Beyond Indenture: An Examination of the Life Stories, Social and Economic Mobility of Mohun and Teeluckdharry—Two Girmitiyas—and Others During the Age of Indenture in Colonial Mauritius (1838–1895)

This chapter focuses on the success stories of two early Girmitiyas, namely Mohun and Teeluckdharry, and on other Indian immigrants who reached Mauritian shores during the 1830s and 1840s. It shows how within a matter of a few years, they were able to complete their indentured labour contracts, move off estates, and achieve some measure of social and economic mobility even in the face of great adversity. It also demonstrates that they became sirdars, labour overseers, recruiters, and Old Immigrant entrepreneurs as small sugar planters as they moved beyond indenture. This study highlights how they were able to purchase property, create their own families, and develop complex webs of social and economic relationships with other Girmitiya Jahaji brothers and sisters. This study focuses on immigrant/human agency and their labour mobility because between the 1830s and the 1870s, thousands of Indian indentured and ex-indentured workers regularly changed employers.