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Kalathmika Natarajan, "Coolie Migrants, Indian Diplomacy: Caste, Class and Indenture Abroad, 1914-67" (Oxford UP, 2026)
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A
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B
Hello and welcome to the New Books Network podcast. My name is Stithia Roy and I will be your host for today. Joining us is Kalathmika Natarajan, author of Coolie Indian Diplomacy, published by Hearst Publishers in 2025 and OUP in North America in 2026. This book recovers the figure of the coolie migrant as central to the origins and practice of Indian diplomacy. Natarajan argues that histories of indenture and labor mig profoundly shaped the Indian state's conceptualization of the international realm as a space. And it's a space of grave anxiety, tainted by the quote, unquote undesirable mobility of the coolie. Through this focus, the book foregrounds caste as a foundational category that shaped diplomacy and notions of the international. Indeed, the term coolie, derived from the Tamil kuli, meaning wages, was interpreted through the anxieties of cast elites whose paranoia was not just about managing the supposed problem posed by these laborers, but also the fear of mutual recognition that they too might be deemed coolies abroad. The study employs a multidisciplinary framework, drawing from diplomatic history, post colonial studies, and migration scholarship to examine the interplay between caste hierarchies and labor migration and how it kind of worked towards the formation of Indian diplomatic networks across the world by Analyzing sites ranging from the Mandapam quarantine camp at the India Ceylon border to migrant houses in Birmingham, and issues such as Caribbean repatriation to the discretionary passport regime that lasted until 1967, the research illuminates how the post colonial Indian state sought to actively construct its dyad diaspora by preventing undesirable migrants from immigrating. The book pays particular attention to anti caste critiques that challenge the hypocrisy of Indian caste elites protesting racial discrimination abroad while perpetuating caste violence at home. Coolie Migrants Indian Diplomacy contributes to a broader scholarly discourse on international relations and South Asian studies by examining precisely these intersections and how they've come to define the international realm both for migrants and for diplomats. The research emphasizes how this legacy of indenture continues to influence contemporary debates from denial of visas to anti caste activists and their ongoing struggles over making caste discrimination visible internationally. Dr. Khalath Makhanatharajan is a Lecturer in Modern South Asian History at the Department of Archaeology and History and co director of the Exeter South Asia center at the University of Exeter. Her interdisciplinary research on South Asia brings together the fields of diplomatic history, migration studies and imperial and global history. She's interested in her own words in critical bottom up approaches to diplomacy, locating histories of labor migration across the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean as pivotal sites through which to recover the centrality of caste in making in the making of International Relations. Dr. Natarajan, thank you for joining us today.
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C
Thank you so much Stuti, for having me and I'm really, really glad to be part of this.
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B
Yeah, thank you. And before we get to talking about how the figure of the coolie haunts Indian diplomacy, could you tell the listeners about your journey as a scholar and how you decided to write this book or how it emerged?
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C
Thank you. Sri. So I actually started off with a Master's degree in international relations, which in some ways has continued to shape my my interests. But I was always in a sort of historical approach to IR. So my PhD in Copenhagen was in history and it was an attempt to kind of link historical methods with the IR scholarship that I had gotten used to looking at. In some ways also my interests are shaped by growing up in Chennai. And I think you'll see once you read the book, you know there's an influence there in terms of trying to understand the so called unlikely sites of Indian diplomacy. And I use archives from, from Chennai as a way of understanding how caste migration and diplomacy were actually really closely intertwined. And I've had stints at some think tanks in Delhi, which were often very hierarchical, very top down. And in many ways they also spurred an interest in me to kind of look at diplomacy would be if we loaded from more bottom up, quick lens.
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B
And did you feel like when you were going through these archives or discovering them that caste was very much present but ignored or was it something you had to dig for?
- [06:11]
C
I mean, that's an interesting question. I think in some of the non metropole archives they're a lot more obvious. So for instance, the Madras archive on Indian diplomacy, as unlikely as that may seem, was actually far more explicit about how caste functions and how caste is elite onto the emergence of an Indian diplomatic apparatus that their mobility protect that status. But in the Delhi archives, again, you sort of have to do a little bit more digging, I imagine. But I think there's increasingly a lot of work that asks us to be attentive to recovering caste as part of the international realm rather than a domestic sphere. And I'm not the only one, you know, doing that. I mean there have been, there have been lots of really interesting work, you know, by Vinitage and a new special issue actually on caste and diplomacy which also speaks to the question of, you know, is it absent in the archive or have we been oriented to look away from it to some degree, especially as scholars doing diplomacy and ir?
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B
That's really interesting. And for the listeners who maybe don't have the context, could you maybe introduce the term coolie or the figure coolie and what it means historically Way.
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C
Yeah, so there are lots of genealogies to the word coolie actually. I mean the Tamil one is one is one version and in the Tamil version it basically means labor or wages. And I mean E. Valentine Daniel, for instance, has written beautifully about how that term collapses the human into the payment to the extent that their humanity is not really present. So the term emerges as a racialized term that is implicated in these histories of labor migration, whether it is the indentured labor migration to the Caribbean or the Indian Ocean colonies, or the so called kangani assisted or the overseer assisted migration to parts of say Ceylon, Malaya, Burma, et cetera. So it emerges as a racialized term. But it's, you know, a lot of wonderful work has been done to show that this is also very much a gender term. Because the first thing that comes to mind visually when you think about a coolie is probably a male plantation laborer, despite the fact that women have played incredibly important roles as laborers themselves. I thought twice about using this term because this is often a very painful term as well for a lot of descendants of these laborers. And there have been many conversations both about reclamation. So there's a lot of interesting work about, say, coolitude or Rajkumari Singh's work, I am a coolie. But there's also been critiques of uncritical usage of the term. So I thought a lot about do I want to use this term? And I do end up using it primarily because my argument is that this is not just a racialized and gendered term, but it is a term that is read very much through narratives and anxieties of past. Because as you mentioned in your wonderful and very eloquent introduction. I mean, the word coolie is read as a caste based slur. At one point, Gandhi even translates the word coolie as meaning what an untouchable means to us. So that kind of transliteration that's happening, this sort of transcoding to use, you know, a phrase that Shankaran Krishna uses in his work. It also points. Points us to the links between race and caste, right. That you can't think of the coolie as a racialized or gendered category, which clearly it is without also thinking about how caste intervenes in this discourse. So a lot of anxieties that caste elites have about the word coolie is, as you mentioned, the fact that it's being used to describe them. I mean, Gandhi is sort of famously angry about being called a coolie lawyer, for instance. And well into the 1950s, there are quotes that you'll hear from South African politicians who at one point, I think called Nehru as just another coolie. So this is a term that is a painful one for descendants of laborers, but is also a painful one for caste elites because of their anxiety of being enveloped in this broad categorization alongside those that they deemed unworthy of going abroad.
