Indian South African History free essay sample

INDIAN SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY 1860 1960 Indians arrived in South Africa in 1860 and, at the time of this writing, have been in the country for over 140 years. That would make about five generations born in the country. 1860 1914 Brought to the British colony of Natal in1860 as indentured labourers, coolies, on five-year contracts, Indians came to work mainly on sugar plantations where they lived under very harsh and cruel conditions. After five years, they were given the options of renewing their contracts, returning to India or becoming independent workers. To induce the coolies into second terms, the colonial government of Natal promised grants of land on expiry of contracts. But the colony did not honour this agreement and only about fifty people received plots. Nevertheless, many opted for freedom and became small holders, market gardeners, fishermen, domestic servants, waiters or coal miners. Some left the colony. By the 1870s, free Indians were exploring opportunities in the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State and the South African Republic (Transvaal). Those who sought to make their fortunes in the diamond and gold fields were not allowed digging rights and became traders, hawkers and workers. Continued importation of indentured labour until 1911, though sporadic, encouraged opportunistic traders and merchants from India and Mauritius to emigrate to South Africa. These independent immigrants, known as passenger Indians, began arriving in the country from about 1875. Many of them quickly acquired land and set up businesses and trading posts. When their enterprises began to encroach on white settlements, laws and regulations were passed to limit their expansion and acquisition of land. Immigrants living in the Republics, unlike those in the British colony of Natal, were not enfranchised and were not welcome in the Republics and laws were passed to contain their growth and development. The Transvaals onerous Act 3 of 1885, debarred them from owning land and confined them to locations. But passenger Indians, who believed that as British subjects, they were entitled to the protection of the crown, were not afraid to enter into litigation. As early as the 1880s, Indian merchants in the Transvaal were petitioning the government and challenging its laws in the courts. They sent a petition to the government protesting Act 3 of 1885 and when it was ignored, took their protest to the British High Commissioner. When this failed as well, Ismail Suliman ; Co. challenged Act 3 in the courts in August 1888. Before that, in June 1888, Indian merchants had protested against curfew regulations on the grounds that they were not African. So before Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi arrived in South Africa in 1893, Indians were actively involved in litigation against governments. In Natal, the merchant elite, under the leadership of a very wealthy ship owner, Sheth Dada Abdulla had established an Ad-Hoc Committee to deal with restrictive legislation. When the Sheth became involved in a legal battle with his cousin, Sheth Tyeb Haji Khan Muhammed, an equally influential leader amongst Indians in the Transvaal, he wrote to a law firm in India and MK Gandhi, a barrister, was sent to South Africa to deal with the matter. He arrived in 1893 and dealt very competently with the suit, bringing it to arbitration and reconciling the cousins. After the case, the local merchants, realising the value of a lawyer in their midst, prevailed upon Gandhi to stay in South Africa to give proper legal direction to their activities. He agreed and through his involvement with this group, began to learn of the problems facing Indians in the country. In 1894, Gandhi became the secretary of the merchants Ad Hoc Committee, gave it a new name, the Natal Indian Congress, and set about challenging legislation aimed at disempowering Indians. He organised meetings and petitions to stop the Bills, but the Franchise Act, which disenfranchised all Indians, was passed in 1894, and Law 17, which imposed a poll tax on free Indians, was passed in 1895. Act 17, the most onerous of laws passed in Natal, imposed a ? 3 poll tax, about six months earnings, on free (ex-indentured) Indians. In 1903, it was extended to children as well. It was hoped that to escape the tax, free Indians would either leave for other parts of the country or return to India. As the governments of the Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State and the Cape Colony were restricting entry of Indians into their areas of jurisdiction, many free Indians had no choice but to endure the burdensome poll tax. Gandhi appealed to the British Government and was successful in getting the Franchise Act overturned. But when Gandhi went back to India in 1896 to canvass support from the Indian National Congress, the Indian Government and influential individuals, the Franchise Amendment Act of 1896 was passed and Indians in Natal were disenfranchised once more. When the South African Boer) War broke out in 1899, Gandhi formed the Indian Volunteer Ambulance Corps to serve British troops, as he believed that Indians owed their loyalty to the Empire. He was from India, a British colony, had been educated in Britain, and believed that such efforts would win proper recognition of Indians as British subjects. He made a similar effort with his Indian Stretcher Bearer Corps d uring the Bambatha (Zulu) Rebellion in 1906. Ironically, Zulus at that time were reacting to a poll tax that had been imposed on them by the Natal government, which was still enforcing the poll tax on Indians. Gandhis stretcher corps was assigned to caring for wounded Zulus. During the South African (Boer) War, the majority of Indians left the Transvaal and sought refuge in Natal, the Cape Colony and India. After the war, the new British Military Authority that had replaced the government of the Transvaal Republic, put obstacles in the way of returning refugees by making re-entry subject to permits and passed