From Neglect to World Heritage: The Preservation of Aapravasi Ghat

History

By U. Dasin

The 2nd of November marks the day when Mauritius honours the memory of the indentured workers uprooted from India in the nineteenth century and brought to produce “white gold” – sugar – in the colonial plantation economy.

The broader historical context is well known. After the abolition of slavery in 1834, following strong humanitarian protests in the British Parliament, plantation economies across the British Empire faced acute labour shortages. Britain, at the height of its nineteenth-century capitalist expansion, turned to a new experiment in labour: the recruitment of so-called hill coolies from northern India, many of whom had prior experience in agricultural work. Mauritius became the testing ground for this “Great Experiment”, which sought to replace enslaved labour with a system of contractual or indentured labour. Between 1834 and 1910, approximately 462,000 Indian workers were brought to Mauritius under this system. Historian Hugh Tinker famously described it as “A New System of Slavery” – for although indenture was legally distinct from chattel slavery, in practice it replicated many of slavery’s exploitative, coercive, and dehumanising features.

Aapravasi Ghat – 13 Steps into an unknown future, which strongly evokes the historical and emotional significance of the Aapravasi Ghat (Immigration Depot) in Port Louis. P – Defi

Indenture was presented as voluntary migration, but most recruits were misled, coerced, or economically trapped into signing contracts they barely understood. Recruiters (arkatis) preyed upon poverty, famine, and illiteracy, and many migrants were unaware of their destination or the harsh conditions awaiting them. Though bound by five-year contracts, labourers had little freedom to protest or leave; desertion was criminalised, and punishments included imprisonment or hard labour. Working hours, rations, punishments, and housing were often as harsh as – if not worse than – those under slavery. Overseers exercised absolute authority, using physical punishment, fines, and sexual abuse to enforce discipline.

Colonial laws were heavily biased in favour of planters. Workers could be prosecuted for “breach of contract,” while planters were rarely held accountable for mistreatment. Labourers’ lives were controlled by the state — from medical inspections to movement restrictions — leaving them with no real autonomy. The system was built upon the same racial and economic hierarchies as slavery: Europeans at the top, people of colour reduced to exploitable labour. It was part of the imperial machinery that converted human beings into productive assets while denying them dignity or advancement.

In Hugh Tinker’s words: “The indentured labourer was a man between slavery and freedom, but nearer the former. His body might not be owned, but his time, his liberty, his movement, and his labour were all controlled. It was in truth a new system of slavery.”

Beyond historical debates, the impact of indenture lives on in Mauritian memory – in family stories passed down through generations, often as fragments of erasure, pain, and endurance. Yet official recognition of the contribution of indentured workers came slowly and reluctantly.

The Recovery of a National Memory

Today, we honour this heritage through the Aapravasi Ghat, the very site where the first indentured immigrants set foot on Mauritian soil. It stands as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a beacon of memory — a symbol of the endurance of those who came with nothing but hope. Yet, this recognition did not come easily. It is due, above all, to the vision, devotion, and perseverance of one man: Beekrumsing Ramlallah.

In the month of June 1970, B. Ramlallah, accompanied by his family and volunteers from the 4th Mauritius Hindu Scouts, began cleaning the neglected Immigration Depot. The site had been left to decay, its walls crumbling and its history fading. Determined to restore its dignity, he invited Mimosa Studio’s photographer to document the condition of the place and later presented an album of photographs to Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam (SSR) as a silent plea for preservation.

Then came a moment of inspired diplomacy. Understanding the symbolic power of visibility, though the official programme was already printed, B. Ramlallah requested that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, during her visit to Mauritius in June 1970, be invited to visit the old depot. Upon much insistence, SSR agreed. On 4 June 1970, Indira Gandhi visited the site — renamed ‘Coolie Ghat’ — and lit a diya, the small flame that has since become the living emblem of memory. That single gesture — the lighting of a lamp amid the ruins — illuminated the forgotten history of thousands. It transformed an abandoned depot into a sacred place of remembrance, linking India and Mauritius across the distance of time and ocean. Since then, the Ramlallah family has consistently held an annual Yaj ceremony on the site of the Aapravasi Ghat. His children along with Sarita Boodhoo have helped perpetuate the tradition long after his passing.

