tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/indentured-workers-28672/articlesIndentured workers – The Conversation2017-05-25T15:51:52Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/781502017-05-25T15:51:52Z2017-05-25T15:51:52ZDebt bondage, domestic servitude and indentured labour still a problem in the world’s richest nations<p>Slavery has been illegal in every country since the last country to do so, Mauritania, criminalised the practice in 2007. But while slavery is illegal, it has not disappeared. Contemporary slavery in the form of indentured labour, debt bondage or domestic servitude still exists in many places – including the richest countries of the world. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/">startling personal piece</a>, US journalist Alex Tizon recalled how when he grew up in the Philippines, an impoverished young woman named Eudoica Pulido, known as Lola, was brought to live with the family as their domestic help. Emigrating with them to the US, with no room of her own, no pay, and no way of returning to her homeland, she suffered verbal and physical abuse from Tizon’s parents. Others were told she was a visiting relative, and she had no one to turn to for help save for her employers’ children. She was effectively the family’s slave. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170666/original/file-20170523-5743-10n8f28.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170666/original/file-20170523-5743-10n8f28.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170666/original/file-20170523-5743-10n8f28.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170666/original/file-20170523-5743-10n8f28.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170666/original/file-20170523-5743-10n8f28.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=798&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170666/original/file-20170523-5743-10n8f28.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170666/original/file-20170523-5743-10n8f28.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170666/original/file-20170523-5743-10n8f28.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1003&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">My Family’s Slave: a portrait of Eudocia Tomas Pulido on the cover of The Atlantic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Atlantic</span></span>
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<p>If this sounds like an exceptional case, research on the conditions for <a href="http://www.kalayaan.org.uk/documents/Kalayaan%20Oxfam%20report.pdf">migrant domestic workers in the UK</a> reveals that the reality of domestic work should make us all uncomfortable.</p>
<h2>Perspectives from the Philippines</h2>
<p>Domestic work is difficult to regulate. Employers often describe workers as “one of the family”, but this often hides unpaid wages, restricted movement and forced overtime. In the Philippines, domestic workers like Pulido are not bought and sold, but they are as effectively indentured as slaves. They work for their food and lodging and receive a small allowance, but this is never enough for them to leave their employer. Most is sent back to their own family.</p>
<p>Migrant domestic workers, in contrast, rarely owe money to their employers directly. They pay brokers, agents, and governments for services, and repay loans to banks, finance companies, loan sharks and relatives instead. Like Eudocia Pulido, to repay these debts they must often forgo a personal life, intimate relationships, raising children and honouring family obligations.</p>
<p>Pulidio’s family still <a href="http://www.rappler.com/rappler-blogs/lian-buan/170462-finding-eudocia-pulido-mayantoc-tarlac">lives in poverty in rural Tarlac</a>. They thought Pulido was living a comfortable life in America. Perhaps she was working to repay the cost of her ticket? Perhaps she had forgotten them? </p>
<p>Pulido only sent money home years after her departure, when Alex Tizon, her employers’ son, gave her a weekly allowance. Following the death of Tizon’s mother, she lived with Alex and his family in the US until her death. Her relatives in Tarlac never saw the money or boxes of goods and gifts they anticipated. Hoping to better their own lives, they intend to migrate for domestic work, too. </p>
<p>As Filipinos debate reparations for Pulido’s family, they are also considering the way they <a href="http://www.rappler.com/thought-leaders/170451-56-years-slave-lola-eudocia-pulido">treat their own domestic workers</a>. Tizon’s story took an unflinching look at the sacrifices middle-class families require from their “help”. Despite the risks, other Filipino women continue to seek similar domestic work situations overseas, and of the potential destinations, the UK is <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=r3HBDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=overseas+filipino+workers+stock+estimate+UK+2015&source=bl&ots=-rv3m3xG08&sig=DG0HxiUvJIGJGC1oiyeqtXVxoVk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiz-u31zIbUAhWsLsAKHdIvB3gQ6AEIVDAH#v=onepage&q=overseas%20filipino%20workers%20stock%20estimate%20UK%202015&f=false">reputed to offer the highest wages</a>. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Lian Buan interviews Eudocia Pulido’s family.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Irregular migrants</h2>
<p>In the UK there are limits on jobs in domestic work for migrants from outside the EU. <a href="https://www.gov.uk/domestic-workers-in-a-private-household-visa/overview">Domestic Worker visas</a> allow non-European workers to enter with their employer and stay for only six months. Migrants on this visa often experience non-payment of wages, abuse and exploitation. The six-month limit makes it very difficult for them to change employers. And not all Filipino migrants doing domestic work hold visas. </p>
