People says that the Seuneurayans descended from Seikhs who occupied the upper tiers of India's kajat. Samuel's father and brothers were agricultural farmers who made their living by harvesting ground nuts, peas, and rice. As a child running around in little more than a doti, Samuel often found himself having to run carts of pumpkin to the local towns where they were sold during the planting season. His two eldest brothers, Moolian and Bharath, owned farms of their own in Kharagpur while his eldest sister, Vashti, married a subsistence farmer from Bhatpara at the tender age of fifteen.
Samuel entered the local village school at twelve years old, shortly after his mother's death. Stationed along the town periphery, the village school sat about two hundred yards from where the sand met the foaming waters of the Laccadive Sea. The village children feared the schoolmaster, a middle aged Brahman, who commanded lessons with a whip that added to the austerity of his appearance. As was the case with all the other children, Samuel's fear of licks drove him to write his lessons out daily in the sand. At such times, his schoolmaster would hover over his shoulder wielding a switch that seemed all-too eager to acquaint itself with his backside.
"Mark it out! Again! Mark it on the sand!" his instructor would shout whenever he found Samuel's lessons less than satisfactory. "Ra-tap!" went the whip against the tender limbs and backs of children who scurried away to escape the sting of the lash. Samuel's father desired for his youngest son, a life that would lead him away from the back-breaking labor of the fields. Little did he know that this was the very place for which Samuel was destined.
As the story goes, Samuel was kidnapped in 1880 while playing football along the shores of an unknown coastal village. He and his friends caught the attention of white arkatees who demanded that they help load cargo onto ships for export. The whites' demands were not aberrations, for foreign shipping companies oftentimes forced India's natives to comply with various pre-imposed labor demands. The boys complied with the whites, who were despised by India's natives for exploiting her land, her labor, and her people.
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"All e young fellar 'bout twenty a dem come hyar to make money. Dem fellar fool me. Bring me dis country e say e ha plenty money, e fool me" -East Indian indentured worker in Trinidad
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The men from the beach fettered Samuel, placing him in the bowels of a ship that harbored hundreds of other East Indians bound for what would become a lifetime of gruelling labor. Most of the people aboard the ship were men who had contracted themselves as indentured laborers. Like Samuel, those who were kidnapped were chained together in coffles beneath the ship's hold. Laaka, the young man to who Samuel was chained, was dragged out of his father's house by white arkatees. Neither he nor Samuel would ever see India again.
Upon arriving in Trinidad, Samuel was sold to Mr. Saxon, a British colonist who owned a large and prosperous sugar plantation outside of San Fernando. After three years of service, Samuel had fully assimilated into the plantation's kurme. His workday began with the sound of the bell horn that echoed across the vast plantation just before dawn. The overseers, who were people of African and European descent, herded Samuel and the other slaves and indentured laborers to the cane fields where they planted, weeded, tended, and harvested cane until midday. Samuel's master stratified his workers in the same way that many planters created divisions between their former African slaves. Versus exploiting color hierarchies, Mr. Saxon took full advantage of kajat in order to negate solidarity among his workers. Samuel often witnessed cruelties towards Brahmans and simultaneously loathed the occasional extra portions he would receive for being Seikh.
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"All a dem livin' but Brahman. E ha village one side da chamar. If I want oak must oak. If a Brahman if a animan comin', must oak" -East Indian indentured worker in Trinidad**
In India, Brahmans were members of a high ranking priestly caste whose position prevented them from participating in strenuous forms of manual labor. This kajat restriction exacerbated the difficulties that many Brahman's faced on Mr. Saxon's plantation. He would often assign Brahmans the most demeaning tasks and took painstaking measures to degrade them. The were treated as chamar, or members of an untouchable caste.
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"One a de barrick have six room. I could hear if you farting dem could hear just like livin' in de bush dat is all" -East Indian indentured worker in Trinidad
**
Samuel was housed in what used to be the former barracks for African slaves and shared a single room that was barely large enough for three people, with seven other indentured workers. Mr. Saxon gave his field hands weekly food rations which generally consisted of alloo, roti, kukunee, makai, and sohari. Maida was a luxury of which only the plantation elite partook.
Throughout the time of their indenture, contracted workers could neither change employers nor could they refuse to perform any task to which they were assigned. They were denied the right to protest their pay, which for many consisted of sara bara ana per day. Under the law, indentured workers possessed no rights that either employers or the colonial government were obliged to acknowledge. Many of the workers who contracted themselves quickly became disillusioned by life on the tappu and while most yearned to return to India, their labor contracts prohibited repatriation until the expiration of their indenture.
"We di want to go back India but which part e go. Go back which ship an who go gi we de ship?" -East Inidan indentured worker in Trinidad
Throughout the time of their indenture, contracted workers could neither change employers nor could they refuse to perform any task to which they were assigned. They were denied the right to protest their pay, which for many consisted of sara bara ana per day. Under the law, indentured workers possessed no rights that either employers or the colonial government were obliged to acknowledge. Many of the workers who contracted themselves quickly became disillusioned by life on the tappu and while most yearned to return to India, their labor contracts prohibited repatriation until the expiration of their indenture.
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"We di want to go back India but which part e go. Go back which ship an who go gi we de ship?" -East Inidan indentured worker in Trinidad
**
British colonial law demanded that laborers completed five years of industrial service after which they were made to fulfill an additional five years of labor in order to receive a free return pass back to India. The law was crafted so as to guarantee that no one would ever return home.
As the story goes, one afternoon while working in Mr. Saxon's cane fields, Samuel caught the attention of a white missionary who happened to be visiting Mr. Saxon's plantation. Struck by Samuel's tall stature, dark-skin, and straight, jet-black hair, the missionary, a man known throughout San Fernando as Reverend MacDonald, approached Samuel and through discussion, learned that he could both read and write his language. Intrigued by Samuel's mental acumen, the Reverend purchased him in order to train him alongside another Indian, Frederick Budhladall, as a Presbyterian catechist at the Susamachar Presbyterian Church in San Fernando. Samuel spent a little over a decade in Trinidad before migrating to Grenada where he founded the island's first Presbyterian church. He became the first non-white missionary to the island and died there at the age of fifty. Almost eighty years after Samuel first set foot in Trinidad, my mom was born in San Fernando. Hers however, is quite another story...
*gaw: Hindi, meaning "village"
** Pronounced soo'-nah-rhine
Brahman: a member of India's priestly caste.
kajat: Hindi, meaning "caste"
doti: Hindi, meaning "loin cloth." This was the traditional dress for East Indian men and young chidren.
arkatee: Hindi, meaning "recruiters." These men were often sent into India's interior to procure young men to work as indentured servants throughout the British Caribbean.
aloo: Hindi, meaning "potato"
roti: A type of East Indian flat bread
kukunee: Hindi, meaning "fruit"
makai: Hindi, meaning "corn"
sohari: Hindi, meaning "fry bake"
maida: Hindi, meaning"sweet meat"
sara bara anna: Hindi, meaning "twenty-five cents"
tappu: Hindi, meaning "island"
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