Edinburgh Research Explorer Courts, Ship-rolls and letters: reflections on the Indian labour Diaspora Citation for published version: Bates, C 2005, Courts, Ship-rolls and letters: reflections on the Indian labour Diaspora. in T Awaya (ed.), Creating an Archive Today. Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 21st Century COE Programme, Centre for Documentation and Area-Transcultural Studies, pp. 131-158. Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Peer reviewed version Published In: Creating an Archive Today General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 09. Jan. 2023 Courts, ship-rolls and letters: reflections of the Indian labour diaspora From Gesick, Sugahara, Bates et al, Creating an archive today: decisions, uses, documentation. Centre for Documentation and Area-Transcultural Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2003 Crispin Bates The social, cultural and economic networks of Indian merchants across the Indian Ocean region have been widely investigated,1, however those that were created by and for labour migration streams have been comparatively neglected. This is despite the fact that internally and externally India has seen some of the largest labour migrations in the modern world, the annual emigration of Indians overseas fluctuating between 240,000 to 660,000 between 1870 and 1930, and totalling some 2,483,000 between 1911 and 1915 alone. This paper highlights what are termed ‘subaltern networks’ in the Indian labour diaspora, with particular reference to the Indian Ocean region, and argues that an analysis of these phenomena is crucial to an understanding of the dynamics of overseas labour flows. Secondly, it seeks to highlight the integration of the worlds of labourers (aka 'coolies'), servants, sepoys, convicts and others, arguing that rather than occupying discrete categories rooted in South Asia, they may be viewed as a composite itinerant class that may be better understood from a global perspective. And thirdly, it argues that given that labour migrants and other subaltern groups such as adivasis or tribals in south Asia sometimes occupied adjacent social and economic class positions they can therefore often be investigated using similar archival source materials. In conclusion, it is argued that whilst the subaltern networks functioned ostensibly as a vehicle for the subordination of labour, they were over time, and with varying degrees of success, appropriated by the subordinated, becoming both a means of socio-cultural reassertion and an economic strategy, linking together forest, field, factory and plantation. Peeling away the labels which defined and continue to essentialise the status of the histories of Indian workers in the Empire, evidence of how the coolie, convict or slave made his or her own world and the means they found of surviving within the interstices of the colonial system must wherever possible be examined from the perspectives of the participants themselves. I. The Context Rural-rural and rural-urban migration within India is an ancient phenomenon which, along with nomadic and shifting systems of agriculture, has been in most parts integral to the functioning of the rural economy.2 Rarely if ever were villages able to 1 C. Markovits (2000). In this context, India refers to the joint territories of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh that existed in the pre-independence era. It is also referred to as British India. 2 The constant inter-relation of economic and social migration is thus a key feature in Sumit Guha's (1999) history of forest communities in western India. 1 meet all the requirements of production and reproduction. The payment of taxes tributes imposed a degree of circulation even in tribal areas. Axe heads, ploughshares and other implements had to be made and paid for with grain, axe heads themselves becoming a form of currency still in circulation in the northern zamindaris of Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh in central India as late as the 1930s.3 Chhattisgarh was also traversed by Bhanjara caravans bringing salt and cowries from the Orissa coast, which were exchanged for grain. Altogether by the end of the eighteenth century the total trade of the Chhattisgarh country, both north, south and west, was believed to employ up to 100,000 bullocks in a good season (indicative of a total trade of something like 100,000 maunds).4 In many parts of India furthermore, particularly those less densely populated, seasonal labour migration was a common resort at times of harvest, as it continues to be up to the present day. Likewise, Indian migration to Indian Ocean states, East Africa, South Africa, and in particular to Mauritius and surrounding islands (the Mascarene group) is as old as European colonization of those regions. Together, they could be said to constitute the beginnings of a circulatory system on an oceanic (if not global) scale even before the nineteenth century, and well before the establishment of plantations in Assam, Sri Lanka and Malaysia and the establishment of the later colonial systems of free and indentured migration. Along with large numbers of African slaves,5 persons of Indian ethnic origin, including Indo-Portuguese concubines and servants, were among the very first settlers in the Mascarene islands, arriving