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B
And that's really interesting because it does have that duality and a very dual kind of recognition element to it. I was going to ask you, but I think you've already answered it, whether it's derogatory.
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C
As a touch. Yeah, I think it is, especially in sort of diasporic regions. But you might also know that within India itself, the term doesn't quite carry the same amount of. It doesn't necessarily have that same sort of reputation. Right. Like, I mean, in the sense within India, the word coolie is used quite a lot. There are films made with the word, you know, with the word coolie in it even now. So it doesn't quite carry the same amount of. Of Disdain or gerontic connotations associated with word. So it goes for context, also the subject of. But it is without a doubtfully visualized and practice term use. Overall, I would say.
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B
Yeah, I. And that's interesting that you mention that it travels differently around the world. And that's one of the things that kind of recurs throughout the book, which is how caste travels, travels around the world, and how Indians themselves travel around the world. So a lot of the efforts to curtail mobility kind of reflect the inconsistency in how certain identity categories are traveling in the way that's not necessarily maintaining the hierarchy. And you write that it's a source of anxiety that kind of shapes the diplomacy. And in this book you identify anxiety as a very central political emotion and that India's relationship to migration and the history of the coolie is kind of shaped by it. What made it clear to you that it was a politics of anxiety you were dealing with?
- [12:16]
C
Thank you. That's a great. That's a great question. I think it was the. I mean, the first quote that I read that made me think about it is the quote that in many ways I begin the book with, which is this anxiety that Nehru has that India has sunk to the coolie ranks among nations, which is an explicit sort of idea identification of India's subjugated, colonized, and in many ways emasculated status with the figure of the coolie migrant. And in many ways that started alerting me to the fact that this is not the only usage of that term with that anxiety attached to it. So, I mean, even as late as 2001, you know, the Indian High Level Committee report on the Indian Diaspora basically talks about how of late the Indian diaspora has become far more prosperous. And they use the term that they're a new bunch of what they called coolie millionaires. And this was seen as a matter of pride. Like this twinning of two very paradoxical sort of terms was apparently very important for the Indian state because one word, the coolie word, had to be forgotten. And the millionaire word was apparently one way of doing that. So it is a staple of anxiety also because of the ways in which I think Indian diplomacy itself is framed as a space and an institution manned largely by caste elites, as a lot of scholars have pointed out recently, when Kirahuyu's book sort of establishes that. So for all of these caste elites who were sort of the origins of Indian diplomacy are kind of anchored within this anxiety about creating a new diplomatic apparatus, but also dealing with the fact that the international realm is a space that has been apparently tarnished by the so called coolie stain on India's reputation because these laborers were prolific migrants. I mean, they were some of the, you know, the most significant numbers of Indians traveling to different parts of the world at the time. And they seemed to have a sort of mobility that both led to the sort of popularization of this derogatory term, coolie, but also apparently leads to a certain kind of envy. So I know I talk a lot about anxiety, but I think there's some portions where I also talk about the fact that there's a kind of ennui that this seemingly undesirable coolie has more mobility than non laboring, non coolie, so called passenger Indians. And I mean, I'll just, I can explain that term a little bit if you want. So the term passenger Indians was sort of used to refer to those who were traveling abroad, but on their own without contracts of indenture or some sort of state regulated mobility. I mean, state regulated labor mobility attached to it. So those were the people who were often subjected to immigration restrictions by settler colonies, for instance. So, you know, the Komagata Maru incident is seen as this pivotal moment where, you know, racialized migration laws come to the fore. But even, you know, even prior to the Komagata Maru, or even sort of coterminous with that, anti caste activists and migrants from caste oppressed communities were calling for free mobility at the same time. So in a sense there is a kind of envy about the fact that these Kuli migrants are so prolific in terms of their mobility, but also a deep rooted anxiety about the fact that India is being represented by them in the international realm. So there is this effort to say, sanitize the international realm by curtailing the mobility of the coolie migrant and ensuring that the right kind of migration immigrants go and the right kind of diplomats represent India in this, in this space.
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B
That's very interesting and you just mentioned this, but could I ask you to elaborate on exactly what the Kumagata Maru incident was and if you could slightly interrelate it, but if you could pinpoint like historically when the Indian elite or the Indian nationalist movement, which sometimes merge, awoke to wanting to regulate indenture.
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C
Oh, those are really interesting questions. I mean, the Komagata Maru is basically the name of a ship, right, which was chartered by Indian migrants to travel to Canada. And this was one way, and I think they set off from Shanghai, if I remember right. But it was one way to challenge the so called continuous journey clause that Canada had imposed to prevent the mobility of so called colored migrants. This was an effort to enact racialized immigration laws without explicitly using the word race, if that makes sense. And obviously that's something that most countries do to some degree or the other, even now, unfortunately. So the voyage of the Komagata Maru, because the ship reaches Canada, but they are not allowed to get on board, for the most part, they're shot at. The ship sails back to India and once they land in Calcutta and Bajpaj, I think they end up being fired at out of suspicion apparently that these were subversive Gadarites on the the ship. So the Komagata Maru is in many ways seen as this pivotal moment where this sort of anxiety over Indian immigration and also attempts to challenge the sort of regulation or curtailment of mobility comes to the fore. But I mean, I kind of point to this in the book that, you know, even before the Komagata Maru and after the Komagata Maru, caste oppressed communities in various parts of the country had long been petitioning for much the same right of free mobility that those on the Kumagata Maru were. So it's interesting that one incident is seen as sort of the paradigmatic example, whereas others have been forgotten. The second question that you asked me, I think. Sorry, could you just repeat that? I forgot.
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B
Yeah, sorry. It was that at what point in history did the castellates kind of pinpoint, Right?
