Aug 06, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

(Kaieteur News) – The argument was recently made on a BBC radio podcast dealing with Indian indentured immigration that the Indian caste system was incompatible with the capitalist ethos of the post-Emancipation Caribbean plantation. There is an appealing simplicity to the argument.

Caste was supposedly a rigid, hereditary system based upon birth, status and occupation, while capitalism was supposedly founded upon individual liberty, competition, economic choice and the ability of individuals to improve their position through work and enterprise. The arrival of Indian indentured labourers on the Caribbean plantation is therefore sometimes presented as a historical encounter between an archaic social system and a modern economic one.