Living conditions on the sugar cane plantations, on which most of the "girmityas" (indentured labourers) worked, were often squalid, degrading and brutal.
In 2007 prosecutors filed charges against 160 construction companies for flouting the summer ban on labourers working outdoors during the hottest part of the day.
Not every adult's occupation was recorded, but where the census taker kept a record, he described most individuals as crofters, agricultural labourers, or farm servants.