an ordinance to enforce the provisions of Act 3 of 1885   to segregate the Asiatics into locations for residence and trade, to refuse licences except in the Asiatic Bazaars and to make the licences of pre-war Asiatic traders non-transferable. [2]  Ã‚   Gandhi, who had left for India at the end of 1901, returned the following year to assist the Transvaal Indians. In 1904, he set up the Transvaal British Indian Association (forerunner of the Transvaal Indian Congress), held meetings and sent off petitions as he had done in Natal. He also became editor of the newspaper, Indian Opinio n, established in 1903 as the organ of the Natal and the Transvaal Congresses. After a few years, British Military governance gave way to colonial rule in the Transvaal and the new government under General Smuts, began debate on the Asiatic Law Amendment Bill (The Black Act), which proposed the registration and fingerprinting of Indians, who would be required to carry registration certificates (similar to passes) at all times. This law, which raised great indignation amongst Indians, led to many mass meetings and at the one held at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg, Gandhi introduced the idea of satyagraha engagement in non-cooperative, non-violent action and sacrifice and when the Black Act was passed, there was an almost total boycott of the registration procedures. Gandhi was imprisoned, then ordered to leave the colony and imprisoned again when he refused. Smuts was obliged to enter into negotiations with him and together they agreed on he withdrawal of the Act and voluntary registration. In good faith, Gandhi led the Indians in registering but the Act was not repealed. A passive resistance campaign was organised and registration certificates were publicly burnt in the grounds of the Hamidia mosque in Johannesburg. In 1908, in defiance of the Transvaal Immigration Restriction Act which barred all non-resident Indians from entering the Transvaal without permits, Gandhi led a protest march from Natal across the Transvaal border, was arrested and sent to prison while about sixty others were deported to India. In 1909, during negotiations for the establishment of the Union of South Africa, Gandhi, at the head of a delegation of Indians, took the demand for the repeal of anti-Asiatic laws to London. The delegation was unsuccessful and when South Africa became a Union in 1910, there could be no further recourse to British intervention. Gandhi then set up Tolstoy Farm on land donated by Hermann Kallenbach, an admirer of Leo Tolstoy, a follower of Gandhi and a satyagrahi. The farm was established with a view to training an army of non-violent volunteers.    Many activists took their families and went to live on the farm for the next three years. In 1913, they were given an opportunity to put their training as satyagrahis into action as a result of: 1. The Immigrants Regulation Act, No 22 of 1913, which put an end to Indian immigration and restricted Indian entry into provinces not of their domicile. (There were no Indians in the Orange Free State which, in 1891, had expelled Indian residents and prohibited Indian entry altogether. ) 2. A judgement by Justice Malcolm Searle in March 1913 in the Cape division of the Supreme Court that rendered all marriages conducted according to Hindu or Muslim rites invalid because these religions allow polygamy. So Gandhi planned a Satyagraha campaign that included women for the first time and even allowed them the initiative. Their resistance first took the form of hawking without licences, and then crossing the provincial border without permits, but these efforts did not get them arrested. When they were taken to the coalmines in Newcastle where they brought the coalminers out on strike against the poll tax, they were at last arrested. While they were in prison, Gandhi led the striking miners and others across the Natal border into the Transvaal. During the march Gandhi was arrested three times at various towns along the way and released twice. He was in jail when the marchers reached Balfour just before Heidelberg, where they were all arrested. The coalminers were put on trains, sent back to the mines, forced down shafts and severely flogged. Their compounds became prison camps. Though Gandhi and many marchers had been arrested and imprisoned, the protests did not stop as people in other parts of the country came out on strike and began marching. When white railway workers on the Witwatersrand went on strike, Gandhi put an end to the satyagraha campaign as it was not be confused with the railway strike. General Smuts met with Gandhi and their deliberations led to the Indian Relief Act of 1914, which repealed the poll tax on free Indians in Natal, recognised Hindu and Muslim marriages and abolished the registration and finger-printing requirements of the Black Act of 1907. But major issues such as restrictions on land ownership, trading rights, immigration and movement between provinces remained unresolved and resistance would continue for many decades to come. In 1914, Gandhi left South Africa to begin his work in India. His legacy to South Africans was the strategy of non-violent non-cooperation (satyagraha) and belief in that strategy sustained mass protests until the demise of apartheid. After 1914 Indians continue their struggle. Very soon (after Gandhis departure) renewed friction developed under existing restrictive laws. Thus, in the Transvaal, Indians discovered that it was possible to evade the Gold Law and Townships Act of 1908 by establishing businesses under the Transvaal Companies Act of 1909, and to evade Law 3 of 1885, respecting ownership of property, by registering it in the names of companies, which was declared lawful by the courts in 1916 and confirmed on appeal in 1920. The number of Indian private companies in the Transvaal grew from three in 1913 to 103 in 1916. As a result a South Africans League under Sir Abe Bailey was formed in 1919 for the expropriation of Indians. An anti-Asiatic League congress met in Pretoria in September that year, attended by twenty-six local authorities, thirty chambers of commerce, nine agricultural societies, twelve religious congregations and forty trade unions. Their recommendations led to the Transvaal Asiatic Land and Trading Amendment Act of 1919 that exempted Indians with businesses in mining areas if they still occupied the sites, but prohibited th e ownership of fixed property by companies in which one or more Asians had a controlling interest.    