in Reunion with the French in the late 17th century. Subsequent subaltern migrants, labelled variously as slaves, convicts and coolies according to the labour regime in which they worked, were imported from India. One of the earliest 'coolie' migrants was Rengasamy Naicker, who went to Mauritius in the 1830s: 'I was formerly employed as a sepoy under the Danish Government of Tranquebar [in the Kaveri delta]. After the annexation of that settlement to the company territories, I obtained a Vesharipoogarship in the Tranquebar talook. As my younger brother was living at Singapore and as I was desirous of paying a visit to him, I resigned the Vesharipoogarship's post and went there. After a lapse of one year, I returned to my native land and was without employment. A native of Karrical of the Vellala caste as acquainted with me…. He said he was going to Mauritius and desired me to follow him. I consented to it, and went along with him...' 6 Such migrants lived cheek by jowl on the islands with Indians who arrived as free, skilled labourers and traders. The involvement of Indians in almost every phase of Mascarene and South African development, to name but two examples, thus belies the subordinate role which is often accorded the non-British migrant in assessments of Empire-building. 3 V. Elwin (1942): 227. 4 J.T. Blunt, 'Narrative of a Route from Chinargur to Yentragoodum ... 1795', in Early European Travellers in the Nagpur Territories (Nagpur, 1930):128-130. This calculation is based on the assumption that each bullock carried about 250lbs. but that only a third were loaded at any one time. 5 See Helen Hintjens in Jayasuriya & Pankhurst (2003). 6 Carter & Torabully (2002): 28. 2 The process of incorporation of these groups into their host societies has been inadequately explored. In 18th and 19th century Indian Ocean colonies, Indian subaltern groups, such as slaves and later convicts and coolies all found means of circumventing and rising above the status with which they had been saddled. The 19th century indentured immigrants, in particular, used and extended networks of support and organization put in place by their compatriots in the overseas context This paper argues that, as a result, Indians themselves increasingly took control of their migratory patterns in the Indian Ocean region, instituting kin and family regroupment, organising repatriation and terms of settlement onto and off the plantations. And many, once freed from indenture contracts would re-emigrate to other overseas destinations (e.g. South Africa) establishing new settlements entirely autonomously. Some would otherwise re-engage on indentured contracts and head for destinations as far away as the Caribbean. Research into the subaltern networks of Indian contract labourers demonstrates that the indenture system did not operate simply or wholly as a European sponsored importation of a non-white work-force, but tapped into a wider circulatory system of labour. This requires us to challenge, the reified, fixed category which the coolie represents for so many orthodox histories of the Indian diaspora. II The Sources The complexity of the ideological discourses which underpinned slave, convict and indentured labour have been underplayed in recent literature which too often appears to take sides in a discourse which is black on one side (the planters) and white on the other. Discourse analysis creates its own victims and baddies in precisely the same way as the now discredited pro-planter or pro-labourer treatises. The uncritical appraisal of the white anti-indenture activists by Kale (1998) is a case in point. Similarly Ghosh (1999) portrays the arkatis (labour recruiters) as evil seducers of innocent labour in a direct borrowing from reform pamphlets of the period. The politics of discourse criticism may therefore be sound, but not always its methods and techniques. Many of the still current misconceptions about indenture can be traced back to the nationalist agitation of the early 20th century. Consider the tissue of distortions and stereotypes which are revealed in Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s denunciation of the humble subaltern migrant: 'those who are recruited bind themselves, first to go to a distant and unknown land, the language, usage and customs of which they do not know, and where they have no friends or relatives. Secondly, they bind themselves to work there for any employer to whom they may be allotted, whom they do not know and who does not know them, and in whose choice they have no voice.'7 Studies of indenture have failed to deconstruct the nationalist discourse as thoroughly as they have critiqued that of the ‘colonialists’. When it comes to the stigmatisation of the Indian coolie labourer, it can reasonably be questioned which was worse : the planters with their bland commercial transactions in coolie ‘cargoes’ or the supposed sympathisers of the overseas Indians plight, such as C.F. Andrews, who reviled the ‘doe-eyed immorality’ of the Indo-Fijian women or 7 V. Mishra, V.(ed), (1979): 27 3 Mahatma Gandhi, who claimed that 'if the badge of inferiority is always to be worn by them … any material advantage they will gain by emigrating can… be of no consideration.' 