THIS is a pleasant district to ride through, for it is the garden of the Punjab and perhaps the only district in the province where man has mastered nature almost as comple­tely as England or France. There is hardly an acre which is, not cultivated and well cultivated too; and the country has not the dusty dishevelled appearance which makes most of the Punjab look as if it were the work of some great but wholly inexperienced artist.

—Sir Malcolm Darling approaching Bundala in Phillaur tahsil of        
eastern Jalandhar District, January, 1929.¹

Central Punjab (the 'real' Punjab) is divided into three clearly distinguished regions, each separated from the others by rivers. The plains tract between the Ravi and Beas rivers is known as Majha, or Manjha, and its inhabitants as Majhails. South and east of the Satluj river is Malwa, occupied by the Malwais. The remaining territory, the wedge between the Beas and the Satluj, is Doaba.

Although the earliest Punjabi migrants to reach New Zealand were mainly Majhails and Malwais the principal focus of this study must be Doaba and the Doabi people. Indeed, the focus must be even narrower. A substantial majority of the Punjabi immigrants who entered New Zealand were from three of the four eastern tahsils of Doaba, the area within the eastern loop of the Satluj, Doaba is divided into three administrative districts. Hoshiarpur District comprises a broad strip running along the southern fringe of the Shivalik Hills and extending into

the plains. Jalandhar District occupies the southern portion of the tract and Kapurthala the west.² The homeland of most of the migrants to New Zealand consists of the two eastern tahsils of Jalandhar District (Phillaur and Nawanshahr tahsils) and their neighbour in Hoshiarpur District (Garhshankar tahsil). From this cluster of three adjacent tahsils came nine-tenths of all the Punjabi immigrants who entered New Zealand prior to 1940.                                                                                  

In geographical and cultural terms the tahsil boundaries which subdivide eastern Doaba are less important than earlier regional divisions.  Two such regions occupy most of the area. The region known as Dhak largely corresponds to Nawanshahr tahsil but it extends eastwards into Garhshankar tahsil and a short distance westwards into   Phillaur.  The remainder of Phillaur tahsil comprises Manjki.   This region extends a short distance westwards into the adjacent Nakodar tahsil where it gives way to Dona. Dhak and Manjki thus comprise the bulk of the area, with the western fringe merging into Dona. The northern fringe in Garhshankar and beyond lies within a fourth region, Sirowal. 

Although the boundaries between these regions are difficult to draw with precision there is general agreement concerning the approximate lines which they should follow. The Grand Trunk Road between Phillaur and Phagwara is commonly cited as the boundary between Dhak and Manjki.³ Local opinion, however, sets it a short distance east of the road. ⁴ The same uncertainty applies to the western and northern boundaries. It is neverthe­less possible to place within their appropriate regions almost all the villages which have supplied emigrants to New Zealand. In the west Kular and Kala Sanghian are clearly in the Dona region with Litran and Chak Kalan on the ill-defined border with Manjki.⁵ On the north-eastern border the Sirowal tract runs along the foot of the Shivalik Hills, gathering within its bounds the seven villages situated in Hoshiarpur tahsil and the cluster of Garhshankar villages located in the vicinity of Mahilpur. The boundary between Sirowal and Dhak runs very close to the village of Khushalpur and for the purposes of this study Khushalpur has

been included within the Mahilpur cluster. From this point onwards the boundary runs in a north-westerly direction leaving Badon, Bar a Nangai and Jalwehra in Dhak. The other Garhshankar villages which have been included within Dhak are Padoori Ganga Singh, Pandoori Ladha Singh, Sooni, Chhadori and Sahungra. The arbitrary nature of this division is made clear by the closeness of Khushalpur to Pandoori Ladha Singh. Both villages are obviously within a transitional area separating the two regions.

Apart from the fringe villages in Dona and Sirowal practi­cally all the other Doaba villages with New Zealand connections lie within either Dhak or Manjki. The only other exceptions are Jalandhar City (including Basti Shekhan) and the village of Randhawa Masandan which is situated north of the city. Those which sit on its south-eastern flank within Jalandhar and Phagwara tahsils are all Manjki villages.

The Dhak region (originally known as Dardhak) takes its name from the hardy dhak shrub (Butea frondosa) which once marked much of the area as a waste-land. The dhak has long since been cleared, but the name survives. Manjki is said to derive its name from the Manj Rajputs, once dominant in the region. ⁶ The entire area is fertile and well cultivated, and although the residents of Manjki claim that their region is more productive than Dhak the assertion is unlikely to win acceptance in Dhak itself. The rainfall ranges from 22 inches in Dona through 26 inches in Manjki to 31 inches in the Nawanshahr portion of Dhak and 35 inches in Garhshankar.⁷ Across the entire area the princi­pal rabi (spring) crop is wheat, with a variety of other crops appearing in the kharif (autumn) harvest. These include maize, sugar-cane and cotton. Manjki, with a lighter loam and lower water-table than Dhak, is said to grow better cotton.  Dhak is more suited to sugarcane. Sirowal is also very productive, and so too is the eastern section of Dona.

Lying on one of the principal routes from the Khyber Pass in the north-west, Doaba has been traversed by numerous invasions and countless migrants. Its history is, however, sur-prisingly obscure until comparatively recent times. During the

Mughal period, from the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, Doaba with its contiguous hills was a division (sarkar) of the province (suba) of Lahore, known as the Bet Jalandhar Doab.⁸ Each Mughal sarkar was sub-divided into a number of smaller districts (mahal). In the case of Bet Jalandhar Doab these have proved difficult to identify with certainty, ⁹ partly because of the comparative unimportance of the area as far as the Mughals were concerned. Doaba also achieved little prominence in early Sikh tradition or records. As a young man Guru Nanak resided in Sultanpur Lodi and the original copy of the Adi Granth eventu-ally came to rest in Kartarpur. Apart from these two centres, however, Doaba contains no major Sikh shrines, although the celebrated town of Anandpur lies only a short distance beyond its north-eastern boundary. This is a surprisingly sparse number for an area so centrally located and neither of the major shrines is actually in the eastern section of Doaba.

During the early and middle years of the eighteenth century Doaba shared in the confusion which overwhelmed so much of the Mughal empire. The Afghan invader Ahmad Shah Abdali crossed the southern portion several times during his protracted series of incursions beginning in 1747, and by 1760 the territory had been largely occupied by the Sikh guerilla bands known as misls.¹⁰ Several of the misls operated in the Doaba area during the later eighteenth century. During the early decades of the nine­teenth century the territory was progressively brought under the de facto authority of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and was thus ruled from Lahore.¹¹ It was a loosely-exercised rule, although there was never any doubt concerning the effectiveness of Ranjit Singh's authority once he had asserted his claim. Much of the area was, in practice, delegated to subordinates as jagirs ¹²

The death of Ranjit Singh in 1839 was followed by mounting confusion and eventually by the Anglo-Sikh War of 1846. In the settlement which followed this first war Doaba was surrendered to the British and entrusted as a Commissionership to John Lawrence. After the second Anglo-Sikh War of 1848-49 the area continued for two further years to be governed under direct subordination to the central British authority in Calcutta.  It was

then transferred to the British administration in Lahore and remained a part of the Punjab for the duration of British rule in India.  It was the British Who sub-divided the area into the districts of Jullundur and Hoshiarpur. (Kapurthala, with its Phagwara enclave, was one of the princely states which the British permitted to survive until 1947.) The tahsils of Garhshankar, Nawanshahr and Phillaur were thus a part of the administrative system introduced by the British.

