From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians: The Making of a Girmitiya Diaspora (GeoJournal Library) 9811933669, 9789811933660

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Urban Perspectives from the Global South

N. Jayaram

From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians The Making of a Girmitiya Diaspora

GeoJournal Library

Urban Perspectives from the Global South Series Editors Christian M. Rogerson, School of Tourism and Hospitality, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park, Gauteng, South Africa Gustav Visser, Geography and Environmental Studies, Stellenbosch University, Matieland, South Africa

The Urban Perspectives from the Global South brings together a wide variety of urban scholars under one series title and is purposefully multi-disciplinary. The publications in this series are theoretically informed and explore different facets of varying sized urban places. This series addresses the broad developmental issues of urbanization in developing world countries and provides a distinctive African focus on the subject. It examines a variety of themes relating to urban development in the global South including: city economic development, issues of local governance, urban planning, and the impact of multi-ethnic and multicultural formations in urban affairs. The series aims to extend current international urban debates and offer new insights into the development of urban places in the Global South from a number of disciplines including geography, sociology, political science, economics, as well as urban studies. A special focus of the series is the challenges of urbanization and cities in Africa.

N. Jayaram

From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians The Making of a Girmitiya Diaspora

N. Jayaram Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

ISSN 0924-5499 ISSN 2215-0072 (electronic) GeoJournal Library ISSN 2511-2171 ISSN 2511-218X (electronic) Urban Perspectives from the Global South ISBN 978-981-19-3366-0 ISBN 978-981-19-3367-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

For my Indo-Trinidadian friends Brinsley Samaroo, Dhanayshar Mahabir, Nasser Mustapha, and Ramesh Deosaran

Preface

In September 1993, the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) offered me the Chair of Indian Studies at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago (UWI) which the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India has been supporting since the mid-1960s. For three years (1994–1966), I was attached as Visiting Professor at UWI’s Department of Sociology, which was reorganised as Department of Behavioural Sciences. My brief was primarily to teach courses on Indian society and culture and Indian communities overseas. Additionally, I was expected to study the community of Indo-Trinidadians that had evolved in Trinidad by the settlement of the indentured immigrants, who had been taken from India during 1845–1917. Honestly, I knew nothing about Trinidad or Indo-Trinidadians till then; I knew a bit about the West Indies, that too from reading the sports page of newspapers reporting test cricket. I bought a copy of a travel book on Trinidad and Tobago and made enquiries with my predecessor P. K. Mishra, who had returned after completing his assignment there. These made me look forward to a wonderful experience as a sociologist in a foreign country with people of Indian descent. My real sociological engagement with Indo-Trinidadians, however, began once I started exploring the rare and excellent collection of books, reports, and documents at the West Indiana and Special Collections Division in The Alma Jordan Library at UWI. Complementing this was my extensive though intermittent fieldwork among Indo-Trinidadians. During the three years I made copious notes from my reading of the sources at the West Indiana and the literature that was generously made available to me by several scholars and concerned Indo-Trinidadians. I also made detailed field notes and transcribed the interviews with key informants. Although I used these notes in classroom lectures, seminar presentations, and articles in journals and book chapters in anthologies, I never could write a book on the subject. My attempts at it were aborted as I kept changing jobs—five times in 18 years; the project lapsed into suspended animation. My subsequent three short-duration visits to Trinidad— in 2008, 2014, and 2017—at UWI’s invitation as a doctoral examiner kept my interest in the project from extirpation.

