When the British failed to stop Tamil labourers from emigrating to Madagascar

In July 1901, the headline “Coolies for Madagascar” appeared in several newspapers around the world. Accompanying it was a short article, just 30 words long. But, despite the length, it sent alarm bells ringing in the colonial establishment in India.

The report revealed that 1,500 workers from China and India had arrived in the colony for employment in public and other works. This was unacceptable to the British. Their Indian Emigration Act, 1883 had a scheduled list of approved countries to which Indians could emigrate and Madagascar was not on it.

What also irked the British was that this was not the first time attempts were made to recruit Indians for labour on the island. In 1874, French planters had tried to take Indians, who had completed their term as indentured labourers in Mauritius, to Madagascar. Shifting Indians from Reunion was also on the cards.

But that time, looking to protect British Indian subjects, British consular officers in Mauritius and Reunion took up the matter with the French authorities to thwart the plans.

“I do not believe, my Lord, that at any distance efficient protection against ill-usage could be secured to Indian labourers,” R Pakenham, the British consul in Madagascar, wrote to the secretary of state for Foreign Affairs in a letter on January 5, 1874. “I am further of [the] opinion that they could not be employed as field labourers on any part of the coast of Madagascar under the scorching sun which prevails without a great sacrifice of life.”

Human trafficking

The expansionist French had set their sights on the island in the 1870s but made it a protectorate in 1882. By that time, the island had a well-established Indian community, comprising mostly Khoja Muslim traders. These Gujarati-speaking businessmen were not always treated well by the rulers of the Merina Kingdom (or Kingdom of Madagascar) and the British were used to getting complaints from them.

In 1897, the French converted Madagascar into a full-fledged colony and looked for ways to exploit its natural resources. One idea was to bring in labour from the Indian subcontinent, just like Fiji and Mauritius had. But since British attitudes towards this idea had not changed for over the previous three decades, the French had to look to private citizens, using Pondicherry as a base to attract Tamil labourers. So desperate were they to exploit Indian labour that they sold people from Pondicherry and neighbouring districts in the Madras Presidency dreams of high pay and a better life in Madagascar – an all-too-familiar story in the subcontinent.

After the “Coolies for Madagascar” report was published in July 1901, the British authorities began to investigate the migration of Indians to Madagascar. Their probe discovered that 700 workers had been chosen by French contractors to depart from Pondicherry in August. More than 500 of these were British subjects.

“It will be seen that all the coolies who were questioned professed to have come to Pondicherry of their own accord, and have stated that they were embarking of their own free will,” G Stokes, chief secretary of the government of Madras, wrote in a note to the government of India. “A few of the coolies who expressed unwillingness to emigrate were readily released by Monsieur Sarlat, the French Emigration Agent.”

Sarlat cooperated with the British authorities when questioned about so many people getting recruited from non-French territories. “It seems clear from the report that Monsieur Sarlat’s requirements have been made widely known in districts remote from Pondicherry, and that illegal recruitment for Madagascar has, in some instances, taken place under cover of recruitment for the Straits Settlements,” Stokes wrote. Migration of Indians to the Straits Settlements (modern-day Malaysia and Singapore) was both legal and encouraged by the British.

In an attempt to curtail recruitment to Madagascar, district magistrates across what is now Tamil Nadu were informed by the government that any kind of labour migration to the island was illegal. The British authorities also told them to stop any potential recruitment to New Caledonia in the southwest Pacific.

“It does not appear that this Government can do more to prevent the voluntary entry of British Indian subjects into French territory and their embarkation from thence for the French colonies,” Stokes said.

The government tried anyway. To prevent further emigration to Madagascar, the police were tasked with finding the non-state actors from Pondicherry who were recruiting workers from Tamil districts in British India.

“I am directed to state that the result a police enquiry which has been held at Pammathukolam in the Chingleput District is to show that a large number of labourers were induced by a gentleman, who is believed to be a M. Goubert, to leave that place for Pondicherry with a view of emigrating to Madagascar,” GS Forbes, acting chief secretary to the government of Madras, wrote to the government of India in a letter dated January 11, 1902. “M. Goubert, was it appears, resident at Pammathukolam for three months in the early part of 1901, his ostensible business being the management of a garden owned by his step-father M. Gaebeleu of Pondicherry.”

Goubert had left Pondicherry and was believed to be in Colombo. The evidence against him was deemed to be “not altogether conclusive” by the government of India. Whatever evidence could be mustered was presented to the French, but nothing came of it.

Bitter reality

The Indian labourers arrived in Madagascar full of hope but were soon faced with a bitter reality. The weather was harsh, the French administration was incompetent, and there was insufficient planning by both the government, which wanted to use them for road and utility work, and by the businessmen who wanted to use them in agricultural plantations.

By the beginning of 1902, the French authorities in Madagascar had given up on Indian labour and were ready to repatriate them at their own expense.

“Indian immigration has proved quite a failure to Madagascar, as by the Messageries Maritime steamer ‘Natal’ one hundred and sixty two coolies have been repatriated to Pondicherry via Djibouti, and others will follow,” Anatole Sauzier, the British consul in Tamatave, wrote to the secretary of state for Foreign Affairs in a letter dated February 12, 1902. “These immigrants, a great many of whom have died, have been a source of perpetual trouble to the authorities as nothing could be got out of them in the shape of work. Under such circumstances the governor general has taken the only step which could meet the case, that is, repatriation of these unfortunate men at the Colony’s expense.”

The Chinese workers who came to the island fared no better and were considered as much of a liability as the Indians.

“The Indian as well as the Chinese coolie cannot stand this climate for, for the last week from January 30 to February 6, there were no less than six deaths among the Indian coolies- reported in the ‘Journal Official’ of Tamatave, and from the few that one meets in the streets of Tamatave, they seem to have neither food nor wages, for their appearance is that of starving beggars,” Sauzier wrote. “From whatever point of view this matter may be looked at, Indian and Chinese immigrations have been failures all through, and I do not doubt that the colony of Madagascar will lose thereby at least £ 30,000.”

The authorities in London investigated the matter and took it up with their French counterparts. It was more or less accepted by London that “inducements to immigrate to Madagascar were actually held out on British territory” for some of the labourers, in “contravention of the Indian Emigration Act, 1883, Section 105, and also of the French Convention of July 1861”.

In a letter to the India Office dated March 24, 1902, the undersecretary of state for the Foreign Office wrote, “It will be seen that the local authorities have been duly instructed to take every precaution to prevent illegal recruiting in British territory.”

Over 1,000 Tamil labourers went to Madagascar in 1901 in pursuit of a better life. Most of them returned to India, sick and disillusioned. How many of them died on this unhappy journey is not clear.

Ajay Kamalakaran is a writer, primarily based in Mumbai. His Twitter handle is @ajaykamalakaran.