The Vocal City: Indian Indenture and Post Slavery Debates in Colonial Calcutta Event

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The colonial city was a site for several voices: the colonising officials, the vocal citizens living under colonial rule, and the non-vocal sections of the public that were twice-removed from decision-making powers. This paper explores the voices of citizens in Calcutta—the colonial capital of British India—with reference to the trans-imperial debates on the use of Indian indentured (contractual) labour in British sugar plantations. It analyses debates around the legitimacy of the Indian indentured trade, to explore ‘post-slavery’ changes in the definition of labour, and to locate Calcutta within global and imperial networks of exchange. Abolition had created a situation where all subsequent labour movements were by definition ‘free’, and this was reflected in the discourse around indentured migration. This post-slavery moment is characterised by a dichotomy of servitude (or ‘unfreedom’) and ‘freedom’, where the indentured debates constantly drew from Abolitionist and metropolitan labour discourse, but also from a global body of opinions. This paper uses voices from Calcutta to explore this ‘post-slavery’ moment, and to reflect on the perceived dichotomy between servitude and free labour.