Bittersweet: The Red Riding Hood and the Wolves of Empire
For most of human history
the ship was the fastest we could travel.
The furthest we could think.
Wind was the invisible force
powering colonial expansion.
J.R. Carpenter
Ships are an important part of the indenture story and we have a constant focus on the Truro and Belvedere that brought the first indentured to Natal from the ports of Madras and Calcutta. But what about the ships that took the very first indentured migrants back to India? In this column, we bring into history the story of the Red Riding Hood, who set sail for India from Port Natal on February 12, 1871, with 387 passengers. It is a harrowing story of a fairytale that turned into a nightmare.
BETWEEN 1860 and 1866, 6 445 indentured Indians had landed at Port Natal. As a global recession impacted on Natal, labour importation was halted in 1866. The sugar industry in the period after the first arrival of the indentured had prospered. The Natal Mercury lauded the role that the indentured played in the growth highlighting in 1865 the “enlarged production and increased prosperity he will create in Natal”.
The figures were astounding as sugar exports exploded from 26 000 pounds to 100 000 pounds in a single year between 1863 and 1864. Plantation owners were overnight turned into men of wealth and power. But beneath the lauding of the indentured by the Mercury was a tale of violence, theft and cruelty whose story was to be exposed by the living cargo that set sail on the Red Riding Hood.
The voyage was hazardous, and many of the passengers, already weakened by the years of labour, fell ill. Six deaths and one birth were recorded as the indentured made the return trip across the Kala Pani. One hundred and fifty six passengers disembarked at Madras and 226 in Calcutta.
Dr JW Matthews, the district surgeon of Inanda as well as the surgeon on the voyage, recorded: “A home on the rolling sea’s sounds very exciting and spirit-stirring when sung on shore, but all the excitement and enthusiasm vanish when one gets to sea on board a ship with some 400 coolies as companions. Yet it was a sight worth seeing to behold the shipment at the anchorage when we left – the lame, the blind, the paralytic, the epileptic, the lepers without toes and the lepers without fingers.”
Once The Red Riding Hood anchored in Madras on April 10, 1871, the drama started.
The ship was met by the Protector of Emigrants and was surrounded by the ex-indentured and a litany of complaints were reported. Grievances included the late payment of wages, which resulted in some indentured workers having to borrow money at usurious rates, the working day extending beyond the nine hours stipulated in the contract, insufficient and incorrect rations, false promises about bonuses, and the “ruthless neglect of the sickly”.
Of 83 adults who got off at Madras, six did not have any money, while the rest had £21 between them. The testimony was heartbreaking.
Balakistna Doorasamy, from Chittoor, was passenger 336 on the Truro. He testified on April 12, 1871, that the recruiter in Madras, Mr Collins, as well as Dr F Holland and Edward Tatham in Natal, told him and other recruits that they would each receive £10 upon their return to India after 10 years. Every Indian that he knew confirmed that this bonus had been promised.
Balakistna worked for three years for Lister’s Estate, where he received “proper food and wages, but he (Lister) was very severe. If a Coolie did not go to work one day he stopped two day’s pay, and he often tied up Coolies who made mistakes, and flogged them, and then put saltwater on their backs”.
He personally saw Jacob and Moonesawmy, fellow indentured workers, beaten with a sjambok, a piece of bullock’s hide “about a foot-and-a-half long, which he (Lister) carried in his pocket”.
Moonesawmy Chinyamma (841) of Hyderabad arrived in Natal on the Lord George Bentinck in December 1860. He worked for Lister as a cowherd.
“I was there till I got my liberty, that is, for five years, the time of contract.”
Moonesawmy described Lister as a “very bad gentleman. He would sometimes put a rope around my neck, and send me to the police. He often beat me with a sjambok, tying my hands and pouring salt water on my back if cattle strayed into the coffee”.
Veeran (280), who went to Natal on the Truro, worked for five years for Mr Greig as a field labourer and cook. His was not a happy experience. Once, Greig beat him “on the head with an iron rod and cut my forehead (a scar on the right temple here shown) because I would not make up the fire. I then ran off into the bush for three days. When I came back I worked for three months but never got any pay”.
Greig gave them “small rations of rice and sweet potatoes”, but not the full ration to which they were entitled. A recruiter in Madras promised him a bonus of £10 when he returned from Natal.
