THE INDIAN IMMIGRATION ARCHIVE IN MAURITIUS

The complexity and richness of Mauritian studies belies the geographical
smallness of this Indian Ocean country.  An island of 720 square miles,
named after a Dutch stadhouder, Mauritius was captured for the British
Empire from the French in 1810. Within a few decades the island had been
transformed into a major sugar producer and experienced an unprecedented
demographic revolution as existing Creole and European populations were
dwarfed by an immigrant Indian community which rapidly gained majority
status.  

By Marina Carter

The Indianization of Mauritius was a deliberate policy of the British who
selected the island to be the site of "the great experiment" in the use of
"free" rather than slave labour.  Mauritius was chosen because it was
perceived to be a new and expanding plantation economy unlike the
"exhausted" West Indian sugar producers, and because of her proximity to
India.  Thus, Mauritius became the first British colony to be allowed to
export labour under a government regulated indenture system from 1834.  The
indentured workers were so called because they were obliged to sign
contracts of varying duration which bound them to serve for a fixed wage. 
Because the migration was designed to prove a viable alternative to slave
labour, indenture was a system under scrutiny.  As a result the entire
proceedings, from recruitment, through shipping, allocation to estates and
employment history was recorded.  Individual data were compiled to describe
and differentiate migrants, and from the 1860s photographs of Indian
immigrants were taken to complete the system of control. The registers in
which this bio-data was recorded are collected at the Indian Immigration
Archives of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute, Mauritius.  The Archive houses
unique ship registers, migrant certificates and photographs relating to one
of the largest of the modern Indian diasporas; these comprise migrant data
recorded at the point of entry, and records of subsequent employment, and
settlement patterns of Indians in Mauritius.  The size, comprehensiveness,
and quality of the database (circa half a million migrants) is unique.  In
no other territory to which Indians migrated as labourers (for example the
Caribbean, South Africa and Sri Lanka) is statistical material available
which can enable the historian to match individual bio-data (region, caste,
age, gender) with subsequent employment and settlement records (marriage,
death or return dates).  
The study of this material will enable us to recreate a unique picture of
the transplantation of an essentially rural or `peasant' population  into a
plantation society.   The data reveal aspects of the living and working
conditions of indentured labourers (through birth and death rates) so that
scholars specializing in the quantitative study of coerced labour would
find much of interest in the records.  Correlations between death rates and
migrants' region of origin can provide new information about the
epidemiological conditions of the subcontinent. In addition, the analysis
of the Indian population data can provide us with an insight into the
modification of traditional customs and practices in the new setting - for
example, the selection of marriage partners in Mauritius by the children of
immigrants entailed adaptation from the caste endogamous patterns which
their parents had followed.  The photographs (the collection dates from
1868) and personal data (e.g. height, family status) recorded for
individual migrants can also be used to provide Indian demographers,
historians, and anthropologists with a valuable new source of
socio-biological information concerning the 19th century Indian populations
(including tribals, Bengalis, Telegus, and Marathis as well as Tamils and
Biharis who were numerically the most significant migrant groups).  

Marina Carter is a historian and currently a MacArthur Fellow based at the
University of London and the Mahatma Gandhi Institute, Mauritius.