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Preface

As providence would have it, I was invited to deliver one of the keynote speeches at the international conference on the Indian diaspora in The Hague in October 2017. After my speech, I had an insightful discussion with Brij Vilas Lal, who was by then well-known as the general editor of The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora (2006, Editions Didier Millet in association with National University of Singapore). Lal was of the opinion that the material that I had collected needs to be published in the form of a book and he even suggested how I could go about writing it. In later email communications, he recommended the expression ‘girmitiya’ diaspora, instead of the ‘Old’ Indian diaspora, as it captures the unique sociological phenomenon that was the subject of my research. It is unfortunate that he is no more with us to see how his insights and suggestions have been put to use. I remember him with gratitude. In writing this book I have incurred a debt of gratitude, which I know I can never repay. Of the innumerable people and institutions on whose generosity of time and consideration that my work depended, I can mention only a few here. First and foremost is Brinsley Samaroo, colleague and benefactor whose affection made him a ghar ka admi. He took me round the Indo-Trinidadian settlements in the central and southern parts of the island, allowed me to accompany him to family gatherings and rituals, shared his circle of friends, and introduced me to many key informants. He also brought to my attention writings of interest, presented copies of some and lent the others for my perusal. He clarified my doubts and explained the nuances of what I had observed in the field. He lives through the pages of this book. Nasser Mustapha, a younger colleague in the department, showered me with affection. He took me to some meetings, masjids, kitab (Koran) readings, and Muslim weddings. I hardly have a count of the ‘doubles’ that we ate together and shopped for Julie mangoes. My neighbour in the office was a young and energetic economist Dhanayshar Mahabir, whose knowledge of the Indo-Trinidadians in rural Cunupia was of immense help to me. We met almost every day and our meetings in either of our office rooms or in a pizza joint, helped me interpret the data that I was collecting and understand their nuances. I also developed a cordial relationship with Ramesh Deosaran, who as head of the department provided me the facilities that I wished for and extended support to me in my research work. At his instance, I got involved in the development of a Master’s programme in Advanced Sociology, and teaching the first batch of its students gave me an opportunity to interact with a mature set of students, who provided me a window to the thought-process of the younger generation of Trinidadians. It won’t do for me just to say ‘Thank You’ to this quartet; I dedicate this book to these Indo-Trinidadian friends. Others at UWI who enriched my understanding of the history, society, and culture of Indo-Trinidadians include Bridget Brereton, Daurius Figueira, John La Guerre, Keith Laurence, Walton Look Lai, Ronald Marshall, Ken Parmasad, Ralph Premdas, Marianne Ramesar, Anand Rampersad, Rhoda Reddock, Selwyn Ryan, Kelvin Singh, and Patrick Watson. I thank them all for the help and advice received. I also thank the students who did their course on the Indian diaspora with me; the discussions with them, both inside and outside the classroom, was richly rewarding. It will be amiss if I do not place on record my gratitude to all my informants who gave their time and extended their warm hospitality during my field visits.

Preface

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Sookdeo Bhagwandeen at The Alma Jordan Library and Manohar Sookhoo at the Computer Centre went out of their way to help me. Helen Alexander, Chandra Katwaroo-Ali, Vidia Lall, Ruvella Melville, Yovonne Naraine, and Scott Ramjattan—the secretarial staff of the department and the faculty of social sciences— were ever cheerful. The fun that we had with each other’s pronunciations made the office atmosphere so friendly. I remember them all fondly. My thanks are also due to the ICCR and the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India for deputing me to UWI and supporting my sojourn there. A special word of thanks to Amb. Bharat Raj Muthukumar, the then Director General of ICCR for all his help. I also received unstinted assistance and cooperation from the officials and staff of the High Commission of India at Port of Spain. I have fond memories of my interaction with the late Professor Chintamani Lakshmanna, then High Commissioner of India there. Life in a foreign land could often be lonely, even when you are surrounded by people. My wife, son, and I never felt such loneliness thanks to the friendship that we enjoyed from the families of some expatriate teachers at UWI: the Bailoors, the Keshavans, and the Prabhus deserve special mention. Similarly, close to us were the families of two Hindi professors who had then been posted in Trinidad by ICCR: V. R. Jagannathan and Neela Jagannathan, and Y. Vekataramana Rao and Rajeshwari V. Rao My wife Vijayalakshmi and son Vinay were part of my sociological exploration for two years. The friendship that my wife developed with people in our neighbourhood and the interaction that my son had with his classmates from different ethnic groups in the school were beneficial to me in the form of spontaneous second-hand ethnographic data. Additionally, my wife has gone through the entire text of this book more than once and brought to my attention the errors of omission and commission. I am thankful for her support in this endeavour. At Springer, Satvinder Kaur has been persuasive, persistent, and understanding. The completion of this project owes much to her. Bengaluru, India

