Indian influence in SA started in 17th century The way we were

INDIAN influence in South Africa didn’t start with the arrival of indentured labourers in Natal in 1860. Archival records reveal a variety of Indian toponyms (place names attached to the first names imposed on slaves), starting with Maria of Bengal, bought for Van Riebeeck at Batavia and sent here in 1653.

Most Indian slaves originated in Bengal and Malabar (which included Calicut, Cochin and Goa), but smaller numbers came from places on the Coromandel coast with interesting names such as Tranquebar, Tuticorin, Nagapatnam, Pulicat and Masulipatnam, and from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).

According to Professor Nigel Worden, Indian and Sri Lankan slaves were predominant in Cape Town during the first few decades of the 18th century, a fact that tends to be overlooked by modern slave descendants, many of whom believe that their migrant ancestors originated in South East Asia (the vast archipelago now known as Indonesia), and neglect their rich Indian, Malagasy and East African heritages.

In her 2015 UWC thesis on forced Indian migration to the Cape from 1658 to 1834, Parbavati Rama notes that Indian slaves became thoroughly absorbed into the local coloured population, assuming either a “Malay” or Christian coloured identity. Similar self-effacement occurred when freed Indian slaves married burghers and were absorbed into the settler community.

Nevertheless, some first-generation Indian ex-slaves appear to have taken the lead in granting small loans, freeing slaves and standing surety for others who’d applied for freedom. Such was the case with the subject of last week’s column, Pieter of Bengal, who was active between 1720 and 1770.

Starting in about 1730, he stood surety or co-surety for two slaves freed by the executors of the estate of a deceased former landdrost, for Clara of Bengal, freed by the free black Paul of Madagascar and for Abraham of Macassar, freed with seven other adult and child slaves by the executor of the estate of Nicolaas Gockelius.

According to the late Margaret Cairns, he also assumed responsibility for Sarah of Bengal, freed by her son-in-law, Cornelis de Cat, in 1739.

Cairns assumed that this implied a relationship between the two, but it appears to have been part of a culture of social responsibility in favour of other exiles, particularly Bengalis.

In the 1740s, Pieter and Arie of Ceylon did the same for for Rebecca of Bengal and her children, Jan and Apollonia of the Cape, freed in terms of the will of the free black Carel Jansz of Bengal.

In 1747 he manumitted his own slaves, Francina and Jannetje, together with the latter’s children, Anna, Lena and Isabella of the Cape, in accordance with the provisions of his mutual will with his deceased wife, Delphina of the Coast (of Coromandel), offering the names of five co-surities.