The Three Categories of Indians in South Africa Under Gandhi

When Mohandas K. Gandhi arrived in South Africa in 1893, he entered a society where Indians were far from a homogeneous group. Instead, they comprised distinct social categories, each with unique origins, experiences, and challenges. Understanding these three groups-indentured labourers, their children born on South African soil, and self-funded “passenger” Indians-is essential to grasping the complexities Gandhi navigated during his 21 years in the country that would shape his philosophy of nonviolent resistance.

Indentured labourers: promises of prosperity, reality of suffering 🔗

The story of Indians in South Africa fundamentally begins on 16 November 1860, when the SS Truro arrived in Durban carrying 342 passengers from Madras. Ten days later, the SS Belvedere docked with another 310 passengers from Calcutta. These were the first of approximately 152,184 indentured Indians who would arrive in Natal between 1860 and 1911, forming the largest category of Indians in colonial South Africa.

The system of indenture emerged as Britain’s solution to the labour crisis in its sugar-producing colonies following the abolition of slavery. Natal’s sugarcane industry desperately needed workers, but the indigenous Zulu population refused to work on the plantations. For Zulu men, agricultural work was traditionally women’s domain; they had little interest in becoming wage earners for white colonists. The solution came through an arrangement between the British government and the Government of India, allowing Natal to import indentured labour.

Recruitment and false promises 🔗

The recruitment process in India was often predatory. Recruiters known as arkatis visited villages across Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh during periods of severe hardship. Famines and epidemics, including the cholera outbreak of 1875, had devastated many communities. The arkatis promised land, wealth, and better prospects in Natal. Desperate villagers, facing continuous struggle, seized what seemed like an opportunity for a better future.

The contracts were deceptive at their core. Under Law No. 14 of 1859, workers signed agreements promising wages of just 10 shillings per month during the first year. The landless peasants, agricultural workers, and village labourers who formed the majority of emigrants could not have fully understood what awaited them. As historians have noted, indentured labour was not free labour-workers had no right to negotiate wages, choose employers, or terminate their contracts.

The brutal reality of plantation life 🔗

The journey itself was perilous. Passengers endured cramped conditions, with allocated spaces of only six feet by two feet. Disease spread easily in such conditions-cholera, dysentery, and various illnesses claimed many lives during the voyage. Ship captains’ logs documented high mortality rates, with the Belvedere recording 29 deaths from illness before arrival.

Once in Natal, conditions resembled slavery in all but name. Workers laboured from sunrise to sunset, tilling soil, planting, weeding, harvesting, and building infrastructure. They returned at dusk with barely enough time to eat meagre rations before exhaustion forced them into sleep, only to be awakened by bells while it was still dark to begin again. Flogging was common for perceived infractions until it was abolished in 1872.

Historian Hugh Tinker and others have characterized the entire system as a “new form of slavery.” The psychological toll was immense-many experienced profound isolation, separated from homeland and family, suffering losses of self-esteem, dignity, social connections, and hope. Some took their own lives, including by throwing themselves onto railway lines.

Choosing to stay 🔗

After completing their five-year contracts, workers faced a choice: re-indenture for another term, accept free passage back to India, or remain as “free” Indians. By 1910, approximately 26.85% of indentured men returned to India, but most chose to stay. Those who remained quickly established themselves in various occupations-as industrial and railway workers, market gardeners, fishermen, clerks, and court interpreters.

The 1887 Wragg Commission observed that Indians who completed indenture were reluctant to sign new contracts-“an Indian, drawing the first breath of freedom after five years of indentured service, will, in almost every instance, prove unwilling to re-indenture.” This success in building independent lives would generate intense white resentment and trigger a cascade of discriminatory legislation.

Children of indenture: a new generation in a hostile land 🔗

The second category consisted of children born to indentured labourers who had settled permanently in South Africa. This generation grew up in a unique position-they were South African by birth but treated as perpetual outsiders by the colonial system that their parents’ labour had helped build.

Growing up under discrimination 🔗

These children inherited both their parents’ resilience and the structural barriers designed to limit Indian progress. As the indentured population grew and began to thrive, the colonial government responded with increasingly restrictive measures. The 1885 legislation in the South African Republic prohibited Indians from full citizenship and property ownership, while restricting them to separate pavements from Europeans.

By 1893, the Indian population in Natal slightly outnumbered the white population-a demographic reality that alarmed colonial authorities. The response was swift and punitive. The Franchise Act of 1896 stripped most Indians of voting rights. The Immigration Restriction Act of 1897 limited Indian entry into the colony. The Dealers’ Licences Act empowered local authorities to refuse trading licences to Indians without legal recourse.

The crushing three-pound tax 🔗

Perhaps the most devastating measure was Law 17 of 1895, which imposed an annual poll tax of £3 on every Indian head of household who did not re-indenture or return to India. This represented an enormous financial burden-essentially a penalty for choosing to remain as free people. By 1900, the tax was extended to all family members, including women and children. Failure to pay could result in deportation or imprisonment.

The tax was deliberately designed to force Indians into a cruel choice: return to India, re-enter the bondage of indenture, or face impoverishment through taxation. As future Natal Prime Minister Harry Escombe candidly stated, “The Indians are to come here appreciated as labourers, but not welcomed as settlers and competitors.”

