ABSTRACT
In the past few decades, authors have taken to constructing narratives pertaining to slavery and indentured labour in Réunion Island. This phenomenon is clearly attributed to the obliteration of archival material in state repositories on the ordinary non-white subjects in the erstwhile French sugar colonies. Often, an entry in the colonial registers or a police report of a missing contractual labour becomes the point of departure for an author to embark on a project of constructing a ‘historical’ novel with scant information. On this side of the Kala pani, in the former French colony of Pondicherry, the situation isn’t any different. The lack of any documentation on the returnees or their accounts has led to a complete silence on their existence. Some authors have therefore taken upon themselves to bridge this gap.
What recourse do individuals or social groups have in the absence of archives? In what way are family histories a legitimate source to counter the dominant colonial narrative? It is here that individual memory, collective memory and history intersect, giving rise to an alternative historiography by portraying the saga of simple peasant folk who abandoned home, caste and identity by crossing the Kala pani and working in an alien land, suffering humiliation day after day, at the hands of rapacious plantation owners.