N. Jayaram

Contents

1

2

3

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Prelude to the Arrival of Indians: A Brief Social History of Trinidad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Understanding the Making of a Girmitiya Diaspora . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Metamorphosis as an Analytical Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

4 12 17 19

Indentured Migration to Trinidad: Recruitment, Journey, and Life in the Estate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Recruitment of Labourers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.1 The System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.2 Catchment Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1.3 The Push to Emigration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 The Passage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Emigration Depot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 The Ships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3 The Voyage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.4 The Arrival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Life in the Estate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23 26 26 30 33 35 35 36 37 39 40 44

Settlement and Community Formation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 The Evolution of a Girmitiya Diasporic Community . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.1 Population: The Settlers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.2 Land: The Settlements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1.3 Economic Activities: The Material Basis for Settlement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Village Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

47 47 49 51 53 57 62

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4

Contents

Ethnicity and Ethnic Mobilisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Resistance, Racial Animosity, and Cultural Resilience . . . . . . . . . 4.1.1 Resistance and Struggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.2 Racial Animosity and Ethnicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.1.3 Cultural Resilience and Ethnicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Representation of Ethnic Interests: Leadership, Associations, and the Print Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 Village Community, Panchayats, and Local Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.2 Ethnic Organisations and National Leadership . . . . . . . . 4.2.3 The Early Indian Print Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Indians and the Labour Struggles, 1919–1939 and Beyond . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

65 66 66 68 68 70 70 71 75 75 79

5

Elections and the Politicisation of Race and Ethnicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 5.1 Introduction of Universal Adult Suffrage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 5.2 The Run Up to Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 5.3 The First Two Decades of Independence, 1961–1981 . . . . . . . . . . 91 5.4 The Alliance Experiment, 1981–1991 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 5.5 Panday’s Pathway to Power, 1991–1995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

6

Sex-Ratio Disparity and Marriage: Erasures and Reconstitutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1 Erasures and Disintegration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.1 Sex-Ratio Disparity and Its Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.1.2 Non-recognition of Hindu and Muslim Marriages . . . . . 6.2 The Re-Institutionalisation of Marriage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Endogamy: Challenge and Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.1 Inter-caste and Intra-varna Marriages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.2 Religious Endogamy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3.3 Racial Endogamy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 The Marriage Rites and Rituals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.1 Marriage Among Hindus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.2 Marriage Among Muslims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.3 Marriage Among Presbyterians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4.4 Polygamy, Extra-Marital Relations, and Infidelity . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

109 110 111 118 122 126 126 129 130 134 134 136 137 137 138

Family, Kinship, and Gender Relations: Erasures and Reconstitutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Family and Household . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Kinship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1 Kinship Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2 Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Status of Woman and Gender Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

143 143 145 147 150 152

7

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7.3.1 De-constitution of Patriarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.2 Re-constitution of Patriarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.3 Challenges to Patriarchy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

152 153 155 162

8

Religion, Ethnic Protest, and Cultural Contestation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 Encounter with Christianity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Religion as Protest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.1 Firepass Ceremony . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.2 Hosay (Muharram) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.3 Temple in the Sea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Religious Idiom in Cultural Contestations in Recent Times . . . . . 8.3.1 The Trinity Cross Episode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.2 The Hijab Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

165 166 170 171 173 177 179 180 184 189

9

Religion and Society I: Trinidad Hinduism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1 Indians in a Multi-religious Polity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Trinidad Hinduism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.1 Religious Organisation as an Ethnic Forum . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.2 Christianity and Hinduism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.3 The Ramayana and Ramleela . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.4 Festivals, Pujas, and Samskaras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2.5 Caste Among Trinidad Hindus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

