Kalathmika Natarajan, "Coolie Migrants, Indian Diplomacy: Caste, Class and Indenture Abroad, 1914-67" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Nov 2, 2025

Kalathmika Natarajan, a Lecturer in Modern South Asian History at the University of Exeter, explores the stories of 'coolie' migrants and their impact on Indian diplomacy from 1914 to 1967. She reveals how caste, class, and race shaped India’s diplomatic anxieties, particularly regarding the 'coolie stain.' Discussing topics like the Komagata Maru incident and the complexities of quarantine during migration, Natarajan highlights how historical narratives around caste continue to influence modern migration policies and transnational resistance.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Kuli As A Diplomatic Stain

The term kuli collapsed human identity into wage-based, racialized, and gendered categories that carried casteed stigma abroad.
Natarajan argues this kuli stigma shaped Indian diplomacy's anxiety about international reputation and mobility.

INSIGHT

Anxiety Drove Mobility Control

Elite anxiety framed diplomacy: caste elites feared being tarred with the 'kuli' label and thus pushed to regulate migrant mobility.
This fear produced policies to sanitize who could represent India abroad and who could travel.

ANECDOTE

Mandapam Quarantine Crisis

Mandapam quarantine camp was built on a viaduct intended to facilitate kuli travel to Ceylon but became a plague quarantine site in 1914.
Caste elites protested being treated like coolies and forced Madras to negotiate with Ceylon over caste and quarantine rules.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Over the centuries, millions of migrant labourers sailed from the Indian subcontinent, across the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean, to shape what is now the world’s largest diaspora. Coolie Migrants, Indian Diplomacy: Caste, Class and Indenture Abroad, 1914-67 (Hearst, 2025 and Oxford UP, 2026) recovers the histories and legacies of those ‘coolie’ migrants, and presents a new paradigm for the diplomatic history of independent India, going beyond high politics to explore how indenture, emigration and international relations became entangled.

Before and after independence, Indian notions of the international realm as a sanctified space were shaped by migrant journeys; this was a space of anxiety in which to negotiate the ‘coolie stain’ on the country’s reputation. Discourse was defined by intersections of caste, class, race and gender—and framed the migrant worker as the quintessential ‘other’ of Indian diplomacy.

Drawing on rich, multi-archival analysis spanning the vast geographies of labour migration, Kalathmika Natarajan pieces together the stories of quarantine camps en route to Ceylon; cultural and educational missions in the Caribbean; discretionary passport policies in India; and the mediation of immigrant life in Britain. The result is a nuanced history from the interwar period to the decades after independence, and a critical analysis centring both caste and the negotiation of ‘undesirable’ mobility as foundational to Indian diplomacy.

About the Author:

Kalathmika Natarajan is Lecturer in Modern South Asian History at the University of Exeter. Her interdisciplinary research combines critical approaches to diplomatic history and South Asian migration. She has worked at the University of Edinburgh, and received her doctoral degree from the University of Copenhagen.

About the Host:

Stuti Roy works at Oxford University Press and is a recent graduate with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Political Science from the University of Toronto.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history