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This Book Uncovers How Indentured Labourers Forged Independent India’s Foreign Relations

by Kalathmika Natarajan

Published 2026-07-21 03:00:00+00:00

Why did India's early diplomats try to stop laborers from crossing the ocean to escape caste violence?

0:00 / 11:39 · Narrator Sulafat

Context

In an excerpt published on 21 July 2026, Kalathmika Natarajan finds the origins of India's foreign relations in the passport office. Early Indian diplomats were desperate to shed the international stigma of the indentured laborer, so they tried to restrict working-class migration to protect the nation's image. But those migrants fought for the right to move, viewing a hard life overseas as an escape from caste violence at home. The excerpt pauses on a quiet question about the world's largest diaspora: who gets to represent a nation?

Show notes

An examination of how early Indian diplomacy was built on elite anxieties over indentured laborers and the international stigma of the coolie label. The research details how twentieth-century diplomats tried to restrict working-class migration to protect India's global standing and maintain caste hierarchies. It also documents how anti-caste leaders and migrants fought these restrictions, defending overseas labor as an escape from domestic oppression.

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