193 194 197 198 202 203 208 212 218

10 Religion and Society II: Presbyterianism, Islam, and Syncretic Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1 Presbyterianism: An Indian Church in Trinidad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1.1 The Origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1.2 Evangelism Through Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1.3 Preaching Christianity Through the Hindi Medium . . . . 10.1.4 The Church in Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 Islam and Indio-Trinidadian Muslims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2.1 Two Early Muslim Leaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2.2 The Sectarian Schisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2.3 The Indo-Trinidadian Muslim Vis-À-Vis India and Pakistan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2.4 Hinduism and Indo-Trinidadian Muslims . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 Religious Syncretism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.1 La Divina Pastora/Sipari Mai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

223 224 224 226 228 229 232 234 235 240 241 243 244 250

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Contents

11 Culture and the Community: Language and Foodways . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1 Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.1 Diglossia, and the Birth and Death of Trinidad Bhojpuri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.2 Presbyterian Mission and the Rise and Decline of Standard Hindi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.3 Bhojpuri/Hindi in Early Indo-Trinidadian Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.4 Attrition of Trinidad Bhojpuri and Standard Hindi . . . . . 11.1.5 Retention and Survival of Linguistic Heritage . . . . . . . . . 11.1.6 Ethnicity and Linguistic Revival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.1.7 Prospects of Hindi as an Ethnic Language . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 Foodways . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.1 Breaking Commensality Barriers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.2 Revivals, Adaptations, and Innovations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2.3 Of Fasting and Feasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

253 254

12 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.1 India in the Indian Diaspora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2 The Metamorphosis of the Girmitiya Socio-cultural Bundal . . . . 12.3 Social Construction of the ‘Other’ Indian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.4 Indo-Trinidadians Today: Ethnicity not Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

283 284 285 287 291 294

254 258 259 261 263 264 266 268 269 270 275 279

Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297 Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

About the Author

N. Jayaram retired as Professor of Sociology from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He was Visiting Professor of Indian Studies at The University of the West Indies, Trinidad. The areas of his interest include the Study of Indian Diaspora and Theory and Methods in Sociology. He was the Managing Editor of Sociological Bulletin (2000–2015), the journal of the Indian Sociological Society, and a recipient of ET Now Education Leadership Award (2013) and Lifetime Achievement Award (2020–2021) of the Indian Sociological Society.

xv

Abbreviations

ACDC ANC ASJA ATSEFWTU BECWHRP BVS CoP CSP DAC DLP EINA EINC HASC HNC HPK ICCR NAR NATT NCIC NJAC ONR OWTU PDP PNM POPPG PPG SDMS SPAN SPIC SRP TIA

Action Committee for Democratic Citizens African National Congress Anjuman Sunaatul Jamaat Association All Trinidad Sugar Estate and Factory Workers Trade Union The British Empire Citizens’ and Workers’ Home Rule Party Bharatiya Vidya Sansthaan Congress of People Caribbean Socialist Party Democratic Action Congress Democratic Labour Party East Indian National Association East Indian National Congress Hijab-at-Schools Committee Holy Name Convent Hindu Prachar Kendra Indian Council of Cultural Relations, New Delhi National Alliance for Reconstruction National Alliance of Trinidad and Tobago National Council of Indian Culture, Chaguanas National Joint Action Committee Organisation of National Reconstruction The Oilfield Workers Trade Union The Progressive Democratic Party Peoples National Movement Party of Political Progress Groups Political Progress Group Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha Society for the Propagation of African Nationalism Society for the Propagation of Indian Culture Special Reserve Police Tackveeyatul Islamic Association of Trinidad xvii

xviii

TLP TML TUC and SP TUC TWA ULF UNC UWI WIFP Womantra

Abbreviations

Trinidad Labour Party Trinidad Muslim League Trade Union Council and Socialist Party Trade Union Congress Trinidad Workingmen’s Association United Labour Front United National Congress The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago West Indian Federal Parliament WOMAN and MANTRA; a feminist organisation

