The last return indenture/ship from Guyana to India: diaspora, decolonization, and douglarized spaces

Most writing on the Caribbean diaspora focuses on arrival into the Caribbean, or secondary migration out of the Caribbean to metropolitan destinations. Less researched are return journeys, out of the Caribbean, back to India. Even rarer are first-hand accounts of return voyages (a promise written into Indian indenture contracts). Weaving oral and written accounts, this dissertation explores the motivations and re-settlement experiences of ex-indentured labourers from British Guiana (now Guyana) back to India in 1955. The achievement of Indian independence in 1947, which sparked demands for return, revived possibilities of belonging outside of colonial paradigms. Thus, my thesis suggests the negotiation of national belongings at the critical juncture of diaspora and decolonization as a conceptual framework to understand return journeys. My work politicizes diaspora studies through its intersection with decolonization. It consequently brings to scholarly attention the promise and experience of return within indentureship studies, and unsettles the borders of area studies.