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C
So the anti indenture movement really gains strength in the early 1900s, especially close to say the First World War, which is the case study that I kind of, I kind of look at. And when indenture is sort of abolished between 1917-1920, I.e. the time period where Indian diplomacy also emerges. And you know, I've argued, and lots of scholars are increasingly arguing that this is not a coincidence, right? That the development of Indian diplomacy goes hand in hand with the anti indenture movement, which was basically an effort to end indenture, but also in so doing curtail the undesirable mobility of Kuli migrants. Now it didn't always have to be those two things because I've looked at lots of anti caste groups who say, yes, ban indenture, but ensure that there is free mobility for caste oppressed communities or laborers. But that is not what caste elites are asking for. A lot of caste elites explicitly say we want not just an end to indenture, but also in so doing, an end or curtailment of the mobility of Kohli migrants and we want to replace it. With what one journal published in Madras calls the intelligent emigration of skilled Indians. Now it was very, very clearly an attempt to say that we are more worthy of mobility in contrast to the coolie other, which in some ways is the sort of figure against which the anti indenture movement is also. So even though it's meant as a critique of a very coercive labor system, which it is. Right. It really is. It also seems to have that dual function of ensuring that laborers don't, or coolie migrants don't get out of the country. And there's a term that they keep, you know, these migrants are. These people should not be going out because they have a function within an emerging Indian nation state which is to be, and I'm quoting them here, raw labor. And it's such an interesting phrase. It's a very dehumanizing phrase as well. But it kind of makes its way throughout such such journals.
- [20:03]
B
There's also like you're saying there's like the dual reasons for why they oppose indenture. But I got the sense when I was reading it that it feels like the wrong reasons for opposite opposing. It feels like they were more concerned about reputation or a sense of what an emerging Indian nation should represent globally as like, as like a brand or an idea as like. There's also the bit about Sarojini Naidu. I think she says something really wild about reputation and the term blot stain. These are all terms that are being used and they don't have much to do with opposing the fact that indenture is exploitative. So how would you say the balance tips in terms of whether the intention was this reputation management or whether there was actually true concern for.
- [21:01]
C
I mean, I think there are elements of concern, but they are overridden entirely by the fact that there is a reputational impact that the coolies mobility is sort of having. And I mean it's also worth noting that this sort of disdain over the figure of the coolie migrant is entirely also motivated by moral anxieties. Right. The idea that indentured women and you know, I mean lots of scholars have written about it, Gayatro Badr's book Coolie Woman sort of explores that. But there is a certain moral anxiety about, you know, the women who migrate as laborers and the idea that these are promiscuous women, they are wayward and deviant in some shape or form actually motivates the emerging women's movement in India. I mean, Sarojini, I do, Vijay Lakshmi Pandit, all of them talk about how Some of the first. I mean, at least Vijay Lakshmi Pandit talks about the fact that some of the first movements or meetings that she attended of these feminist movements or women's movements was basically to protest indenture. So she kind of. It's sort of, you know, it's there in her. In her sort of memoir. So it becomes this moment where nationalist elites unite in sort of, for the most part, in being worried about the mobility of the coolie and the reputational damage that it causes. So while there may be concerns about the system, the fact that they want an end to the mobility of these laborers alongside an end to indenture, I think is the smoking gun. Right. As to. As to what exactly is the purpose of these movements.
- [22:30]
B
That makes perfect sense. And it's a little depressing, but it's also really unexpected. I wouldn't think that these kinds of very obvious hypocrisies shaped decisions to oppose indenture. And I want to start talking about your chapters. In the first chapter, you talk about this viaduct that was being built from India to Ceylon. And the whole story is fascinating because it was there to manage coolie mobility, but it ended up being a site of quarantine during the outbreak of a plague. What were the dynamics on this train, essentially? And there were so many. What were the dynamics there that really revealed the specific hypocrisy of both the British and the colonial elite? And what does it tell us about the relationship between the British and the colonial elite and the coolie migrants?
- [23:35]
C
Yeah, so, I mean, Mandapam is the sort of the site of the quarantine camp that you're referring to. And I sort of begin the chapter with this. Look at this viaduct, which is built to bridge and directly link India and Ceylon. So this viaduct basically comprises. Comprised really, a railway and a ferry service that would link Dhanushkodi in what was then Madras Presidency, to Taliban or in Ceylon. And the reason it was built to a large degree was also because they wanted a way to ensure. And by the. I mean, the colonial state wanted a way to ensure the steady mobility of coolie migrants to Ceylon, of these laborers to Ceylon. But because of the fact that it was a much direct route, much more direct route than the other routes that were being used, it actually becomes a space where all kinds of travelers start to use this. Right. So it's not just being used to transport these laborers. It's also being used by far more wealth. Do people, including, say, European passengers who were traveling through Mandapam to reach Ceylon or Merchants and caste elites from Madras who were also using it to travel and reach Ceylon. The fact that this becomes a space where all three different kinds of travelers are accessing the same space becomes the big source of a problem. And also, of course, the fact that they now have to be quarantined after the outbreak of plague and Ceylon in 1914. So what was built is this sort of magnificent tribute to the colonial state, state's apparent sort of engineering prowess, or that at least how they advertise it, ends up being very much shrouded in controversy over the quarantine camps. And the fact that caste elites are appalled by the fact that they were being treated as though they were coolies by being forced into these quarantine camps, by being asked to eat food that was being cooked by people who they weren't sure who they were. So there is this constant. And that word comes up again very explicitly this time in the archive, because they literally say that we are appalled by the fact that a foreign power, Ceylon, has built a quarantine camp in India and is imposing its control over us and is apparently leading to the breakdown of social order and caste hierarchy by subjecting caste elites to the same kind of treatment that coolie migrants were apparently being put. Put through.
- [25:58]
B
Yeah. And you talk about how it becomes incredibly layered in terms of, like, discourses around cleanliness, discipline. Like there's a hierarchy of who is more likely or less likely to be affected by the plague. And it's totally a scientific. Like, it makes no sense, and yet it feels so deeply held. Is that something that is the notion of cleanliness, which is obviously central to caste, something that carries through with the diplomacy part of this?