8 One wonders, furthermore, what feelings were aroused among the ex-indentured populations in Guyana, Trinidad, Fiji and Surinam when the Indian National Congress propounded that their very existence testified to the ‘international shame of the Indian’. And, reading the following account of Peria Gengadu, an Indian migrant who returned to recruit his fellow villagers, one could argue that in this case the so-called exploiter has himself become the victimized: 'I was really astonished to see my close relations and intimate friends holding aloof…. The public believed all that was stated in the pamphlets. Rumours were afloat that some sirdars were killed. All these put me in great fear. I could not eat. I had no sleep….In the meantime some 15 men who were negotiating with me privately to emigrate changed their minds and absconded at Ramapuram railway station. This made the situation worse. The villagers began to suspect me. The village magistrate put a guard on me. I was more or less a state prisoner. Seeing all these difficulties, I begged of my wife to go with me … After a deliberate consideration she agreed. She also influenced 3 Indians'.9 Gengadu’s story shows nonetheless that even in the midst of a propaganda drive, it was still possible for close relatives to be persuaded to migrate. Munusamy Naidu further expressed the real dichotomy of the indenture experience – that migrants who were viewed as desperate victims, and their recruiters as exploitative scum, very often had a totally different image of themselves: 'In India, everybody – young and old – did spit on sirdars. Sirdars are treated like pariah dogs – not as gentlemen… I am not a young man to stand all abuses, to receive kicks and blows from the public. I belong to a respectable family.' 10 It is this self-image which the historian must refract and assess, rather than merely the splintered fragments of opposing discourses of pro and anti-migration lobbies. The difficulty of this enterprise is compounded by the types of sources that have often been employed by historians. These are commonly less overtly political official accounts or enquiries which are concerned with the conditions or circumstances of migrants insofar as they related to the needs of legislation. This demand for legislation arose primarily, as Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued, from the needs of employers. In the monopolistic conditions pertaining in many industrial and planting concerns in the 19th century, there was often little demand for legislation to regulate the conditions of Indian labour (on the model of the British Factory Acts of the 1820s) because of the abundance of labour supplied. This abundance arose, particularly in the north and east of India, from the expropriation of adivasis and low caste groups who are found in a majority among the workforce. In India therefore the administration gave full vent to its natural alliance with the predominantly European employers and completely ignored the conditions of labour. The motivation behind official accounts was initially 8 M.K. Gandhi, The Indian Review, September 1917, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi [CWMG] Vol. 16: 1 September, 1917 - 23 April, 1918, P. 3 9 Bhana, S. & Pachai, D., A Documentary History Of Indian South Africans. Cape Town: David Philip, 1984, p. 28 10 Carter & Torabully (2002): 33. 4 the desire to demonstrate the lack of any need for legislative control of mining and industrial enterprises within India. As competition increased however, particularly that between the Indian and European capitalists, a growing voice begins to be heard within colonial documents, making a case, also motivated by the needs of capitalists, for an alternative approach: the intervention of government and the controls required by industry in order to equalise competition. This voice was heard particularly in the 1920s and 1930s but also at other times when declining prices or competition for labour put pressure on profits. The case then needed to be made for legislation, and evidence was sought for a quite contrary interpretation: that all things were bad and there was a need for dramatic reform. By simply reproducing colonialist accounts either for or against systems of production, historians have all too easily fallen into the trap of becoming themselves crude advocates of one or other position, failing to notice that these accounts were produced for a purpose - usually that of justifying or rejecting a policy of legislative intervention by the colonialists themselves. From this perspective one can argue that by critically examining them much more can be made of colonial Government of India sources on migration than has hitherto been the case. At the same time, greater use could be made of sources originating beyond the shores of India. Ship-Rolls and Indents In the eighteenth century some of the earliest Indian migrants overseas were transported as slaves by the French. 