Indentured servitude is broadly understood as the often brutal exploitation of the lives and labors of long-distance migrants, enabled by a deceptive system of labor contracting in the home country. The terms of an indentured contract legally approved subjecting an indentured laborer to backbreaking work without pay for a fixed period of time. The laborer was required to 'voluntarily' agree to and sign on these  terms before departing the homeland to the destination of work. Historically, the paradigmatic example of indentured servitude has come to be identified with the exploitation of the millions of people who left British India for other colonies of the British Empire--primarily, to its sugar colonies, but other places as well--under this labor contracting system.

The term 'indentured servitude', however, has nothing to do with the actual exploitation that the multitude of Indian migrants were subjected to. Rather, the name derives from the nature, or more accurately, the matter of the contract itself. For indenture literally refers to the perforations or indents on a sheet of paper--the paper on which the contract was written/printed in duplicate, on either side of the perforations--along which the sheet was then torn, upon signing of the contract. The migrant kept one copy while the British colonial government kept the other.

This bureaucratic practice of contract signing lend its name to the entire migration carried out under such labor contracts, the so-called indenture system. Indeed, this detailed record-keeping by the colonial government also marks one important distinctions between slavery and indentured servitude, even if the exploitation and hardship both faced were often similar in kind. The absence of such records in the case of the former means that it is difficult to get a sense of who African slaves were as individuals. Whereas, for indentured laborers, we get a fairly detailed snapshots of the migrants--their names, ages, place of origin, social location, etc.--from the records kept by the British.

In terms of the labor contract itself (look carefully at the background image): according to the laws and statutes passed by the British, indentured migration had to be ‘voluntary’ and they were to be recruited only by Licensed Agents. Though, in practice, people, overwhelmingly illiterate, were often tricked into indenture by unlicensed recruiters. Typically, the contract was for a duration of 5 years. Upon the completion of this tenure, the migrant was given two options: to renew the contract, upon the completion of which, the indentured individual was promised 10 acres of land in the place they had migrated to; or, get a free passage back to India. Though having left Indian usually with the intention of returning, most, however, chose to stay back, giving rise to Indian enclaves in the migrant destinations and the making of an Indian diaspora in places as far-flung as Mauritius, Fiji, Natal in South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, and Guyana and Suriname in the southern American continent. Most of the migrants in these places came from present-day states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Bengal. We will learn more about their social locations in class.

There were two other systems of migrant labor exploitation under British colonial rule that while bearing many resemblances to the actual hardships inflicted on the laborers, nevertheless, are considered apart from indenture servitude in faraway islands. This is because of the differences in the process of labor recruitment, terms and conditions of the contracts, and the places the contracted labor was sent to. These other two forms of inhumane servitude were the kangani and the maistri systems. If under the indenture system, labor was recruited mostly from northern parts of British India, the kangani and maistry systems prevailed more in the southern parts, among primarily the Tamil, but also Telugu and Malayali people. The places migrants under these contracting systems went to were much closer home, mostly along the rim of the Bay of Bengal, like the present-day countries of Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Malaysia. Importantly, however, many more people left British India under these two systems--an estimated 6 million--than did under the better-known indenture system that took and placed Indians far, far away from home.