By the turn of the century the British administration was firmly in place and the statistics compiled during this period supply a reasonably accurate impression of the society which produced a substantial majority of the Punjabi migrants to New Zealand. According to the 1901 Census the total population of the three tahsils was:

For religious affiliation the three tahsils returned the follow­ing figures: ¹⁵

These latter figures, however, tell us little. Prior to 1925 the British census commissioners failed to reach a clear, consistent definition of who was a Sikh, and their understandable confusion seriously vitiates the religious returns for the censuses conducted prior So that date.¹⁶ More significant are the caste returns, for these give some impression of the dominant elements in the society of eastern Doaba and of other groups conspicuous for their numerical strength. Four castes returned particularly high figures: ¹⁷

In eastern Doaba, as elsewhere in rural Punjab, the Jats are the dominant caste, a dominance which finds expression in land ownership and in the influence which control of the land confers. As we shall see, the Jats of eastern Doaba are also the most prominent of migrants to New Zealand in numerical terms. An absolute majority of the migrants can be identified as Jats, a feature which must command close attention when the attempt is made to explain the reasons for immigration. What it indicates is that poverty alone is not likely to prove a sufficient explanation. The principal contribution to the New Zealand migration is actually supplied by the dominant group in the rural society of the Punjab, the group with the firmest grip on the principal economic resource of the area.

This particular feature indicates that the analysis of motives will not resolve itself into a single cause or a simple pattern. The complexity of the situation is pointed up by the fact that the Chamars provide the second-largest contribution to the New

Zealand migration. Although this must obviously bear some relationship to the size of the Chamar population in eastern Doaba numbers alone will not provide a sufficient explanation. Both the Arains and the Rajputs, each with an impressive total, are virtually absent from the migration statistics; and although the Chamars may have possessed a substantial proportion of the Jats' numerical strength they were at the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of land ownership, social status and political influence. In other words, the two principal contributors to this particular migration were caste groups with diametrically contrasting positions in the local society of eastern Doaba.

From the census returns and the narratives supplied in the district gazetteers there emerges an impression of fertile fields and reasonably prosperous villages. Famine had long since been banished from this area,¹⁸ crime is said to be rare,¹⁹ and prospects for continued development seem excellent. This picture is only partly true. The British were well disposed towards the 'sturdy peasants' of such tracts and their preference for such societies informs (or misinforms) their official analyses. There is, however, a significant measure of accuracy in the impression which they communicate. Eastern Doaba was indeed a fertile territory, with no prospect of serious disaster. Why, then should one of India's more favoured locations produce one of its most notable migrations?  The movement to New Zealand may have been comparatively small, but it was by no means the only destination for the migrant villagers of eastern Doaba. The New Zealand migration occurred within an early phase of Punjabi emigration and it was to be part of a much larger flow. The impulse which directed a small group of Doabis to New Zealand during the first two decades of the twentieth century was an impulse which carried many more of their compatriots to other parts of the world.

An early attempt to supply a reasoned explanation for Punjabi emigration was offered by Sir Malcolm Darling. In three famous books published between 1925 and 1934 he comments

from time to time on the difference which repatriated earnings have made to certain areas of the Punjab and declares with obvious assurance the reasons which impelled young Punjabi men to emigrate.²⁰ The problem, he maintains, is economic need. Subdivision of the land reduced holdings to an uneconomic level and in the case of eastern Doaba a receding water-level aggravates the problem. ²¹ The pursuit of water has, however, already contributed to the solution. The need to perform such tasks as well-digging encourages the development of vigour and enterprise. Confronted by economic difficulty the enterprising man does not despair. He seeks an alternative income in a trade, in the army, in the growing transport industry, or in emigration to a canal colony or overseas. The Jat provides the prime example of agrarian need matched by vigour and enterprise.²² The Punjab thus provides a regular supply of emigrants and amongst them the sturdy Jat commands a unique pre-eminence.

Darling's analysis was thus a simple theory posing economic necessity as the problem and offering as its solution environmental influences which stimulate physical vigour. It was not an analysis which he confined to eastern Doaba.  The districts of Rawalpindi and Jhelum were also identified as conspicuous examples of its validity.²³ Indeed; it was an analysis which Darling believed could be applied to most of the Punjab if one remembered that options such as military service and the canal colonies were as much a part of the solution as overseas migra­tion.²⁴

Although Darling's explanation may be criticised for its simplicity it is evident that he had grasped the essential point. Land was the key and pressure on the productive land certainly had something to do with emigration. This is spelt out with much greater sophistication by Kessinger in his Vilayatpur 1848-1968, a work of particular value for any study of emigration from eastern Doaba. Three features of the book account for its importance in this respect. First, it examines a village which lies in the heart of eastern Doaba and which had produced a steady stream of Jat migrants to Australia during the decades overlapping the nineteenth and twentieth century.     Secondly, Kessinger has

collected and used an impressive range of empirical data. Thirdly, he focuses attention on the specific question of what motivated those who left Vilayatpur for Australia during the early phase of Punjabi emigration.

Kessinger acknowledges that the principal reason for emigra­tion (to the canal colonies as well as to Australia) was 'the acquisition of wealth to purchase land and construct brick houses in Vilayatpur'.²⁵ This objective, however, is not to be understood in terms of individual ambition, nor even as individual responses to the subdivision of a patrimony. The context, as Kessinger repeatedly reminds us, is the family. Although a family's problems may derive from the Jat custom of sub-dividing land at the death of its owner the consequent pattern of emigration must not be seen as a dispersal of individual sons, each bent on making his own individual fortune. If a family group experienced a decline in its fortunes it adopted a family strategy designed to reverse the trend. This strategy might well include the emigration of some of the young adult males, the objective being to repatriate their earnings for the purchase of additional land or for the construction of new houses.²⁶

This analysis explains some interesting features of early Doabi emigration. First, it shows why the process could operate during a period of restricted population growth. Disease served to limit the population of Doaba during this early phase of emigration, and in the period 1901-1911 the population of Jullundur District actually declined. During the next decade it increased by only 3%. ²⁷ What mattered was the perceived pressure on individual land-owning families, not the demographic pattern of the area as a whole. If a Jat family produced several sons it could be expected to despatch migrants overseas. If it grew more slowly it was under less pressure to build up its resources, and if members of such families left Vilayatpur they normally travelled no further than the canal colonies.²⁸

A second feature explained by Kessinger's analysis concerns relative levels of austerity. Although affluent families owning more than ten acres were less interested than others in emigration, those with middle-range   holdings   (5-10 acres) were as well

represented as families possessing little or no land.²⁹ In other words, penury alone certainly cannot explain the process. Migrants were more likely to be engaged in restoring what had been lost rather than in obtaining land for the first time.

A third feature explains the marked predominance of Jats in emigration. In the case of Vilayatpur the Sahota Jats of the village provided 95% of the migrants. Families without land commonly lacked a focus for investment and also the initial capital needed for emigration. ⁸⁰ This meant that in practice those who emigrated would usually belong to Jat families, traditional owners of the village land. The New Zealand data indicates a somewhat more complex pattern than the limited Vilayatpur situation, but in a modified form the principle still holds. Most of the Punjabi migrants to New Zealand were Jats and many of them belonged to families which already possessed some land. This applies particularly to emigrants from Manjki, the region in which Vilayatpur is situated.

Kessinger's analysis carries us well beyond Darling, substantially enlarging our understanding of the emigration process. It would, however, be a mistake to interpret it simply as the restoring of a diminished economic resource. Strictly speaking economic gain was not the objective. For most of Kessinger's Vilayatpur families it was the means to a more important end and funds repatriated from abroad were not used exclusively for the purchase of land. They were also used for the constructing of conspicuous brick houses. A pakka house built with brick is less comfortable than a mud hut, neither as cool in summer nor as warm in winter.¹ It is certainly more resistant to monsoon rains, but this is not its most conspicuous advantage. The two-storied pakka house is also important because it bears visible testimony to achieved affluence and thus to status.

For many emigrants the prime objective was therefore status or 'prestige' (izzat), a concept which has been clearly enunciated in the works of Joyce Pettigrew and Arthur Helweg.³² The purchase of additional land and the construction of pakka houses are two of the principal means whereby a family restores or otherwise enhance its status.   A third is the marriage of its

daughters. Marriage requires a series of expenses and the level of expenditure which a family can afford contributes significantly to its perceived status, particularly amongst the Jats. If a daughter is to be married into a family of equivalent or superior status a corresponding level of expenditure will be required.³³ Division of a patrimony may still be the most important of the economic pressures promoting Jat migration, but it is certainly not the only one. The incidence of daughters in a family may also have had a significant effect.