- [26:38]
C
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so it emerges as a way of sort of. I mean, there is this assumption that Ceylon's quarantine policy has, that apparently European travelers are far more clean and less likely to be passing disease germs, which, you know, is clearly racist and clearly caught up in a very sort of Orientalist imagination of. Of contagious brown bodies. Right. So the caste elites rightly call that out, but what they do when they call that out is also to say that but we are better than other Indians. So we understand if, you know, coolie migrants are put through these processes. But why should we, as castehouse, as Chettyars, as Brahmins, be put through something similar? So even as they are? And the reason this becomes a diplomatic scandal is because, you know, there is such an outcry among caste elites who are traveling from Madras to Ceylon that they forced the government of Madras to have a bilateral conference with Ceylon in 1914, or maybe 1915, I think early 1915, sorry, where they basically put forward the concerns. They start addressing the government of Ceylon formally by saying that people in Madras are very worried about the imposition of brutal quarantine rules on them and the fact that their caste boundaries are being tarnished. And here to answer one of the questions you began this interview with, caste is explicit in the archive. They literally, literally say it. I'm not even sort of inferring anything from it. So yes, there is this sort of duality. On the one hand, you're using narratives of anti colonial sentiment to say that why should we, who are contributing to the war effort and this is happening at the same time as the First World War. Why should we be subjected through such racialized regimes? But at the same time you're also saying, but we are better than other lower caste coolie migrants who are sort of being, you know, who we are being treated on par with. So I think there's that kind of conversation that is happening. I also wanted to add one thing, sorry, if I may, about the term coolie and how I understand it in the book, which maybe I should have mentioned earlier on, but when I talk about the word coolie as something that's being understood through narratives of caste, I mean precisely that. This is not to say that all those categorized as coolie were necessarily lower caste or caste oppressed migrants. In fact, a lot of, I mean, to be clear, a lot of migrants from caste oppressed communities did emigrate and there were prolific numbers of migrants from these communities to go to places like Singapore or Ceylon. But what's most interesting for me is the fact that it's not necessarily about all coolie migrants being lower caste. It's the fact that they are being read as lower caste. Right? They're seen as. So there may be upper caste coolies present, but that itself is seen as an oxymoron. And I think that's what comes to the fore even within Mandapam where, you know, there are two camps that are set up in Mandapam. One is a sort of coolie quarantine camp and one is for, you know, the so called passengers or Indian passengers who are traveling through Mandapam. And caste elites are just basically appalled at the fact that even though there are caste based segregation to some degree in their camps, the Kuli camp has no caste based segregation. And they are appalled by it precisely because they say, well, there are some sort of upper caste coolies. So perhaps you should try to understand that and make space for those caste based rules within the coolie quarantine camp as well.
- [30:07]
B
That's fascinating and disturbing. Also, I wonder if that's. Are you saying that it's like at some point it becomes a conflation between socioeconomic class and unclass at the same time in how they're treated? Because I mean, assuming people who do sign up for the kinds of coolie contracts, even if they aren't necessarily lower caste, are probably don't have money.
- [30:34]
C
Yep, exactly, exactly. That's precisely what's happening. But also, you know, there is this caste sort of dogma against crossing the seas. Now that is also another reason why there's not just anxiety about the coolie migrant, but also actively envy. Because actually a lot of organizations increasingly, and these are sort of reformist organizations within Hinduism which increasingly start to campaign for the mobility of caste elites and start to ask the allowance be made for them to be readmitted back into their castes once they come back and they do this. So there is a recognition that obviously caste is causing a problem and caste is a hindrance to mobility. But of course that doesn't entail a call for the annihilation of caste. Right. So what they want is basically a version of mobility that can be enabled for caste elites while they can still hold on to caste when they come back home.
- [31:24]
B
I learned about the sea thing really recently and it's, and it's so, it's just one of those things. It's so strange. And the more you, the more you learn about it, the more you're confused by it. And yet it's like such a rigid way of like stratifying and like actually creating inequalities in the world. I wanted to ask you something, but it's, it's like it's slipped by me, but when it comes back, I'll mention it. But in the meantime we'll talk about a little bit about chapter two. And here let's talk about South Africa and the Indian elites in South Africa, especially Gandhi obviously famously. Right, so what was, who is MC Raja and what was his critique of Indian elites in South Africa opposing racism but ignoring caste oppression?
- [32:19]
C
Yeah. So I mean, South Africa obviously plays a really, really important role not just in, you know, in the making of Gandhi's political career, which it. But also in the making of Indian diplomacy. The first issue that India takes to the UN is the position of Indians in South Africa. It's the earliest thing that Indian diplomats do. So South Africa occupies that kind of pivotal place within the diplomatic register because it's seen as representing the stakes of Indian diplomacy. Why is Indian diplomacy needed and what should Indian diplomacy do? So there is that kind of constant conversation really about what's happening in South Africa and Gandhi's own role as in many, in many ways the sort of the victor against Jan Smuts to some degree is very much important to that. So I look at some. I mean, the second chapter is not about South Africa, but South Africa has a long shadow on many of the chapters, including this one, which is actually set in colonial Madras where again there are these anxieties about who gets to migrate, who shouldn't be migrating. But there's also a very strong anti caste resistance to the fact that the mobility of caste oppressed communities who are traveling as these so called coolie laborers is being curtailed. So there is this conversation that's happening among many Aditraveda or Dalit leaders as we might call them today, about the fact that there's so much international attention or so much attention among Indian elites about the status of Indians in South Africa when there is absolutely no attention to the fact that caste oppressed communities in India are faring far worse and are in conditions of caste based servitude. So I think that is that conversation which comes about. It's also linked to, and I know you asked about sort of MC Raja, who's again a very prominent Tamil Adid Ravida politician who sort of basically goes on to this legislative council in Madras in 1937 and basically says, I just, I don't, I find it very strange that caste elites are going on and on about oppression of Indians in South Africa when they haven't lifted a finger to help those of us who are facing conditions of servitude in India. And he's doing this because he wants to also critique the emergence of an Indian diplomacy that is constantly talking about race while pretending caste doesn't exist. And this is a critique that has a lot of resonance even later on where there's a tendency to pretend that caste is an internal domestic political issue and doesn't intervene anywhere else. Whereas obviously we know that caste is central to immigration and mobility. So Raja's critique kind of stems from that, but it also stems from the fact that he's very closely aware of the origins of Indian diplomacy as one that is closely linked to caste and labor migration. So in fact it's surprising that the caste bit gets left out. And I can explain that in a little bit More detail if I May. So the 1922 Indian Immigration act is, is in many ways the first significant proto diplomatic legislature because it basically provides for the appointment of Indian agents in places that have been shaped by labor migration. Vineet Thakur's wonderful work looks at India's first diplomat who was Srinivasa Shastri. And he was India's first agent to South Africa in 1927, but four years before that, actually the first Indian agents appointed were to Ceylon and Malaya. And these were regions that were entirely shaped by the labor migration, largely of caste oppressed communities. So the first agents were actually explicitly appointed from the Madras Labor Department, which was actually a labor department that was explicitly meant to help with the conditions of the so called depressed classes, which again is a term that was used to refer to caste abras communities in Madras. So it's basically the same people who are looking after questions of labor and caste in Madras who are appointed to become the first agents in Malaya. You know, I look at Harulananda Pillai who kind of does that. But in contrast to that, of course there's increasing critique among other classes and castes of migrants in Malaya that we want someone who's not going to be focusing only on the so called coolie, but someone who will focus on us as well. And they start increasingly petitioning against the selection of someone from the provincial Madras cadre of the civil service and instead start asking for someone from the more prestigious, more national Indian civil service. So there is this. So Raj's critique is kind of based on the fact that despite the origins of Indian diplomacy being so closely intertwined with caste and labor migration, it is increasingly pretending as the caste doesn't exist. So I think that's where that kind of anger comes from.
