A Record of Concealed Indentured Labour in Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies

Indian diaspora has been spread across the world vividly, and each phase records different characteristics or motives for a migrant's movement. During the colonial period, a lot of people moved away from their roots as Girmitya's or Indentured labours. Their thumb impression acted as their ID card for working as an indentured worker; thus, they soon started to accept the form of enslavement. It was an involuntary force that led them to migrate from their rooted place in search of new life and liberty in a foreign land under colonial rule and thus they became a part of the diaspora. This paper focuses on Amitav Ghosh's novel Sea of Poppies which narrates an untold tale of the griefs of the "Girmitya system" during the colonial phase. The novel Sea of Poppies is set in the 19th century and it depicts the East India Company's imposing designs on the Girmitya system through Deeti, the female character of the novel and other characters who decide to move across the Indian Ocean to an unfamiliar island where they are ready to substitute with new identities. The Metaphor of the novel is the migration and displacement of the indentured slaves who were sent in Ibis a ship, set to move