<p>When I interviewed Filipinos in London between 2009 and 2012, only two of 61 people I met held this visa. Most of my interviewees worked in London’s informal economy for domestic services, but had arrived on student or tourist visas and then disappeared. </p>
<p>An estimated 32,000 Filipinos in the UK have <a href="http://www.kanlungan.org.uk/filipinos-in-the-uk/">irregular immigration status</a>, augmenting <a href="http://www.cfo.gov.ph/downloads/statistics/stock-estimates.html">218,126</a> working visa holders, permanent residents and citizens, and their dependants. Irregular migrants are predominantly women and do in-home, cash-in-hand housekeeping, babysitting, cleaning and caregiving work. Their earnings go towards servicing debts, or to their families to send their children to school, provide medical care, improve their housing, and starting businesses. Some are still repaying debts incurred for previous contract domestic work in Hong Kong or Singapore, or care-giving in Israel. </p>
<p>Their irregular status means they struggle to access healthcare, are often underpaid, rent outside regulatory controls, and live in fear of being stopped, held and quickly deported by the UK Border Agency. Informal landlords, employers, and other migrants manipulate them by threatening to report them to the authorities. Facing low wages and precarious work, they depend on the goodwill of employers to sustain them – a situation that leads to them being exploited.</p>
<p>Irregular migrants can change employers to search for better-paid work and more generous conditions. A few of my interviewees received higher wages than workers in equivalent formal sector jobs, but across the group their situations varied widely. One, a teacher turned nanny-housekeeper, earned over £37,000 a year. Another, an accountant-cum-caregiver, faced destitution after her employer died. Both were servicing large debts to support families they hadn’t seen in years, and if caught would be deported, unable to return to the UK for a decade.</p>
<p>Irregular migrant domestic workers are not quite slaves. Yet their circumstances may be closer to slavery than we’d like to acknowledge. The full life denied to Pulido is something Britain’s irregular migrant workers also forego, because their debts limit their choices. </p>
<p>Working with Filpino NGO <a href="http://www.kanlungan.org.uk/filipinos-in-the-uk/">Kanlungan</a>, our <a href="https://www.curatingdevelopment.com">project team</a> is exploring ways to improve conditions for Filipino migrants. Beginning with community arts workshops, the aim is to increase their financial literacy so they can avoid debt, while showing workers and politicians just how much – and how widely – their debt-fueled migration contributes to national development in the Philippines.</p>
<p>Here in the UK, we need to end systems that tie migrants doing domestic work to their employers so they have freedom to seek better working conditions. Where there is demand for migrant domestic and caregiving work, it should only be under formal, regulated working conditions. After all, post-Brexit the UK may find it needs to rely even more heavily on migrants from outside Europe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Deirdre McKay receives funding from the AHRC for Curating Development. Led by Mark Johnson (Anthropology, Goldsmiths), the project's partners are Kanlungan (London), Enrich (Hong Kong) and the Scalabrini Migration Centre (Manila, Philippines). Her research on Filipinos in London was funded by the Mellon Foundation/Indiana University Press and published as An Archipelago of Care (Indiana, 2016). </span></em></p>With My Family’s Slave, journalist Alex Tizon challenges our complacency over domestic workers. When does domestic work become slavery?Deirdre McKay, Senior Lecturer in Geography, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/671802016-11-01T15:30:54Z2016-11-01T15:30:54ZTreatment of foreign workers lends a lie to myth of the Mauritian ‘miracle’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/144009/original/image-20161101-15821-53w9xm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Workers process tuna at the Thon des Mascareignes factory in Port Louis, Mauritius</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mauritius, an island with <a href="http://www.antrocom.net/upload/sub/antrocom/060110/08-Antrocom.pdf">no indigenous populations</a> and a history of multiple European colonisations, is a multi-ethnic society <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/mp.html">made up</a> of just over two thirds Indo Mauritians, nearly one third Creoles and small groups of Sino-Mauritians and Franco-Mauritians. </p>
<p>The social fabric of the island of <a href="http://countrymeters.info/en/Mauritius">nearly 1.3 million people</a> is a reflection of its history of involuntary and voluntary migrations. Its population has been constituted by flows of people since the 16th century. These flows have consisted of colonial administrators and merchants, sugar plantation owners, African slaves, Indian indentured labourers, traders and, most recently, large numbers of Chinese and Bangladeshi migrant workers. </p>
<p>On November 2 Mauritius commemorates the arrival of the first indentured migrants with a national holiday. It is a timely moment to reflect on current labour conditions on the island, and to ask to what extent they reproduce colonial indenture practices. </p>
