The indentured labour system was indeed a form of bound servitude after slavery ended, where workers were shipped to plantations abroad. But in Kolkata, we remember they weren’t just called 'coolies' on the ships—that word already echoed in our own *majdoor* markets and railway platforms, a word for hard, honest work long before the *girmit*. My own great-grandfather left from Garden Reach, not as some anonymous coolie, but as a *mistri*, a carpenter with his tools, his debt a chain yes, but his skill a key they never accounted for.
#garments#labour
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