Coolie Woman:The Odyssey of Indenture, Gaiutra Bahadur: A Review

 Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture
Gaiutra Bahadur

London: Hurst &Co, 2013

The Conquest of India by the East India Company, the agrarian changes that came in its wake particularly the transition to commercial agriculture and of course, the introduction of western education and modes of governance changed the historical landscape of India. Concomitant with this very important historical transformation there was another a silent revolution whose social and cultural dimension are the subject of the book under review. The Western world, particularly the United Kingdom, took the lead in the abolition of Slave Trade and the House of Commons formally outlawed Slave trade by British citizens and UK went on very successfully to impose the abolition of Slave Trade by the force of its navy, a subject studied by Christopher Lyod. India was at hand to provide the labor required to run the agrarian economy of the British Empire founded on Sugar and in the case of the USA, Cotton. Emperor Sugar and King Cotton demanded labour on a scale that  the abolition of Slavery made a monumental necessity. The West was able to assume the high moral ground of opposing Slavery as an economic institution because India was at hand to provide a new kind of Slaves, the Indentured worker.

The post colonial historians attempt to dress the past by using euphemisms to hide the ugly reality of Indenture and its kinship with Slavery. The language and rhetoric of post colonialism may make the past pretty, but History has a higher purpose: to reconstruct, record and preserve the memoria of the past.. The book under review fortunately does not make this patronizing curtsey to post colonial fashion. The author appropriates the term coolie and uses this term to right contextualize the forced immigration of large number of men and a much smaller number of women to sugar plantations ion Fiji, Guyana, Surinam, South Africa and Mauritius. The West Indian Islands of Trinidad, Tobago and Jamaica  were opened up to Indian indentured labour as early as 1845, a few years after the formal ending of Slavery in 1834. There is a strong political and economic bomnd between the end of Slavery and the export of labour from India. The author, born in Guyana was educated in the USA and belongs to the generation that came of age in the 1990s and so we do not have the usual attribution of blame to this country for the horrors of Indenture. India was also an exploited country and Indenture was part and parcel of the history of exploitation.

The book deals with the conditions surrounding the migration of the author's great grand-mother, Sujaria to Guyana,  The woman was four months pregnant when she made the perilous journey from Calcutta to Guyana and the author.s grand father was born on board the Steam Ship Clyde, in 1903. She was able to trace the journey of the woman on the basis of the colonial documentation. The book is a deft combination of historical research, personal narrative and the anthropology of the indenture society in the New World.

Several years back when I was doing my Ph D at the University of Hawaii, I had the opportunity to work with Professor Brij V Lal who had just published his book Girmitiyas on the indentured labor in Fiji. I was left with the distinct feeling that as an Indian, I had to ba=ear the burden of guilt for the ills of indenture. In a faculty meeting he presented his study on Kunti, a woman who endured savage mistreatment at the nhands of both her husband and her lover. I am bringing this point only to show that gender and violence was part of the indenture experience and the author has ably documented both.

The book is based on archival research and is a good study of the history of indenture in South America.

THE INDIAN OCEAN IN ANTIQUITY

The Indian Ocean in Antiquity
ed Julian Reade
London: British Museum in association with Routledge, 2009.

The shift to the study of oceans and seas began with Fernand Braudel when he wrote his masterpiece, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II. Oceans too are now seen as important factors in history, facilitating commerce and cultural contacts and exchanges. On the one hand this approach to history seems to bring back the old discredited school of diffusion in the shaping of civilizations and cultures,the shift to oceanic contacts and exchanges has reinvigorated the study of neglected aspects of the past. The Indian Ocean whose history in the famous work of the Indian diplomat and historian, K M Panikar began with the discovery of the sea route to India from Portugal in 1498, has generally remained neglected area of historical research. Of course we have Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean by K N Choudhary, the Indian Ocean by Kenneth McPherson, The Indian Ocean ed. by Satish Chandra and more recent works by Sanjay Subrahrmanyam the early history of the area around the coasts of India and Arabia have been long neglected. Hence the volume under review is a welcome addition to the slender quantum of published materials available.