These measures, attempts to segregate Indians and curb their economic viability, led to clashes between South African Representatives and Indian Representatives at Imperial Conferences in London. Dr Srinivasa Sastri (1921) and Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru (1923), representatives of the Indian Government demanded fair treatment for Indians but as General Smuts saw it, this was   a question of the white mans position in society, and in the last resort of his continuing presence in Southern Africa.   Ã‚   Smuts regarded the granting of rights to Indians as the thin end of the wedge that would open the way to rights for the African majority. The Asiatic Land and Trading Amendment Act of 1919 and other restrictive measures led to the amalgamation of the Natal, Transvaal and Cape congresses into the South African Indian Congress; Indians were no longer dealing with disparate governments an d needed a national organisation to deal with a national government. The South African Indian Congress made appeals to the Union Government, The Indian National Congress and the British Government and prominent Indians (from India), notably Srinivasa Sastri, Tej Bahadur Sapru and Mrs Sarojini Naidu. When the South African Party (SAP) under General Smuts was defeated in the 1924 elections, the PACT government under JBM Hertzog came into power. During its term of office, the SAP had pushed for segregation and separate development but Hertzogs government wanted Indians out of the country altogether. It negotiated with Strinivasa Sastri, Sarojini Naidu (president of the Indian National Congress) and others who came over on fact-finding missions. At round table discussions, held from 27 December 1926 to 11 January 1927, between a deputation from India and the PACT Government, the Cape Town Agreement was drawn up. It recommended a scheme of subsidised repatriation that reflected the PACT Governments wishes and did little to alleviate the position of Indian South Africans. The Agreement also approved the appointment of an Indian Agent to mediate between Indian South Africans nd the South African Government. Between 1927 and 1948, a number of Indian Agents were appointed. Srinivasa Sastri, appointed in 1927, was the first. Then came Sir Kurma Reddi, Sir Syed Raza Ali, Sir Kunwar Maharaj Singh and Sir Rama Rau, all eminent, erudite leaders from India. The South African Indian community in general revered them all and was very proud to welcome them but young radical political activists repudiated them. These youthful members of the Congresses condemned these Agents for their ineffectiveness, their inability to address real issues and their readiness to compromise. As the young lions believed that their future was in their own hands, not in the hands of Indian Agents or collaborators, they began to advocate the strategy of non-violent, non-cooperation (satyagraha) to protest against the land and trade restrictions embodied in the Transvaal Asiatic Land Tenure Act of 1932, amended in 1934, 35, 36, 37, and replaced by the Asiatics (Transvaal Land and Trading) Acts of 1939 and 1941, the Trading and Occupation Land Bill (Pegging Act) 1943, and the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act (Ghetto Act) of 1946. Despite the many laws instituted from 1885 to confine and repress Indian endeavour, Indians had expanded their trade and ownership of land into areas not specifically designated for them because laws, especially under the colonies and republics, had not been strictly applied. For example, under the provisions of the Transvaal Company Act of 1909, they had been able to form limited companies and purchase land. They had taken advantage of loopholes: the appointment of nominees in whose names they could acquire property, and marriage to white and Malay women, who were allowed to own property. The latter development led to laws against miscegenation and mixed marriages, which were probably more economic than racist measures. The late 1930s and early forties was a period of internal struggle in the congresses and the young radicals eventually emerged victorious. In 1945, Dr Yusuf Dadoo took over the leadership of the Congress in the Transvaal and Dr G. M. Naicker became the leader in Natal. In 1946, after Smuts government passed the Ghetto Act, the Congresses embarked on a massive passive resistance campaign and over 2000 men and women were imprisoned. Though the campaign did not achieve the desired goals, it helped to amalgamate people of all races in the struggle for human rights. In March 1947, the Doctors Pact, a Joint Declaration of Co-operation, was signed by Dr Naicker of the NIC, Dr Dadoo of the TIC and Dr Xuma of the ANC. Under Apartheid In 1948, the Nationalist Government came into power and began to formalise the separate development policy that had been in the making since the time of Van Riebeeck. Its apartheid laws brought all oppressed people together in the struggle for freedom. In the 1950s enduring links were established through the Defiance Campaign of 1952, the Congress of the People in 1955, the Womens March in 1956 and the Treason Trial, 1956 1961 and the Indian community as a whole began to lose its myopic grasp of oppression in South Africa. In 1911, with the Colonial Born Indian Association, there had been an incipient understanding of a new identity. This grew stronger in the 1920s and 30s when young radical leaders began to take over the Congresses, but it was only in the 1950s that Indians, in general, came to an acceptance of themselves as South Africans. It had taken ninety years to evolve to this point. At the beginning, Indians had been totally