Indentured servitude is a type of labor in which a person is forced to work for a set period of

time without pay. An "indenture" is a contract that can be entered willingly for future recompense
or debt repayment, or it can be imposed as a court penalty.Indentured service varied from
slavery in that it was a type of debt bondage, i.e., an agreed-upon period of unpaid labor that
generally covered the servant's costs of immigration to America. Indentured servants were not
paid salaries, although they were housed, clothed, and nourished in most cases.

Following the end of the slave trade in the early nineteenth century, the Indian indenture system
was a system of indentured servitude in which over one million Indians were brought to work in
European colonies as a substitute for slave labor. After the abolition of slavery in the British
Empire in 1833, the French colonies in 1848, and the Dutch Empire in 1863, the system spread.
Indentureship in India existed until the 1920s. As a result, a sizable Indian diaspora has
developed in the Caribbean, East Africa, Réunion, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar,
and Fiji, as well as the establishment of Indo-Caribbean, Indo-African, Indo-Fijian, and Indo-
Malaysian cultures.

https://guyanachronicle.com/2014/05/05/east-indian-immigration-1838-1917/