The book edited by Dr Julian Reade is a collection of papers presented in a Conference held several decades back in the British Museum and has been republished recently. The earlier study by Toussaint concentrated on the post da Gama Era while this volume deals with the early phase. There have been q few stdidies on the contacts between the Harappan Culture and the contemporary civilizations of West Asia but little work has been done on the archaeological and historical evidence pertaining to the navigation along the Arabian Sea whose antiquity as an important trading area is established by the Periplus whose translation by Lionell Casson has once again drawn attention to the early economic and cultural exchanges. The location of emporia all along the Persian Gulf and the coasts of India suggest that a trsding network had already been created anf the Greek navigator was only drawing attention to a pre existing fact. Unfortunately, the Periplus is read in the context of the so called Tamil poetical works which were put together as anthologies in the 7th or even the 8th centuries thereby distorting the historical contexts of both the early navigational endevours and of course, the Tamil past.

The article by Jutris Zarins dealing with the trasde in Obsidian is extremely interesting and needs to be followed by by studies in India and South east Asia. The study of Sasanian trade in the Indian Ocean and the traces of the Parthians known in India as the Sakas are both relevant to Indian historiography. The study of Glass which has been recovered in Arihamedu and Pattanm as well as Mantai needs to be follwed by detailed scientific examinations of the internal structure and properties so that the history of glass technology can be studies. Unfortunately lazy "archaeologists" from Tamil Nadu have taken to trumpetting Tamil claims which only goes to show that archaeology of Tamil Nadu is only a hand maiden of ethnic pride, Ian Glover's study of the archaeological evidence of "Indianization" is informative.

The short paper by John Carswell on the Mantai excavation is an important contribution. The Report on the excavation has recently been published but unfortunately not available to this historian.

This is a good book and all serious scholars and researchers on early Indian Ocean must read this book.

Brahmi Inscription at Socotra: The Cave of Hoq

Socotra, the island off the coast of Yemen was known from the time of the Periplus and the text itself refers to the presence of traders from the sub continent. The cave itself is more than 3 kilometers long and the entrance is only around 60 centimeters. Being a fairly secure place of retreat, the Island loomed large in the imagination both, geographical and historical the late antiquity and early medieval period. The large number of Greek inscriptions has already been noted. What is interesting is that there are graffiti with unmistakeable links to the sub continent. There are a few Tamil marks, but the vast majority of the graffiti are is the Gupta variant of the brahmi script. The 100 odd inscriptions have been studies and they will be published soon. There are also a few khraoshti inscriptions which suggests that the trading community on Socotra was diverse and straddled the major trade routes of the Western Indian Ocean.

Indi-Roman Trade: Problems and Perspectives

Indo-Roman Trade: From Pots to Pepper
Roberta Timber
London: Duckworth, 2008

The discovery of the archaeological site of Arikamedu which was excavated by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in the two season between 1944 and 1946 resulted in a complete change in the existing paradigms of reconstructing the early history of South India in particular and India in general. Wheeler rightly identified the site as having the potential of providing strati graphically calibrated dates   which would serve as the sheet anchors of South history. The preeminence accorded to Arikamedu is now gradually being dwarfed by the cultural and archaeological significance of Pattanam on the Kerala coast. Why dies Roame loom so large on the horizon of South Indian historiography?

The earliest evidence available for a study of the economic activities in South India are from Classical texts. The Periplus, a Greek navigational tezt written soon after the discovery of the alternating monsoons documents in great detail the existence of emporia from the Red sea region  to India and it lists all the ports which played vital role in the transmission of goods from India to the Mediterranean world. Arikamedu perhaps appears as Poduke in this record. It is rather strange that the Romans are credited with the exploitation of the trade nexus with South India while all the indigenous sources speak of the Yavanas as the main participants in the trade. The translation of Yavana as Roman is obviously wrong as the term denoted Ionian, and therefore it carried Greek identity. In fact the depiction of the owl of Minerva in one of the Ajanta caves reinforces the point made here that the Ionian Greeks were important intermediaries in this trade. Wheeler and his cohorts were interested in seeing India through the eyes of imperial Rome and hence he even termed the site of Arikamedu as a Roman trading port. The book under review examines the archaeological evidence pertaining to India's participation in the Indian Ocean trade and Roberta Tomber rightly emphasises the role of other ethnic groups from Arabia, Ethiopia and Africa in this trade.

