The Use of Protective Talismans by Indentured Indians and their Descendants, with Reference to Enslaved Africans

For enslaved Africans as well as indentured Indians, the inhuman conditions which they had to endure aboard the ships and on the elds did not suggest that the wearer was completely protected from danger or helped by talismans. Even so, the talisman remains a cultural feature among descendants and like astrology and psychic readings, the phenomenon is a ‘contemporary supernatural component of mainstream rather than marginalised social groupings’ (Canetti and Pedahzur, 2002).