By: Radhay P. Misra, IAC Executive Member
On 13th March 1913, a little over one hundred and two years ago, colonial police under the command of George Castriot De Rinzy (1865-1913), the Inspector General of Police of British Guiana and Honorary Colonel of the British Guiana Militia, opened fire on East Indian sugar workers at Rose Hall Estate, East Canje, Berbice killing 15 and wounding 41 others.
Nine of the labourers died instantly, while six others died of their wounds at the New Amsterdam Hospital between 13-15 March, 1913. In addition, one policeman, Corporal James Ramsay, died instantly with a bullet wound to the head. Only policemen armed with rifles and officers armed with revolvers fired bullets that day; the East Indian labourers were armed with hackia sticks, cutlasses, bottles and stones.
This massacre, which was widely reported internationally, was instrumental in bringing about an end to the Indentureship System on 1st January 1920; the last batch of indentured labourers having arrived aboard the S.S. Ganges in April 1917.
The late 1912 sugar cane crop season was over when grinding ceased at the Rose Hall estate on 20 January, 1913. Rewards to the sugar workers for a successful crop took the form of a holiday, from one to four days awarded by the Manager. Since this was an extremely successful crop, James Smith, Manager, on Monday, 27th January, granted the maximum of four days to begin on the following day, Tuesday 28th January and to end on Friday 31st January.
In January, however, Smith after consulting with Robert Hunter, Assistant Manager, who convinced him of the urgent need for the commencement of replanting, cancelled the holidays and ordered the labourers to the field, explaining that the holidays would be rescheduled.
The field labourers en masse, on the urging of Ramchand, who was transferred to Rose Hall from Plantation Diamond, West Bank Demerara and six others, refused to obey the order from Smith which was conveyed by Hunter and did no work on Tuesday 28th January. They returned to work on Wednesday, 29th January (the second holiday) and worked on Thursday and Friday (the third and fourth holidays) also.
James Smith, who succeeded Mr. Bethune at Rose Hall on 1st April 1911, having previously worked as Deputy Manager at Plantation Uitvlugt and with a total of twenty years’ experience in different capacities on sugar estates in British Guiana was well known for his abrupt manner of speech and his abusive language, especially towards sugar estate workers.
He had not endeared himself to free East Indians when, in September 1912 he doubled the rental for rice beds and water supply to rice cultivators, and withdraw the privilege of rent-free beds. At that time, Rose Hall estate employed an indentured work force of about 500 and around 2,000 free East Indians.
Unable to forgive what he considered insubordination by the labourers, Smith arranged for legal action in the form of summonses to be served on seven persons he perceived to be the ringleaders of the disobedience. These people received them on Saturday 1st February.
The infuriated labourers complained to Smith the same day and also on Sunday 2nd February about the legal action, asking why only seven persons were targeted when, in fact, all of them had stayed away from work. Conviction on these charges could have led to imprisonment and fines. Obtaining no satisfaction from the arrogant manager, the labourers trooped into New Amsterdam later on Sunday to complain to and seek advice from the “Krasbi (Crosby),” Thomas Fairbairn, Immigration Agent, stationed there.
The following day, Monday 3rd February, Fairbairn visited Rose Hall Estate to investigate the matter and found that there was widespread anger against the estate administrators, Smith and Hunter. Fairbairn met with Smith, who offered to withdraw the charges provided the defendants defrayed the full act of the summons, a total of $5.04 or seventy two cents each.
Even though the seven defendants saw this as an injustice, tantamount to a fine without recourse to the courts, they offered to reimburse Smith in installments of four cents a week; it would have taken 18 weeks to pay off this amount. Smith, however, refused this reasonable compromise, having full knowledge of the low wages received by the labourers.
On Tuesday 4th March, work virtually ceased at Rose Hall estate, as between 200 and 300 workers walked to New Amsterdam to support the seven “ringleaders” who had to appear before Magistrate Douglas. These cases, however, were not heard that day due to the improper preparation of the documents – six of the summonses showing no jurisdiction on their faces, these six were dismissed and fresh summonses issued.