Land, housing and marriage are thus the three familial concerns which evidently prompted emigration. Poverty alone is not enough to explain Panjabi migration, although it is commonly the answer which migrants give when asked for an explanation³⁴. The sustaining or the redeeming of izzat might also be seen as a primary impulse.³⁵ The two are in fact intertwined, poverty being a cause of diminished status and access to finance an essential means of restoring it. Access to education, another contributor to recent migration,³⁶ seems not to have applied to the early phase. There is no evidence which suggests that it made any significant impression on the Jats of Vilayatpur and it has never been cited as a reason by any of the Punjabis who migrated to New Zealand.

The typical answer given by informants in New Zealand was the predictable one. It was garibi (poverty) which had persuaded them to emigrate. When pressed for more specific answers, however, some differences emerged and one informant produced a detailed theory incorporating features which I had not previously encountered.

Several of the answers which I received supported the analyses offered by Darling and Kessinger. There was, for example, the case of Juwala Singh, a Deol Jat who left the Dhak village of Rasulpur in 1913 and ended his life as a successful market-gardener in Pukekohe. Juwala Singh informed me that his father had four acres of land and three sons. His uncle and other men from Rasulpur had already emigrated to Fiji, and Juwala Singh followed their example because of the subdivision of the land which would obviously come with his father's death.

His decision to work in New Zealand followed a pattern common to several of the Dhak villagers originally destined for Fiji. His ship called at Auckland while he was returning to Fiji in 1920 and when he succeeded in showing that he could meet the New Zealand entry requirement he disembarked there.³⁷

Gurdas Singh Johal of Jandiala also affirmed that land was the reason for emigrating, adding that pressure on the land was much greater in eastern Doaba than elsewhere in the Punjab. The water-table in the region was low when he left India in 1919 and there was no access to canal irrigation. Gurdas Singh also stressed that those who emigrated during the early period invariably did so with the intention of returning. He had himself fulfilled the intention in 1940 and his latter-day circumstances clearly testified to the rewards of self-denying industry in New Zealand.³⁸

In both cases the example set by men from their own villages had played a part in the decision to emigrate abroad, and for some young men this example was of crucial significance. Milkhi Ram Fermah of Bundala commented: 'Hearing others talk was very influential on the imagination and on the decision to emig­rate.'³⁹ Milkhi Ram had first heard about New Zealand from his friend Karam Singh Basi with whom he subsequently travelled to New Zealand in 1920. Karam Singh knew of the distant country from at least two sources. One was his school-teacher Pandit Maya Das of Pharwala village. Maya Das had been in Australia and had briefly visited New Zealand before returning to the Punjab where he became headmaster of the middle school in Bundala.⁴⁰ Karam Singh's other informant was a Jat called Pal Singh Rijji who had returned to Bundala from Australia. It was Pal Singh Who told Karam Singh that Austriala was now closed and suggested that he might like to try New Zealand instead.⁴¹

Most of the returned migrants living in Bundala had actually been to North America, not to Australia or New Zealand, but their reports could nevertheless aid and encourage a young man's decision, particularly after access to Australia and North America, was blocked.   Phuman Singh, a Kunar Jat from Rurki, described

what for him had been a deciding experience. He happened to be at the local post office when a migrant who had returned from Canada received the proceeds of a remittance from overseas. Phuman Singh had never before seen such a mountain of cash and was quickly persuaded to emigrate.⁴²

The reports submitted by Milkhi Ram Fermah, Karam Singh Basi, and Phuman Singh Kunar suggest that for a later gener­ation (those who emigrated immediately after World War I) Kessinger's emphasis on family decision-making may have to be modified. In each case there were the typical economic pressures to emigrate and to this extent the decision to do so followed the earlier norm. These were, however, educated young men whose personal horizons had been raised by their schooling and by their conversations with an increasing number of returned emig­rants. In the case of Milkhi Ram there was evidently no tradi­tion of migration in his caste or family back-ground as he was a Chhimba, not a Jat. For this later generation individual decision-making was evidently becoming more important, although there is no evidence to suggest a significant loosening of family ties nor any weakening of status concepts. The New Zealand responses suggest, however, that this supplementry development was taking place within Manjki rather than within Dhak, possibly as a result of differential standards of education. One response which specifically emphasised the school as a factor in decision­making was the case of Indar Singh Randhawa. His son, Har-bans Singh Randhawa, reported that several young men from the village of Randhawa Masandan who attended the American Mission School in neighbouring Jullundur City were influenced by this experience.⁴³

It was Harbans Singh Randhawa who during the same inter-view enunciated the interesting theory which I had not previously heard. To explain emigration from eastern Doaba, he said, one must understand the bara pind (large village) network. Certain villages were regarded as bard pind, a title depending on numerical size but also involving status claims and an effective marriage network. It was this network which sustained bard pind cohesion and it was within the bara pind, he claimed, that the

effective migratory impulse operated. A majority of the bara pind villages are within Manjki and they include in addition to Bara Pind itself ⁴⁴ the large villages of Jandiala, Bundala and Rurka Kalan. In Nawanshahr tahsil the only bara pind village is Pharala, but the network extends into Garhshankar tahsil where it includes the important village of Mahilpur. At its western extre-mity, in Nakodar tahsil, it takes in Shankar. There are no bara pind villages in Jullundur tahsil or beyond.

According to Mr Randhawa there were three features of the bara pind network which prompted an interest in emigration, and specifically in overseas emigration. The first was a condition general to the Manjki region. The trend to diminished land-holdings was he claimed, more serious in Manjki than in Dhak or in other parts of Doaba. The second was a function of village size. The larger villages, with their schools and their contacts with British officials, had a window on the wider world which most of the chhota pind (small villages) lacked. The third feature was a serious sex imbalance resulting from the survival of female infanticide in bara pind society. This created for bara pind fami-lies a surplus of males. Efforts to find wives in the chhota pind were only partially successful as the young males on offer were the less affluent of the bara pind range. There was, moreover, a sense of shame associated with breaching the traditional endo­gamy. Other outlets were needed and emigration provided a very convenient one. Marriage could then be postponed until the migrant possessed stronger claims to consideration. In many cases it meant in actual practice that he would never marry within the Punjab.

Although this theory is difficult to test it does have a certain intrinsic appeal. The second feature is plausible and there is some evidence to support the third. In 1903 the District Commi-ssioner of Jullundur drew attention to the continuation of female infanticide in some of the large villages of his territory, specifically referring to Pharala, Rurka Karan, Jandiala, and Bundala as examples.⁴⁵ There can be no doubt that a significant sex imbal­ance existed in these villages ⁴⁶ and it seems reasonable to claim that this would   have encouraged   the   emigration of surplus

males.

On the basis of earlier studies and New Zealand responses the following summary explanation can be offered. The origins of Punjabi emigration are to be found in the complex of economic and social pressures which affected the Punjab in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These pressures were particularly insistent in eastern Doaba. The impulse derived in significant measure from the Jat practice of subdividing a deceased father's land between his sons, a problem which in terms of its economic results was aggravated in eastern Doaba by the falling water-table. Diminished land-holdings also created a social problem for Jats in that they threatened status rankings. The social problem may well have been compounded in the Manjki area by a sex imbalance which left many Jat families with a surplus of males.

Solutions were needed for this complex of economic and social problems, solutions which would enable affected families to restore both their land-holdings and their prestige. The newly-established British administration, having deprived the Punjab of a traditional outlet (military service under its Sikh rulers), now increasingly delivered a range of substitutes. These included military and police service, the canal colonies of the Western Punjab, and employment opportunities in other parts of India (notably in transport). They also opened the door to overseas emigration. , Many Jats were to choose this latter option, taking with them some of their fellow-Punjabis of others castes. Those who went were seldom the poor. Overseas travel required a substantial initiative and a small capital such as the desperately poor can never possess. The emigrants were typically young men of modest means who went in order to earn what they needed and then returned to their homes. Many did in fact return, but not all. Punjabi communities survive in New Zealand and elsewhere because some of the men who planned to go home delayed their return for too long.

