europeans), and African blacks. By the end of the century, following indenture and further ethnic and cultural mixing, the region received and in part integrated Portuguese, Chinese, and Asian Indians. The mixed offspring of these groups has increased further the degree of ethnic variety and social complexity in the Caribbean region. The demographic mix was not uniform, however, since each territory did not have the same proportion of blacks, whites, browns, Asian Indians, or other ethnic groups.