Tony Blair could solve his contrition dilemma quite easily: he should postpone the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery by 110 years. For an estimated 2.5 million Indians, slavery ended not in 1807, because of William Wilberforce, but in 1917, thanks to Mahatma Gandhi. A marginally prettier term was used for post-modern slavery: indentured labour. The fiction was that the new slaves had volunteered, and in theory they were entitled to return passage in five years. One hundred and seventy years later they are still waiting. The figures are equal: Britain enslaved some 2.5 million from Africa.
There is a bitter word in Bihar: girmitya. It is a corruption of "agreement" and describes the dread of agents, thugs or smoothies who kidnapped or bluffed the destitute, and sent them away to lands from which they would never return.
It took a while after 1807 for as vital an economic institution as slavery - the British, with some 2.5 million slaves, the same number as indentured labour, were second only to Portugal - to wind down. By the 1830s, slaves on British plantations had begun to exercise their right to freedom. Africa could not remain the catchment area for replacements - this trick would not be sustainable. The eye of the British government turned to its most lucrative colony, India. By this time, British rule extended up to Bhojpuri-speaking Bihar in the north, and between Madras and Mysore in the south. The famines that resulted from unprecedented taxation following Lord Cornwallis' Permanent Settlement killed millions in Bengal and left those who survived on the edge of desperation. From this pool came the new slaves.
The first batch of Biharis reached British Guiana in 1836. Within two years, Charles Anderson, a British magistrate on the island, unable to contain his anger, complained to London about the severity with which Indians were treated. Whipping, imprisonment and death were common, often through starvation. Nothing had changed except for the colour of the slaves. The pressure became so strong that the Colonial Secretary suspended the import of Indian labour in 1840.
Slavery had powerful allies when legal, including the Church of England, which used slaves on its sugar plantations and lobbied against abolition in Parliament. An alliance of the Church and the City had to be appeased, and it was. By 1844, after fruitless attempts to find Chinese labour from Malacca and Africans from Sierra Leone, London decided that commerce was more important than morality. The theft of Indians resumed, and they soon began to fill the British Empire cash-crop havens of Mauritius, Fiji,
Jamaica and Trinidad first, eventually followed by Natal, Malaya, Ceylon and Burma. Women were picked up to solve the problem of sex-starvation, and learnt the meaning of slavery when they were raped by British crews en route. Those who died in the squalor and disease of the ships were thrown overboard. By the 1880s, destitution in Bihar and Avadh had forced even high caste Brahmins into indentured labour, making them a powerful community in places like Fiji. The patois of Mauritius includes a heavy strain of Bhojpuri, and its music is a fascinating blend of Bihar, Britain and France.
For evidence, Mr Blair does not have to return to Oxbridge or even pick up a history book. All he to do is turn to Sky Sports, and watch the West Indies play Pakistan. Why do you think one third of the West Indies cricket team is named Chanderpaul, Ganga, Mohammad or Ramadhin? They are the children of Hindus and Muslims of India, enslaved to enrich the Empire after the Great Deception of 1807.