This generation faced the peculiar challenge of being legally and socially marginalized in the only country they had ever known. They could not return to an India they had never seen, yet they were denied full participation in South African society. Their struggle would become central to Gandhi’s later campaigns, particularly the 1913 strikes when coalminers and railway workers joined the movement to repeal the three-pound tax.

‘Passenger’ Indians: affluence and envy 🔗

The third category-and the smallest-consisted of Indians who came to South Africa at their own expense as free migrants. Unlike indentured labourers, these “passenger Indians” arrived as independent traders, entrepreneurs, artisans, teachers, and shop assistants, alert to commercial opportunities in the developing colony.

Origins and arrival 🔗

The first passenger Indians began arriving in 1869, nearly a decade after indentured labour began. They were predominantly from Gujarat and included Muslims from varying backgrounds-Memons, Surtis, and Urdu speakers from Uttar Pradesh. One of the earliest documented passenger traders was Aboobaker Haji Ahmed Jhaveri, who arrived in Natal in 1872.

By the time Gandhi arrived in 1893, brought to South Africa by the Muslim merchant Dada Abdullah to handle a legal dispute, the passenger Indian community had established significant commercial networks. These traders set up businesses not only in Durban but expanded inland to the Transvaal, establishing communities along the main road between Johannesburg and Durban.

Economic success breeds resentment 🔗

The commercial acumen of passenger Indians quickly generated white hostility. Indian traders rapidly displaced small white shop owners in trade with other Indians and with black Africans. Their willingness to work long hours, accept lower profit margins, and serve customers regardless of race made them formidable competitors.

This economic success provoked intense jealousy. White colonists who had expected Indians to remain a subordinate labour force were alarmed to see them thriving as businessmen. By the 1890s, about 30,000 Indians-roughly 20% of the total Indian population-were of passenger origin. Though numerically small, their economic visibility made them targets for discriminatory legislation.

Targeted discrimination 🔗

The Boer states responded to Indian commercial success with particularly harsh measures. Both the Orange Free State and the Transvaal passed laws forbidding Indian settlement within their borders and movement across borders without passes. The Orange Free State’s 1890 law led to the forced closure of all Indian businesses and the deportation of owners without compensation by 1891.

In the Transvaal, the first discriminatory legislation of 1885 confined Indians to specific locations and banned them from owning property. Indians could not walk on sidewalks alongside white people. The rationale was explicit-Indians were to be classified alongside the indigenous African population, regardless of their economic status or education.

Interestingly, passenger Indians who moved to the Cape Colony experienced relatively better treatment-they could own property, vote, and trade freely. Many Muslim men in this group married Cape Malay women, and their descendants were often later classified as “Cape Malay” or “Coloured.”

Gandhi and the merchant class 🔗

When Gandhi began his political work in South Africa, he initially represented primarily the interests of this merchant elite. The Natal Indian Congress, which he helped establish in 1894, was modelled on the Indian National Congress and largely served the voice of the small Indian merchant class.

A telling anecdote reveals the different attitudes between classes: when Gandhi expressed outrage at racial discrimination, a Muslim merchant in Johannesburg told him that only Indians like themselves could survive in such a land-they were willing to pocket insults if they could pocket cash. Gandhi’s sensitivity to every slight, regardless of economic calculation, would eventually set him apart and lead him to broaden his advocacy to include all categories of Indians.

A community forged through struggle 🔗

Despite their different origins and circumstances, these three categories of Indians shared a common experience of racial discrimination that would eventually forge a unified political identity. The indentured labourer and the wealthy merchant, the South African-born child and the recent immigrant-all faced laws designed to limit their rights, restrict their movements, and ultimately pressure them to leave.

By the time Gandhi left South Africa in 1914, he had evolved from representing primarily the merchant elite to championing the cause of indentured labourers and their descendants. The 1913 strikes that brought thousands of coalminers into the struggle demonstrated that economic success and economic hardship were both subject to the same racist structures.

The legacy of these three categories persists in South African Indian communities today. The descendants of indentured labourers, concentrated primarily around Durban, form the majority of the community. Class distinctions between former indentured families and passenger families, though less visible, remain part of people’s historical memory. What binds them is a shared heritage of survival against systematic attempts to deny their place in South African society.

What do you think? How did the existence of these distinct categories among Indians shape both the challenges Gandhi faced and the strategies he developed in South Africa? In what ways do historical class divisions within immigrant communities continue to influence identity and politics today?

References

1. https://sahistory.org.za/article/indian-indentured-labour-natal-1860-1911
2. https://sahistory.org.za/article/indian-south-africans
3. https://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/brief-history-indian-indenture-south-africa
4. https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv03370/05lv03414.htm
5. https://www.iol.co.za/sunday-tribune/opinion/the-day-the-first-indian-indentured-labourers-landed-in-sa-592e1ec6-f6e3-4983-b564-1b65c51f5c96
6. https://www.gov.za/news/speeches/premier-sihle-zikalala-arrival-indian-indentured-workers-south-africa-16-nov-2020
7. https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/indentured-indian-labourers-and-their-struggle-citizenship-south-africa-dr-brij-maharaj
8. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19438192.2024.2388399
9. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/indians-south-africa-wage-satyagraha-their-rights-1906-1914
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_South_Africans
11. https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-1541
12. https://journals.openedition.org/samaj/3762
13. https://www.gandhiashramsevagram.org/gandhi-articles/mahatma-gandhi-south-africa-and-satyagraha.php
14. https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/cis/omalley/OMalleyWeb/03lv02424/04lv03370/05lv03414.htm