GLC@Lunch: “Dalits under the Indentured Labour System: Transformative Experiences”

Ayushi Varma (GLC Postdoctoral Fellow) 

This talk examines the overlooked experiences of Dalit (untouchables) labourers within the nineteenth-century indenture system and argues that the labourers cannot be understood as a socially uniform group. Drawing on testimonies and memoirs by indentured labourers, alongside official enquiries and colonial reports, it shows how migration and plantation life reshaped caste relations in ways that were not possible in rural north India. While indenture remained a coercive labour regime, plantation and depot spaces often weakened rigid hierarchies by enforcing shared routines, uniform living conditions, and work structured around task completion rather than inherited status. The talk highlights forms of mobility enabled by this context such as inter-dining, inter-marriage, and occupational authority. It asks how ‘castelessness’ emerged through everyday survival, labour discipline, and new solidarities such as jahajibhai ties.