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1

Fig. 1.2

Political map of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Source https://www.ezilon.com/maps/north-america/ trinidad-and-tobago-maps.html (accessed on 23 November 2018) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Diagrammatic representation of metamorphosis in diaspora. Source Prepared by the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5 18

xix

List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 1.2 Table 2.1 Table 3.1 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3 Table 5.4 Table 5.5 Table 5.6 Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 6.3 Table 6.4 Table 8.1 Table 8.2 Table 9.1 Table 9.2

Indians introduced into Trinidad, mainly under indenture, 1845–1918, and known to have returned to India . . . . . . . . . . . . . Indians introduced into various colonies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Main recruitment districts (1845–1917) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Age of Indian emigrants to Trinidad (1874–1917) . . . . . . . . . . . . Results of general elections to the legislative council (1946, 1950, and 1956) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results of elections (1958–1961) in which PNM and DLP were the main contenders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results of general elections to the legislative council (1966, 1971, and 1976) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results of general elections to the legislative council (1981, 1986, and 1991) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results of general elections to the legislative council (1995) . . . Abstract of the results of general elections to the legislative council (2000, 2001, 2007, 2010, 2015, and 2020) . . . . . . . . . . . Females despatched from India to Trinidad, 1845–1917 . . . . . . . The proportion of women among Indians in Trinidad, 1891 through 1970 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Religion and caste of women who embarked from Calcutta to Trinidad during 1876–1892 and 1908–1917 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The proportion of women residents on the estates in Trinidad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Religion of Indians who embarked from Calcutta to Trinidad during 1874/1875–1910/1917 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Distribution of Indians by religion in Trinidad, 1891–1946 . . . . Religious composition of Trinidad & Tobago’s population, 2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Religious/denominational composition of ethnic groups in Trinidad & Tobago’s population, 1970 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

10 13 32 60 85 89 92 97 102 104 112 113 115 116 167 168 195 196 xxi

xxii

Table 9.3 Table 9.4

List of Tables

Ethnic group representation of Trinidad & Tobago’s population in different religions/denominations, 1970 . . . . . . . . . Religious distribution of Indo-Trinidadians by their residence, 1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

196 197

List of Photographs

Photograph 2.1

Photograph 2.2

Photograph 2.3

Photograph 3.1

Photograph 8.1

Rhine (with the studding sails set), the ship that made nine trips to Trinidad from India between 1888 and 1906 carrying girmitiyas (see Appendix 2.1). Source https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:StateLibQld_1_174583_Rhine_(ship).jpg (Courtesy John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland copyright free) (Accessed 31 January 2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Newly arrived girmitiyas in Trinidad, c. 1897. Source https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Newly_arrived_coolies_in_Trinidad.jpg (copyright free) (Accessed 31 January 2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Indian woman, Trinidad, c. 1890–1896. Source https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indian_ Woman,_Trinidad_(13226374243).jpg copyright free courtesy DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA) (Accessed 31 January 2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Women and children in a rural settlement, Trinidad, c. 1914. Source https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Collectie_Nationaal_Museum_van_ Wereldculturen_TM-0062002_Groepsfoto_van_ vrouwen_en_kinderen_Trinidad_fotograaf_niet _bekend.jpg (copyright free) (Accessed 31 January 2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hosay procession in Trinidad, 28 January 1948. Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File: Indian_Muslims_taking_out_a_procession,_Tri nidad,_1948.jpg UK National Archive Catalogue Reference: INF 10/352/1 (copyright free) (Accessed January 31, 2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37

