Dr Basdeo Mangru
 

Published in 1987, this book examines the effectiveness of policies designed to protect the interests of indentured labourers brought to British Guiana from India. It analyses the pressures to formulate policies and put them into effect, and the ways in which, in practice, policies were obstructed. It seeks to show that where the interests of government and colonial employers tended to coincide, policies designed to protect labour proved largely effective. However, where there were divergent aims, the interests of the plantocracy tended to predominate with the result that conditions under indenture – basically a system of personal and industrial control – underwent very little improvement.
This detailed and scholarly study of the migration of Indian labourers overseas, is based largely on unpublished sources and analyses the socio-economic, political and cultural factors which induced a traditionally non-migratory people to leave their motherland for service in distant sugar colonies. It examines the pressures to formulate policies and implement them, their effectiveness in protecting the interests of indentured workers and the ways in which these policies were obstructed.
Benevolent Neutrality also includes a major pioneering study of Indian women migrants, particularly the circumstances of recruitment, sexual exploitation on sugar estates, the alarming rate of wife murders and women’s assertiveness and militancy during periods of industrial unrest.

“Dr Mangru’s scholarship is marked by unfailing rigour and deep empathy.”  Clem Seecharan

“Benevolent Neutrality is by any standard an excellent book. Its value lies in its information, exposition and analysis on an important aspect of the post-emancipation era.”  Tota Mangar

• 215 x 153 mm
• 272 pages
• Hardback