Indian Agent Involvement in the Establishment of Permanent Settlement for the South Indian Labouring Community, 1923–1941

This article investigates a long-neglected aspect of Indian Malaysian history, namely the Indian Agents of the Government of India to British Malaya. The Indian Agents were representatives of the Indian Government who were appointed under the Indian Immigration Act of 1922 to investigate and report on the state of affairs of Indian communities in the British colonies. The official duties of the Indian Agents in British Malaya were formalised under Section 73 (III) of the Labour Code 1923. Between 1923 and 1941, six Indian Agents were appointed in British Malaya. Throughout their tenure, they focused on and reported extensively on the socioeconomic conditions of the Indian working-class community, particularly south Indian labourers. One problem that came to their attention was the underdevelopment of the community’s permanent settlement in the country. The Federated Malay States (FMS) government did not appear to be concerned about the situation. Similarly, private estate managers reacted indifferently to the issue. Both saw permanent settlement as simply an economic measure to keep the community as a labour force, rather than a way to alleviate their socioeconomic hardships. This article shows how the Indian Agents were able to uncover a range of issues that were impeding the establishment of permanent settlements for south Indian labourers in the FMS. Some of them demonstrated exceptional levels of direct involvement. The article’s primary goal is to assess the degree to which the Indian Agents influenced the overall development of permanent Indian labour settlement.

Changing Caribbean geographies: connections in flora, fauna and patterns of settlement from Indian inheritances

There can be no doubt that Indian immigration to the plantation colonies changed the geography of those colonies. However, most analyses have dealt with the sugar industry in the colonies after the abolition of slavery. This paper will argue that, apart from the sugar industry, Indian labour and ingenuity made other significant contributions to plantation economies. The girmityas (agreement signers) were well aware that they were going to agricultural occupations so they took with them an amazing array of dried fruits, seeds and cuttings, which survived the long crossing, adding to the flora of the plantations. Armed with this foreknowledge, the jahajis packed these items into their jahaji bundles alongside the Tulsi Ramayan and the Holy Qu'ran. Animals too formed part of this international trade. Sheep, goats and poultry which were not eaten on the outward voyage were sent to the estates, where they multiplied. When dangerous snakes threatened plantation security, cages of mongoose were dispatched to the Caribbean where they bravely tackled venomous creatures. At the urging of Indian labourers with long experience in the sugar industry, the plantations' owners imported Brahma bulls and Zebu cattle, which revolutionised transport on the estates and provided leather, manure and meat to the wider population. There is also the amazing story of the importation of hundreds of water buffaloes (bhaisa) from the Indo-Gangetic plains. Some nine breeds were imported and in the twentieth century Caribbean bio-geneticists were able to blend the best qualities of those Indian animals and created a new hybrid, the buffalypso, which combined the scientific name with Trinidad's fame as the land of the calypso. The buffalypso became a prized animal for haulage, meat, milk and leather and an item of export to Venezuela, Colombia, Miami and the wider Caribbean. Indian cultivars were continuously exported to the botanic gardens in the Caribbean and Indian forestry experts were sent to the region to advise on forest rehabilitation in the wake of large-scale deforestation, which sugar cultivation required. In these and other ways the physical character of the Caribbean underwent permanent change, which manifests itself today.

Diaspora and Culture: A Study of Indian Immigration and Integumentary Anxiety in Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake

This research aims at capturing the sense of identity, loneliness and untold anxiety among the immigrants from the writing of one of the prominent authors writing in English from Indian subcontinent. The Namesake, a well-knit novel by the author Jhumpa Lahiri. The novel “The Namesake” depicts it the best kind of reference to classify Diaspora as the word ‘Diaspora’ as well as its prime role in this present era, the first and second generation who are struggling for identity, loneliness and the most prominent one is integumentry anxiety among them. It is that untold anxiety which the people can’t disclose to anyone. It remains in the very heart of them untold and unexpressed. In fact Jhumpa Lahiri the novelist is child of Indian immigrates and she is also migrated from her birthplace England to America. The effect of both made her Diaspora writer and a migrant one. She mirrored the life of the Indian Diaspora, who are struggling for identity and the integumentary anxiety. They construct unhomely home in the foreign land.

Prologue

The formation of the Indian middle class around the mid-nineteenth century and of policies of race-based U.S. immigration exclusion in the same time period bears some explanation, since these spatially distinct but temporally overlapping processes merged during the Cold War. The historical development of these eventually entwining, transnational narrative strands forms the substance of this prologue. Concentrating on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the prologue provides the foundational context on which to build a narrative of postwar South Asian immigration to the United States. It provides historical context of the histories of anti-Asian immigration law in the United States and Indian immigration.

Emergent Representations of the East

Using The Lamp, a publication of the Toronto Theosophical Society, as its primary example, this chapter examines the ways in which Theosophists advanced their cause both inside and outside the mainstream through their periodicals. The Theosophical journals functioned as platforms for cultural brokers between the East and West and included the exchange of a great number of topics related to the East, including ancient philosophy; sub-continental politics; and debates around cremation, karma, imperialism, and Indian immigration to countries such as Canada and Australia. The chapter demonstrates how the Theosophists in this way consciously participated in the creation of the occult counter-public sphere that helped to introduce new ideas into the mainstream. It was this oppositional sphere that was their key means for engaging with the public.

Indian Migration to New Zealand in the 1920s

Racist attitudes against Indians appeared in New Zealand from the 1890s resulting in the Immigration Restriction Amendment Act of 1920. This Act required potential Indian migrants to provide photographs and other details for certificates of registration, enabling them to re-enter the Dominion within a three-year period. Drawing on a selection of immigration files, this chapter offers a preliminary exploration of mobility patterns of early Indian migrants to New Zealand as well as an interpretation of how they represented themselves based on the portrait photographs they provided for their registration certificates. The chapter argues that this piece of legislation intending to restrict Indian immigration can now be interrogated to reveal more about the first generation of post–World War I Indian migrants to New Zealand.