The cases were postponed by Magistrate Douglas to Friday 7th February and were heard by Magistrate Shankland who sentenced each of the “ringleaders” to pay three shillings (seventy two cents) costs and to be bound over to keep the peace for three months after Defence Counsel Joseph Eleazar, later to become Mayor of New Amsterdam, after consultation, advised his clients to plead guilty.
This outcome added to the dissatisfaction of the sugar workers who had been feeling aggrieved for almost two weeks since the holidays were cancelled. Smith, now, added fuel to the fire that he had lit. In a letter dated Friday 14th February to Booker Bros McConnell 7 Co. Ltd in London, he wrote: ‘The New Coolie Gang of about 60 men struck work this morning and have gone to interview the Immigration Agent.
They demanded that the rates be increased which I declined to do.’ Smith decided to go after those he believed to be the “ringleaders”. On Monday 17th February, Smith applied to the Immigration Department for permission to transfer Jahangir (Jhangi) Khan and his wife Muradan; Chotey Khan and his wife Aladi; Amir Baksh and his wife Jumya (with infant son Hassoo); Mathura; and Maula Bax an educated scribe who was in possession of a soiled copy of the Immigration Ordinance that he brought back with him from India and who explained to the labourers how they were overworked and how they were underpaid. He was Smith’s chief target.
After submitting his application to transfer the ring leaders, Smith departed for England.
The bureaucracy of the Immigration Department acted quickly and on Sunday 2nd March, the transfer order for Jahangir Khan and wife, Chotey Khan and wife, Amir Baksh and wife, Mathura and Maula Bux was delivered to the police station at Reliance.
On Tuesday 4th March, the transfer men appeared in court to contest the order to transfer them. Armed with a copy of the agreement made in India, Maula Bux contended that it contained no reference to transfer, or punishment by fine and imprisonment for refusal to work. Eleazar, the attorney supported the motion of the labourers that the estate management had no legal authority to transfer workers since there was no such reference in the contract.
During the sitting of the Court on 4th March, Robert Hunter, Manager (ag.), Inspector Arthur Hamilton Baker and Thomas Fairbairn, Immigration Agent thought that as the police had automobiles at the court, it would be a good opportunity to seize the transformers and take them away. An attempt was made to induce them to leave but they claimed that they did not have their possessions; they were told that these would be sent after them.
Jahangir Khan appeared to be inclined to go but Ganga caught hold of him as he was about to enter a police car and forcefully prevented his removal. The large crowd of labourers, which by this time had swelled considerably, became excited and threatening in their manner, a large number having sticks. The anger of the large crowd aborted the transfer and Hunter had to obtain police protection in order to return to his home at Rose Hall Estate.
After this attempt to abduct the transfermen , Rose Hall estate suffered a complete shutdown as angry indentured labourers prevented the free labourers from working; prevented the overseers and drivers from going into No. 8 yard (the logies) to give orders and thus prevented the rest of the indentured labourers from working, called for the dismissal of Hunter, Jagmohan Maharaj, the head driver (who was accused of all sorts of improprieties and was Smith’s lackey) and the sicknurse (who was accused of corruption and was Jagmohan’s lackey) and became threatening and defiant in their manner.
During the last nine days of this tumultuous period, five new ‘ring leaders’ were identified: Ganga, Baloo, Ramdayal, Shankar and Dildar Khan.
Into this situation of anarchy, rode Colonel George Castriot De Rinzy, Inspector General of Police in a police car at the head of at least 70 policemen including two European officers, Inspector Arthur Hamilton Baker and Inspector Henry William Birch. They brought with them a Maxim gun, a machine gun, obviously to intimidate the sugar workers; mercifully it was only paraded but not used against the labourers.
De Rinzy, born in Ireland into a military family was descended from Sir Mathew de Renzy, a native of Cullen in Germany, who was granted the estate of Clobemon, County Wexford, Ireland by Charles I of England. This ancestry made Colonel DeRinzy a direct descendant of Gjergj Kastrioti (George Castriot) (1405-1468), the famous Albanian nobleman also known as Skanderbeg ( or Iskander Bey meaning Lord Alexander).