<p>Since its independence Mauritius has been showcased as an economic “<a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/books/9781400845897/9781400845897-010/9781400845897-010.xml">miracle</a>” and a peaceful society where several ethnic groups live in harmony. In reality this harmony is precarious and the idea of the “Mauritian miracle” masks a significant social malaise that cannot be separated from contemporary labour conditions.</p>
<h2>From slavery to indenture</h2>
<p>The first inhabitants of Mauritius were African slaves and the French settlers that forcibly brought them there. With the spread of sugar cultivation on the island, by 1806 the slave population had grown to <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/creating-the-creole-island/?viewby=title">63,000</a>. </p>
<p>After the British conquest in 1810 and following the abolition of slavery in 1835, Indian indentured labourers were brought to the island to continue work on the sugar plantations. </p>
<p>Indenture is generally considered “free labour” when compared with slavery. Indentured labourers are generally recruited rather than kidnapped and they are paid wages. </p>
<p>But in reality the system of recruitment and contractual arrangements placed the indentured workers under the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220388.2013.780039?scroll=top&needAccess=true">total control</a> of plantation owners. Many were deceived into migrating and several were confined in poor accommodation, completely isolated from relatives on other plantations. Planters relied on punishment and confinement to extract maximum labour from migrants. They also curtailed their mobility and prevented them from leaving the plantation. </p>
<p>This led some, like scholar Hugh Tinker, to conclude that the indentured labour system was merely “<a href="http://www.hansibpublications.com/A-NEW-SYSTEM-OF-SLAVERY">slavery by another name</a>”.</p>
<h2>From indenture to independence</h2>
<p>Indentured labour formally came to an end in 1910. Between 1834 and 1910 more than <a href="http://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/41258/sample/9780521641258wsc00.pdf">450,000 migrants</a> of Indian origin (mainly Hindus) disembarked in Port Louis. This mass migration drastically changed the island’s ethnic distribution. From a Creole island, Mauritius became a Hindu dominated society. </p>
<p>In the 1880s and 1890s a process gained momentum that would once again reshape the power structures of Mauritian society. Morcellement schemes – involving the sale of small tracts of land to former labourers – saw land passing into the hands of many Indo-Mauritians. These former indentured labourers came to form a new Indian small <a href="http://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/41258/sample/9780521641258wsc00.pdf">planter class</a> which played an active role in colonial economic life. </p>
<p>The descendants of indentured migrants would eventually come to political power in 1968 when the island gained independence from Britain.</p>
<h2>The “Mauritian miracle” and foreign labour</h2>
<p>Independence saw the establishment of a garment manufacturing sector, a rise in luxury tourism and the recovery of the sugar industry. These resulted in impressive growth rates in post-colonial Mauritius. By the 1990s, in what has been dubbed the <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/books/9781400845897/9781400845897-010/9781400845897-010.xml">“Mauritian miracle”</a>, the island established itself as a middle income country.</p>
<p>But newly industrialised Mauritius once again faced a labour scarcity problem. It addressed this by importing contract workers from low-wage economies in the developing world. This came more than 80 years after the end of the colonial indentured labour system. </p>
<p>As the demand for factory workers in the flourishing <a href="http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/export-processing-zone-EPZ.html">export processing zones</a> increased in the 1980s, Mauritian employers began looking to other South Asian countries to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3876101?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">recruit</a> labour migrants.</p>
<p>Employers soon realised that “foreign labour” was more flexible and that migrant workers were ready to accept poor conditions of work and overtime. By 2014 more than <a href="http://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/mp_mauritius_26aug2014.pdf">38,000</a> workers, mainly from Bangladesh and China, were employed on the island.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.die-erde.org/index.php/die-erde/article/view/313/140">Recent studies</a> have drawn parallels between colonial indenture practices and the modern day contracting of migrant workers. </p>
<p>Despite government regulations and controls there are reports of ongoing <a href="http://www.lexpress.mu/article/274687/travailleurs-bangladais-largent-lespoir-galeres">abuse</a> of migrants. The local newspaper L’express <a href="http://www.lexpress.mu/article/274687/travailleurs-bangladais-largent-lespoir-galeres">has described</a> Bangladeshi migrant labour in Mauritius as “a real trafficking of modern coolies”. </p>
<p>The challenges they face include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The threat of deportation. Recently <a href="http://www.lexpress.mu/article/279677/travailleurs-etrangers-dix-bangladais-ji-yun-deportes">10 Bangladeshis</a> working in a factory had their mobile phones confiscated and were deported without any explanation. </p></li>
