Paying tribute: Kolkata Port recalls indentured labourers’ journeys

Kolkata: Nearly two centuries ago, 36 “hill coolies” from the Chotanagpur region stepped aboard a vessel at the Port of Calcutta on September 15, 1834. Their departure marked the beginning of an epic movement of people — men and women who left their homeland in search of livelihoods across the seas.

On Monday, that first voyage was remembered as Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port, Kolkata, observed Indentured Memorial Day at Jetty No. 8, Kidderpore, where the Indenture Memorial stands along the banks of the Hooghly.

The daylong seminar brought together voices from India, Mauritius, Fiji, South Africa, the UK, and the USA to reflect on the resilience and spirit of those who sailed between 1834 and 1920. For thousands, Kolkata was the “Emigration Gateway” to unfamiliar lands such as Mauritius, Guyana, Trinidad and South Africa. For their descendants, the journeys remain a story of courage and survival.

Inaugurated in 2011, the Kolkata Indenture Memorial has become a symbolic bridge between past and present. It pays tribute to the endurance of those who worked the sugar plantations of the colonies while keeping alive language, food, festivals and traditions that would shape the modern Indian diaspora.

Panelists spoke of how migration was not just about labour but about lives transformed. They explored the social fabric of indentured communities — the struggles of women, the forging of new families, the pain of displacement, and the creation of hybrid cultural identities. They also reflected on how these communities contributed to the economic and cultural growth of their adopted countries. As the Hooghly flowed quietly beside the memorial, the commemoration sought to connect memory with continuity. It invited descendants of indentured labourers and others to remember not only the hardships endured but also the courage that carried generations across oceans — and kept their roots alive in faraway lands.