- [37:27]
B
That's very interesting and paradoxical. And I want to ask you, when you say agents, are these kind of like embassies or are they like you mentioned, like proto diplomatic institutions?
- [37:44]
C
Yeah, they are proto diplomatic. I mean they didn't really necessarily have the kind of infrastructure, at least at the beginning. They didn't have the infrastructure that you would, that you would imagine, you know, an embassy would. But they do increasingly become more infrastructurally sort of set up. And then of course they become quite prominent like Shastri does right in sort 1927. But the first two that we're talking about in the chapter, they are basically functioning out of fairly rudimentary proto diplomatic structures.
- [38:14]
B
And you write, when you're talking about Madras as a city, and you write about plagues and how Madras is considered plague free because of how deep caste society there is as opposed to Bombay or Calcutta. What about Madras is it that makes it so central to your research in this case?
- [38:38]
C
Yeah, I mean the personal reason is pretty much that I've always been interested in the history of colonial Madras. I mean, having grown up in Chennai. And I just wanted to see what Indian diplomacy would look like from such an unlikely archive. Right. Because not many diplomatic historians would think of Madras as an important archive. But the more serious answer is obviously the fact that it was, it was obviously a seat of colonial power for a really considerable point of time, but it's also imbricated in a larger coastal network of migration, of mobility and of anti caste resistance. Right. Some of the journals that I use in chapter two are actually published in Ceylon by Tamil migrants who sort of from caste oppressed communities who've traveled. And there's this kind of Madras is at the core of this Bay of Bengal migration to a considerable degree. It's also one of the important sites from where indentured labour were also recruited. So it's central to two different kinds of labor migration. And if you grew up in Madras, you've definitely heard of places like Burma Bazaar and you always wondered why does Madras have a. Or Chennai right now still have a place that's called Burma Bazaar? And obviously that history is linked to these Bay of Bengal transnational mobilities that very much predates the modern, sorry, the post colonial Indian states. So Madras becomes, I think, and I found it a very freeing archive to work from because it allowed me to completely rethink what I thought I knew about, about Indian diplomacy. And it's also an archive where, because of the strong anti caste movement that was, that was happening there, the archive contained a lot of these material, although I must say that a lot of these material is also in London. But that's just how the Crown archive works, I guess.
- [40:26]
B
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. That's really, that's really enlightening. And I wanted to ask you as well, well, slightly tangentially that when Nehru gets asked about how about how people from lower castes or at least coolie migrant laborers are getting treated potentially better abroad, he, in his like anti indenture, I suppose, moment says we prefer to see them starve at home. And that I feel like maybe could be taken out of context, but it still means he still said that. So as a reader that's very shocking and disturbing. And what does it tell us about the kind of tension of postcolonial diplomacy. I know it's in a specific context.
- [41:23]
C
Yes, yeah. I mean, to be honest, I was just startled to read it because he sort of explicitly says it. But the context. Yeah, yeah, but the context is kind of, I think quite useful because you know, he's saying this to Justin Kotilavala who I think was the brother of, you know, the, the man who would go on to become Sri Lanka's president. I think so. So Kotilavala is a planter and he's having a conversation with, with Nehru about basically critiquing Nehru and critiquing the Indian state, critiquing Indian migrants and actually repeating a lot of anti Indian rhetoric, which is why Nehru to some degree as viscerally as he does, and the material that we're looking at are actually basically to some degree unfiltered notes taken by Av Pai, who was the Indian agent or Indian Commissioner at that point, I think to no Indian agent actually to Ceylon. So he's taking these notes and that's why we have them as starkly as they are. And once Kotlawala starts basically using caste as a way to censure Nehru and censure Indian migrants at large, Nehru basically says that, well, we don't even want these people to go out in the first place. And as we know, this is just something that he's. This is nothing new that he's been saying. This has for the longest time been something that caste elites have wanted. But I think the most interesting thing for me here was the ways in which there's a kind of pitting of race against caste that happens quite a lot. It happens with the Mandabam thing where there's this kind of anxiety that there's, you know, Europeans are being treated better than Indians while calling for preferential treatment of caste elites in comparison to the so called lowly Kuli migrant. And even their colonial officials are also actually quite openly using race against caste. So they start saying things like, well, you know, we are treating these laborers much better in these plantations than they were being treated at home. So you know, why are you protesting? And Justin Kodlavala does pretty much the same thing. He says exactly that, that you, I think they're better off in Ceylon than they are in India. Which of course is a very sort of piercing critique for Nehru to take. And I think he responds the way he does precisely because of the fact that it touches a nerve to some degree. But also there has been that long standing narrative that this mobility is wrong for Many reasons.
- [43:54]
B
It also really unearths. We've been talking a lot about anxiety, but how prevalent disdain is it in this entire sort of history? Like is so much is motivated by a disdain towards the coolie, a kind of very upper caste disdain towards potentially having to. Because it's so based on difference. It's so surprising to look at how that disdain, that anxiety is coming from a recognition of similarity. It's recognition of like proximity. It's like, I'm not that. I'm not that different from you when I go abroad. So I'm worried that that's gonna come to the fore. So you better stay away so I can.
- [44:32]
C
Oh, that's very. Right, yes. Yeah. I mean there is a kind of intimacy as well as a disdainful.
- [44:38]
B
Like there's a closeness or a recognition of. Of like that we are one at the same time as trying to enforce this strong difference. Like how did you like deal with that when you're. When you're looking at it?
- [44:53]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, there is this sort of. It comes to the fore with. With a. Of kind. Couple of different things. I think the envy argument is very close to that. But also I think the fact that when Castiletes are abroad to a racist colonial system, there was very little to apparently differentiate them from the coolie others. So that's exactly it. Right. So that you could be tarred with a brush that's being used to describe the other who you thought a different.
- [45:25]
B
Yeah, exactly. That's like. That's such a charged thing to deal with and it's also such a. It's such a messy way to then conduct international. Your own international posturing. I now want to ask you about the notion of the dark diaspora and to what extent postcolonial and pre colonial Indian diplomacy worked towards constructing the diaspora as we understand it today. Like who gets included in the diaspora? Who gets excluded from the diaspora? And you. You challenge the conventional idea that India abandoned its more coolie diaspora in 1947. Instead, you argue that India went to incredible lengths to establish diplomatic representation in places like the Caribbean precisely because of the cool legacy. Can you explain this tension between one trying to gain control over designing the diaspora versus this kind of pedagogic diplomacy and trying to distance yourself from it at the same time.