Although this analysis should answer most of the questions concerning the origins of Punjabi emigration it can not pretend to cover them all.   In particular, it does not adequately explain

the strength of the eastern Doaba movement in comparison with those from other districts of the Punjab. Other areas certainly contributed to the flow and some contributed substantially. None, however, can match the eastern Doaba contribution, neither in the early Pacific phase nor in the emigration to England and North America which has occurred since World War II. Repeatedly one encounters migrants from Garhshartkar, Nawanshahr and Phillaur tahsils. Their conspicuous predomi­nance in overseas emigration requires a more detailed analysis than the general explanation offered above.

The usual explanation has been differential population pressure⁴⁷ and there is some evidence to support this claim. The first four censuses produced the following figures for Phillaur and Nawanshahr tahsils⁴⁸:

Where comparable figures are available from other districts of 1 Central Punjab they are lower than those supplied for these two tahsils in eastern Doaba.    For the three tahsils of Amritsar District the 1911 figures   for population   per square   mile of cultivation were: Amritsar (excluding Amritsar city) 627, Ajnala 764, and Tarn Taran  549. ⁴⁹   For Gurdaspur District the  1911 figures were : Shakargarh 606, Gurdaspur 613, Pathankot 667, Batala 712.⁵⁰   Tahsil analyses were not supplied in the case of Lahore District, but for the district as a. whole the 1911 figure was 564.   This evidently concealed a wide range, for the report adds that in the Khadir circle of Lahore tahsil the figure reached 782. ⁵¹

Such evidence, however, falls short of a sufficient explanation of the eastern Doabi pre-eminence in overseas emigration. First, the figures are incomplete, for they do not cover the situation in Ferozepore and Ludhiana districts. Secondly, they do not present the conspicuous difference which one would hope to find if the figures were to supply a thoroughly convincing argument. Nawanshahr is well in advance of all other tahsils, but the same cannot be said for Phillaur. The eastern Doaba profile actually replicates the pattern of the Punjab as a whole All the districts of Central Punjab returned a smaller population in 1911 than in 1901 and all offered the same explanation. During the intervening decade numbers had been reduced by plague, aggravated in most instances by malaria and emigration ⁵²  The Jullundur report is merely typical of those submitted by all the settlement officers.

At the time of Mr Purser's assessment [1892] the pressure of population on the land was already severe and he feared that it would soon become excessive.    Plague has since taken its toll and there has been considerable emigration to canal colonies as well as elsewhere including places overseas.   But the district is still densely populated and the holdings are small [4-9 acres] ⁵³

This may offer a reason for emigration, but it does not signi­ficantly distinguish Jullundur District.   Other settlement officers made similar comments.⁵⁴

Excessive pressure on the land offers at best an uncertain explanation for the pre-eminence of eastern Doaba. Its strength is the absence of, convincing alternatives rather than its own intrinsic credibility. Other suggested reasons may have contributed to the outcome, though none of them seems to have been parti­cularly significant. There is, for example, the water-table factor noted above. This receives little support from the Jullundur and Hoshiarpur settlement officers. The District Commissioner of Jullundur declares the rainfall in his area to be 'assured, sufficient and well-adapted to the soil.... The country is suitable for wells and being covered by them has no need for canal irrigation.’ ⁵⁵   If in fact there was a water-table problem in 1917

he was evidently unaware of it and his lack of concern was shared by his Hoshiarpur counterpart.⁵⁶ The preference of British army recruiters for Majhails and Malwais may also have played a part in that it reduced Doabi access to a traditional outlet for surplus manpower,⁵⁷ yet this too must be unconvincing if offered as a total explanation.

Once the migratory tradition has been established and information is transmitted back to Manjki or Dhak the typical pattern of chain migration takes over and thereafter one has little difficulty in identifying motives. The actual establishing of eastern Doabi pre-eminence, however, remains something of a mystery. We can identify a number of possible contributory causes. What we cannot do is offer a thoroughly convincing explanation.

During the decade preceding 1850 the advancing British twice fought the Sikh rulers of the Punjab. Maharaja Ranjit Singh had left an impressive kingdom when he died in 1839, but economic difficulties and personal rivalries quickly reduced the Lahore state to a condition of serious confusion. The strong buffer state on the British border had lost its stability, a situation which led to the two Anglo-Sikh wars of 1846 and 1848-49. Doaba was anexed after the first war. The remainder of Ranjit Singh's kingdom followed after the second.

Initially the British were suspicious of the Punjabis, parti­cularly of the Sikhs. The Punjabis had proven themselves unusually stubborn foes and no one imagined that they had been thoroughly subdued by the two wars. The events of 1857-58 quickly changed the British mind, for the Punjab proved to be an invaluable source of assistance during the Mutiny crisis. A new-found trust was added to the long-established respect for the military prowess of the Punjabis and the British were soon recruiting many of them for the army and the police. These new recruits, uninhibited by traditional fears of foreign travel, were available for service overseas. Sikh police were posted to Hongkong in 1867, to Singapore in 1881 and to Tientsin in 1896. ⁵⁸   In both services they established a uniquely impressive

reputation for their courage, dogged strength and reliability, ideal qualities for guardians of the Empire's outposts. It was even suggested that Sikh troops should be brought to New Zealand in 1869-70 to assist the British in the last of the wars with the Maoris.⁵⁹

For the Punjabis who found employment in the British army or police overseas service was a respectable means of supplementing family resources. It led, however, to much more than military service in imperial outposts. Punjabis who served in Singapore or China soon began to appreciate the wider opportunities of their immediate environment. Such territories had more to offer them and their relatives than military or police service, although both services continued to attract Punjabi recruits for as long as the British were in India. Their experience in Singapore and China served to raise their horizons. Their had always been a pardes, a world beyond India. Now it began to assume a more definite shape, a world of new countries which promised new opportunities. Two such countries assumed a particular impor­tance during this early period. These were Telia (Australia) and Mitkan (America, specifically the west coast of Canada and the United States).

The initial response to this new awareness was concentrated in Malaya with small numbers finding their way to more distant destinations in China and the Dutch East Indies. While travelling through Moga tahsil in 1931 Sir Malcolm Darling encountered a Jat who had been in Sumatra for thirty years and several who had been in China.⁶⁰ Such men were unusually enterprising, but they were rare only in terms of the distances they travelled. Although the actual numbers are not known it is evident that soon after the British began posting Sikhs beyond India Punjabis were travelling unaided, as individuals and in groups, at least as far as Malaya. Most of them continued to seek employment in the security forces, but others took labouring jobs and well-built Sikhs soon found themselves in considerable demand as watchmen and caretakers.⁶¹ During this earliest phase of Punjabi emigration a substantial majority of the migrants were evidently from the Malwa   and Majha regions of the   Punjab.   This presumably

reflected the British recruitment preferences. Malwais and Majhails were recruited rather than Doabis and so the pattern of chain migration which developed early in the case of Malaya delivered to this destination an unusually high proportion of men from Malwa and Majha.⁶²

Meanwhile, other parts of the world were evidently assuming a more distinct shape and outline. In the case of Canada this impression was clarified for some Sikh soldiers by Queen Victoria's 1887 jubilee. A detachment of Sikhs who had been paraded through London were returned via Canada, and it has been assumed that their report significantly encouraged the eastwards movement of migrants across the Pacific. ⁶³ It was a movement which would have occurred anyway. Punjabis who had found their way to Hongkong, China and the Philippines were bound to learn of North America. The first known arrivals from the Punjab were a party of five Sikhs who disembarked in Canada in May 1904. By the end of 1906 numbers had accelerated dramatically with approximately two thousand arriving during the latter half of the year. Some moved south to Washington, Oregon and California Most remained and found work in the saw mills of British Columbia.⁶⁴ These Punjabis were not the first visitors to reach North America from India, for Indian seamen and personal servants had been in California as early as the 1860s.⁶⁵  The 1904 immigrants were, however, the initiators of the first significant movement from India.

