ANCESTRAL SEARCH
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IGNCA ANCESTRAL SEARCH PROGRAMME has been established to help Diaspora to search their cultural lineages, identities and ancestral roots.
We have developed a standard search form to trace the ancestral roots of those who migrated during colonial period. Under the colonial rule hundreds of thousands of Indians were migrated to various countries under indentured migration, Kangani migration and as labourers, traders etc. The colonial administration maintained proper records of these migrants both in India as well as in countries to where these Indians migrated.
IGNCA Ancestral Search program can be availed by anyone who has details of their ancestors such immigration forms, estate registers, birth or death registers. Please download Ancestral search form to see more details.
Search for Cultural lineages are applicable to those Diaspora members who are interested in finding out the similarities that exists in Indian as well as in their community in the form of rituals, language, festivals, caste system, food habits etc. During the recently concluded IGNCA Diaspora Cultural Events, we have assisted our Balkan Gypsy delegates to trace their cultural lineage back to Bikaner in Rajasthan.
Like lineages, identities that exist between various cultures in the world are another area IGNCA Search program would like to develop. Similarities in cultural expressions in music, art, archeology, institutional governance, language, literature and are some of the areas that IGNCA is looking forward to develop for the search.
CULTURAL SEARCH
Rooting the diasporic family tree...
The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts launched a Diaspora Cultural Search in January 2007 in an attempt to help members of the diaspora trace their roots in India and reconnect with the kin of their forbears.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries several million Indians were transported across the world as soldiers, tradesmen, slaves, convicts or contractual labourers to meet various demands of the colonial empires.
The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) launched a Diaspora Cultural Search programme in January 2007 as an attempt to record and understand the large-scale migration in many parts of India during colonial rule, by locating the original migrant families in India, and reconnecting them with their relatives abroad.
The present scope of the search programme is limited to those who went abroad under a contractual labour migration known as indentured system of labour migration, because of the easy availability of immigration records in the national archives of the respective countries.
Indentured migration
The indentured migration system was introduced to ship out Indians when the colonial empires found it hard to cope with the labour crisis of the plantation economies owing to the refusal of the subjugated native people or the captive slave labourers to work on terms dictated by plantation owners. For instance, in the Caribbean, the system was used to undercut the demands of the freed Africans in the wake of the abolition of slavery, formally in 1834, and finally in 1838.
Indentured migration, unlike its predecessor, slavery, was a wellorganised and systematic affair. It was for the first time that formal immigration forms were introduced to ship out people. Also this was the first time a body trade of human labourers was conducted and monitored directly by “colonial governments”, which led to the creation of elaborate bureaucratic networks and structures across the world. The British, French and Dutch colonial planters had their recruitment depots in Calcutta, Madras and Pondicherry, where it was manned by an Agent-General of Immigrants appointed directly by colonial administration. From the villages, the labourers were enlisted and recruited to the sub depots at the district headquarters by the recruiting agents. After signing the agreements, the migrants were transported to the main depots in Calcutta, Madras and Pondicherry to be shipped to colonial plantations. After months of travel through Kala Pani (Andaman and Nicobar Islands), the ships arrived at the ports where the details of the migrant labourers were handed over to the colonial office through the Agent-General of Migrants. The migrants were then allotted to respective plantations according to requests made by the planters.
This elaborate procedure of recruitment led to the generation of innumerable records, such as signed affidavits, records of the sub depots and main depots, ship registers, immigration records, reports of the colonial administration and many others. The records pertaining to those who migrated to British colonies are still available in the national archives and various other institutions in the UK. In the former Dutch colony of Guyana or Suriname, many records are intact and even available on the internet. Also many records are available at Central Library, Hague, and other institutions in the Netherlands. These records offer a fascinating picture of how these Indians were recruited, transported and how they struggled on the plantation to rebuild their culture from memory. Today, nearly 90 years after the last shipment of the indentured migrants from India, the descendants of these labourers have prospered well and are spread over several countries across the world.
Search enquiries
The enquirers for the Diaspora Cultural Search service are descendants of these indentured migrants, who want to link back with their ancestral motherland for various reasons. Their requests to locate their ancestral families are emotional and cultural but this programme has an expanded vision to survey not only the family history but also the history of village culture from ethnoanthropological and historical perspectives in order to build village/community level material archives and make available the search findings in the public domain for further enquires and studies.