General James Wolfe, the British Commander who died at the Plains of Abraham, Quebec in 1759, stated that Skanderbeg was a commander who “excels all others, ancient and modern, in the conduct of a small defensive army.” On 27th October 2005, the United States Congress issued a resolution honouring the 600th anniversary of the birth of Gjergi Kastrioti (Skanderbeg), statesman, diplomat and military genius, for his role in saving Western Europe from Ottoman occupation.
Skanderbeg was victorious in many battles against the Ottoman Turks but his descendant, De Rinzy, who bore the illustrious name of his ancestor, was known for shooting protesting workers in British Guiana, for example at Non-Pareil in 1886 and Ruimveldt in 1905.
During the shutdown of Rose Hall Estate after Tuesday 4th March, Hunter, acting for Smith, sent a message to the Immigration Department asking for help and for the transfer of five “new” ringleaders: Ganga, Baloo, Ramdayal, Shankar and Dildar Khan. Armed with these warrants and the Maxim gun, Colonel De Rinzy and a large body of policemen travelled to Rosignol by train during the evening of Wednesday 12th March.
After a parade from Cumberland to Rose Hall with the Maxim gun visible, the policemen approached No. 8 yard only to be met by a large group of angry and anxious labourers who believed that the five “original ring leaders” were to be arrested: up to that time, the labourers were unaware that the police sought five different persons.
De Rinzy claimed that the coolies roared fiercely and wildly brandished all kinds of weapons, sticks, cutlasses and spears made from cutlasses mounted on sticks as if in a wild barbarian country. Mangru mentions that the workers also had bottles and bricks.
After the Riot Act was read, Corporal James Ramsay, a decorated policeman, attempted to cross the bridge over the punt trench to arrest Ganga. He was rebuffed by the labourers and as he once again attempted to push through the crowd he was seized by Motey Khan and a physical struggle between them on the bridge resulted in both of them falling into the punt trench. At this point DeRinzy himself opened fire with his side-arm on the men struggling in the water. Both Motey Khan and James Ramsay died from bullet wounds; Motey Khan with four bullet wounds in the head, chest and back and Ramsay with a bullet wound to the head.
At the Commission of Inquiry conducted by Magistrate H.K.M. Sisnett, two eye witnesses, Ganga and Jahangir Khan, testified that Corporal Ramsay was shot by De Rinzy while he was struggling with Motey Khan in the trench.
In this confusion, De Rinzy ordered his men to open fire on the workers and after 100 bullets were discharged, 55 more persons were shot. Motey Khan, Bholay, Badri, Hulas, Jugai, Sohan, Sarjoo, Sadulla and Gobindei (female) were killed instantly while Gafur, Juggoo, Roopan, Durga, Lalji and Nibur died in the New Amsterdam hospital between 13th – 15th March. Forty one others were wounded. Other than Ramsay, no policemen were injured.
Sisnett’s report exonerated De Rinzy and the policemen supporting an allegation that the labourers killed Ramsay but stated that the workers acted under considerable provocation. Lord Crewe, after reading Sisnett’s findings, considered that the disturbance at the Rose Hall Estate was the direct and inevitable result of the conduct of James Smith, Manager of the estate, not only in regard to his broken faith in the matter of the holidays and his refusal in the case of Driver Jagmohan to redress a grievance shown by his own subsequent action to be just, but also in view of his repeated failure to explain the position to the coolies.
It was the opinion of the Marquess of Crewe that such a series of incidents can only be taken as a want of intelligent consideration on the part of the management of the estate towards its intelligent labourers. Lord Crewe concurred with the view taken by the Government of India that the owners of the estate should be pressed to make adequate provision for those who have been incapacitated and for the families of the killed. No compensation, however, was received by the victims.
In 2013, the Indian Arrival Committee persuaded the Government of Guyana to make the former cemetery, then covered by bush and which was being used as a garbage dump site, a national memorial site. On Thursday 13th March 2014, President Donald Rabindranauth Ramotar unveiled the monument to the 1913 Rose Hall Estate Martyrs on the site where they were buried, exactly 101 years after the massacre.