Sea of Poppies

It started in 1834 when Great Britain called for contract labourers from India to work in the sugarcane fields in Mauritius, as slavery would be finally abolished in 1835. Until 1920, more than 500,000 of such workers, men and women will reach the shores of Mauritius and the overwhelming majority will stay on, even after the expiry of their contracts. Many of these workers spoke a language called Bhojpuri and came from specific regions of Bihar which happened to be producing India’s most successful export at the time, opium. In his recent novel entitled “Sea of Poppies“, Amitav Ghosh beautifully captures this part of History. The story is set in a ship called the Ibis, on its way to Mauritius, carrying sailors (the lascars), convicts and indentured labourers. As the story unfolds, the heroism of some of these people, farmers from the deep interior of India and culturally “afraid” of water, as well as the hardships that led them to leave India become clear. It is a voyage into the unknown by people of different religions and castes, each socially conditioned to believe that there is no way of organising a marriage, cooking spices or peeling a fruit other than their own! But they soon realise that their lives will never be the same again, as the journey dilutes all the boundaries that define each one of them. As one migrant puts it: “On a boat of pilgrims, no one can lose caste and everyone is the same. From now on and forever afterwards, we will all be ship-siblings – jahaz-bhais and jahaz bahens – to each other. There’ll be no differences between us.” But he was wrong. As everyone who knows Mauritius would agree, and as Amitav Ghosh himself puts it in an interview, caste and religion still matter economically and politically. An absolute must read!