The visit of Indira Gandhi brought international attention to the site. In the years that followed, Aapravasi Ghat became a destination for visiting dignitaries and a focus of national reflection. B. Ramlallah seized that momentum to press for official recognition of the site. On 4 June 1978, his efforts bore fruit when Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam unveiled a commemorative plaque marking two historic dates: 2 November 1834, when the first indentured workers arrived, and 31 May 1924, when the system of indenture came to an end. The site was eventually declared a National Monument in 1987.

But B. Ramlallah’s work went far beyond ceremony. In the early 1970s, he discovered that thousands of invaluable historical documents — registers of immigrants, marriage records, and other artefacts — lay neglected in the decaying buildings of the Immigration Depot. With the help of Ramnarain Ramsaha, then Commissioner of Public Assistance, he appealed repeatedly to the authorities to safeguard them. His appeals were ignored. When a devastating cyclone struck the island, journalist Trilock Dwarka recalls finding him amidst the wreckage, desperately chasing loose papers blown by the wind.

Contributing to a forthcoming book on Beekrumsing Ramlallah, Trilock Dwarka, then a young journalist for the MBC, recalls:

“He was crying. Tears rolled down his face as he gathered sheets of paper-records of our forefathers- from the ground. He told me that the memory of our people was being erased forever.”

Despite this tragedy, Mr Ramlallah persisted. Auguste Toussaint, then Director of the Archives, dismissed the documents as being of “no historical value” and refused to give them shelter at the National Archives. Dr K. Hazareesing, the first Director of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute (MGI), was approached. He understood their significance. In 1976, the immigration documents were transferred to the MGI where they were preserved and catalogued, giving birth to the Folk Museum of Indian Immigration – a lasting tribute to the story Beekrumsing Ramlallah had fought to rescue.

In 1987, the Coolie Ghat officially renamed Aapravasi Ghat and declared a National Monument. On 18 December 2001, the Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund Bill was passed and came into operation in July 2002. The 2nd of November was declared a public holiday to commemorate the arrival of the first indentured labourers, as from 2001 onwards. Prior to this however, in 1984 a monument was inaugurated in Phooliyar on the site of Antoinette Sugar Estate, dedicated to the memory of the first 36 Hill Coolies to ever set foot in Mauritius. It was the well-known artist Mala Chummun who sculpted the Lotus monument — a symbol specially chosen as a symbol of gentleness, healing and reconciliation as a coda to a dolorous history of inter-generational trauma. The Phooliyar monument was inaugurated in 1984 by the then Prime Minister, Sir Anerood Jugnauth.

Following the efforts of a dedicated team of scholars, researchers and volunteers, a dossier was submitted to UNESCO and on 16 July 2006, Aapravasi Ghat was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site during the Vilnius meeting in Lithuania. This was a major moment when the International recognition allowed the formerly neglect, derelict, overlooked Immigration Depot to be inscribed onto the memory of the world, standing as the only surviving site across all territories where the stones preserve the dolorous imprint of this infamous, yet nation building reality.

On the 2 November 2014, the Beekrumsing Ramlallah Interpretation Centre was inaugurated by Dr Navin Ramgoolam, Prime Minister of Mauritius, and late Srimati Sushma Swaraj, then Minister of External Affairs of India.

Through all these milestones runs a single thread — the moral courage of Beekrumsing Ramlallah, who refused to let a nation forget its beginnings. His faith turned an abandoned depot into a sanctuary of remembrance. His persistence transformed shame into pride, and silence into history.

Today, when we gather at Aapravasi Ghat, we do more than honour the past; we renew a promise — that the struggles and dreams of those who came before us will never again be left to the winds of neglect. The small flame that Indira Gandhi lit in 1970 continues to burn — steady, luminous, and eternal — as the flame of our collective memory.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 31 October 2025