The Sugar Wasn’t Sweet

CUNY Lecture Series – CUNY Podcasts

They could starve in India or work like slaves on the sugarcane plantations of British Guiana; that was the choice for thousands of Indians who left home from 1838-1917. One was journalist Gaiutra Bahadur’s great-grandmother Sajuria, who, pregnant and alone, immigrated in 1903. Bahadur seeks her story in Coolie Woman: An Odyssey of Indenture. Indenture provided cheap labor after Britain abolished slavery, and the indentured weren’t treated much better than slaves. Women had it worse, as victims of domestic violence. The abolition of indenture was “the first significant victory” for Indian nationalism, Bahadur tells a LaGuardia Community College audience.