This, however, is leaping ahead. Migration across the Pacific came later than migration to the south. Many years earlier Punjabis in Singapore and Hongkong had begun to seek employ-ment in the tapu (island) of Telia, a destination which attracted them two decades before the advance guard reached Mitkan.⁶⁶ The earliest Punjabis to reach Australia evidently did so in the 1880s and local tradition in the Punjabi centre of Woolgoolga identifies the first arrival as Inder Singh, an Ark Jat of Malpur village in Nawanshahr tahsil.⁶⁷ Kessinger records that the first group migration from Vilayatpur to Australia occured in the 1890s when approximately twenty men set out for the new country.⁶⁸ There is no way of computing or even estimating the number of

Punjabis who visited Australia in search of work, but if Kessinger's Vilayatptir figures are an indication the total must have been-substantial. By 1903 approximately thirty-five men had gone to Australia from Vilayatpur, a number which amounted to almost one-third of the village’s 1898 male population.⁶⁹ There they worked as labourers or as hawkers.

The migration to New Zealand was initially a small extension of the movement to Australia. In or around 1890 two brothers, Bir Singh Gill and Phuman Singh Gill, crossed the Tasman from Australia. Typically they were Malwais and the few Punjabis who entered New Zealand during the next fifteen or twenty years were mainly Malwais of Majhails. The Doabi migrants began to predominate during the years immediately before World War I and from that time until New Zealand closed its doors to Asians in 1920-21 practically all the Punjabi migrants entering the country were Doabis.

This second phase was also an extension of a larger movement rather than a sustained traffic self-consciously directed to New Zealand. As Kessinger indicate, Doabis were involved in emigration during the early Australia phase and they were significant contributors to the North American flow when it began. By the time Doabi participation became preponderant, however, circumstances were changing as governments became alarmed. Australia acted first and in 1901 passed legislation which effectively closed its doors.⁷⁰ Canada's rather more hesitant moves reached a climax in the celebrated Komagata Maru incident of 1914. ⁷¹ The United States had likewise begun to apply restrictions and immigration from India which had been rendered virtually impossible in 1910 was legally proscribed in 1917.⁷²

This effectively blocked entry into Australia and North America Without terminating emigration from the Punjab or directing attention away from the Pacific region. By the first decade of the twentieth century word had arrived of a third tapu - Fiji. Information concerning the existence of Fiji and of its employment prospects may have reached the Punjab through migrants returning from Australia, or it may have been brought

by indenture agents. Although very few Punjabis accepted indenture it is evident that there were agents operating in eastern Punjab during the early years of this century and it was possibly through these men that news of Fiji began to spread across the Satluj. Punjabis with sufficient initiative to raise a fare were certainly not going to bond themselves to an indenture agreement. A new movement thus began, one which was to carry many Punjabis to Fiji as 'free' labourers. The principal source of this new movement was eastern Doaba, particularly Nawanshahr tahsil.

As with the earlier phase New Zealand acted as an overflow, attracting a small proportion of those whose original destination had been Fiji. Many of the ships carrying migrants to Fiji called at Auckland and a few of their passengers discovered that a knowledge of English was sufficient to secure permission to land.⁷³ Others soon realized that the minimal English required by the current New Zealand regulation could be acquired in Suva, even by illiterate villagers whose only language was Punjabi. This produced the second phase of migration to New Zealand, one which diverted migrants who were travelling to Fiji or who had already been there. Most of these second-phase immigrants came from Nawanshahr tahsil.

A third and final phase overlapped the second. Information concerning New Zealand and its undemanding immigration regulations had filtered into eastern Doaba during World War I and immediately after the war groups of young men began travell­ing direct to New Zealand without any intention of seeking temporary employment in Fiji. Some of these migrants were from Nawanshahr and Garhshankar tahsils, but a majority were evidently from Phillaur tahsil. It was, in other words, principally a Manjki movement and for a brief period it seemed set to assume significant proportions Those who joined it were men with sufficient education to complete the English-language form required from all who desired entry. For them the door was still open, as for the many more Gujaratis who entered during this brief period.

landers it seemed that a flood of Indian immigration was beginn­ing and the Government moved quickly. An Immigration Restriction Amendment Act was passed in 1920 and effectively applied by the middle of the following year. For the next three decades virtually all the Punjabis (and Gujaratis) who entered New Zealand were earlier arrivals who secured permits to return or members of their immediate families. New Zealand had followed the example earlier set by Australia, Canada and the United States. Fiji continued to admit immigrants from India for another decade, but eventually it was decided by the British administration that the traffic had to be curbed. This was progressively done from 1930 onwards.⁷⁴ The Pacific period of  Punjabi migration, having lasted for half a century, was finally brought to an end

Punjabi migration to New Zealand should thus be seen as a part of the larger movement to the South Pacific area, first to Australia and subsequently to Fiji. Today the links between the three Punjabi communities of the South Pacific are weak. During the migratory period, however, movement between the three countries was common, particularly in the case of Fiji and New Zealand. Kala Singh and his son Milkha Singh, Manak Jats from the village of Manak Ghuman in Nawanshahr tahsil, illustrate the kind of movement which continued for as long as doors remained open. Kala Singh originally went to Australia, having heard about it from a Rasulpur man who had been there. He cut sugar-cane in Queensland for six or seven years and then returned to the Punjab, Because he remained there for too long his return permit expired and so in 1914 he travelled instead to Fiji taking Milkha Singh with him. In 1917 Milkha Singh moved on to New Zealand where he eventually decided to settle. His wife joined him in 1956 and he died in New Zealand in 1980.

A prominent example of the link between Fiji and New Zealand was Ganga Singh, a Mahton from Karnana in Nawanshahr tahsil. Ganga Singh spent most of his time in Fiji where he acquired considerable property in the town of Ba, but he maintained an interest in New Zealand and regularly visited the country.    His five sons were educated in New Zealand and

Ganga Singh himself died there in 1965.⁷⁵

Ganga Singh was, however, an exception in that he continued to move between Fiji and New Zealand throughout his lifetime. For most of the Punjabis in New Zealand with previous experience in Fiji the personal link was severed when New Zealand imposed effective immigration restrictions in 1920. They might still meet Fiji residents when they returned to their villages, but for most of them New Zealand was the only possible destination whenever they left India. Many continued to work in New Zealand during the 1920s and 1930s, returning to their home villages from time to time. A majority eventually fulfilled their original intention of permanently returning to their respective villages. Only a minority remained to establish a permanent Punjabi community in New Zealand.

New Zealand is very different from the Punjab. Set in the southern Pacific Ocean fits two main islands enjoy a temperate climate, one which experiences neither extreme heat nor extreme cold. Its soil is not particularly fertile and much bf it is mountainous. It does, however, receive a regular rainfall which nourishes a reliable growth of grass. This provides the basis for an efficient pastoral industry and New Zealand's principal exports are its results. Wool, dairy produce and mutton continue to sustain its economy.

New Zealand, for long uninhabited, was eventually discovered in comparatively recent times by Polynesians. Originally from south-east Asia the Polynesian peoples had progressively spread across the Pacific and then down its eastern sector until they eventually, reached Aotearoa, or New Zealand. Those who settled in Aotearoa came to be known as Maoris, the people encountered by the European explorers who eventually followed them. The first of these explorers was the Dutch mariner Abel Tasman, exploring on behalf of the Govenor of the Dutch East Indies. Tasman was unimpressed by his brief glimpse of the country in 1642 and although visit gave 'New Zealand' its Dutch name the Dutch themselves showed no further interests.  No European

followed Tasman until James Cook arrived in 1769. Cook did what Tasman had failed to do. He charted the islands thoroughly during his six-month visit in 1769 and he returned in 1773, 1774 and 1777. His accounts were widely published, revealing New Zealand to the western world and accurately describing the Maori people and their environment.