11 There were some 600 slaves in Mauritius, for example (originating from India and Africa), rising to 38,000 by 1788. Later on, considerable number of Indian convicts were also transported overseas by the East India Company to penal settlements in South-East Asia, such as Penang, Arakan, Malacca, Singapore and the Tenasserim coast. Later on they were sent to Mauritius, the Port of Aden and the Andaman Islands (a favourite destination for the mutineers of 1857), and then to sometimes to Australia. The total number of Indian convicts transported to Aden Mauritius and South-East Asia totalled at least 100,000.12 They were an extremely important source of labour, providing an infrastructure and facilities, at the very inception of these colonies. Ship-rolls or passenger lists were the lists of free labourers on board ship, specifying their names, age, region of origin, and particular skills or reasons for travelling. In the case of Mauritius these are stored in the state archives in Port Louis. For indentured migrants an emigration list was produced at the port of embarkation, which was then copied into the immigration register upon arrival by the Protector of Immigrants. This register was kept up to date with details of their employer, whether they were married or not, and even a photograph in some cases, along with details of their date of birth, caste, occupation, etc. 11 Anthony Barker, J., (1996); W. G. Clarence-Smith (1988); Moses D. E. Nwulia, (1981); Kernial Singh Sandhu (1969); Deryck Scarr (1998); S. B. C. Servansing and U. Bissoondoyal (1989); Vijaya Teelock and African Cultural Centre (1995); Vijayalakshmi Teelock (1993); Charles Telfair (1830). 12 Hargrave Lee Adam (1909); Clare Anderson (1998; 2000); John Frederick Adolphus McNair and W. D. Bayliss (1899); Satadru Sen (2000). 5 For convicts being transported to penal colonies from the UK, India (or Mauritius), personal details were kept on 'hulk-lists', if they were transported on prison ships, or within the passenger list if they were transported in smaller groups on ordinary merchant vessels. Upon arrival at their destination – whether in Mauritius, Australia, Malaysia, or elsewhere – a Muster-Master and clerks would copy the ship-roll, recording the details of the individual's name, crime, and sundry other characteristics, as well as interviewing the convicts and minutely examining their physical appearance. The resulting document, known as an indent, can be surprisingly revealing of the lives of convicted individuals. Passenger lists and indents of convicts transported to Mauritius can be found in the Mauritian Archives and in the Public Record Office in London. The indents of Indian convicts transported to Australia are to be found in the Archives office of Tasmania in Hobart, or in the State Archives Office of New South Wales [SANSW] in Sydney. Further details of the lives of convicts and the crimes of which they are accused can sometimes be traced back to the High Court records in India, Mauritius, or in the UK (for example the Old Bailey session papers held at the Guildhall library in London). Convict indents reveal there to have been a far wider and more diverse migration of Indians overseas than is commonly realised. The records of transportees from London to Australia, for example, included several Indian lascars or sailors, who had left ship and settled ashore in London, who subsequently committed an offence and were transported. One can deduce that they were many others more fortunate who, apart from fleeting references, remain invisible in the historical record – not least of all because British records in the 18th and early 19th are almost completely oblivious of concepts of race. Racial profiling of offenders, in local government records and in census returns does not become commonplace until the second half of the 19th century. One example is Sheik Brom, a 'dark-skinned' servant, aged 22, originating from Surat, who was arrested and indicted for stealing on March 4th 1824. Details of his crime are to be found in the printed records of the London Old Bailey Sessions papers for 1824, which state that Sheik Brom stole from the dwelling house of Francis Robinson at All Saints, Poplar, in west London, a 'provision-merchant' who ran a 'depot for the reception of black men' [most probably he was providing accommodation for 'black men' as a commercial enterprise]. Sheik Brom was no small thief, having taken three coats, two pairs of trousers, four waistcoats, a pair of breeches, two handkerchiefs (these were usually highly decorated silk and lace), a pair of gaiters, two pairs of stockings, a pair of shoes, a towel, five gloves, six shillings and two sovereigns (each worth 20 shillings) – all the property of William Green, a clerk to Francis Robinson. Altogether these were valued at a total of 101 shillings – equivalent to a minimum of £500 in modern terms, although almost certainly very much more. Sheik Brom was probably a Muslim seaman who had left his ship and resided in the locality where he committed his crime. His mistake was that he had lived in the locality long enough to be known, yet did not move away in order to sell the stolen goods. He thus sold a waistcoat and breeches to a tobacconist from whom he regularly purchased snuff, other items he sold to another shop-keeper, and two coats he pawned to a pawnbroker (using the name Jack Brown), all of whom gave evidence against him in court. When arrested he had 17s. 6d. sown in his trousers, but claimed that he 6 had only 2p about his person. Sheik Brom was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to transportation to New South Wales (whence he travelled on the ship 'Asia') in view of the fact that he was a foreigner for which he was 'recommended to mercy'. The