The identity and cultural memories of the Girmitiyas, who were forced into indentured labour, are being contested today, often to suit present-day cultural and political narratives.
Over the past few years, Girmitiya histories have resurfaced with renewed force on digital platforms. Girmitiyas were men and women, from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh (India), taken to Fiji, Mauritius, and South Africa under unfair work contracts (called “girmits”), where they faced hard labour, violence, and separation from home. Instagram pages, YouTube channels, and independent digital archives have begun documenting the songs, journeys, and everyday lives of indentured labourers, bringing into public view experiences long excluded from official histories.
In 2017, an Amsterdam-based artist released a project titled Girmitiya Kantraki, featuring a song about his grandfather, girmitiya, who was taken to Suriname. The song gives voice to the pain of displacement and the deception that underpinned the indenture system, foregrounding the emotional worlds of those lured across oceans by false promises. One of its lines captures this betrayal with painful clarity:
“Saat samandar paar karaike, ek nawa desh ke sapna dekhaiyeke, Kaise humke oo bharmaike, le gail dur Surinam bataiyeke” (The dream of a new land was shown across seven seas, how they deceived us and took us far away to Suriname).
There are other digital pages like The Cutlass Magazine and The Bidesiya Project that are actively reclaiming memories by foregrounding stories of migration, separation, and exploitation. Together, these digital revivals function to preserve the memory, where inherited trauma and historical injustice are remembered. However, this revival has also created new tensions, as these songs are now being co-opted as symbols of cultural or nationalist pride, removing them from their original context of struggle.
The Origins of the Girmitiya System
Before examining how Girmitiya memories are being reclaimed and contested today, it is necessary to understand the historical conditions that gave rise to the indenture system. Indian indentured migration emerged in the nineteenth century following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833. With enslaved labour no longer legally available, colonial plantation economies faced an acute labour shortage. To sustain sugar production, colonial governments across the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, Africa, and the Pacific turned to India as a new source of cheap labour, where indentured labour became the backbone of colonial plantation economies.
Mauritius became the first colony to import Indian indentured workers in 1834, followed by British Guiana in 1838, and Trinidad and Jamaica in 1845. Over the next eighty years, the system expanded rapidly. By the time indentured emigration was officially abolished in 1916, nearly 1.5 million Indians had been transported overseas under indenture contracts.
Although the system was presented as voluntary, indenture reduced human beings to commodities. Historians have repeatedly drawn parallels between slavery and indenture, with Hugh Tinker describing it as a “new system of slavery,” one in which coercion replaced chains with contracts. Indentured labourers were subjected to long working hours, low wages, and severe punishments for minor infractions, making exploitation central to the system’s survival.
Today, however, such songs are sometimes reframed to suit present-day cultural and political narratives. For instance, Girmitiya songs were performed at a cultural event attended by diplomats, highlighting spiritual heritage and cultural pride. Such performances show how folk songs are increasingly folded into state or national cultural projects. In the process, the deeper histories of labour, coercion, and exploitation that shaped these songs risk being softened or erased.
The recruitment of labourers was carried out by local agents known as arkatis, who travelled through rural India, persuading villagers to sign contracts binding them to plantation work for 5 to 10 years. These agreements were often poorly explained, and many recruits were misled with promises of prosperity and easy returns. The word “agreement” itself was mispronounced by people into girmit, giving rise to the term Girmitiya.
Once recruited, labourers were transported on overcrowded and unsanitary ships known as “coolie ships.” The journey across the seas could take months and was marked by disease, malnutrition, physical abuse, and death. Women faced particular vulnerabilities, including sexual violence. As historian Brij V. Lal observed, the voyage was “a nightmare of disease, death, and despair,” leaving deep psychological scars that would shape generations. Most Girmitiyas came from present-day Uttar Pradesh, which accounted for nearly eighty per cent of migrants, followed by Bihar and Bengal, with smaller numbers from regions such as Madhya Pradesh and Punjab.
However, there is debate among scholars on the realities of Girmitiya. One perspective reads Girmit as a system of coercion, and another views it cautiously, as a space where new possibilities emerged amid constraint.
