The Return to the Motherland

It was also noted in a 1909 report, mentioned by Roopnarine, (2009) that the savings accumulated by the ex-indentured workers returning to India were also gained from other occupations like shop-keeping, money-lending, cow-keeping, and cane-farming.
In the “British Guiana: Report of the Immigration Agent General for the Year 1906-7” there are records of savings taken back from British Guiana to India in 1907 by individuals such as Kaino Singh, a ‘shovel man’ at Enmore Estate who returned to India with $220; a female weeder called Pargasia from Plantation Ruimveldt who took back $360, and Rampersad, a driver from Pouderoyen who returned to his homeland with $1,100.
It has been suggested by several scholars that there were a number of reasons why some ex-indentured labourers returned to India after their contract expired.
Some, it is suggested, returned simply because they wanted to return to their homeland, while others returned because they were no better off and perhaps were even worse, than when they left India.
Others returned because they found conditions on the plantations too harsh to live under, while others experienced some traumatic event that caused them to prefer to return to India.
Several, as noted by some scholars, had arrived as unwilling labourers duped at an Indian port, and just wanted to return home after their contract had expired.
However, there is also evidence of Indian indentured workers using the indentureship system as a way of accumulating finances before finally returning to their Indian villages and families when they had saved enough money to buy land there.

Research has revealed that some Indians who had returned to the Motherland would also return to the Caribbean, if not to British Guiana, then to other British Caribbean islands, or British territories such as Mauritius and Malta; some, returning to India after serving 10 – 15 years of indentureship in the Caribbean, left India once again to return to the Caribbean colonies, including British Guiana.
There is also record of 44 Indian indentured labourers who, upon completing indentureship contracts in Natal, South Africa, arrived in British Guiana in 1920 to work on the colony’s sugar plantations.
British Guiana politics also played a role in Indian remigration. According to Dabydeen et all (2007) the ethnic tensions of the 1940s leading up to the country’s self rule and independence left many ex-indentured migrants fearful about their future, and they chose to return to their homeland.
In addition, according to Samaroo (1982) some ex-indentured workers who were Indian Hindus, preferred to return to their homeland to die. There has been supporting research that notes the maintenance of religious practices allowed for ex-indentured labourers’ strong ties with India and the spiritual importance of the Ganges River at the later stages of their lives.
Roopnarine (2009) also mentions that under the mistaken belief that India had gained independence, some ex-indentured workers returned to India to live in their free Motherland.
As can be observed today, however, many Indian indentured labourers remained in British Guiana, now Guyana, and made the country their new homeland, forging a legacy that continues to this day.