kangani and maistry systems. It is said that kangani system prevailed in the case of Malaya and Ceylon, whereas maistry system was in place for recruiting labour to Burma. India did not have any strong structures to regulate the recruitment through kangani system as these emigrations were considered as ‘ free labour migrations’and if there was any regulation on kanganis it was mostly from the authorities of the destination countries118. Maistry system of labour recruitment, like the kangani system, too relied on a system of advances as an inducement for emigration and every plantation worker start his work in the overseas plantations with a debt account 119. Though the system was more exploitative than the knagani system because of the involvement of middlemen and undue authority to maistry, emigration to Burma by and large not subjected to any control as Burma was a province of British India until 1937. Though not large scale, there were significant amount of emigration during the colonial time from the Punjab as indentured labour. Some of them who ended up in colonies like that of East Africa eventually made their way to the U.K. But most of the migrations from Punjab during that time might have been as free migrations, that of ‘ temporary sojourners’ , as sepoys, lascars and ayahs 120. The 18th and 19th centuries witnessed the increasing participations of Indian sepoys in the overseas campaigns of the Empire. These emigrations were facilitated by the colonial government to various destinations including Europe, resulting many often the sepoys slipping from the contingent to become emigrant labourers or peddlers in the concerned destination121 Similarly, the Indian lascars arriving at England were sometimes made to wait for months for a return passage and their plight was often desperate with a mortality rate of 10 per cent122. It was usual that a number of lascars from the subcontinent jumped from the ship and settled at various points around the Indian ocean and in British port towns such as Liverpool, London, etc.123. This too was considered as free migration as it was unregulated from the Indian side. The emigrating merchants from India, including the Punjabis, were another stream of people traveling abroad, but were not classified as emigrants till 1922 and hence were largely absent in the official records124. The Western notion of regulating the movement of people across the borders of the nation states was inaugurated in India during the colonial time and it was put in practice in such a way that the document of passport in a colony like India became a symbol of status, available for a few in the native society and a mechanism of generating loyalty for the colonial rulers125. It was in1917 that the Government of India made passport compulsory for all travellers entering or leaving India by sea, but the system was introduced with significant exceptions: to naval and military forces, to crews of overseas vessels, to pilgrims and also to collie traffic with Ceylon and the Malay states126. On the other hand, the efforts of the colonial government to assist migration was limited to an exercise of testing the documentary uprightness of the emigrating labourer. The system was applied on the indentured labour emigration which was considered as a state regulated form of ‘ assisted migration’by ensuring ‘ coolie 127 agreements’through ‘ voluntary contracts’ . The Passport Rules of 1917 and the Passport Act of 1920 coupled with widespread protest in India against the indenture with the aid of a discourse of ‘ national prestige’culminated into the Emigration Act of 1922, which brought a formal end to the indenture labour system 128. The Act made government notifications for recruitment and emigration for labour mandatory. The emigration of unskilled labour from India declined progressively since then also because of the economic peril brought about the Great Depression of the 1930s. The passport and the emigration regimes of colonial India were thus seen as discriminatory wherein passport was a privilege of a few and an instrument of control and emigration of unskilled labour was regulated and eventually made impossible in the name of protection and nation’ s pride. The Passport Act of 1967 by the independent Indian government has made it mandatory for everyone departing from India to overseas by invalidating the individual discretion allowed by the previous act. On the other hand, the emigrations from Indian continued without a legal framework till 1983, but at times invoked certain provisions of the 1922 Act, as a matter of convenience. The enactment of the Emigration Act of 1983, the immediate reason being a Supreme Court directive in the context of increasing amount of abuses and exploitation in the overseas recruitments from India, in actuality reinvented the previous discriminatory emigration regime. Through a principle of “protection by exception”the office of the Protector General of Emigrants (PGE), under the Ministry of Labour, 118
Ramasamy, 1992, Guilmoto, 1993, Lal, 2006, Peebles, 2001, Jain, 1998 Lal, 2006 120 Visram, 1986, Ballard, 2003 121 Singh, 2006, Mazumdar, 2003, Yong, 2002. 122 Lal, 2006 123 Ibid 124 Visram, 1986, Lal, 2006 125 Torpey, 2000, Mongia, 1999, Singha, year unknown 126 Singha, Ibid 127 Marina, 1992 & 1995, Mohapatra, 2006 & 2007 128 Singha, op.cit 119
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