Early historians such as I. M. Cumpston approached indenture primarily as a demographic and administrative disaster. Drawing on extensive statistics, Cumpston argued that the so-called “coolie trade” was catastrophically expensive in human terms, draining colonial treasuries while producing immense suffering. Yet he resisted the idea that indenture fundamentally transformed Indian culture or language, suggesting instead that returning migrants armed with savings, skills, and global exposure fed into the growth of Indian nationalism and anti-colonial consciousness at home.
Moving beyond administrative records, K.L. Gillion examined everyday social life under indenture and argued that, despite its coercive structure, a new society took shape with unexpected potential. He claimed that caste hierarchies weakened, that women experienced comparatively greater mobility, that children’s health improved, and that religious tolerance became more visible. The sharpest disagreements emerge around the question of women. One strand of scholarship portrays indentured women as a “sorry sisterhood,” trapped in a system that exposed them to sexual violence, surveillance, and dependency.
Scholars such as Rhoda Reddock underline how plantation regimes and colonial policies reinforced women’s vulnerability, even when migration appeared voluntary. Historians like Emmer and Northrup, and later Marina Carter, argue that indenture opened cracks in patriarchal control, allowing women, for the first time, to earn wages, participate in public life, and negotiate social relations outside caste-bound domesticity.
Himadri Lahiri draws a distinction between older forms of diaspora and more recent forms of migration. Earlier movements were shaped by the plantation economy, whereas today’s migrations occur under advanced capitalism. Treating these very different histories as the same risks losing the specific conditions under which the girmit emerged. Debates around migration and diaspora continue, and there is no single agreed way to read these histories.
Yet it is this unsettled past that has returned so strongly in the present. As Girmitiya songs circulate again on digital media, they do more than bring history back into view. They reopen old questions, reshape memories of suffering and survival, and turn the past into a contested space, where ideas of freedom, loss, and belonging are still being argued over.
Songs as Counter Archive
The pain of migration has long been recorded in Bhojpuri folk traditions, especially in bidesiya and Girmitiya songs. These songs gave voice to the trauma of indentured labour migration, particularly to Caribbean plantations under colonial rule. While official histories have often ignored such cultural forms, these songs preserved lived experiences that formal archives left out. It needs to be understood that knowledge about past events is constructed, maintained and disseminated through “sites of memory” such as the media, museums, cemeteries, and now, the digital medium. However, the ‘coloniality of knowledge’ has played a crucial role in determining which histories are preserved and which are erased, particularly in the context of oral and performative traditions.
Institutional archives, shaped by Eurocentric epistemologies, often prioritise written records, official documents, and state-sanctioned narratives while dismissing embodied cultural memories as illegitimate or unreliable. This exclusion is not merely an oversight but a systemic issue rooted in what Meighan refers to as an “epistemological error, a flawed mode of knowledge production that privileges certain ways of knowing ( or perhaps the depoliticised form of knowing). Harshita Manchanda writes, “When confronted with incomplete or biased archives, writers must interpret silences and fragments.” In this sense, folk songs function as fragmented memories that together reveal a larger, more complete history.
This way of working with memory is not limited to Girmitiya histories. A comparable approach can be seen in Indonesia, as discussed in Kate McGregor’s interview with photographer Muhammad Fadli. Speaking about his photodocumentary, The Banda Journal, Fadli describes how he and his co-author, Fatris, aimed to rethink the history of the Banda Islands by focusing on the long afterlives of colonial exploitation of labour and natural resources. Much like Girmitiya songs, the project draws on partial records and community songs rather than complete official archives. Together, these practices show how cultural forms can recover silenced histories and challenge dominant accounts of the colonial past.
As Girmitiya songs move onto digital platforms, they no longer speak only to shared village memories but connect dispersed communities through online networks. narrating stories of displacement, broken families, deception, and the everyday violence of colonialism. In doing so, their digital circulation turns these songs into living archives that function as counter-histories, challenging both colonial narratives that justified indenture and nationalist accounts that later romanticised migration’s ‘cultural heritage’ while silencing its exploitation.
