Whatever the world is today, whether good or bad, it is we who have made it. We are people whose ancestors may have lived somewhere else hundreds of thousands of years ago and are somewhere else today… because humans have never stayed in one place. His curiosity to do something new, to get something better, to know and see something unique kept taking him from one place to another and thus human migration continued in the world. Which kept on changing the person and also changed the places where he kept going. 18th December is celebrated as International Migrants Day. This process of human migration started from Africa 70 thousand years ago and continues even today.
About 30 crore population of migrants
Talking about short-term migration, in 2020, about 3.6 percent of the world’s population was those who left their countries and went to other countries as migrants, to work, study or live etc. Today the population in the world is around 30 crore migrants. Sometimes there is compulsion in migration and sometimes there is also desire. Forced migration is called migration, which is a big crisis facing the world. Due to the circumstances that many countries of the world are going through these days, their people are forced to go to other countries. This is a forced migration. Due to this the world is facing a refugee crisis. According to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, by the end of 2023, the number of such refugees in the world will cross 12 crore 26 lakh. Of these, 32 million are refugees under the United Nations Human Rights Commission and 60 million are Palestinian refugees.
Stanford historian Priya Satia cites the 1947 partition of India as the root of today’s continuing tension between Pakistan and India. In 1947, British India was divided into two independent countries. One name was India and the other was Pakistan. 10-12 million people were displaced due to partition. This created a huge refugee crisis in the newly formed countries. There was violence on a large scale. The violent nature of partition created an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion between India and Pakistan, which still prevents normalization of relations. But this was the first migration of the people of independent India, not of British India.
migration of indentured laborers
By the eighteenth century Britain became the world’s largest slave trading power, but by the end of the nineteenth century large-scale slave buying and selling in Africa had stopped. Slavery was abolished by making laws in European countries, America and many colonies. The British Slavery Abolition Act came into force in 1834. After this, the freed people refused to work in the British colonies of the West Indies at low wages. After this another method of migration started. Indentured workers who were called indentured servants in India. The word Girmitiya is a broken native form of agreement. This was also a kind of slavery, for which the British used the people of India. People from India were hired to work on sugarcane, cotton, tea plantations and railway projects in the West Indies, Africa, Southeast Asia. They were taken to those places as an agreement.
It continued like this until the end of the First World War
From 1834 to the end of the First World War, Britain had transported two million such people from India to 19 colonies in Fiji, Mauritius, Ceylon, Trinidad, Guyana, Malaysia, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa. Thousands of them would die due to ill health during the sea voyage. Apart from India, people from China and Asia Pacific region were also taken as indentured labourers. For this, a five-year contract or agreement was made with these people in their countries. They were promised a salary, a small piece of land as remuneration and that they would be brought back to their country after the contract was over, but the truth is that this rarely happened. The people taken as indentured laborers were not educated, they had no knowledge of their rights. Therefore, most of the people remained where they were taken. Voices were raised against the poverty in which they lived, movements took place and in 1917 the British government had to stop the indentured servitude system. Meanwhile, the indentured laborer did not return from wherever he went. Today, in the new era, their descendants are playing a big role in those countries.
The period of oppression since the fifteenth century
Although migration continued to happen in every region of the world, but when migration crossed the continents and reached other continents, it also spread its customs, its food habits, its language. This much would have been fine, but he went on erasing every evidence of the local population, their dialects, languages, customs, traditions, everything. By the sixteenth century, a similar period of long migration from Europe intensified. In the fifteenth century, the population had increased significantly in most of the countries of Europe. Europe was running out of land to grow food grains for the growing population. This explosion of population forced the countries of Europe to look outside while fighting among themselves. At that time, India, which was shining in the world economy, was a big support for their hopes.
This was the period when one after another many courageous explorers from Europe set out through the sea to discover the unknown places of the world. The Italian explorer Columbus, who set out in search of India, went in the opposite direction in the ocean. Reached America in 1492 after a dangerous sea journey of about two months. When Columbus’s ship landed on the coast of the Caribbean island of Bahamas on October 12, 1492, a new world had opened up for Europe. After this, Columbus made four voyages to America within ten years and Europe came to know properly about the new world named America.
