The Limits of Traditional Dissent Sample Clauses

The Limits of Traditional Dissent. Options were few for those struggling to abolish indenture between the final decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century. For the most part, dissent was either digested by well-worn processes like inquiries or legislation or rendered irrelevant by those in power. The knowledge regime of indenture held a monopoly on criticism. The Xxxxxxxxx Committee, an inquiry that Britain commissioned in 1910 to determine whether India should extend indenture to additional colonies,174 demonstrates that inquiries late in the arc of indenture suc- cessfully quashed indenture criticism. In determining that indenture should be extended to additional colonies,175 the Committee relied on ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 172 See KALE, supra note 4, at 4–5, 56–65. 173 Xxxxxx himself wrote to Xxxxxxxx that “[t]he policy of the government of India has not hitherto been to criticise minutely the terms offered to Indians emigrating to the various fields of xx- xxxx; . . . the Government is content to leave the success of the emigration to the ordinary laws of supply and demand.” Dec. 4, 1877 Letter, supra note 101. 174 KALE, supra note 4, at 83. 175 See XXXXXXXXX COMMITTEE REPORT, supra note 13, ¶ 102 (“[T]he system of indentured immigration as actually worked is not open to serious objection in the interests of the immigrant labourer [It] is the only practicable form of emigration to distant colonies on any considerable scale.”). 2021] THE AGREEMENT AND THE GIRMITIYA 1849 interviews with eighty-three witnesses,176 only three of whom were non- European, and of whom none had ever been indentured.177 One of the non-European witnesses, Xxxxxx Xxxxxxxx, the Afro-Caribbean head of the Trinidad Workingmen’s Association, did actually object to the ex- tension of Indian indenture because it depressed free market wages, cost colonies too much in outlays, and led to the abuse of indentured Indians on plantations.178 Upon hearing these critiques, the committee of inter- viewers harassed Xxxxxxxx for wasting their time and funds and dis- missed his comments as inconsistent.179 Xxxxxxxx’x experience lends context to how the Xxxxxxxxx Committee Report massaged its observations and reached its conclu- sions. Conceding that the rate of labor prosecutions in Fiji was “con- siderably higher than it should be,” the report nonetheless concluded that “persons prosecuted are as a rule unsatisfactory workmen, unaccus- tomed or disinclined t...