self-absorbed partly because they were immigrants but mostly because anti-Indian legislation had kept their focus firmly fixed on their own condition. Ironically, it was apartheid that gave them the freedom to break out of narrow cultural confines. Before 1948, legislative acts had not really taken on a national character and were still, for the most part, enactments for separate states and separate groups. This had kept oppressed communities in distinct compartments and each had focused on its own problems. With the advent of formal apartheid, legislation cut across provincial barriers and made people aware that new, unequivocal statements of separate development, among them the Population Registration Act, The Group Areas Act and The Separate Amenities Act, affected them all. And they became South Africans. Indian Slaves In South Africa – Indian African History INDIAN SLAVES IN SOUTH AFRICA A little-known aspect of Indian-South African relations Soon after Jan van Riebeeck set up a Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, to supply provisions to Dutch ships plying to and from India nd the East Indies, people from India were taken to the Cape and sold into slavery to do domestic work for the settlers, as well the dirty and hard work on the farms. A woman from Bengal named Mary was bought for van Riebeeck in Batavia in 1653. Two years later, in 1655, van Riebeeck purchased, from the Commander of a Dutch ship returning from Asia to Holland, a family from Bengal – D omingo and Angela and their three children. On May 21, 1656, the marriage was solemnised at the Cape between Jan Wouters, a white, and Catherine of Bengal who was liberated from slavery. Later in the year Anton Muller was given permission to marry Domingo Elvingh, a woman from Bengal. From then until late eighteenth century when the import of slaves from Asia was prohibited, many hundreds, if not thousands, of persons from India – mainly Bengal, Coromandel Coast and Kerala – were taken to the Cape and sold into slavery. Officers of ships and officials of the Dutch India Company returning to Holland usually took slaves or servants with them and sold them at high profit in the Cape. Slaves could not be taken to Holland where slavery was prohibited). Many others were carried by Danish and British ships. While most of the Indians were taken from Dutch trading posts in India, a considerable number were also taken from Batavia as thousands of Indians had been taken by the Dutch as slaves to Batavia. South African, American, British and other scholars have conducted painstaking research into the archives in the Cape – records of the deeds office, courts , churches etc. – and have brought out several studies on slavery in the Cape. They contain extensive, though far from complete, information on transactions in human beings, the conditions of slavery and resistance of the slaves. The archives indicate that Mary, the first known Indian slave, was found in bed with a constable, Willem Cornelis, in 1660. He was fined and dismissed from his post but she was apparently not punished. Van Riebeeck and his family probably took her with them when they moved to Batavia in 1662. Jan Wouters was transferred to Batavia soon after his marriage to Catherine. There is no information on Anton Muller. Van Riebeeck sold Angela, who had taken care of his children, to Abraham Gabbema, his deputy and law officer. Gabbema granted freedom to Angela and her three children before he departed for Batavia in 1666, except that she was required to work for six months in the home of Thomas Christoffel Muller. She integrated easily into the white community even while continuing relations with her friends who were still in slavery. She asked for and obtained a plot of land in the Table Valley in February 1667. Next year she obtained a slave from Malabar on hire. In 1669 she married Arnoldus Willemsz Basson, with whom she had three children. Her daughter from the first marriage also married a Dutchman. When her husband died in 1689, Angela took charge of the estate which had a considerable value when she died in 1720. Some of these early slaves – especially women from Bengal who were acquired by senior officials of the Dutch India Company for domestic work – were relatively fortunate. The great majority of those enslaved in the Cape, however, lived under miserable conditions. The researches in the past three decades – by Anna Boeseken, Margaret Cairns, Achmat Davids, Richard Elphick, H. F. Heese, J. Hoge, Robert Ross, Robert Shell, Nigel Worden and others – destroy several myths that had been prevalent – for instance, that slavery had little economic importance in the Cape, that the treatment of slaves, especially Asian slaves, was benign, that Asian slaves were mostly from Indonesia etc. The number of slaves exceeded the number of white settlers by early 18th century and they did the hard work of developing the land. Most of the Asian slaves worked on the farms and were treated as cruelly as the Africans. There were almost as many, if not more, slaves from India as from Indonesia. Places of Origin The slaves were almost invariably given Christian names but their places of origin were indicated in the records of sales and other documents so that it is possible to get an idea of the ratio of slaves from different regions – Africa (mainly Guinea and Madagascar) and Asia (India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka). Frank R. Bradlow put together available information from various scholarly studies on the places of origin of the slaves and free blacks between 1658 and early nineteenth century. The information is very incomplete after 1700 and covers only a little over three thousand persons. The figures were as follows: Place of origin Number Percent Africa 875 26. 65 India 1195 36. 40 Indonesia 1033 31. 47 Sri Lanka 102 3. 10 Malaya 16 0. 49 Mauritius 6 0. 18 Other and unidentified 56 1. 71 Total 3283 100. 