- [46:36]
C
Yes. Yeah, that's a great question. So I mean, to some degree there's always been the tension between. I think at one point, I think the scholar Vijay Mishra talks about this distinction between the old diaspora and the new diaspora. Right. And the Old diaspora, of course, is the indented labor diaspora. The newer one is the one that the Indian state for the longest time liked, which was the so called skilled elite diaspora, which they thought should be the ambassadors of India representing India abroad basically as migrants. So there's always been this tension between these two diasporas. And while there is a lot of shame attached to this history of the coolie migrant, or what was referred to at one point as the coolie stained on India's identity, there is also this idea, idea that if India became a post colonial state, dealing with this ignominy of the coolie was actually really, really important for Indian diplomacy. So they basically, I mean, there's a lot of literature on how India does this with regard to postcolonial Afro Asian nations that it deems as being civilizationally more backwards in the hierarchy. So this idea that the Indian state would have to teach them how to be postcolonial, right, like there's this kind of self appointed guru status which itself is implicated in ideas of caste, I'm sure. So that exists. But what I'm trying to say is that they try to do something similar with the post indenture communities in the Caribbean as well through this form of pedagogic diplomacy. So they start using the profile of the coolie migrant and the fact that there are lots of millions of laborers who traveled to different parts to do two things. One, they start using that as a way of building their diplomatic apparatus. And it has to be said that they go through about 12 years of negotiation to get diplomatic representation in areas like the British West Indies, precisely because it was a colonial territory. So they go through all of that and they appoint these commissioners at the time so that it had moved from agents to commissioners, and they appoint them in all of these places. And India was the only country to have such an extensive diplomatic representation in British colonial territories, which was of course something that made the colonial state panic so much because they thought Indian diplomats are going to be subversive, they're going to provoke rebellion, they're going to basically try and take. So on the one hand there is that sort of geopolitical motive, but there's also a kind of pedagogic imperative to this. Right. And this pedagogic imperative is that as a post colonial nation state, we will teach you how to be post colonial. We will teach you how to reconnect to your lost Indian culture, which we argue, and here I'm just mirroring the Indian state, which we argue is the reason that you have Become so backward. And this is a term they use quite a bit to refer to post indentured communities. And they use it not just to describe the fact that a lot of these communities were in fact dealing with rampant illiteracy, but they also use it in a far more cultural sense as people who have intermarried, people who have, you know, who have not anymore sort of maintained the boundaries of caste and intimacy that they should have. Right. So there is that kind of judgment that comes with this sort of pedagogic mode of Indian diplomacy. And I use that term precisely because it's entirely meant to teach them how to. How to be, to some degree.
- [49:56]
B
Do you know how they wanted the diaspora to view India?
- [50:03]
C
Yes, of course, as the sort of a. The fountain of all culture and tradition, but also as a leader of Afro Asian solidarities, as a leader of the third world, as also of course, as the beacon of post colonial expertise. Right. So a lot of the things that they did as part of this post colonial pedagogic diplomacy was to give scholarships, and these include a lot of technical scholarships to both Afro Caribbean as well as Indian origin students in the region, but also in other parts of the world. So there was this idea that we have to impart, and the Indian state wants to impart this sort of knowledge to societies and people who are more backward in some sort of hierarchy that they've created for themselves.
- [50:53]
B
Yeah, and this is linking in really nicely with your fourth chapter, which is one which is a really interesting chapter. And right at the beginning you write about how the 1967 Supreme Court ruling found the discretionary granting of passports violated equality or violated the constitution. The fact that that was even happening is really surprising. Yet for 20 years after independence, the Indian government treat passports as a document of privilege and only the worthy and respectable would have access to it. How did this come about? Was it, was it common knowledge back then? Like it seems surprising now, but did people know that people were being denied passports based on their status, caste status? Yeah, yeah.
- [51:46]
C
I mean, in many ways it is startling. Right. And before I kind of research this, I had no idea. And I was just as stunned when I first found out that this was even happening because I just kind of assumed it wouldn't. But I mean, it follows on from how the colonial state did things. Right. So the colonial state also treated passports as a document of privilege to be given to only loyal colonial Indians. So it's worth noting that all of these indentured laborers who traveled did not have passports. They were not given Passports, they would have other kinds of ID documents that would enable their mobility. But the colonial state gave passports again very much as a document of colonial privilege to sort of. This is why if you Google Indian colonial colonial passports, the only things that will come up are maybe a photo of Jinnah's passport, of Gandhi's passport, or really well to do elite individuals and their passport for the most part. So in many ways the Indian state uses this, the post colonial Indian state uses this as the same logic that underpins their anxieties, but of course now modified to prevent passports being given to those that they deemed unworthy of traveling abroad as representatives of India. I think it was fairly commonly knowledge that passports were a document of privilege in the early years after Indian independence. But of course, you know, now it, you know, it, it appears even more shocking. And I mean it should, it should be shocking as well.
- [53:07]
B
Yeah. And I wonder how this restrictive nature of Indian passport, I wonder what the term is offering or giving Indian passports, what legacies do you think it has today in the current landscape of, of like migrant labor, which, and like, as opposed to also people who are NRIs or OCIs and so on, because there is a clear stratification there. And those who go out to do migrant labor also get given sham passports and little different types of documents. Do you think there's a legacy that follows maybe not from the Indian side, but the fact that the Indian government would allow that to happen to its own citizens?
- [53:55]
C
Yeah. And I mean to some degree, I mean there are many colonial, sorry, many continuities that I can think of. I mean to some degrees, even the discretionary grant of the Indian passport was done actively in collaboration with the British. Right. Like because the British didn't want so called colored migrants coming in. And the Indians said, well, we're very happy to arrange for that because we have a list of undesirables that we don't want going out either. So it happens, you know, with the active collaboration between the post colonial elite and the former colonial elite. And to some degree, I would argue even now this, you know, if whenever India and the UK sign a deal or something, there's always this conversation about, you know, we'll give thousand expert visas to highly skilled geniuses to come here. But what you're basically doing is what the Indian state did then, which is to say that there are a group of skilled migrants, they should have free mobility. And this is something that a Western state with its own racialized and colonial visa regimes is very happy to arrange. So there's this sort of unofficial agreement that happens between two states, one a post colonial one and one a colonial one, with enormous continuities. Even now with the NRI thing and the OCI thing, I mean, I think a lot of scholars have written about it. When they first introduced the OCI card, it was largely offered to people who were NRAs residing in the west and not so much the indentured labor, you know, the old diaspora, so to speak. So it has been very much built into the making of this OCI thing and the passports. I think I talk about this in the book. I think at some point in 2017 or 18, the Indian state came up with this idea for orange colored passports that would be given to so called unskilled migrants with limited educational qualifications and that would of course be separate from the blue passport that the others would have. And of course, thankfully, they were forced to abandon this really, really casteist and classist idea because you know, people protested saying you're literally creating a second class of citizens with their own passport. But you know, this is merely a continuity of what has for the longest time been a long standing effort to curtail what mobility they thought of as undesirable, really.