resolution of his case was helpfully explained to him by an interpreter.13 A rather less charismatic character is Mahomed Balletti, 5' 2', 'Black' and 32 years of age, a literate Muslim from Bombay, whom – it is stated – 'can read and write in his own language'. He was tried in the Central Criminal Court in London on May 9th 1842 for the crime, to which he confessed, of sodomising a lascar on board a ship. Mahomed was sentenced to transportation 'for life' to Van Diemen's Land (otherwise Tasmania), where he served for nine years in Wedge Bay – including four consecutive sentences of up to three months hard labour for disobedience or laziness. He was eventually given his ticket of leave (i.e. permission to work for a private employer under probation) in 1851 and was clearly reformed by his experiences since he soon after married a somewhat rowdy young woman by the name of Martha (who herself got into trouble for drunkenness and talking in chapel). Sheikh Brom was conditionally pardoned in 1854 and disappears from the records having managed to avoid falling into trouble with the authorities thereafter [see illustration: M. Balletti indent record]14. An interesting instance of mutiny, of sorts, is to be found in the case of Talicouty, a cook and groom from Trichinopoly. 'Heathen' by religion (i.e. Hindu), he was tried in the Port Louis Assizes in Mauritius in December 7th 1843, and sentenced to 10 years transportation to Van Diemens land for the crime of 'murder by poisoned pudding of a ship's mate'. Talicouty conspired in this crime with no less than three others: Osensa and her husband Samba, and Yacousal – a Muslim servant from Trichinopoly. All were sentenced to ten years transportation to Van Diemen's land. Yacousal was given a ticket of leave in 1849 and his freedom in 1853, but Talicouty excelled at creating mayhem and was sentenced to additional hard labour or solitary confinement on no less than nineteen occasions – usually for disobedience, but also for gambling, insolence, absconding or other absences from work. He was not given his freedom until 1853, and subsequently fell foul of the law in Australia again in 1868, and again in 1869 for 'idle and disorderly conduct' and a 'breach of the Police Act', for which he was returned to prison for a further month's hard labour.15 Most of the above convicts were illiterate, but a surprising number are to found who could read – such as one 'John Solomon', from Bombay, a Muslim cook and waiter who could read and write Gujarati (he was tried and sentenced in Sydney Australia in 1840 for the crime of sodomy, and transported to Van Diemens Land), Solomon had either migrated on his own or, most probably, had been in service on an East India ship which he abandoned in search of employment ashore in Australia. 'Nowardin' [Nur Al-Din?], an Arab from Muscat, seems also to have served on an East India ship, being arrested and tried in February 1815 at the Middlesex assizes in London for the crime of stealing (with the aid of accomplices) one five pound bank note, one three 13 Brom, Sheik, AONSW, R.2662, ICS 1823-6, per 'Asia', arr. ex England 29 April 1825. Copies of these indents and relevant court cases (where available) have been passed on to me by Dr. Ian Duffield, University of Edinburgh. I gratefully acknowledge his permission to reproduce them. 14 Balletti, Mahomed, 549, Con./33/32., per 'Moffat' (3), 28 Nov. 1842. VDL transportee. 15 Yacousal, 277, Con. 37/1, per 'Ocean Queen', 1844; Talicouty, 278, Con. 37/1, per 'Ocean Queen', 1844. VDL transportees. 7 shilling bank note, 16 calico shirts, 16 pairs of trousers, 2 brass pans, and a quantity of spices from the trunk of one Mahomet Cassam, or Sarane, of the East India ship Forbes, who was staying at the time in the East India barracks in London.16 Sometimes the true identity of individuals is elusive – such as that of James Sievewright, alias Edward Stuart, a literate Roman Catholic, who had black eyes and 'dark and swarthy' appearance, who came allegedly from Bengal. He was sentenced to transportation in London in 1843 for forging cheques.17 For others, their career as criminals was so infamous that it necessitated detailed recording - such the case of Sheikh Adam, the thief and poisoner, a 30-year old Muslim labourer and would-be thug originating from Bombay, whose crimes were recorded in meticulous detail in the Port Louis assizes and are described by Clare Anderson (2000: 75-79). Sheikh Adam was originally transported to Mauritius in 1834 for a crime for which he claimed he was innocent. He subsequently absconded and embarked upon a career of poisoning and robbing innocent travellers, for which he was eventually caught, tried and transported for 14 years to Australia in 1840.18 After arriving, Sheikh Adam became, perhaps hazardously, a cook to the police magistrate in Campbell town, and subsequently married the servant Sarah Swift, in 1849. No more is then heard of him. Court Records At the Indian end, apart from the still under-utilised emigration department proceedings of the government of India [IOR], some of the more valuable resources for ascertaining the perspective of the subaltern are court records and commissions of inquiry. The former are scattered, arising usually whenever anything went apparently wrong in the recruitment process. Such records can