00 (Note: The number from India includes those from Bangladesh) Source: Frank R. Bradlow and Margaret Cairns, The Early Cape Muslims, page 102 If these figures are representative, over 70 percent of the foreign-born slaves in the Cape came from Asia, and more than a third from India. Of those from India, the following is a more detailed breakdown: Bengal (including Bihar and Orissa) 498 Coromandel Coast (especially Trancquebar, Tuticorin, Nagapatnam, Pulicat and Masulipatnam) 271 Malabar Coast (including Goa, Bombay and Surat) 378 Other 36 Source: Ibid. The slaves were, however, dispersed and lost their identity in the course of time. The Indians became part of the â€Å"Malay† community – so called as Malayo-Portuguese was the lingua franca in the Asian ports at that time – and their descendants later came to be identified as â€Å"Cape Malays† (Cape Muslims) as the Muslim community expanded. Kidnapping South African scholars, with little access to sources or contacts with scholars in India, have tended to make some errors in their conclusions. They assume, for instance, that the Asian slaves had been purchased from the â€Å"slave markets† or â€Å"slave societies† in Asia. Many of those sold in the Cape, however, had not been slaves at all in India, but domestic servants, bonded or otherwise. The Reverend William Wright, a missionary in the Cape of Good Hope in the 1830`s, wrote of the slaves: â€Å"Some are natives of Bengal and other parts of India, who came to the colony as free servants, and were bartered or given away to the colonists. † In fact, there is reason to believe that many of the slaves – far too many of them were children, even less than ten years old – had been kidnapped in India. Warren Hastings, the British Governor-General of India, wrote in a Minute on May 17, 1947: â€Å"†¦ the practice of stealing children from their parents and selling them for slaves, has long prevailed in this country, and has greatly increased since the establishment of the English Government in it†¦ Numbers of children are conveyed out of the country on the Dutch and specially the French vessels†¦Ã¢â‚¬  In 1706, a Dutch political prisoner, Jacob van der Heiden, was confined in a dungeon in Cape Town with Ari, an Indian slave charged with serious offences. He found that Ari had been kidnapped as a child while playing with other children on the Surat beach. He had been sold from one master to another and had been treated so harshly that he had run away. He joined other fugitive slaves and lived on stolen food until he was caught. He escaped torture and persecution because of the intercession of the Dutchman. Brutal oppression and the spirit of freedom Individual slaves ran away from the harsh conditions on the farms and lived as fugitives. Most of them were caught: they were flogged, branded and sentenced to hard labour in chains. At least two attempts were made at mass rebellion. The most remarkable was on October 27, 1808, when hundreds of slaves, including many from India, rebelled and joined a peaceful march from Swartland (near Malmesbury) toward Cape Town to demand freedom. The government sent troops and over 300 were captured. To avoid wider repercussions, it eventually charged only the leaders of the resistance. Two accounts from court records show the harsh punishments to which the slaves were subjected and their spirit of freedom. In 1739, Cupido, a slave from Malabar, threatened his mistress with a knife to force her to listen to his story. He said he resented the work and the lack of freedom which he had enjoyed in his own country. He wished to commit suicide as that was the only way he could obtain freedom and deprive his owner of his possession. Cupido was overcome before he could stab himself, and broken alive on the wheel, thus being subjected to slow death. Alexander, from Bengal, ran away and was captured in the 1730`s. He was flogged, branded, pilloried under the gallows and sentenced to 25 years of hard labour in chains. He managed to escape and was captured again in 1737. He was broken on the wheel after eight pieces of flesh were pulled out from him with red-hot tongs. Miscegenation Sexual relations between whites and Asian slaves were quite common in the 17th and 18th centuries, and several studies show that half or more of the children of slave women had white fathers. Many white settlers married or lived with Asian women and their children were accepted in the white community. Marriages between the Dutch and slave women were prohibited in 1685 but persons of mixed parentage were allowed to marry anyone, including the white settlers. Inter-racial marriages, in fact, increased from that time. J. A. Heese, in Die Herkoms van die Afrikaner 1657-1867, presented the results of research from parish registers and other sources on the ancestors of the Afrikaners. He found that between 1660 and 1705, 191 of the settlers from Germany married or lived with women who were not pure blood Europeans. Of the women, 114 were born in the Cape (most probably mixed), 29 were Bengalis and 43 were from other Asian regions. He estimated that in 1807, between 7. 2 and 10. percent of the ancestors of the then living Afrikaner population were Africans and Asians. His figures were perhaps inevitably conservative. It may well be that a tenth of the present Afrikaner population has Indian ancestry. Asian ancestry was not considered unusual. The mother of Simon van der Stel, the most prominent Governor of the Cape in the 17th century, after whom Stellenbosch is named, was Maria Lievens, daughter of a Dutch captain in Batavia and an Asian woma n. The Reverend M. C. Vos, a prominent clergyman in the 18th century, mentioned in his autobiography his Asian ancestry without any comment. Need for research by Indian scholars It is a pity that there has been hardly any research by scholars in India on the export of Indians to slavery in Indonesia and South Africa, long before labourers were sent into semi-slave conditions in Natal as indentured labour from 1860 to 1911. That has left a serious gap in Indian history. A study of the slave trade is also important to appreciate the contribution of Indians to the building of South Africa: the descendants of the slaves may well outnumber the