A punitive tax forced Indian indentured workers back into servitude in South Africa

Evidence

It was the year Indian workers rose against a new three-pound tax and against a new marriage law that made their existing marriages illegal and their children illegitimate. The year the three-pound tax was imposed on those who had worked off their indenture and wanted to live on in South Africa as free citizens. Being unaffordable, the tax would have forced workers to re-indenture and lock themselves into a cycle of servitude. — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 261

Categorization

• XREF: The marriage law that retroactively illegitimized Indian marriages parallels colonial impositions on non-Western family forms.