Kala Pani Crossings: Revisiting 19th-Century Migrations from a Contemporary Indian Perspective

When used in India, the term Kala pani refers to the cellular jail in Port Blair, where the British colonisers sent a select category of freedom fighters. In the diaspora it refers to the transoceanic migration of indentured labour from India to plantation colonies across the globe from the mid-19th century onwards.

This volume discusses the legacies of indenture in the Caribbean, Reunion, Mauritius, and Fiji, and how they still imbue our present. More importantly, it draws attention to India and raises new questions: doesn’t one need, at some stage, to wonder why this forgotten chapter of Indian history needs to be retrieved? How is it that this history is better known outside India than in India itself? What are the advantages of shining a torch onto a history that was made invisible? Why have the tribulations of the old diaspora been swept under the carpet at a time when the successes of the new diaspora have been foregrounded? What do we stand to gain from resurrecting these histories in the early 21st century and from shifting our perspectives?

A key volume on Indian diaspora, modern history, indentured labour, and the legacy of indentureship, this co-edited collection of essays examines these questions largely through the frame of important works of literature and cinema, folk songs, and oral tales, making it an artistic enquiry of the past and of the present. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of world history, especially labour history, literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, diaspora studies, sociology and social anthropology, Indian Ocean studies, and South Asian studies.

Ashutosh Bhardwaj is an independent writer, journalist and literary critic. He has worked with the leading daily The Indian Express and has been a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Besides, he has received several awards and fellowships for his work as a journalist and critic.

He has three books to his credit: a short story collection (Jo Frame Men Na The, 2010), a book of essays on literature (Pitra Vadh, 2019) and a novelistic account of the Maoist insurgency in Bastar (The Death Script, 2020). He has also published numerous articles and reviews and has presented academic papers in several national and international seminars.

Judith Misrahi-Barak is Associate Professor at University Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, France, where she teaches English and Postcolonial literatures. A member of EMMA, she has published numerous articles and book chapters. Her areas of specialization are Anglophone Caribbean, Indo- and Sino-Caribbean literatures, diaspora, and migrant writing.

She is General editor of the series PoCoPages (Collection ’Horizons anglophones’, University Press of the Mediterranean, Montpellier). Borders and Ecotones in the Indian Ocean is the most recent volume (2020). http: //www.pulm.fr/index.php/collections/horizons-anglophones/pocopages.html

She was Co-Investigator on the AHRC Research Network series on ’Writing, Analysing, Translating Dalit Literature’ (2014-16). She is also Co-Investigator on the AHRC Follow-on Funding for Impact and Engagement on ’On Stage and on Page: Celebrating Dalit and Adivasi Literatures and Performing Arts’ (2020-21) https: //dalitliterature.wordpress.com

She has co-edited Dalit Literatures in India (Routledge 2016; 2nd edition 2018) with Joshil K. Abraham, and Dalit Text: Aesthetics and Politics Reimagined, with K. Satyanarayana and Nicole Thiara (Routledge 2019).