million people now known as Indian South Africans. Indians played an important role in the spread of Islam in South Africa: the first mosque in Cape Town was established early in the 19th century by Imam Frans and Imam Achmat, both from Bengal. The Indians contributed to the origin of the Afrikaans language which was created by slaves and the Coloured (mixed) people: the oldest book in Afrikaans was a Muslim religious text published in 1856. It is also important to appreciate the historic blood relationship between the Indian and Coloured communities whom apartheid has tried to separate – and the significance of resistance by slaves in the history of the freedom movement in South Africa. The Afrikaners must be helped to shed the false notions of race purity and superiority if the hopes for a new non-racial and democratic South Africa are to be fulfilled. I hope that with the changes now taking place in South Africa, Indian and South African historians will cooperate in producing an authoritative study of the transport of Indians into slavery in South Africa and their contribution to the development of South Africa. From: http://www. anc. org. za/ancdocs/history/solidarity/indiasa3. html The Indian Origin community in South Africa| HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: 1. The major part of the Indian community, which has retained a distinct ethnic sub-identity, came to South Africa between 1860 and 1911 as indentured farm labour to serve as field hands and mill operatives in the sugar and other agricultural plantations of Natal (which was then a British colony). Although they were given the opportunity to return home on completion of their contracts, most preferred to stay on, either as farmers on crown land in Natal or as petty businessmen. . Most of the initial migrants were drawn from what is today Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh with some from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. A second wave of Indians came after 1880. These were the â€Å"passenger Indians† – so-called because they paid their fares as passengers on board steamships bound for South Africa. This was the community of traders mainly from Gujarat. POPULATION, REGIONAL LINGUISTIC DISTRIBUTION 3. The South African Indian origin community currently numbers around 1. 15 million and constitutes about 2. % of South Africa’s total population of 45. 45 million. About 80% of the Indian community lives in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, about 15% in the Gauteng (previously Transvaal) area and the remaining 5% in the Cape Town area. In KwaZulu-Natal, the major concentration of the Indian population is in Durban. The largest concentrations of Indian settlement are at Chatsworth, Phoenix, Tongaat and Stanger in the Durban Coastal area, which covers approximately 500,000 of the Indian origin community. Pietermaritzburg – noted for its link with Mahatma Gandhi has a community of approximately 200,000. 4. Smaller inland towns in KwaZulu Natal such as Ladysmith, Newcastle, Dundee and Glencoe make up the bulk of the remaining Indian population. In the Gauteng area, the Indian community is largely concentrated around Lenasia outside Johannesburg and Laudium and other suburbs outside Pretoria. There are also smaller groups in towns in the Eastern Cape and other provinces. Settlement of Indian origin people in a particular area, as with other South African peoples, came about as a result of the Group Areas Act that forced racial division into particular designated areas. 5. According to the figures provided by the Department of Education and Culture, in the Province of KwaZulu-Natal, the linguistic break-up of the Indian community is as follows: Tamil 51%, Hindi 30%, Gujarati 7%, Telugu 6%, Urdu 5% and others 1%. 6. The language issue is of more emotional and cultural significance than a practical one as 98% of the Indian community in South Africa considers English their home language. However, community organisations make some commendable efforts to teach Indian languages to children at school levels and to maintain university level language courses at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Indeed many local Indian origin people speak Afrikaans, having been taught it throughout their schooling and some because of business and other interactions with the local people. The preponderance of English over Indian vernaculars is also as a result of the state education received by Indian origin learners, which precluded languages other than English and Afrikaans. IMMIGRATION LAWS AFFECTING THE DIASPORA 7. Although Indians came to South Africa in the 1860’s, it was not until over a century later (in 1961), that they were granted the status of full citizens. While their status changed, they were subject to the same discrimination as the rest of the Black people of South Africa. Post-1994, they are treated like any other South African and have afforded most of the benefits reserved for previously disadvantaged people. | | | POLITICAL ROLE: 8. Traditionally, progressive South African Indian leaders led the fight against apartheid. Beginning with Mahatma Gandhi during his 21-year stay in South Africa, it was valiantly followed by Dr Yusuf Dadoo, Dr Monty Naicker and others. The Natal Indian Congress, which was founded by Gandhi, also successfully led the move to boycott the tricameral and racist elections in 1984 and together with the Transvaal Indian Congress, participated actively in the United Democratic Front and its struggle against the racist regime, during the years in which the ruling African National Congress was banned and in exile. Their contribution has always been acknowledged by leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and President Thabo Mbeki. The Natal Indian Congress played a significant role when the African National Congress (ANC) was banned in 1960, but was subsequently dissolved in the 1990s when the ANC was unbanned. However, the Natal Indian Congress and its leaders, George Sewpersad, Pravin Gordhan, Dr Kesavaloo Goonam and Ela Gandhi, amongst others, had served the struggle for the liberation of South Africa unflinchingly. 