sometimes throw into sharp relief the extent of the control migrants exercised over their movements and lifestyles. The case of Mst. Singaria - a tribal woman in the Satpura Hills in central India whose migration to Assam resulted in a prosecution of her recruiter - represents a classic example of a migrant experience which can be read in a number of ways 19 In the . first place Singaria's story can be seen as a migration undertaken to escape social exploitation or physical coercion at home. She was a Gond woman aged 17, from the village of Nagdon in the Dindori tahsil in Mandla. Singaria had been married at the age of 12 to Matadin, the 11-year old son of Tithru 'a respectable malguzar' of the village. The basis of this marriage cannot be known: although the payment of bride- price is common amongst Gonds, in this case the status of Tithru may have required the payment of dowry instead. The fact that Matadin was married again shortly after might suggest that such payment was not forthcoming, that the marriage involved settlement of some other obligation, or that the purpose was merely to effect a local political alliance. At the same time, polygamy is permitted among the Gonds, especially if the first marriage is without issue, and in the records of the court there is no mention of offspring in this instance. The marriage though was arranged and, as is 16 John Solomon, Con. 37/1, Dec. 1840-June 1840, per 'Waterloo' 1842; Nowardin, AONSW, COD/141, ICS, July 1814-Jan. 1816, per 'Fanny', arr. ex England 18 Jan. 1816. 17 Sievewright, James, alias Stuart, Edward, 17764, Con.33/76. per 'Maitland', arrived 30 August 1846. VDL transportee. 18 Sheik, Adam, Con. 37/1. Dec. 1840-April 1844, per 'Eleanor' 1841. 19 Madhya Pradesh Central Record Office, Nagpur [MPCRO], Comm. & Indy. Dept. (C.I.D.), 1916/9-34. 8 usual, Singaria moved to the home of her new husband. At the age of 12, and assuming no other use was found for her, she would then have been expected to devote herself largely to household chores under the instruction of her mother-in-law. This family she lived with for the next five years before running away to Assam, making the journey in chet (March) 1915 in the company of Molin (alias Debia), a licensed recruiter of the Sephinjuri Bheel Tea Company in Sylhet. Singaria was possibly put in contact with the recruiter by Jharri, one of Molin's relatives, who resided in her locality. To effect her 'escape' Singaria left her father-in- law's home on the pretext of paying a visit to her husband's second wife, Manmath, at Dongaria. At the village of Sangrampur about three kilometres from Nagdon, aided by another of Molin's relatives, Kancharia, she met up with Molin and Jharri. According to Kancharia, Molin and Jharri told her that they also were heading to Dongaria, and they and Sangaria then left together. In cases such as that of Singaria and others like her, it is difficult to disentangle social from economic causes of emigration. Not only debt, but also the cost of marriage forced many tribals to become bond-servants in central India (known as bhagia in Betul, or saldars in other parts) for two or three years, and such relationships, once established, were difficult to bring to an end 20 In Chhattisgarh, for example . indebtedness and high out-migration rates were attributed to '...Three factors, that is a low standard of living, an absence of work for 7 to 8 months per annum, and the existence of a large body of small cultivators whose holdings are entirely inadequate'.21 . Singaria's reasons for leaving, as she told her friends on the tea estate, were that her husband used to beat her and tie her to a charpoy and, on one occasion, 'tied her to a horse's heels'. In response to questioning she insisted that she had in no way been deceived but had gone of her own free will. However, the Malguzar of Nagdon made an issue of the case, presumably because the honour of his family had been offended, and after Molin's return to Mandla a year later to carry out further recruitment, he had him arrested and imprisoned on the charge of abducting a minor. In support of this the Kotwar of Maholi (where she was born) produced forged evidence, at the Malguzar's instigation, showing that the girl was only fourteen at the time of her recruitment - old enough to get married, but technically still under the guardianship of her father-in-law. In the face of this evidence the district magistrate was ,inclined to take the side of the Malguzar, and Molin, the recruiter, was sentenced to six months hard labour. Only after strenuous efforts on the part of the agent of the TDLA [Tea District Labour Association], and the production of medical evidence proving the girl's majority was Molin finally released, by which time he had already served half of his allotted sentence. This case has all the characteristics of an intra-village squabble, but it effectively illustrates the point that migration, though a conscious choice, was never a free one, and although it was a liberation for some, it commonly derived from circumstances of oppression or deprivation. The case further highlights the ambivalent attitude of the local administration, which was required, albeit reluctantly, to co-operate with the 20 W.V. Grigson (1944): 240 21 Royal Commission on Agriculture in India 1926, Evidence, vol. vi: 4. 9