Then there was a race among the European countries to reach America and grab more and more areas. The sixteenth century proved to be the biggest century in terms of migration of Europeans. Traders followed the courageous explorers and their greed began to destroy the local populations of America. Then the priests also came to spread the religion. The natives of America and their civilizations continued to be crushed under their pressure. Kept losing her identity. According to an estimate, between 1500 and the middle of the twentieth century, about six to seven crore people left Europe. Most of these people first settled in North and South America, then went on to settle in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. America had everything that Europeans dreamed of. But even more than that. Empty fertile areas, grasslands, water, forests, minerals, everything. The people of Europe brought back with them the grains from there and also the diseases from there. They started growing their grains there, took their animals there and then their settlements started getting established there. America started losing its identity.
These countries looted America
Spain and Portugal were among the first European countries to colonize America. Spain occupied large areas of Mexico, South and Central America. Portugal captured Brazil. This is the reason why these areas now speak the dialects of those countries whose colonies they were. His own bids were coming to an end. When Europe first came in contact with America, the local population there had more than eight hundred languages ​​and their traditions were equally colorful and rich, but the European countries started making everything monochromatic. In North America, France colonized Canada and many areas of today’s America. The Dutch dominated the Hudson Valley of North America and some Caribbean islands. England ruled 13 colonies on the Atlantic coast in North America and captured several Caribbean islands. These European countries kept fighting among themselves to capture more and more of America’s new land and also snatched away their rights from the local population.
5 crore 60 lakh people died
According to researchers at University College London, European settlers, in their violent campaign, killed more than 56 million local people in different areas of America. This is said to be about 90% of the native population of America. His fields were also destroyed. According to this research, the forests that grew in these empty fields also affected the air of the world. Forests grew rapidly in an area almost equal to the area of ​​France, which absorbed so much carbon that the earth’s temperature decreased slightly. Till now, natural causes were considered to be the reason behind the Little Ice Age that started in the beginning of the seventeenth century, but according to this research by UCL, the temperatures in America are somewhat lower than the forests growing in the fields left vacant due to the massacre of the local population. Happened.
Situation did not change even after independence
But what the European invaders did to America is one of the darkest chapters in the history of migration. Even after America’s independence, this treatment continued with the natives. Their land kept being snatched away and bought. The original inhabitants of America, who loved nature immensely, shed their blood to fight for the land irrigated with their blood. Many books tell about these atrocities. Tells about the bravery of the local tribes. About one hundred and seventy years ago, when the atrocities of the Europeans were at their peak, there was a brave chief named Seattle in a tribe named Sukamission. He was a fearless warrior and led six local tribes. In December 1854, he wrote a letter addressed to the then President of America, Franklin Pierce. Well-known Hindi writer Ashok Pandey has translated that letter into Hindi and it should be read…
The chief of Washington has sent a message that he wants to buy our land. How can you buy or sell the sky – how can you buy the heat of the earth? To us this very idea is strange. It is a different matter that we have no right over the freshness of the air or the shine of the water. How can you buy these from us? Every part of this earth is sacred to the people of my tribe. Every needle leaf of a pine tree, every sandy beach, every dark night of the forest, every open field and every humming cricket and moth are sacredly recorded in the memory and experience of my people.
We know the living water that flows within the tree as the blood that flows in our veins. We are a part of this earth and the earth is a part of us. Fragrant flowers are our sisters. Bear, deer, eagle – all these are our brothers! Rocky heights, pasture grass, mule body heat and humans – all are members of the same family.
The water flowing in rivers and streams is not just water. That is the blood of our ancestors. The trickle of water is the voice of my father’s father. Mahanad is our brother, he quenches our thirst. They carry our canoes and give food to our children. You have to love rivers like you love your brother.
((In this long letter, a chieftain named Seattle writes further…))
We know our lives are incomprehensible to the white man. For him, every piece of earth is the same as the next piece. Because he is such a stranger who comes at night, who steals things of his use from the earth whenever he wants. He leaves behind the graves of his ancestors and the birthright of his children is forgotten.
There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. There is no place where the sound of spring leaves or the fluttering of insects’ wings can be heard. But since I am wild, I cannot explain. Your noise is just an insult to my ears. Well, what is there left in life if you cannot hear the croaking of the birds or cannot understand the reasoning of the frogs around the pond at night.
White people will also leave this world one day. Maybe even before the rest of the tribes. You keep your bed dirty and one night you will suffocate from your waste. When all the buffaloes have been slaughtered, all the wild horses have been domesticated, where will be the hidden corners of the forests filled with the smell of men and where will be those mountain views – they will be gone.
Where will the hawk be? – Must have gone.
Life will have come to an end – then the war for survival will begin.