Cook's descriptions aroused more than an academic interest. Whaling and sealing stations appeared on the New Zealand coast from 1792 onwards, and flax and timber also attracted attention. The British Government proclaimed its sovereignty over the territory in 1840 and planned colonisation began in the same year. As British settlers spread over the country their search for land brought them into conflict with the Maoris, with the result that a series of campaigns were fought between 1860 and 1870. These wars ensured for the British settlers access to the land which they sought and immigration from the United Kingdom increased substantially. During this early period the South Island prospered more than the North Island for it had very few Maoris (there were no wars in the South Island) and it briefly experienced a gold rush. In terms of pastoral development, however, the North Island had a much stronger potential. During the twentieth century economic development has carried it further and further ahead of the South Island, a process which is still continuing.⁷⁶

It was the rural development of the North Island which provided Punjabi immigrants with their employment opportunities. Apart from hawking by the earliest arrivals the first significant occupational activity of the Punjabi immigrants was cutting flax in the swamps of the Hauraki Plains and the Waikato. This was soon accompanied by ditch-digging in the same areas as farmers converted water-logged swamp into drained dairy pasture. Hard physical labour, long hours, and rigorous living conditions were to be the typical Punjabi experience for several decades.

As they moved further south in the Waikato the Punjabis soon found a third occupation, one which was to involve practically all of them for at least a part of their stay in New Zealand. This was scrub-cutting.   Initially it involved the clearance of

native manuka from the hills of the central North Island (the southern Waikato and the King Country). This was hard work, but not nearly as demanding as the scrub-cutting which awaited them. As they moved southwards to the hinterland of Wanganui they found employment clearing gorse. It was not a pleasant occupation, for the ferociously spiky gorse is hard to handle and it is quick to regenerate if not rooted out or poisoned. Gorse is actually an exotic plant in New Zealand. A comparatively benign hedge-shrub in England it grew and spread with alarming speed in New Zealand, rapidly infesting land which had been cleared of its native bush for farming purposes. Laboriously the gorse had to be destroyed and Punjabi scrub-cutting gangs participated in this work.

Scrub-cutting was the occupation which employed most Punjabi immigrants during the 1920s and 1930s, and many of them continued to clear gorse for several years after World War II had concluded. Meanwhile a new development had begun, one which was to become the primary focus of Punjabi ambitions in New Zealand. Ever since World War I there had been a few Punjabis who aspired to land ownership in New Zealand and from the late 1920s a few began to realize this ambition as success­ful dairy farmers. By the time World War II commenced in 1939 there were still very few Punjabi dairy farms in New Zealand, but the objective had been established and a significant beginning had been made. After World War II the proceeds of scrub-cutting were increasingly directed to the purchase of dairy farms and today the wealth of the Panjabi community is conspicuously concentrated in Waikato dairy farming.

With its mild climate, its farming potential, and its small population New Zealand has, since the days of early European settlement, been seen as a land of opportunity. It was, however, an opportunity largely confined to those of British and Irish stock. Ever since British sovereignty was established over New Zealand immigration has been subject to scrutiny and, increa­singly, to controls. Apart from the Maoris and the Irish comparatively few non-British settlers have found a home in New Zealand, at least until recent times.   From time to time

groups of non-British workers have been admitted for specific purposes, but apart from the Polynesian immigrants of recent years these new arrivals have made little difference to the dominant culture or the ethnic mix.⁷⁷ Asian immigrants have been viewed with particular suspicion and the series of immi­gration statutes which were passed into New Zealand law between 1899 and 1920 were introduced in order to block the entry of Asians. The definitive statute, the Immigration Restriction Amendment Act of 1920, plainly owed its origin to fears concer­ning Indian immigration.⁷⁸

Apart from Indian immigrants the two Asian groups which had caused mounting concern amongst the European settlers late in the nineteenth century were the Chinese and the 'Assyrians'. For many there were only two groups to be excluded, as the term 'Assyrian' was loosely used to cover not merely the small number of Lebanese who had entered the country but also the Indian hawkers who had begun to appear on New Zealand roads. The Indians posed a special problem in that they were British subjects and for this reason they were specifically excluded from the terms of the abortive Asiatic Restriction Act of 1896. ⁷⁹ They remained one of the three targets, however, and the 1899 Immigration Restriction Act incorporated a form of words which was designed to bring Indians within its terms. The Act excluded:

Any person other than of British (including Irish) birth and parentage who, when asked to do by an officer appointed under this Act by the Governor, fails to himself work out and sign, in the presence of such officer, in any European language, an application in the form numbered two in the Schedule hereto, or in such other form as the Colonial Secretary from time to time directs ⁸⁰

The restrictive reference to British birth and parentage was the means whereby Indians were to be covered by the Act. Although they were not perceived as nearly the same threat as the Chinese at this stage they were still Asians and as such were viewed by many New Zealanders as undesirable immigrants.

The 1899 Act was further strengthened by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1908 which restated the requirement that all alien immigrants should be required to complete an application form in any European language.⁸¹ It soon became evident, however, that the strategy might be less effective than had been intended. The choice of 'any European language' was made by the prospective immigrant, and those who had prepared them­selves in English were entitled to enter. It was alleged that prospective immigrants, innocent of English and sometimes comple­tely illiterate, were learning the relevant form by rote. These hopefuls, it was claimed, were being tutored in Fiji before present­ing themselves for admission in Auckland. This led to an amend-ment in 1910 which authorised immigration officials to proffer any of four different forms.⁸²

The problem, however, persisted. Existing legislation proved to be inadequate for at least three reasons. Ohe was that some Indians actually knew English and after World War I their numbers showed distinct signs of increasing. A second was that the rote or 'cram-school' method continued to prove effective for many with little or no English. A third was that immigration officials evidently administered the rules laxly. Hans Raj Kapoor, one of the first of the Doabi immigrants to enter New Zealand, reported his experience as follows :

When I arrived here [in 1912] it was customary for an officer to board the ship and ask people if they wanted to settle in New Zealand. If they did they were only required to complete a simple form and that was it* However some people cunningly capitalised on this by going to Fiji and charging fees to Indians there which enabled them to fill in these forms and get to New Zealand whereas they would not [otherwise] have entered because of their illiteracy.⁸³

Santa Singh who arrived from Jandiala 1920, reported that the form could be completed in Sydney and confirmed that deception was possible. His daughter has recorded his description of the procedure:

From Singapore to Sydney where in those days Indians

wishing to come to New Zealand had to fill out forms in English which was not much bother to bad but frequently was to others who could not read. They usually got someone to do it for them.⁸⁴

Milkhi Ram Fermah described the entire procedure in detail. Having decided to Seek entry to New Zealand he and some friends wrote from Bundala to the 'Immigration Department' in Wellington saying that they could speak English and requesting permission to enter the country. In reply each eventually received a form which he was required to complete and submit to the District Commissioner's office in Jullundur when applying for a passport. Upon arrival in Auckland in June 1920 each received the usual form which had to be completed in English. Having done so they were granted immediate entry.⁸⁵ The form which confronted them was a simple one which posed a series of routine questions such as name, address, father's name, etc.⁸⁶

The procedure was an easy one and official figures suggested that the number of Indians entering the country was increasing after the war years. In 1914 the excess of Indian arrivals over departures had been 183. In 1918 it was 119 and in 1919 it rose to 175.⁸⁷ Economic recession reinforced existing prejudices and in 1920 the Massey government acted. The result was the impor­tant Immigration Restriction Amendment Act, a comparatively simple statute which finally secured effective control over Asian immigration.

Although the pressure for restriction did not become insistent until after the war the ground had earlier been prepared by the Imperial War Conferences of 1917 and 1918. The resolution concerning interstate migration which was accepted during the July 1918 meeting was ostensibly designed to rank India on an equal footing with the dominions of the Empire. In practice, however, the principle of reciprocity which it enunciated was important only in that it acknowledged the right of the dominions to limit immigration as they chose.⁸⁸ New Zealand acted accord­ingly in 1920, passing into law a statute which conferred discretio­nary power on the Minister of Customs.⁸⁹   The exercise of this

power was defined by policy determined the following year. In the case of Indians it was decided that entry would normally be restricted to the wives or minor children of Indian males who had already established residential qualifications.⁹⁰ In actual practice this granted the right of continuing entry to those who had already entered New Zealand by the time the Act came into force (mid-1921), to their wives, and to any of their children who had not reached the age of 21. When any Indian who had thus acquired residential rights left New Zealand he received a Certi­ficate of Residence which entitled him to re-enter the country if he returned within four years.⁹¹ It could, of course, be revoked if the Minister chose to do so and the Government also retained the right to deport any Indian resident whom it deemed undesirable.⁹²

The 1920 Act was applied in these terms until World War II. An amending Act passed in 1931 further tightened restrictions on immigration, but did not affect Indian entry. This was already sufficiently controlled by the 1920 legislation. Only one small loophole remained after 1920. 'Adopted' sons could still be presented to customs officials in the reasonable expectation that they would be admitted.⁹³ After 1945 the policy which deter­mined the actual application of the Act was relaxed in order to admit the entry of male spouses as well as wives. It remains, however, the statutory basis of immigration to the present day.