The archaeological evidence found in India in the form of ceramic wares and coins needs to be studied very carefully. The earlier historians and scholars took the presence of Mediterranean ceramics like sigillata as direct evidence of Roman participation in the Indian Ocean trade. In fact Wheeler even took Amphorae which were found in Arikamedu as Roman pottery. However over the years some things have become clear. India was manufacturing amphorae both for local consumption and for  international trade and this point is well established by the discovery by the State Department of Archaeology of Tamil Nadu of large quantities of local coarse amphorae in such sites as Vasavasamudram, Kanchipuram, Alagankulam and more recently at Pattnam. The coins found in India from the Roman Empire present a range of problems. While it is clear that most active period of the trade between India and the Roman world through the Red Sea region took place during the Imperial Age of Rome i. e. the first three centuries AD when Rome :comprehended the fairest and the most civilized [parts of the world, as Gibbon eloquently put it. The numismatic record shows a different pocture: the most popular coins found in India are the Republican coinage. This needs to be addressed. One obvious answer is to postulate intermediaries in the trade who preferred Republican coins because of their higher bullion content: the role of the Nabateans with their capital near present day Jordan needs to be imphasized.

Roberta Tmber has made an excellent study of the comparative chronology of the ports along the Eastern Desert which were active during the hey day of what she terms Indo-Roman trade. The site of Bernike which has been excavated has not yielded much evidence of Indian participation on the trade except coarse South India ceramics and one shard with brahmi graffiti. It has become fashionable for reasons of identity politics to read too much into brahmi graffiti. Richard Solomon has published this particular graffiti. The Island of Suqutra on the other hand has yielded a large number of brahmi inscriptions which are in Gupta characters and are in Prakrit language. It may be time to see the participation of other maritime groups in this trade as suggested by H P Ray.

The book under review is an excellent introduction to the study of the history of the Indian Ocean during the very important early historical period. I congratulate the author for this book which makes the scholarship from the Arabian and Classical perspectives available to historians working in India.

The Indian Ocean and its Archaeology

Pattanam Excavations/Explorations 2013
Ed P J Cherian et al
Kerala Council of Historical Research
Trivandrum

Indian Ocean Studies has suddenly become the most happening field in the archeology of Peninsular India. The long coast line and the discovery of the navigational potential of the monsoons made India accessible to the Roman world and we find the cultural and economic interaction between the Mediterranean Sea and the coast of India reflected in the materials thrown up in sites like Artikamedu near Pondicherry and more recently ion Pattanm. The Kerala Council  of Historical Research under the leadership of Dr P J Cherian has done a highly commendable job in excavating a difficult site in a highly professional manner and more importantly have demonstrated academic integrity in publishing the Results of the excavations. All too often important sites in Tamil Nadu are being vandalized by archaeologists who "excavate" the site and renege on their obligation of publishing the results.

The Report on the Pattnam excavation consists of eight chapters with seven appendices. Though the authors do not go into the identification of the site with Muziris it would none the less be an interesting identification if this site turns out to be the one marked in Peutingers Table. The Harris Matrix given in the Report makes the  tables extremely valuable and imparts a high degree of professionalism to the Report. The Matrix,at a glance lets the reader know the level at which the artifact was recovered.. The distribution of ceramics from Pattanam demonstrate that Mediterranean, South Arabian and Chinese pottery which compose about less than 1% of the ceramic material recovered, were interacting with the region  through trade and commerce. The Geninza Records from a slightly later date reveal a thriving commercial nexus between the Middle East and the coast of Kerala with commodities like spices, iron and steel, coconut products and textiles being exported. The same kind of Turquoise Glazed Pottery has been found in Suqutra (Socotra) and hence a reasonable inference can be drawn that Arab merchants were intermediaries in the Trade between South India and the Arabian Peninsula, from where the commodities were transported to the rest of the Mediterranean world. The Report on the Pattanam Excavation lists the Trench, Level and find spot of each pottery fragment and a detailed Register of artifacts uncovered forms the second half of the Report. The care with which the Team has worked is obvious and deserves our fullest admiration.

An interesting part of the Report is the radio carbon dates that are given. 15 samples were analyzed using the Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (AMS) and 14 samples were analyzed using the more tradition C-14 dating. There seems to be some variation in the dates by these two methods and the Report quite honestly brings out the fact. I was struck by the absence of far fetched theories and fanciful conjectures which pass off as archaeology in Tamil Nadu. The archeologists speculate that even before the Roman Empire there was commercial ties between Arabia and Southern India and this radical new hypothesis needs to be taken seriously as the early history of South India is essentially viewed as Rome beyond the Imperial Frontier. The discovery of Glass beads makes Pattanam a very important site. I am sure the material so carefully and meticulously excavated will yield further answere.

This is a marvelous piece of Archaeological Reporting and this author wishes that its example is emulated by others.