In 2019, the Roots Foundation performed a Girmitiya song rewritten by Suchita Ramadin and translated by Professor Ramesh Ramdoyal, marking an important moment in this digital and transnational revival of Girmitiya memory.
“Calcutta se chootal jahaaj (From Calcutta the ship is speeding away)
bhanwarwa dheere chale (O waves, flow slowly)
Khoye niklal naya sansaar (The ship is speeding away to a new world)
Bhanwarwa dheere chalo (O waves, flow slowly)
Sanghatiya ba bhook bemary (Hunger and Disease are our constant companions)
Pag-pag mawt hanse bhaiya (Death Dogs are steps every inch of the way)
Ab chutal re deshwa kea aas (Now the hope of seeing our motherland again is forever gone)
Bhanwarwa dheere chala” (O waves, flow slowly)
Some other Bhojpuri folk songs record the pain of migration, especially bidesiya songs. The word bidesiya carries layered meanings. In one context, it refers to the foreigner, the colonial power and distant lands associated with British rule. In another, more intimate sense, bidesiya refers to the husband who has left home, expressing the sorrow of those, mostly wives, who are left behind, waiting for his return. Although Bidesiya birha became popular during the period of post-colonial industrial expansion, when Bihari migrants moved to other cities for work. Birha songs capture loneliness, the pain of separation, and the emotional weight of absence. Such as:
“Piya pardes gail, hamar jiya tadapata” (“My beloved has gone abroad, my heart aches with longing”).
Or the song that is written by Girmitiya to his/her lover:
Baithee sunawe purvaz ke bidesia Tohra balan ab na awe ho badariya (Sit and listen to the saga of our ancestors, Your lover will not come back dear!)
These songs function as lived documents of exploitation, humiliation, and exhaustion. By turning everyday suffering into words and melody, they recorded what was happening to Girmitiyas in distant lands and experiences that were largely absent from official records. In this sense, the songs must also be read as forms of resistance, preserving truth and memory in the face of colonial power, such as this song.
“Paal ke jahajua me royi-dhoyi baithi (Sitting and weeping inside the sail-driven ship)
Kaise hoyi kala pani paar re bidesiya (How will we ever cross the black waters, O foreigner?)
Khoon paseene se seenche hum bagiya (With my blood and sweat I water the plantation garden)
Baithe-baithe hukum chalaye re bidesiya” (While they sit and issue commands, O Foreigner.)
Appropriation of memories:
Remembering Girmitiya history in the present century has changed how Girmitiya songs and stories travel across borders. What was once shared through local oral traditions now circulates widely through digital videos on the internet. These videos allow Girmitiya memories to move across countries connected by indentured history. However, this digital revival has also opened up new debates. Many Girmitiya songs draw on stories from the Ramayana or ideas such as janmabhoomi (birthplace) and karmabhoomi (land of work).
For Girmitiyas, these references carried specific meanings: Ram’s exile mirrored their own forced displacement, and the Sarayu River often served as a metaphor for the lost homeland. Lines such as “Agra, Prayag, Kashi, Delhi, Calcutta, my soul dwells on the banks of the Sarayu, O traveller” express longing rather than pride. These memories emerged from lived experiences of separation and suffering and need to be understood within that historical context.
Today, however, such songs are sometimes reframed to suit present-day cultural and political narratives. For instance, Girmitiya songs were performed at a cultural event attended by diplomats, highlighting spiritual heritage and cultural pride. Such performances show how folk songs are increasingly folded into state or national cultural projects. In the process, the deeper histories of labour, coercion, and exploitation that shaped these songs risk being softened or erased.
We must understand that Girmitiya identity was not built through claims to a territory one could return to, but, as Prof. Singh writes, through memory, ritual, and everyday acts of survival. The nostalgia present in Girmitiya literature and song is not a passive sentiment that can be easily folded into cultural or institutional projects. It is an active force, shaped by loss, labour, and longing. Reaching across oceans, it holds on to a homeland that has become less a place than a feeling, “an ancestral village remembered through a grandmother’s story or the rhythm of a folk song.” To strip these memories of their historical context is to misunderstand them entirely. They are not static relics of the past, but living, unsettled inheritances that continue to resist easy appropriation.
