Daughters of Indenture:  The Early Female Indian Immigrant Labourers & their Life-Stories in British Mauritius (1826-1908)

Satyendra Peerthum,

Historian, Lecturer, and Writer

Introduction

As we are commemorating the 189^th anniversary marking the arrival of the indentured labourers to Mauritian shores, the contributions of the female immigrants in Mauritian history is often forgotten and overlooked. Until the mid-1990s, one of the largely neglected research themes of modern Mauritian indentured labour historiography by local and foreign historians and scholars have been the importance and life-stories of the female Indian immigrant workers from the mid-1820s to the early 1900s. It was not until exactly a quarter century ago, in 1994, with the landmark publication of Marina Carter’s Laskmi’s Legacy: The Testimonies of Indian Women in 19^th Century Mauritius. In 2014, Carter wrote a seminal article on Indian female immigrants which might be viewed as an update of her previous work.

Barely, three years later, in ‘They Came to Mauritian Shores’: The Life-Stories and History of the Indentured Labourers in Mauritius (1826-1943), by the present author, a long and detailed chapter was dedicated to Indian immigrant women and their children within the context of labour, gender and the immigrant family and their contribution to the making of Mauritius. The objective of this article is to be a historical and pictorial presentation of the lives and social history of these Indian female immigrants who have directly or indirectly contributed to the shaping of Mauritian history.

The Genesis of Female Indian Immigration:

The Case-Studies of Early Indentured Immigrant Women

Nearly one third or an estimated number of 144,663 Indian immigrants or 32% of all the Indian immigrants who emigrated to Mauritius between 1826 and 1910, were females, mostly young women and girls between the ages of 10 and 40. Between 1826 and 1834, a few female Indian arrived in Mauritius to work mostly as domestic servants and ‘ayas’ or domestic baby-sitters.  For instance, Immigrant Josepha, a 15-year old Christian Indian worker, who was engaged by Captain Langlois in Pondicherry came to work as a domestic servant for the Bolger family on a two-year contract.

Josepha and seven other male servants travelled to Mauritius on board the Jeune Lauren and landed in Port Louis in October 1829. She was engaged “under articles of agreement” which were read to her. Her two-year contract was renewable. Mr. Bolger paid ten pounds sterling as security bond to secure her services.

Between 1834 and 1842, when the indenture labour system was a private enterprise, controlled and funded mainly by Franco-Mauritian and British planters and merchants, around 1,014 women and young girls arrived mostly as indentured workers from the Bengal, Madras and Bombay Presidencies. The female immigrants represented 3.9% of the total number of indentured immigrant arrivals.

In June 1838, Immigrant Peearee, a Hindu of Bengali origin from the village of Baheeheea near Calcutta, and her child along with ten female Indian indentured workers and ten Indian children arrived in Mauritius. She was assigned immigrant number 10,702. Peearee and her fellow indentured workers were employed as labourers on Mr. de Bissy’s sugar estate at Plaisance. Seven years later, 15^th July 1845, Peearee and her child returned to Calcutta like most of her fellow female immigrants and their children. However, in 1849, she came back to Mauritius to work as a domestic servant under contract for Mr. de Bissy on Mon Repos Sugar Estate in Plaines Wilhems. She passed away in the same district on 12^th December 1883 at the age of 90.

Immigrants Quiton and Taillame, two female Hindu indentured workers, arrived in Mauritius in December 1838 from Pondicherry. Shortly after, in June 1840, Mr. and Mrs. Plantin petitioned Governor Sir Lionel Smith to approve the transfer of the remaining period of their two female indentured servants to Mrs. Edouard Marquet. This initiative was undertaken through the Colonial Secretary and the Police Department. Eventually the transfer was granted with some concerns being raised by John Finiss, Chief Commissary of Police. However, between 1839 and 1842, dozens such requests were granted for dozens of female indentured labourers and for hundreds of male indentured workers.

In January 1843, the ship the Emerald Isle arrived in Mauritius from Calcutta with 213 men, 19 women and 1 child. The first registered female indentured immigrant under the newly established state controlled indenture system was Rimoney. It is noteworthy that during the same year, 4307 female immigrants were registered at the Immigration Depot representing 14% of the total number of Indian immigrants who were introduced into the colony.

Immigrant Rimoney was 30 years old when she arrived in Mauritius. She was a Muslim widow from the village of Dakah, in northern Bihar. She had emigrated with her parents, Juggodess and Begum Fakim to Calcutta where she worked, got married and lived for several years. After the death of her husband she came to Mauritius with Cootry, her 12-year old daughter. Rimoney was assigned number 215 and registered as a shopkeeper.

As immigrant Rimoney was literate, she was employed as a store keeper in the estate office of Mr. Langlois and Mr. Lavoqeur, owners of the Triolet Sugar Estate in Pamplemousses District. In the late 1850s, Rimoney left her job at Triolet, bought a small wooden house and settled down in  the village of Pamplemousses with her daughter Cootry. As from the 1860s, she purchased land and became a small landowner and vegetable cultivator.

Eventually, Rimoney became involved in land speculation and acquired a small fortune. She died in 1905 at the ripe age of 92 and was buried in the Muslim Section of the Bois Marchand Cemetery. Between the late 1820s and the early 1900s, during the Age of Indenture, she was one of tens of thousands of female Indian immigrants who made important contributions to the formal and informal economy of British Mauritius that should be honored and remembered each 2^nd November.