Bauboo Ilyalloo (3049) of Madras went to Natal on the Sir John Lawrence in July 1864. He worked for Clement Crozier for three years and nine months. He was paid irregularly and owed almost one year’s pay. Crozier owed the same to 33 others who were still in Natal. The manager, Henderson, and Sirdar Ramasamy Naidoo “used to worry and bully the coolies so that four men hanged themselves to escape the annoyance of being compelled to work when sick, and of being beaten”.
Workers were never given proper rations. Sick Indians were sent to the depot at the Point near the Durban Bay “and made to work in Baboo Naidoo’s garden. If they refuse he gives them only half-rations. We were compelled to clean the privies while we were sick at the depot. Mr Mason is entirely in the hands of Baboo Naidoo [the interpreter]. Mr Mason is the manager at the depot and emigration agent”.
Ilyalloo was speaking from personal experience that was literally written on his body. He was badly injured at work and returned on the Red Riding Hood even though he had been in Natal for less than seven years.
Girmitya, my maker
Your journey
Has broken my heart.
- Sudesh Mishra
The “evidence” of abuse and violence was not limited to returning Indians. There were cases of the indentured literally being beaten to death. One case that came to official attention was Sirdar Baloomookund’s assault of Nabee Saib (5807) in October 1866, as described by Dheen Mahomed (3674): “I saw him (Nabee) flogged. Baloomookund tied deceased’s two hands together, then tied him with a leather piece to the right hand fore-wheel of a wagon, and then flogged him with a sjambok. Blood was dropping along his back. Deceased cried out very loud amon, amon, which means mother, mother, afterwards he became senseless. After the flogging, Nabee Saib was taken to his own hut and tied, and there he remained till he died.”
Another witness, Chuttee, who took food to Saib, saw “wounds on his back bleeding. The skin was out like a sore. Sirdar beats the coolies with sjambok, sticks, and fists”.
Dr Matthews told the court that Saib suffered from a heart condition, which his employer and the Sirdar were aware of G Jackson, the employer, knew that Saib was incapable of hard work, and once described the 1.46-metre-tall Saib as “a weak, emaciated creature”. Yet he subjected him to hard work and physical punishment. Jackson buried the body before a post-mortem was carried out. When Dr Matthews saw the body five days after the murder, “the skin of his back was peeled off... some of the skin on the heel had also peeled off”.
Saib had arrived from Bangalore on the Adelaide in February 1866 and died barely eight months later. His death did not result in any convictions. Due largely to the absence of a proper interpreter, the evidence of the witnesses was deemed contradictory, and the magistrate ruled that the heart ailment was the cause of death. As the prosecutor, Bowlby, said in frustration: ‘There was no skilled interpreter and the consequence was that the evidence had to pass through two interpreters before the replies reached the ears of the Court.“
The contradictions that led to the exculpation of Baloomookund and Jackson revolved around whether Saib was tied to a wagon or a cart, and whether it was the left or right wheel!
Natal’s employers were outraged by what they regarded as a pack of lies by the first returnees to India. In keeping with the pattern of ignoring abuses, the Natal government dismissed the complaints without a proper investigation. Colonial Secretary David Erskine conceded to the Indian government on November 21, 1871, that Lister’s “treatment of his coolie was both harsh and illegal“, but dismissed the complaints as baseless. When economic conditions improved in Natal, employers began to request labour.
The Indian government, however, refused to sanction further immigration until the treatment of indentured Indians was thoroughly investigated. Forced to take action, a commission was appointed by the Natal government under Attorney-General Michael H Gallwey and Major General Banastre Pryce-Lloyd. It came to be known as The Coolie Commission of 1872.
While commissions reflect the views of those who hold power, by reading against the grain, returning to the archives to excavate new material, and highlighting the testimony of the indentured against the voices of the plantation bosses, we can begin to understand how people negotiated their way into a new life on African soil. In our next article,, we will lay bare the work of Commissions and the creative ways in which we have tried to use them to reveal a more insightful sense of the conditions faced by migrants and the way the commission was both legitimated and contested.
In the meanwhile, the next time you drive past a palatial mansion of asugar baron with its tree-lined driveways and grand entrance halls, spare a thought for the passengers of The Red Riding Hood.
For more on this history see Ashwin Desai and Goolam Vahed, Inside Indian Indenture. A South African Story 1860-1914 (Cape Town: HSRC Press).
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.