<li><p>Overcrowded and poorly furnished <a href="http://www.lexpress.mu/article/271311/trafic-humain-dans-usines-cas-flagrants-dexploitation-travailleurs-etrangers">accommodation</a>. </p></li>
<li><p>The recruitment process often leads to bitter disappointment and high levels of debt bondage. This is because migrant workers pay middlemen and unscrupulous recruiters to get employment. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>It seems ironic that a nation made up mainly of descendants of slaves and immigrants should treat its foreign workers poorly. Today’s migrant workers may not be coerced by colonial economic imperatives such as the mass transportation of “coolies” in the 19th century. But, arguably, postcolonial capitalist economies exploit the vulnerabilities and inequalities that globalisation has produced without weighing the long term consequences.</p>
<h2>Ethnic vulnerabilities and Mauritian nationalism</h2>
<p>Mauritian <a href="http://ile-en-ile.org/lit-mauricienne/">fiction writers</a> are increasingly exposing the darker side of the Mauritian “miracle” –- its <a href="https://www.amazon.in/Rethinking-Global-Mauritius-Srilata-Ravi-ebook/dp/B00Q5HSKGI?ie=UTF8&qid=1477924234&ref_=sr_1_5&s=books&sr=1-5">communalism, intolerance and social prejudices</a>. </p>
<p>They suggest that it has not provided equal access to resources for all Mauritians. Nor has it improved the lot of disadvantaged Creole communities, referred to as the “<a href="http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/BoswellMalaise">malaise créole</a>”. </p>
<p>The segregation and discrimination imposed on migrant labourers only compounds the tension between groups. Problems of rising unemployment and the continued creole malaise are social problems that have not been resolved. The presence of “foreign” workers could very easily further fuel <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2016/08/migrant-labour-fuels-tensions-in-mauritius">violent ethnic tensions</a>. </p>
<p>The danger is that the arrival of modern day “coolies” could easily transform the persisting “malaise créole” into a “malaise Mauricien”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67180/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Srilata Ravi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Slavery, indenture and industrialisation have all contributed to Mauritius’ multiculturalism - and to its deep social tensions.Srilata Ravi, Professor of French, University of AlbertaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/609542016-06-26T13:53:27Z2016-06-26T13:53:27ZBehind the God-swapping in the South African Indian community [part 1]<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127705/original/image-20160622-7158-1sx2i8r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Hindu devotee prepares to participate in a fire-walking ceremony to honour the goddess Draupadi in Durban in 2011.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Rogan Ward</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The first group of Indian indentured labourers <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/history-indians-south-africa-timeline1654-2008">arrived</a> in South Africa in 1860. The majority settled in Natal because they were originally requested by local farmers. Like India, Natal was a British colony. Most of them were Hindus, although not exclusively so. The 19th century immigration of Indian labourers brought two types of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/indian-indentured-labour-natal-1860-1911">immigrants</a> – “indentured” workers and “passenger” Indians. The latter group came at their own expense. They were largely traders and over time became an economic force to reckon with.</em></p>
<p><em>South Africa’s <a href="http://www.southafrica.info/about/people/population.htm#.V2AIc7t97IU#ixzz4BYpLOyAt">Indian population</a> currently stands at 1,286,930 (2.5% of the overall population). The Indian community can be culturally divided into four broad groups along linguistic lines: Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and Gujarati. They are divided along the following major <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/SAStatistics/SAStatistics2012.pdf">religions</a>: Hindu (41.3%), Muslim (24.6%) and Christian (24.4%).</em></p>
<p><em>The interplay between Hinduism and Christianity in the predominantly Hindu Indian community, and in particular the contentious issue of conversion, has been the subject of great debate and intense research. In this two-part series, Professor Pratap Kumar, of South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal, looks at patterns of conversion in the 20th century and the response of leaders in the Hindu community.</em></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/hinduism/">Hinduism</a> is a religion of vast diversity with different philosophical views and religious practices. It has more than 900 million adherents worldwide. Hindus subscribe to some common ideas such as rebirth of the soul based on one’s past actions. Although they worship a variety of gods, such as Vishnu, Shiva or Mother Goddess, they generally think of themselves as of one faith due to similar ideas about life after death.</p>
<p>Christian missionaries in South Africa targeted Hindus to try and convert them. However, contrary to popular belief among the Hindu community, there seems no evidence of significant conversion in the mid-19th century. Much of the Christian <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/missionary-settlement-southern-africa-1800-1925">conversion activity</a> then was focused on African communities.</p>