1 Malcolm Lyall Darling, Rustic us Loquitur (London, 1930V p. 166.

² The old princely state of Kapurthala owned an enclave in centra1 Doaba. After independence this became the Phagwara tahsil of Kapurthala District, still separated from its parent by a portion of Jullundur District. The correct spelling of Jullundur is now Jalandhar.

³ JDKS 1904, vol. XIV-A, p. 2.

⁴ Int. 20.2 Kessinger's 'Vilyatpur', though east of the G.T. Road, comes within Manjki.

⁵ See map and Appendix 1.

⁶ Panjab Notes and Queries, vol. 1, no. 2 (Nov. 1883), p. 16; no. 4 (Jan. 1884), p. 43; and no 6 (March 1884), p. 69. JDKS 1904, vol. XIV-A,

pp. 2-3. RSJD, pp. 2-3. Dona, literally 'both', takes its name from the mixing of sand and clay which characterises the region. Sirowal is a moist (sir) area where wells are easily dug.

⁷  Commissioners' reviews prefacing Hotu Singh, Final Report of the Second Revised Settlement 1913-1917 of the Jullundur District (Lahore, 1917), p. 2; and R. Humphreys, Final Report on the Second Revised Settlement 1910-1914 of the Hoshiarpur District (Lahore, 1915), p. 1.

⁸  The sarkars of Lahore suba were interfluvine tracts, each called a doab rather than a sarkar. Irfan Habib, Atlas of the Mughal Empire (Delhi, 1982),  map 4A and Notes, p. 9.

⁹  Ibid.  JDKS 1904,  vol. XIV-A,  pp. 244-45.

¹⁰ Khushwant Singh, A History of the Sikhs, vol. 1 (Princeton, 1963), pp. 131-150.

¹¹ For brief summaries which relate specifically eastern Doabi history as opposed to Punjabi history in general see JDKS 1904, vol. XIV A, pp. 30-40 RSJD, pp. 16-47; and J. A.L.Montgomery, Final Report of Revised Settlement Hoshiarpur District 1879-84,  (Calcutta, 1885), pp. 19-23.

¹² Indu Banga, The Agrarian System of the Sikhs (New Delhi, 1978), pp. 139-40.

¹³ JDKS 1904,  vol. XIV-A,  pp. 41-42.

¹⁴  JDKS 1904, vol.XIV-B,  p. viii.  HD 1904, vol. XIV-B,  p. viii.

¹⁵  JDKS 1904, vol.XIV-B, p. xxxiii. HD 1904, vol. XIII-B, p. xxxiii.

¹⁶  R.A. Kapur, 'Religion and Politics among the Sikhs in the Punjab, 1873-1925' (unpub. D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1978), pp. 41-42. Note also the comment of W.E. Purser, settlement officer for Jullundur District following the 1881 Census : 'For practical purposes the people may be said to be either Hindus or Muhammadans. The Sikhs are really a Hindu sect and are always looked upon as Hindus among the people.' RSJD, p. 50.

¹⁷  JDKS 1904, vol. XIV-B, pp. xxiv-v, xxvii. HD 1904, vol. XlII-B, pp. xxv-vi, xxix.

¹⁸  JDKS 1904, vol. XIV-A, p. 226. HD 1904, vol. XIII-A, p. 161.

¹⁹  JDKS 1904, vol. XIV-A, p. 231. HD 1904, vol. XIII-A. p. 166.

²⁰  The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt. (London, 1925). Rusticus Loquitur, or the old light and the new in the Punjab village(London, 1930). Wisdom and Waste in the Punjab Village (London, 1934). The third of these contains very little about emigration.

²¹  Rusticus Loquitur, pp. 28, 42-43,   160-61, 173-74, 215.

²²  The Punjab Peasant, pp. 38-40 and chap. III. Rusticus Loquitur, p. 2.

²³  The Punjab Peasant, chap. V, esp. p. 85.

²⁴  Ibid, chap. VII.

²⁵  T.G. Kessinger,   Vilayatpur 1848-1968 (Berkeley, 1974), p. 175.

²⁶  Ibid, pp. 155,  172-73, 175-76, 214-15.

²⁷  Ibid, p. 86.                                                                 

²⁸  Ibid, pp. 168-69.

²⁹ Ibid, pp. 145-46, 175-76.

³⁰ Ibid, pp. 15.5-56.

³¹ Malcolm L. Darling, Rusticus Loquitur, p, 179.

³² Joyce Pettigrew, 'Some notes on the social system of the Sikh Jats', New Community I (1971-72), esp. pp. 360-61; and 'Socio-economic background to the emigration of Sikhs from Doaba', Punjab Journal of Politics I. 1 (October 1977), esp. pp. 66-69. A.H, Helweg, Sikhs in England (Delhi, 1979), pp. 11-33 passim.

³³ Joyce Pettigrew, New Community I (1971-72), p. 360.

³⁴ Helweg, p. 26.

³⁵  The same point is also made by Roger Ballard and Catherine Ballard, 'The Sikhs', in James L. Watson (ed.), Between Two Cultures (Oxford, 1977), p. 26.

³⁶  Helweg, p. 33.

³⁷  Int. 18. Juwala Singh died on 6 July 1976, For another interesting case of the same kind see Inder Singh, History of Malay State Guides (Penang 1965), pp. 113-16.

³⁸  Int. 46.

³⁹  Int. 23.2.

⁴⁰  Karam Singh Basi, letter 15/8/79.

⁴¹  Int. 20.1.

⁴²  Int. 26.1.

⁴³ Int. 14.5.

⁴⁴ In early British records the village is called Kuleta. It is presumably Kessinger's 'Vilayatpur'.

⁴⁵ JDKS 1904, vol. XIV-A, pp. 59-60. In 1892 W.K. Purser, the Settlement Officer, had named Jamshex, Pharala, Kuleta, Dosanj Kalaa, Rurka Kalan, Bundala, Jandiala, Samrae and Bilga as Mat villages suspected of female infanticide'. RSJQ, p. 74.

⁴⁶ JDKS 1904 cites Rurka Kalan as an example.

Detailed discussion of the Figures would be out of place here, but is may be mentioned that in Rurka Kalan for example the Sindhu Jats returned 138 boys to 61 girls under 5, although the Jats in that village had in 1896-1900 registered 242 male to 214 female births. They had also registered 127 female to 53 male infant deaths, pointing to extreme neglect of female infant life. For female infanticide in the Punjab see M.N. Das, Studies in the Economic and Social Development of Modern India 1848-56 (Calcutta, 1959), chap. IX. Paul Hershman Punjabi Kinship and Marriage (Delhi, 1981), p. 232, refers to the 'big' villages of Manjki and their marriage relationships with 'small' villages. Hershman's book supplies an exceedingly interesting, description of society and social practice in the village of Randhawa Masandan.

—Loc cit, vol. XIV-A, p. 60.

⁴⁷ Malcolm L. Darling, Rusticus Loquitur, p. 55.

48 Hotu Singh, Final Report of the Second Revised Settlement. 1913-1917 of the

Jullundur District (Lahore, 1917), p. 7.

⁴⁹ H. D. Craik, Final Report of the Fourth Regular Settlement of the Amritsar District, 1910-1914 (Lahore, 1914), p. 3.

⁵⁰ F. W. Kennaway, Final Report of the Revision of the Settlement of the Gurdaspur District, 1912 (Lahore, 1912), p. 2.

⁵¹ R. C. Bolster, Final Report of the Fourth Regular Settlement of the Lahore District, 1912-1916 (Lahore, 1916), p. 2.