9. After the 1999 elections, of the 400 National Assembly MPs, 41 were of Indian origin. The Speaker was of Indian origin as were four Cabinet ministers and two deputy ministers. In the current Assembly, there are 25 Indian-origin MPs, one Cabinet Minister and three Deputy Ministers. Given that Indians represent less than 2. 5% of the overall population in South Africa, people were chosen on the basis of their ability, their activism and their contributions rather than their ethnic origin, in keeping with the non-racial ethic of African National Congress rule. 10. In the province of KwaZulu-Natal where there is maximum concentration of South Africans of Indian origin, one Indian-origin Minister has been inducted into the 11-member Cabinet. In the 80-member Provincial Legislature there are six members of Indian origin, excluding the one Minister. For the first time in the province of Free State there is one member in the Provincial Legislature of Indian origin. Ironically, during apartheid rule people of Indian origin were not allowed to spend more than 24-hours in the province, let alone settling there or setting up businesses. LINKS WITH INDIA: 11. In common with other large long-established overseas Indian communities, South African Indians have a deep emotional bond with their mother culture. Having been the unfortunate victims of the severing of ties with their motherland due to international sanctions against the apartheid state, they have warmly welcomed re-establishment of diplomatic, sporting, cultural and trade relations. Many community organisations want closer religious, cultural and educational ties. They are interested in visiting India to rediscover their roots and for tourism and trade. They are also eager to start interacting with other overseas Indian communities with whom their ties also suffered as a result of the apartheid rule. 12. The community participates actively in the celebration of National Day by the Indian missions in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Diwali is celebrated as a big public function in Durban as well as in Lenasia, Laudium and other areas where Indian communities reside. There are a large number of community organizations, which are working to propagate their cultural and linguistic traditions. 13. To sum up, the Indian origin community in South Africa is one of the largest such communities in the world, and one of the oldest, and has had an honourable and acknowledged role in the liberation struggle with strong emotional and cultural bonds with the country of their origin, and while they may have concerns about their future, like all minorities, are proud of being South Africans. | | Indian slaves in South Africa Soon after Jan van Riebeeck set up a Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, to supply provisions to Dutch ships plying to and from India and the East Indies, people from India were taken to the Cape and sold into slavery to do domestic work for the settlers, as well the dirty and hard work on the farms. A woman from Bengal named Mary was bought for van Riebeeck in Batavia in 1653. Two years later, in 1655, van Riebeeck purchased, from the Commander of a Dutch ship returning from Asia to Holland, a family from Bengal – Domingo and Angela and their three children. On May 21, 1656, the marriage was solemnised at the Cape between Jan Wouters, a white, and Catherine of Bengal who was liberated from slavery. Later in the year Anton Muller was given permission to marry Domingo Elvingh, a woman from Bengal. From then until late eighteenth century when the import of slaves from Asia was prohibited, many hundreds, if not thousands, of persons from India – mainly Bengal, Coromandel Coast and Kerala – were taken to the Cape and sold into slavery. Officers of ships and officials of the Dutch India Company returning to Holland usually took slaves or servants with them and sold them at high profit in the Cape. Slaves could not be taken to Holland where slavery was prohibited). Many others were carried by Danish and British ships. While most of the Indians were taken from Dutch trading posts in India, a considerable number were also taken from Batavia as thousands of Indians had been taken by the Dutch as slaves to Batavia. South African, Amer ican, British and other scholars have conducted painstaking research into the archives in the Cape – records of the deeds office, courts, churches etc. – and have brought out several studies on slavery in the Cape. They contain extensive, though far from complete, information on transactions in human beings, the conditions of slavery and resistance of the slaves. The archives indicate that Mary, the first known Indian slave, was found in bed with a constable, Willem Cornelis, in 1660. He was fined and dismissed from his post but she was apparently not punished. Van Riebeeck and his family probably took her with them when they moved to Batavia in 1662. Jan Wouters was transferred to Batavia soon after his marriage to Catherine. There is no information on Anton Muller. Van Riebeeck sold Angela, who had taken care of his children, to Abraham Gabbema, his deputy and law officer. Gabbema granted freedom to Angela and her three children before he departed for Batavia in 1666, except that she was required to work for six months in the home of Thomas Christoffel Muller. She integrated easily into the white community even while continuing relations with her friends who were still in slavery. She asked for and obtained a plot of land in the Table Valley in February 1667. Next year she obtained a slave from Malabar on hire. In 1669 she married Arnoldus Willemsz Basson, with whom she had three children. Her daughter from the first marriage also married a Dutchman. When her husband died in 1689, Angela took charge of the estate which had a considerable value when she died in 1720. Some of these early slaves – especially women from Bengal who were acquired by senior officials of the Dutch India Company for domestic work – were relatively