‘Go back to Bombay’ – a warning to the SA Indian community to wake from their apathetic slumber

In South Africa, those with ancestral connections with indentured labourers who arrived in the country between 1860 and 1911 regard 16 November as “Arrival Day”.  

In many parts of the indentured diaspora, such as Mauritius, the Caribbean, Fiji, Grenada and Suriname, Arrival Day has official national recognition and is deemed a public holiday, commemorating the history and struggles of the pioneers, recognising diversity, and celebrating Indian cultural heritage, all of which undoubtedly contribute to social cohesion and nation-building.

Regrettably, in South Africa there is no official national recognition, let alone a holiday on 16 November, Arrival Day of the indentured labourers. There is a superficial reference to indenture history in the school curriculum.

The 1860 Heritage Centre in Durban, led by volunteer curator and director Selvan Naidoo, “serves as a beacon of hope and a reminder of the struggles of those who gave up the familiar for the unknown, and their contribution in forging an economy, an identity, and a proud legacy of human triumph in the face of adversity”.

The quick adaptation and general economic progress of the immigrant group, and their ability to overcome almost impossible odds, generated a great deal of envy, bitterness and anti-Indian sentiment among whites in Durban.

In 1875, the mayor of Durban, Richard Vause, stated that “legislation will doubtless have to be resorted to to prevent these people thus locating themselves in our very midst, their habits and customs being, as is well known, so totally at variance with and repugnant to those of Europeans”.

As the anti-Indian imbroglio increased, the government was forced to appoint several commissions of inquiry from 1885 to investigate the various allegations and demands for repatriation to India and residential segregation.

The commercial, merchant and professional groups were perceived as an economic threat to whites in Natal, and this was reflected in racial prejudices of the most revolting kind, which were transformed into policies limiting their access to land and housing, as well as trading opportunities.

The various restrictions were conceived to ultimately facilitate repatriation to India by making their settlement in Natal impossible or untenable. In 1920, the state-appointed De Lange Asiatic Inquiry Commission stated that “indiscriminate segregation of Asiatic in locations and similar restrictive measures would result in eventually reducing them to helotry”.

Indians managed to survive the economic and political onslaught primarily because of their rich cultural and religious heritage, and the importance the community attached to education.

However, Indians were not a homogeneous group, and experienced various divisions and tensions, particularly between the traders and the working class. The merchant group made every effort to differentiate itself from the indentured stock. 

There was increasing evidence that political organisations were used to articulate merchant interests, sometimes at the expense of the underclasses. Indeed, only in the post-1945 period did working-class issues become more prominent in Indian political agendas.

This tradition of non-cooperation with the apartheid regime continued into the 1980s when more than 80% of the Indian community rejected participation in the Tricameral Parliament.

Harsh reminders