- [56:05]
B
And yet the Indian government is very willing to send its citizens into like conditions that are akin to indenture today that are exploitative, whether it's. It's the migrants being sent to the Gulf or migrants being sent to Israel when they, when they had a labor shortage. So those are all precarious arrangements and sending your own citizens to like readily sending. So in what cases are they really ready to send? So it feels like the Indian state today has subsumed what the British were doing and what the Indian cast elites were doing, doing and kind of joined it up.
- [56:49]
C
I agree. I mean, I think that's a really, really good summary of what explains the ways in which they do labor migration. I mean, I think it's also worth saying that they find labor migration to the west as far more anxiety inducing for themselves than to other regions where they're not quite worried about the impact on their reputation. So again, there's a clearly racialized dynamic to this as well. Right. So these efforts to curtail mobility were enacted through such a lens as well. But yeah, I mean, I think there's a constant sort of need for the Indian state to assert some sort of control over who can move. And it's not just in terms of the labor migrants traveling to the Gulf.
- [57:31]
B
Right.
- [57:31]
C
But I think I talk about the fact that recently the Scholarships that the government used to provide to students from marginalized caste backgrounds. They've started. And these were scholarships for students to study abroad, largely in the UK and the US I think. And they've now started. They've basically, basically cancel such scholarships for students who are studying the humanities and social sciences abroad, and they're giving it only to those who are doing, I think, STEM subjects. So I think that, and obviously this is also based on this anxiety that these students are gaining mobility and critiquing the Indian state through the fact that they can now access a larger international network of scholars, perhaps, or of similar critiques or comparisons between race and color past. So that's one reason why this curtailment of mobility happens even now. Not to mention the deportation of scholars and writers coming into India as well.
- [58:29]
B
Yeah, yeah. Those are all really shocking developments and really interesting about how these kinds of areas of control map so neatly onto past practices. But I guess we always find that out once you look into his. We haven't had a chance to touch on this. So I will. Briefly, could you tell us a little bit about what the dynamic was at the migrant houses in Birmingham? Because that's really interesting.
- [58:59]
C
Yeah. So the final chapter looks at this anxiety over public health and sanitation again. So in some ways it actually rounds out really well from the Mandapam focus where again there are ideas of sanitation, cleanliness, purity, pollution happen. But here, basically there is a conversation that happens because of large numbers of so called unskilled migrants. And they're referred to as the coolie class of migrants. Of course, they are coming into post war Britain from India and these are migrants who've managed to dodge some of the discretionary passport policies that were imposed by the Indian state and they've managed to gain some mobility. So the Indian diplomats basically end up opening the first consulate outside of London in Birmingham, where a huge number of these migrants are, are coming and settling in. And they do this because they're being basically badgered by British officials that they need someone to mediate and intervene with these migrants and teach them how to live. And this is a phrase that they use. So again, in some ways there is a pedagogic mode of Indian diplomacy here as well. And Indian diplomats basically assign welfare officers and they turn up. I mean, you've got high commissioners from Pandit to YD Gundevia to MC Chagla. All of them turn up seeing these migrants. Not just in Birmingham, although Birmingham is where I focus on, but in a lot of places in Britain with significant Indian migrant populations and they're asked to mediate their lives and asked to deal with the fact that they are a public health threat, as per the British officials. Now, I mean, this is not new, but lots of scholars have argued the ways in which health and sanitation are read through rubrics of race and caste. And that's exactly what happens here as well. So they find a way, way to talk about race and caste without not necessarily saying those words because they're talking about it through euphemisms of, you know, hygiene, sanitation, et cetera.
- [60:59]
B
And in that way, a lot hasn't changed. And I want to bring up what you write, ambedkar wrote in 1916 saying, and your book is kind of a really good, all the stories in it is like a really good, good representation of precisely this, which is that if Hindus migrate to other regions on earth, Indian caste would become a world problem. And obviously we're seeing this also at tech institutions and all over the world. It's just the caste system travels and the more migration happens, the more it travels. And yet there's always been an effort historically by the Indian state to, to sort of put its foot down on caste being a domestic problem, including at that race conference where they. This is not racism, it's just an internal issue. Let's forget about that. So what are the stakes with this and, and how do we come to more fully understand this?
- [62:06]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of anti caste activists have, have done incredible work in talking about exactly what Ambedkar said. Right. Which is to talk about the internationalization of caste, the fact that caste has traveled and has resulted in discrimination abroad. And as you mentioned, for multiple reasons, the Indian state has failed to recognize that or refused to pretend that it, or refused to acknowledge that it exists as a problem. I mean, I think what is at stake is basically in many ways the future of the Indian diaspora and how the Indian state deals with it. Right. Because now there is a kind of assumption that even within the diaspora you have to be orderly and you have to behave in a certain way. Otherwise the Indian state still manages to find ways of curtailing mobility, whether it is the cancellation of OCI cards for scholars and activists or ways of preventing the mobility of these anti caste activists from going abroad. So I think, I think there are, you know, what is at stake is precisely this, and these are big things that we kind of have to find a way to sort of deal with. But I think what's also interesting is that for the longest time, this is not necessarily new in the Sense that lots of scholars like Surat Jengde for instance, have written about Afro Dalit solidarities of ways in which people oppressed by racial and caste hierarchies have collaborated for a really long time. I mean, and this is not new either, right? So even as there is this kind of concern and very understandable concern over the ways in which caste is internationalized, I think it's very productive for us to also think about how anti caste resistance is also getting more and more international and hopefully. And there are historical precedents to it. But yeah, I think that's also in some ways the way forward.
- [64:03]
B
I totally agree with that. And, and it's one of those things where today we still have caste traveling. And a lot of the things you discuss in your book happen in the immediate post colonial sort of setting when people like Nehru were trying to say that we're trying to eradicate caste, we're trying to move towards a future where, where everyone can be and then the caste system can go away. But the approach to that maybe is like education or whatever other forms of quote unquote upliftment that we're looking for. And yet all of this shoving coolies under the rug and all of this very paranoid management goes totally against that and looks like it reinforces caste boundaries. Is this something that you think there was an awareness of at the time or it's just one of those.
