The kangani system was a form of labour recruitment and organisation in parts of Southeast Asia under British colonial rule, generally in operation from the early 19th century until the early 20th century, specifically the areas now known as

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

, and

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

. The system was similar to

indentured servitude Indentured servitude is a form of Work (human activity), labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensa ...

and both were in operation during the same period, with the kangani system becoming more popular from late 19th century onward. Under the kangani system, recruitment and management were taken up by people called the ''kangani'' (from the Tamil word for 'The one who observes', an equivalent for the English word foreman; The root word 'Kan' in Tamil means eye.), who directly recruited migrants from

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

—especially

South India South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the States and union territories of India, Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and T ...

in Tamil-majority areas—via networks of friends, family and other contacts, with that same person then responsible for the supervision of the labourers they recruited. The leader of these groups of immigrants had considerable control over their affairs and generally forced them to enter debt-bondage relationships by illegally deducting their wages. In smaller groups, they might work as labourers themselves in addition to their other responsibilities but in larger groups their role was more one of organisation, supervision and dealing with the landowner. With certain estimates showing that nearly 1 in 8 Indian labourers in Burma was a kangani, some have argued that stepping into the role of recruiter and supervisor, with its accompanied rise in income and status, was a relatively achievable form of social mobility among the labourers of the plantations

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