The incredible journey of Ram Sing, indentured number 120323

IT OFTEN takes a few generations for descendants to fully reap the benefits of the sacrifice of their ancestors.

- SELVAN NAIDOO

In the case of Dr Boop Ramsingh, it took just one generation for his family to completely alter the lifestyle trajectory of their indentured descendants for generations to come.

He is the son of Ram Sing and Ramdulary Sing.

Ram Sing, indentured number 120323, was registered as an indentured migrant at Agra in India, to disembark from the port city of Calcutta on the SS Umlazi in April 1906.

An interesting part of the Umlazi register revealed that Sanskrit-speaking Ram Sing, who hailed from the Gwalior District, with many of his male friends, were listed as part of the 3.4% Thakur caste that, according to Professor Surendra Bhana, had come to South Africa from 1860 to 1902.

The list of ship passengers alongside Ram Sing corroborates the testimony of Dr Boop Ramsingh, narrated to him by his father, explaining that his indentured recruitment to Natal was a result of an angry family dispute.

The dispute centred around a lost family letter on a horseback journey from Gwalior to Kasganj, which resulted in Ram Sing opting to be recruited to Natal after seeing a pamphlet that extolled the benefits of indentured labour recruitment to former imperial colonies.

The peculiar nature of Ram Sing's indentured recruitment to Natal debunks the coercive myth of indenture and that only workers from the lower castes were recruited to the colonies.

Dr Boop Ramsingh, a first-generation descendant, places himself in a unique category of being perhaps the world's fewest, if not the only living, children of indentured workers, given that the system of indentured labour bondage ended in South Africa by 1911.