Introduction: Girmitiya Culture and Memory: Theorizing Its Culture and (Post)memory

Indian migration is ubiquitous. It can be bifurcated into ‘Old Diaspora’ that emerged from the colonial migrations and the ‘New Diaspora’ that emerged from the ‘postcolonial migrations’ (Amba Pande, 2017). Indian Indentured Labour migration is an old diaspora at the time of the British colonial period, where Indians were lured and sent to work on the sugar agricultural estates in the far-off British colonies to curb expenses. It is also known as Girmitiya migration, which is one of the poignant chapters in the annals of history in the Indian context where thousands of Indians were transported to the Pacific archipelago, as a substitute after the abolition of slavery in 1833. Girmit is the corrupt form/mispronunciation and demotic form of the word ‘agreement’ that Indian labourers signed before voyage, and a Girmit going under this agreement was called a Girmitiya by uneducated Indians. Under this system, approximately 1.5 million men and women were uprooted from their native India between 1838 and 1916 and sent to colonies such as Mauritius, Suriname, Guyana, Tobago, Trinidad, Fiji, and other island nations. These Indians left their homes in the hope of a better future (Lal, 2004a, b, c, p. 34).