The search programme proposes to give copies of the reports free of cost to the enquirers upon agreement that the findings would be published in the public domain in different formats. The onus of responsibility to accept or reject the search findings would be entirely upon the enquirer and the enquirers shall be requested to visit the village and family for personally verifying the search findings.
The process of search
The search programme has so far received 100 enquires from Canada, US, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Fiji, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In the process of collecting details about the ancestors, the enquirers were asked to furnish the maximum possible details of the ancestors in a prescribed format, which is available on the IGNCA website. The enquirers were asked to share the immigration forms, letters or any other oral or written documents pertaining to the ancestor. Ancestral enquiries so far have been received from villages of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
Based on the information such as name of the relatives, village, district and caste, most of which are available on immigration forms, the local researchers were sent out to locate the family and to prepare a search report which contain the following information:
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Changes in the name of migrant, village and tehsil mentioned in the immigration form supplied by the enquirer along with history of the village/tehsil/district at the time or period of departure of the migrant from the village.
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Data pertaining to agricultural, industrial and cultural activities at the time of the departure of the migrant and the reasons for the migration.
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A genealogical tree of the family which include the located relatives and the enquirer.
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Any available records or registers on land, marriage, birth or death or any other information on the village at the time of departure of the migrant as well as about the family and the migrant.
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The present living conditions of the family and the social, cultural and educational conditions of the village.
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A summary of suggestions on what Diaspora members can do for the family/village along with a detailed contact list.
So far 10 cases in the eastern districts of Uttar Pradesh have been successfully completed with the help of a local NGO. The search findings include a report prepared along the above mentioned lines supported with sets of 50 still images and three hours of video of each of the family and the village searched.
Story of Punnu Singh
The story of Punnu Singh who migrated from the district of Basti in Uttar Pradesh is one of the most fascinating cases so far compiled. The following is the basic information that was received from the descendent of Punnu Singh who is presently based in Canada.
Man’s Name: Punoosingh
Age: 18
Emigrated: 1913 to Suriname (Dutch
Guiana)
Ship: Sutlej
Father’s Name: Mahabir Singh
Caste: Thakur
District: Basti
Thana: Rudhouli
Village: Rudhouli
With the above information, researchers travelled to Basti district and located the surviving relatives of Punnu Singh after interviewing a number of elderly people, local historians, serving and retired government officials and surveying a number of official records, such as settlement records, land records, in the same and neighbouring villages.
According to the findings, Punnu Singh’s father Mahavir Singh was the brother of celebrated freedom fighter Shivgulam Singh of neighbouring Bansi district who led a revolt against the British rule and subsequently got killed in 1857. There are folk songs written after the martyrdom of Shivgulam Singh whose family at the time of revolt was Gujaaredar (representative for collecting tax) for the Bansi State. He had the rights to collect taxes from 156 villages in the area. His family built a teacher’s training school way back in 1857. After the revolt, the British confiscated the property of Shivgulam Singh and unleashed terror against the family members. The family members who were running a teacher’s training school and bestowed with considerable land and revenue soon disintegrated and dispersed. Many in the villages said that the British targeted Shivgulam Singh’s close associates and brothers.
Shivgulam Singh was one of the three sons of Daulat Singh. Shivbaksh Singh and Jeet Singh were the other two brothers. Researchers have been able to locate the family members of Shivgulam Singh and Shivbaksh Singh but not Jeet Singh whose existence has been recorded in many official records. However, history acknowledges that he had a son. Further enquiries revealed that Jeet Singh actually ran away from the village with his family to escape British revenge. In official records and in local oral history, Punnu Singh’s father’s name was mentioned as Jeet Singh. But in the immigration form as supplied by the enquirer it was mentioned as Mahavir Singh. When the family tree was reconstructed, but for the change in his father’s name everything else fell in place.
Future plans
In order to expand the scope and dimension of this search programme, as well as to engage the Diaspora members in these activities, regular meetings of the lost relatives have been planned at the village level. A village level networking will be built to train one member from each family to conduct further searches. Plans are being drawn to create a fund at the village level with the contributions from the Diaspora and other individuals and institutions to build local material archives on the indentured migration and its cultural history which could contribute to the educational and cultural development of the family/village. "
By Suresh Kumar Pillai
(The author is the head of Diaspora Cultural Programme, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi)
