This Article First Appeared In The Indian Express On Jan 15, 2021
In his autobiography, Munshi Rahman Khan wrote about the sudden meeting with two strangers on the platform of a railway station in Kanpur that would mark the beginning of the journey of a lifetime, taking him to the South American country of Suriname. “They asked me why sahib do you want to do a job. I asked, whose job? They said, a government job. Then enquire me whether I had schooling or not. I said yes I am middle school passed. Then they gladly responded that I would be made a sardar and I shall be paid twelve annas,” he writes as reproduced in historian Ashutosh Kumar’s book, ‘Coolies of the empire: Indentured labourers in the sugar colonies.’