<p>There were five major Christian denominations active among Indians at the time – Catholics, Methodists, Anglicans, Lutherans and Baptists. Indian members of these churches were not new converts from the Hindu community but rather those who had already been Christian when they arrived in Natal. When the early Indian indentured workers arrived, the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/INDENTURE/Pdfs/Moodley_P_Indentured_Indians_Immigration_to_Natal_1860-1870_Caste_System.pdf">estimated figures</a> along religious lines were as follows: 87% Hindus, 7% Muslims and 4% Christians. </p>
<p>The mission boards did not seem to be that enthusiastic in providing support for the missionary work among the Indian community in order not to cause any disruption to the indentured work. The white farmers were also not so keen for the missionaries to be around the plantations.</p>
<p>The early Christian missionary activity among Indians was mainly focused on providing community services such as clinics, hospitals and schools. Yet, these material benefits yielded hardly any converts.</p>
<p>This is very significant in the context of the early Hindu leaders complaining about conversion. The Arya Samaj is a Hindu reform movement that arrived on the Natal scene in 1905 from India. Its leaders quickly began Hindu reform activity on the assumptions they had made based on their experience in India, where <a href="http://www.saeculumjournal.com/index.php/saeculum/article/view/16382">mass conversions</a> did take place in the mid-19th century.</p>
<p>In Natal, however, the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/INDENTURE/Pdfs/Moodley_P_Indentured_Indians_Immigration_to_Natal_1860-1870_Caste_System.pdf">percentage of Christians</a> among Indians in the 19th and early 20th centuries remained constant at 4%.</p>
<h2>Threat to the Hindu faith</h2>
<p>Still, the leaders of Hindu organisations in South Africa saw conversion as a threat to their faith. At its 1918 council meeting, the Hindu Maha Sabha, a council established by various Hindu organisations, urged all Hindu parents to <a href="http://www.kznhass-history.net/files/seminars/Gopalan2012.pdf">protest</a> against the religious instruction given at the Christian mission schools.</p>
<p>In the initial period of indenture in Natal it was Christian missionaries who established schools for Indian education where Christian religious education was part of the curriculum. As there were no non-Christian schools at the time, the Indian community demanded that government schools be established in place of mission schools for fear of their children being converted to Christianity. In the absence of any statistical evidence pointing to a significant growth in the original Indian Christian population in Natal during the early period, it is difficult to correlate material benefits directly to conversion. </p>
<h2>Pentecostal impact</h2>
<p>So, if material benefits failed to yield conversions, the question then is: what was the basis of the success of the Pentecostals who came onto the scene later in the early 20th century?</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=ZyZYTCpnyKsC&pg=PA227&lpg=PA227&dq=Gerald+Pillay,+writing+in+Christianity+in+South+Africa&source=bl&ots=BlDCKXgSQj&sig=R1IG-h9mFWCVpioYmOh67TD93Fc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzu_2p06fNAhVC2xoKHbeoDD4Q6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=Gerald%20Pillay%2C%20writing%20in%20Christianity%20in%20South%20Africa&f=false">It is largely three factors</a> that made a significant difference to people who were at the lower rungs of society.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>First, what is known as the “holiness gospel” that emphasised sin.</p></li>
<li><p>Second, the “prosperity gospel” that emphasised poverty. These two Christian preaching modes tended to focus on different lifestyles. </p></li>
<li><p>The third factor was the focus on social ills such as drugs and crime.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Instead of being involved in community service, the Pentecostals placed emphasis on critiquing Hindu belief systems and caste practices. They focused on healing and exorcism. The Pentecostals have made significant inroads since the early 20th century to date in South Africa.</p>
<p>Gerald Pillay, writing in “<a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=ZyZYTCpnyKsC&pg=PA227&lpg=PA227&dq=Gerald+Pillay,+writing+in+Christianity+in+South+Africa&source=bl&ots=BlDCKXgSQj&sig=R1IG-h9mFWCVpioYmOh67TD93Fc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzu_2p06fNAhVC2xoKHbeoDD4Q6AEIIzAB#v=onepage&q=Gerald%20Pillay%2C%20writing%20in%20Christianity%20in%20South%20Africa&f=false">Christianity in South Africa</a>”, points out that Pentecostal churches became so active that between 1925 and 1980 the Indian membership of the Pentecostal churches grew larger than all the other Christian denominations put together. It remains the case today. </p>
<p><em>So why did conversion, especially when driven by the Pentecostals, happen? In the second article in the two part-series, Professor Kumar examines this and the Hindu community’s response.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60954/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>P. Pratap Kumar receives funding from National Research Foundation of South Africa</span></em></p>Since the 1920s Pentecostal churches have had a major impact in South Africa’s Indian community. Their converts have grown larger than all the other Christian denominations put together.P. Pratap Kumar, Emeritus Professor, School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics, University of KwaZulu-NatalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.