fortunate. The great majority of those enslaved in the Cape, however, lived under miserable conditions. The researches in the past three decades – by Anna Boeseken, Margaret Cairns, Achmat Davids, Richard Elphick, H. F. Heese, J. Hoge, Robert Ross, Robert Shell, Nigel Worden and others – destroy several myths that had been prevalent – for instance, that slavery had little economic importance in the Cape, that the treatment of slaves, especially Asian slaves, was benign, that Asian slaves were mostly from Indonesia etc. The number of slaves exceeded the number of white settlers by early 18th century and they did the hard work of developing the land. Most of the Asian slaves worked on the farms and were treated as cruelly as the Africans. There were almost as many, if not more, slaves from India as from Indonesia. The first Indentured Indians arrived on the Truro, a paddle steamer from Madras, on November 17,1860. The second ship arrived soon afterwards from Calcutta; this was the ship Belvidera which reached Port Natal on November 26, 1860. After this ships arrived regularly until July 14, 1866 when the Isabella Hercus arrived from Madras. No immigrants were sent to Natal from India between 1867 and 1874 partly because Natal was suffering from economic depression in the last years of the 1860s and, when this lifted, the Government of India required some of the conditions under which Indians were employed to be reviewed. The first returning immigrants, sailing on the Red Riding Hood in January 1871,and on the Umvoti shortly afterwards, complained about some of the conditions under which they lived and worked in Natal. They complained particularly about the ? 10 bonus that had not been paid to them despite the promise they claimed had been made to them when they were indentured. The colonial government then set up a Commission of Enquiry under the chairmanship of the attorney-general M. H. Gallwey. The report of this Commission, which became known as the Coolie Commission, was published in 1872. Once new regulations were promulgated the Government of India allowed recruitment to take place again. Emigration began again in 1874 and continued without interruption until July 21,1911 when Umlazi 43 brought the last immigrants to Natal before the termination of the indentured labour system by the Government of India. Ships could accommodate between 300 and 700 migrants and altogether a total of 152,184 men, women and children were transported. Of these two thirds of the immigrants were from Madras and one third from Calcutta. Each shipment was expected to include 40 women for every 100 men but in many cases there were far fewer than 40 women and sometimes as few as 25. It has always been assumed that exactly 152,184 individuals arrived in Natal as indentured immigrants. A study of the Shipping lists, however, reveals that a few numbers were never allocated, and a number of immigrants who returned to India were recruited again, often with their friends and members of their families, and were given new colonial numbers when they came back. Some of these were known to be returning immigrants and their names were endorsed with R of N (Resident of Natal) but many others seem to have said nothing about the earlier period in Natal and were given completely new numbers. There is no way of discovering how many of these returning immigrants there were but certainly there were fewer first time immigrants than was formerly thought. There were also men and women who had originally indentured for work in other colonies, completed their period of indenture and then volunteered for Natal; their names are endorsed R of S (Surinam), R of F (Fiji) etc. Other British colonies who imported Indian labour were Mauritius, Trinidad, Jamaica, British Guiana, St Lucia and Grenada; the French islands of Reunion, Martinique, and Guadelope, together with St Croix, also took advantage of indentured labour from India. Initially the demand in Natal was for agricultural labour for the farms and estates; gradually this changed and by the 1880s it was railway workers that were needed to extend the railway line from Port Natal to the interior. By the 1890s the coal mines in Northern Natal were calling for labour as were the rapidly developing sugar estates along the north and south coasts. By 1904, when Zululand was opened up, the planting of sugar began in the Amatikulu district and around Empangeni and Indian labour was needed there. In addition a small group of indentured men, known as Special Servants, were brought in from Madras to work in hotels and clubs, as grooms and waiters, laundrymen and carriage drivers and as gardeners and aiyas (nursemaids) in private residences. These skilled people were recruited in Madras for a particular employer, were paid higher wages and enjoyed better conditions Pietermaritzburg is the capital and second largest city in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It was founded in 1838, and is currently governed by the Msunduzi Local Municipality. Its purist Zulu name is umGungundlovu, and this is the name used for the district municipality. Pietermaritzburg is popularly called Maritzburg in English and Zulu alike, and often informally abbreviated to PMB. It is a regionally important industrial hub, producing aluminium, timber and dairy products. It is home to many schools and tertiary education institutions, including a campus of the University of KwaZulu-Natal. It had a population of 228,549 in 1991, the estimated current population is around 500,000 (including neighbouring townships) and has one of the largest population of Indian South Africans in South Africa. Pictures BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. bbc. com 2. hindu heritage. com 3. Britannica online Table of Contents 1860 19141 After 19145 Under Apartheid8 Indian Slaves In South Africa – Indian African History9 Indian slaves in South Africa17 pictures†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦20-24 BIBLIOGRAPHY25 NAME: JEETESH BEHARILAL GRADE: 12A SUBJECT: HISTORY –â€Å"HERITAGE PROJECT† INDIAN HERITAGE PROJECT