This is a book which chronicles the use, by indenturing, of 1.3 million impoverished labourers from eastern and southern India for cultivation in the British-owned plantations in the West Indies, Fiji and Mauritius—under inhumane conditions, both in the voyage to plantations as well as with the torturous conditions of work they had to undergo in their stay over there. As analysed by other scholars in literature, the book refers to the link between the Act which ended slavery in British territories by 1808 as well as the end of ‘apprenticeship’ by former slaves in British-owned plantations in 1834, and the indenturing of labour, primarily from India, starting in 1834 itself. The arrangement implied the need to find labour in near servitude conditions in order not to interrupt cultivation in the plantations owned by British financiers.
Bhaswati Mukherjee, a diplomat by profession, wears the robe of a meticulous historian in drafting the contents of the small book. She highlights three specific aspects of her proposed analysis in its blurb. Those include: (a) the identity between the indentured status and slavery (or ‘coolitude’) of workers; (b) a need to discover the route (or journey) of the indentured, and (c) the search for identity serving as saviour for the indentured, flourishing over time as diaspora.