Recasting the Coolie: Racial Capitalism, Caste, and Indian Indentureship in the Caribbean

FAIN: FT-291570-23

Najnin Islam
Colorado College (Colorado Springs, CO 80903-3243)

Research and writing leading to a literary and historical account of Indian indentured laborers in the British Caribbean from the nineteenth century to today.  

My project offers a literary-historical account of the figure of the Indian indentured laborer or “coolie” in the British Caribbean. While contemporary scholarship reads the New World “coolie” as the product of a nineteenth-century racialized division of labor, I argue this figure is better understood through British imperial discourses on caste. Reading literary texts and colonial documents, I trace how this figure was discursively produced. Against narratives of the disappearance of caste in the Caribbean, I illuminate how Indian laborers negotiated their caste identities within the multiracial order of the plantation and examine new social formations that emerged through the interaction of race and caste. Restoring caste to the analysis of capitalism, my project demonstrates how social formations considered “unique” to India and incommensurable with colonial modernity were nonetheless harnessed to support racialized labor extraction in the transition from slavery to indentureship.