- [65:00]
C
Yeah, that's a really interesting question, I think. I mean scholars have written about how the Nehruvian state particular was marked by an obfuscation of discussions about caste. And in many ways, I mean this sort of focus on class or on religion, but a very often derogatory, but also caste blind. I mean the word that they love to use, which is that it's similar to race blindness, right? Like we don't see race, but of course you do. And just like that, you know, the Neuroben state to some degree does that, so it happens to some degree with the diaspora as well. And during Nehru's time, and I talk about this in the third chapter where we're kind of exploring the pedagogic mode of diplomacy in the Caribbean. And the Indian state basically starts sending out a lot of these religious and cultural missionaries to go and lecture to post indenture communities. What happens is that in contrast to assumptions about the cosmopolitan and creole Caribbean which of course exists, it's also worth noting that caste metamorphoses and travels in the Caribbean as well. And it becomes very important to see that there's a Host of Brahmin led organizations which gain political clout and power in places like Trinidad. Now what happens is that when the Indian states start sending out these missionaries to go and lecture there, they start getting pushback from some of the Brahmin led organizations in Trinidad because they think that those selected by the Indian government are not fitting their standards. So you see a certain. It's gone full circle now. Like the Indian state thinks they're civilizing post indenture communities, but caste elites within those communities, communities are in some ways saying that the people that the Indian state is sending out aren't good enough for them.
- [66:46]
B
Yeah, that's, that's so interesting. And that's really hard to also just wrap your head around, try and understand just how sticky caste is, how resistant it is to any kind of intervention. Even though that wasn't necessarily like we should be suspicious of all these like kind of civilizing missions. And a lot of trying to erase caste was also had to do with civilization organizational discourses. And as we approach the end of this wonderful interview, I want to ask you what made you want to center the margins in these stories? The sites that are the key diplomatic sites are not the conventional ones by any means. They're caps, they're smaller spaces, they're the kind of margins. What made you remember, realized there was value?
- [67:40]
C
Yeah, I mean, that's such a great question. I think it came from an effort to center caste. I think in some ways, I think feminist college have also spoken about how spaces that may seem unlikely are really important spaces to recover categories that are invisibilized. And I think that that's sort of true of Indian diplomacy and the ways in which we've tended to brush caste under the carpet to some degree. So I think it was just an eff to. To basically see what would Indian diplomacy look like if we don't do a conventional Delhi centric lens. So also selfishly, it was just my attempt to write Indian diplomacy with language, language skills that I have, which is to, you know, read Tamil sources. And I, I was really, really. I mean there's lots of interesting new work being done using Urdu sources in diplomatic history or say Bengali sources. But I feel like that is still a big gap in the scholarship. So in some ways the focus on unlikely spaces also led me to Tamil language sources and documents that if I had been looking at Indian diplomacy from a more conventional lens, I may not have even thought about looking at. So I think it was very. I think the word I'd use is freeing. I Think it was just decentering the archival lens was very freeing and it helped me write a history of diplomacy which would not just center caste, but also ensure that the migrants are not just subjects or recipients or problems of diplomacy, but their voice is heard, that they are speaking back to power, they are resisting attempts to curtail the mobility. And in many cases they are also articulating a stake in the making of Indian diplomacy and the international realm. So I think decentering the Delhi based archive in many ways, even though of course I use material from there as well, but I think in some ways it has helped me write a more critical history, if that makes sense.
- [69:37]
B
And it works so beautiful, works so beautifully in an unearthing, very difficult dynamics that are otherwise probably not very easy to access. And a final question for you. How can we follow your work? And what are you working on now? What should we be looking forward to?
- [69:57]
C
Oh, thank you. I've got two projects that I'm currently thinking about working on or working on. The first is a larger collaborative project that I hope comes through which looks, looks at actually repatriation and return. So since you read the book, you kind of know that those themes make an appearance here as well. But it's basically a way to think along with a couple of wonderful scholars that I'm working with about what histories of South Asian migration look like if you focus on return or repatriation rather than emigration. Right. So what does that conceptual lens look like? And again, we're hoping to center things like caste work with a multilingual archive. And also there's lots of conversations in the archives about repatriates. What happens when you come back? Does your cast come back with you? So there's that kind of anxiety as well. So that's one project. The other one is a book project, hopefully, which I've tentatively titled Caste at Bay. And it's basically an attempt to look at anti caste movements across the Bay of Bengal. And again, it's that sort of fixation, I suppose, with coastal Madras networks. But also some wonderful, wonderful books that have come out recently. Kalyani, Ramnath's Boats in a Storm. Lots of scholars like Kajin have also been working on kind of immigration against caste by drawing on a Madras archive. So in many ways it's sort of inspired by all of that and I'm looking forward to it. And yeah, you can follow my work. I'm on all kinds of social media platforms if that's helpful. And I do have, apart from my university profile, also a website. So if you're interested. Do follow that.
- [71:37]
B
And quickly before I let you go because you may mentioned some books. Do you have any book recommendations for if people read your book and they want to do some further reading or maybe if they want perspectives from Cooleys himself, those kinds of histories?
- [71:50]
C
Oh, thank you. That's such a great question. So there are, I mean, actually I have a lot of recommendations. There's a few wonderful books on, on indenture that have come out recently. One is Jonathan Connolly's new work. I can't remember the name of it immediately, but I think, oh, I can look that up if you like. But it's called Worthy of Freedom actually Indenture and Free labor in the Era of Emancipation. There's also poor Ba Hossain's recent book Voices from Calcutta, which looks at how migrants from or you know, how Calcutta was shaped by indenture in some ways. There's lots of work written by descendants of indentured laborers which includes, you know, Gayatra Bahadur's wonderful book A Coolie Woman. There's also lots of anti caste scholars who are increasingly writing about migration and how that shapes certain trends. I think Suraj Yengli's new book, A Global Story does that to a very significant degree. And also there's also lots of interesting work which looks at the Bay of Bengal migrations, which I think Kalyani Ramnath's recent book Boats in a Storm does beautifully. Yeah, but I mean I could go on.
- [73:05]
B
And I'm going to wrap things up. Thank you so much, Dr. Natarajan, for joining me here. And to anyone interested, please read Coolie Migrants Indian Diplomacy, which is out this month.
- [73:19]
C
Thank you so much, Stutti, for a wonderful, wonderful conversation. I really enjoyed being part of this.
- [73:23]
B
Thank you. Thank you.