⁵² In addition to Craik, Kennaway and Bolster (cited above) see M.M.L. Currie, Final Report of the Revised Settlement, 1910-1914, of the Ferozepore District (Lahore, 1915), p. 8; and J. M. Dunnet, Final Report of the Second Revised Settlement, 1908-1911, of the Ludhiana District (Lahore, 1912), p. 19.

⁵³ Commissioner's review prefacing Hotu Singh's Jullundur report, p. 3. The Commissioner was in fact exaggerating Mr. Purser's concern.

⁵⁴ Craik, p. 3, uses very similar words. See also Kennaway, p. 2.

⁵⁵  Commissioner's review prefacing Hotu Singh's Jullundur Report, p. 2.

⁵⁶  Commissioner's review prefacing R. Humphreys's, Final Report of the Second Revised Settlement 1910-1914 of the Hoshiarpur District (Lahore, 1915), p. 1.

⁵⁷  A. H. Bingley, Sikhs (Simla, 1899), pp. 29n, 106. Bingley's value scale was: very good/good/fair/indifferent/bad/very bad. Phillaur, Nawanshahr, and Garhshankar tahsils were all rated 'fair'. Ibid, p. Hi of Appendix A.

⁵⁸  D.A. Farnie, East and West of Suez (Oxford, 1979), p. 382. The first Sikhs to land in the Straits Settlement were actually convicts, transported there by the British after the Anglo-Sikh wars of the 1840s. It is possible that some of the convicts who settled in the Straits Settlement after discharge may have included Sikhs. Kernial Singh Sandhu, 'Sikh immigration into Malaya during the period of British rule' in Jerome Ch'en and Nicholas Tarling (ed.), Studies in the Social History of China and South-East Asia (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 436-37. In 1873 a Captain Speedy, commissioned to raise a protective force on behalf of a Malay chief, brought in a group of ninety-five men comprising mainly Sikhs, Pathans and Punjabi Muslims. Ibid, p. 430n.

⁵⁹ James Cowan, The New Zealand Wars : a History of the Maori campaigns and the pioneering period, vol. 2 (Wellington, 1923), p. 533. The relevant extract from Cowan's book is reproduced in The Panjab Past and Present XV-I. 29 (April 1981), pp. 232-3.

⁶⁰  Wisdom and Waste in the Punjab Village, pp. 104, 106.

⁶¹  Kernial Singh Sandhu, Indians in Malaya, (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 69, 73, 124-25.

⁶²  This regional structure has persisted in Malaya. It has been estimated that Majha and Malwa each accounted for approximately 35% of the Sikh immigrants in Malaya. Only 20% came from Doaba. Kernial Singh Sandhu, 'Sikh immigration into Malaya during the period of British rule', pp. 341-42.

⁶³  Hugh Tinker, Separate and Unequal (London, 1976), p. 28.

⁶⁴  Hugh Johnston, The Voyage of the Komagata Maru (Delhi, 1979), pp. 2-3. Johnston questions the claim that the Jubilee contingent of Sikh soldiers directed Punjabi attentior to Canada. Ibid, p. 137.

⁶⁵  Bruce LaBrack, 'South Asian peasants on the Pacific coast', unpub. paper presented at Asian Studies, on the Pacific Coast conference at Asilomar, California (June, 1976), p. 2.

⁶⁶  According to Mr. Harbans Singh Randhawa Telia (Australia) and Mitkan (America) were both believed to be tapus by the early Punjabi migrants.

⁶⁷  Khushwant Singh, 'Australia : lone land of magnificent distances', Illustrated Weekly of India XC VIII.20 (15 May 1977), p. 21.

⁶⁸  Kessinger, p. 90.                                                                     . 69 Ibid, p. 92.

⁷⁰  The new system introduced in Australia required all prospective immigrants to pass a fifty-word dictation test in English Kessinger, pp. 92-93.

⁷¹  Immigration by Punjabis and other Asians into Canada had been virtualy stopped by 1908. Ram P. Srivastava, 'Family organization and change among the overseas Indians with special reference to Indian immigrant families of British Columbia, Canada' in George Kurian (ed.), The Family in India :a regional view (The Hague, 1974), p. 371.        

⁷² Bruce LaBrack, 'Occupational specialization among rural California Sikhs : the interplay of culture and economics', Amerasia 9.2 (1982), p. 37.

⁷³ Int. 20.1,47.

⁷⁴ K. L. Gillion, The Fiji Indians (Canberra, 1977), pp. 116-117.

⁷⁵ Ganga Singh became very prosperous as a result of his business and property interests in Fiji and New Zealand (particularly the former). With a portion of his fortune he built and endowed a small hospital near Kamam village, a short distance from Karnana. Ints. 48, 54, 55, 59.

⁷⁶ For a general history of New Zealand see Keith Sinclair, A History of New Zealand (London, rev. ed. 1980). For a move detailed treatment see W.H. Oliver (ed.),   The Oxford History of New Zealand (Wellington, 1911).

⁷⁷  Sinclair, pp. 155- 6, 317-18.

⁷⁸  For a survey of New Zealand's immigration legislation see Jacqueline V. Leckie,'They Sleep Standing Up, pp. 241-47.

⁷⁹  Leckie, p. 242n. V.H.H. Scurrah, 'Asiatic Immigration into New Zealand* (unpub. M.A. thesis, University of New Zealand, Auckland. 1948), pp. 63-64, 73-74.                     

⁸⁰  The Statutes of New Zealand (Wellington, 1899), no. 33, p. 116. Form 2 in the schedule attached to the Act reads :

Under the provisions of "The Immigration Restriction Act 1899", I, (Full name, occupation, and address) hereby make application for admission into New Zealand, and declare that I am not a prohibited immigrant within the meaning of that Act. And I further declare as follows:—

I was born at                          , in the year

My place of abode during the last twelve months has been

Dated at, this day of

(Signature of applicant)

⁸¹  The Consolidated Statutes of the Dominion of New Zealand, vol. II (Wellington, 1908), p. 714. For a detailed discussion of the 1908  Act see chapter 2 of F.A. Ponton, 'Immigration restriction in New Zealand: a study of policy 1908-1939', unpub. M. A. thesis, University of New Zealand, Wellington, 1940.

⁸²  Ponton, pp. 32-33. The Statutes of the Dominion of New Zealand (Wellington, 1910), p. 44.

⁸³  Daniel Kapoor (son of Hans Raj Kapoor), letter 25/10/77.

⁸⁴  Santa Singh memoir (Hocken Library typescript), p. 7. Jacqueline Leckie records other examples of the deception which was made possible by lax administration of the form-filling procedure. Op. cit., p. 245.

⁸⁵  Int. 23.2.

⁸⁶  Ints.24, 25.1.

⁸⁷  Leckie, p. 206, supplies detailed figures for the period 1914-21. It must be remembered that a substantial majority of the new arrivals would have been Gujaratis.

⁸⁸  Ponton, pp. 43-45. Hugh Tinker, Separate and Unequal, pp. 31-32.

⁸⁹ The Statutes of the Dominion of New Zealand (Wellington, 1920), pp. 78-83. The Act provided that 'no person other than a person of British birth and parentage shall.... enter into New Zealand unless he is in possession of a permit to enter in the form and to the effect provided by the regulations under this Act'. Section 3 confers discretionary power on the Minister of Customs to grant or refuse any application for a permit without giving reasons and without right of appeal. Loc. cit. pp. 80, 81.

⁹⁰ Ponton, pp. 48, 66-67.

⁹¹ Karam Singh Basi, letter 16/12/77.

⁹² See Appendix 2.

⁹³  A few optimistic individuals continued to present themselves for admission without meeting the requirements of official policy. The Otago Witness of Dunedin printed in its issue for 30 November 1926 (p. 45) a photo of one such applicant, with the caption :

Captain Munsha Singh of the Indian Army, who acquired his row of medals through military service at Gallipoli, France, Iraq, and Afghani­stan, has arrived in Australia. He wants to settle in New Zealand if the Government will let him, and thinks he has earned the right to make a living in a white man's country.

The Government did not let him enter. Only one Punjabi exception was allowed prior to World War II.