The popular notion that the indentured workers were primarily male is a misinformed one. Women made up at least a third–as required by government statute–and sometimes close to 40 to 45 percent of the labourers being transported from India.
The continued migration of Indian women through the nearly 100 years of indentureship facilitated greater degree of exclusivity around racial and ethnic boundaries in Trinidad and elsewhere. It also made racial mixture with other groups–particularly the Afro-Trinidadians–less likely, and which often threw up situations of resistance and resentment.
Recent decades have seen education and political participation help the Indo-Trinidadian population to integrate into mainstream Trinidadian society. But there still exist exclusive ethnic enclaves in certain pockets of Trinidadian society, which was made possible by the presence of Indian women from the very beginning.
Sumita Chatterjee presents a brief portrait of one of the few surviving women of that generation of indentured workers who was born in India, and who had re-created a new home and a new identity in Trinidad.