Echoes Across the Kala Pani: Memory, Migration, and Colonial Trauma

Abstract

Indian diaspora as we understand explores the experiences, lives of people of Indian origin who live outside India and in literature it focuses on the themes of cultural exchange, identity, diversity and the various challenges faced by migrants across generations. Many often conceive Indian diaspora with the images of a sophisticated life in a foreign land. Many individuals were not cognizant of the fact that before the rise of the Modern Indian diaspora, there was a notable movement of Indians to European colonies, which is recognized as the Indenture Indian Diaspora. This was a new form of bondage that shattered the happiness of the people with low incomes. The number of people transported to the British colonies was more than twenty lakhs from the year 1837 to 1920. These people lived with a sense of trauma and their memory is haunted by the torturing everyday life. They experienced cruelty at the hands of the Britishers like the false promises of return to India but actually they faced kidnapping, a journey that continued for more than three months on a lonely sea without proper food, more than eighteen hours of work at the plantation, harsh punishments, and sexual violence at the hands of their masters. The paper aims at presenting the trauma, sufferings and pain experienced by innocent Indian labourers in an alien nation by using autobiographies, biographies, historical records and testimonials.