Kala pani revisited: Indian labour migrants and the sea crossing

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/jofstudindentleg.1.1.0036
• Pages: 36-62
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• Author: Crispin Bates,Marina Carter
• Subject Matter: kala pani and migration,sepoys,transportees,labour migration India,caste and kala pani,nationalism and migration India,kala pani as metaphor

Journal of Indentureship 1.1 September 2021

Kala pani revisited

Indian labour migrants and

the sea crossing

Crispin Bates and Marina Carter

Crispin Bates is professor of South Asian history, University of

Edinburgh

Marina Carter is honourary fellow, School of History, Classics and

Archaeology, University of Edinburgh

ABSTRACT

This article examines the reconstruction and deconstruction of the

concept of काला पानी or kālā pānī, meaning the ‘black waters’, which

all Indians must cross when migrating overseas. From its origin as

a Brahmanic text warning about the dangers of oceanic voyages,

through its dissemination as a more generalised stricture against

emigration and its use and abuse as a British colonial construction,

to its recasting as a historical trope and a literary device, the ever-

changing inuence and meaning of kala pani is interrogated and

assessed. Contextualising the kala pani trope against the setting of

sepoy, convict and indentureship voyages, this study also evaluates

its historical validity and importance in colonial and nationalist re-

alities. Finally, the symbolic value of the kala pani and its reworking

as a literary device are explored.

KEYWORDS

kala pani and migration, sepoys, transportees, labour migration

India, caste and kala pani, nationalism and migration India, kala pani

as metaphor

KALA PANI REVISITED 37

Journal of Indentureship 1.1 September 2021

DEFINING KALA PANI:

HINDU TEXTS AND THEIR

INTERPRETATION

In Hindi or Bhojpuri (the language of the large number of Bihari

North Indian overseas migrants), kālā means black and pānī

means water. The term kala pani can be written either as two

separate words or as a single concept: kalapani. This ‘black

waters’ trope is said to derive from long-held notions that sea

crossings were antithetical to Hindu culture, entailing a separa-

tion of the traveller from the holy Ganges, thereby breaking the

reincarnation cycle and engendering a loss of caste (for a sum-

mary of this debate Mehta 2004a). Ancient Indian texts have

been studied to investigate the wording and applications of this

sanction. This research and the conclusions that can objectively

be drawn with regard to the importance and extent of the kala

pani stricture are briefly summarised below.

Scholars of ancient India have noted that a ban on sea travel

is mentioned in the fifth-century BC sutra of Baudhayana, while

the texts Manu (III. 158, 16–17) and Ausanasasmrti (V. 525–6)

record that a brahman who had undertaken a sea voyage was

considered a sinner, without, however, specifying that the indi-

vidual would lose caste and/or become socially unfit. Indologists

have speculated that lower castes may have considered that the

taboo applied to them merely as a way of emulating Brahminical

practices (Bindra 2002). It has further been contended that the

textual concerns with religious purity did not actually serve to

prevent sea travel. As Basham concludes, Indians of all castes,

including brahmans, frequently travelled by sea. Hence, ‘the

texts which forbade or discouraged ocean voyages cannot have

been followed by more than a small section of the population’

(Basham 1964: 162–3). Michael Pearson comments that the