REVIEW – BBC Video – Coolies – How British Re-invented Slavery

Watch a BBC Video containing archive footage and historical evidence, of the Girmitiyas who were shipped to Fiji between 1879 and 1916. This footage includes speaker such as Mr Brij Lal, a Fiji-Indian who now teaches at the University of Australia and David Dabydeen, an Indo-Guyanan novelist who teaches in Warwick, United Kingdom. This documentary is focused on the descendants of Indian indentured labourer – like me and the many other present day generation in the Diaspora, nurture a deep urge to know our ancestral roots in India for sentimental reasons. At the same time, many of us are trying to evaluate the implications of our history. This documentary acts as a source to provide an important dimension to debate over whether or not the Indentured Labour system were really a little more than a “new system of slavery”.