40

43

57

177 xxiii

xxiv

Photograph 8.2

Photograph 9.1 Photograph 9.2

Photograph 9.3

Photograph 9.4

Photograph 10.1

Photograph 10.2

Photograph 11.1

List of Photographs

Temple in the Sea: Siewdass Sadhu Temple in the Sea, Waterloo, Trinidad, 2008. Source Photograph taken by the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Hindu kutiya, Trinidad, 1996. Source Photograph taken by the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sri Dattatreya Yoga Centre (estd. 1986), Carapichaima, Trinidad, 2008. Note The temple, built according to the Dravidian style of architecture of South India, was inaugurated in 2003. Source Photograph taken by the author . . . . . . . . . Entrance to the venue of Ramleela, Dow Village, California, Trinidad, 2014. Note Dow Village has the distinction of hosting Ramleela since 1880. The murals of the compound of the Ramleela complex show some scenes from the Ramayana. Source Photograph taken by the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jhandi fixed near the sacred pipal (ashvattha) tree, Trinidad, 2008. Source Photograph taken by the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Krist Mandali Presbyterian Church (estd. 1886), Monkey Town, Barrackpore, Trinidad. Source https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Presbyterian_Church,_Barrackpore_area,_Tri nidad_and_Tobago.JPG (copyright free) (Accessed January 31, 2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Masjid, Avocat Village, Trinidad, c. 2017. Source https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Masjid_-Avocat_Village,_Trinidad_and_Tobago. jpgxxx (courtesy Kalamazadkhan copyright free) (Accessed January 31, 2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Doubles: The number one street food of Trinidad & Tobago. Source https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Doubles-GT.jpg (Courtesy GeoTrinity [Wikimedia Commons] copyright free) (Accessed January 31, 2022) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

179 199

201

207

211

225

234

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Chapter 1

Introduction

Those who were aware of the fallacy of calling Trinidad and the neighbouring countries the ‘West Indies’ would perhaps have been gratified to know that a real Indian element had come to stay in this ‘new’ part of the world. —Jagdish Chandra Jha (1985: 1)

Social anthropologists and sociologists treat the societies they study and the communities living there as axiomatic and given. In the youthful stage of their discipline, social anthropologists invariably went out of their country of origin and/or training to study ‘other’ societies and communities, often located in isolation in far-off lands or islands. They devoted themselves to the study of small and ‘primitive societies directly, living among them for months or years’ (Evans-Pritchard, 1951: 11). They became ‘the biographers of single societies’, ‘societies “without history”, and [with] cultures of an “exotic” nature’ (Nadel, 1951: 6). Sociologists, on the other hand, mostly studied their own societies, not in their entirety, but specialising in select aspects or isolated problems. Obviously, they used different methods for the collection and analysis of their data than did social anthropologists. However, over the decades the difference between social anthropology and sociology seems to have been blurred with both of them traversing the conventional boundaries of their disciplines and using the same concepts, theories, and methods. Historians, too, have treated countries and societies they write about as axiomatic and given. They basically seek to understand and explain the linear succession of events; their focus is mainly on the structure and functioning of regimes and the changes they undergo. Historians analyse the rise and fall, and disappearance of civilisations, and have focused on specific epochal events such as wars and revolutions, holocausts and genocides, colonial conquests and liberation struggles, socio-political mobilisations and movements, catastrophic famines, and so on. Social anthropologists and sociologists have found the work of historians useful in understanding the processes of social change and social transformation. While all these disciplines have enriched our understanding of human society and culture and the changes that they have undergone and are undergoing, they all have taken for granted the existence of societies and communities that they have studied and written about. They have seldom asked how did these societies come into existence and how were the communities living there formed. Of course, Karl Marx, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7_1

1

2

1 Introduction

who rose above disciplinary distinctions, was a notable exception. His delineation of the evolutionary typology of societies from the perspective of materialist dialectics is unique (see Marx, 1963). But his interest was in explaining the origin of a particular economic formation, namely, capitalism (and its social superstructure in the form of bourgeois society), its structure and functioning, and its possible future. He was primarily interested in a particular socio-economic formation, not in any society or community existing in reality. There are, however, societies that have come into existence almost as if it were from scratch and communities that have been formed albeit from migration of people from one part of the world to the other, whether voluntarily or through the use of force. In some cases, this has been preceded by the decimation of the indigenous population that had lived in that country for centuries and transplanting people from other countries, who are then forced to evolve themselves as communities and form themselves as a society. One such country is Trinidad and Tobago, whose indigenous Amerindian people, known as Arawak and Carib, were decimated by the Spanish colonial conquistadors. The country was subsequently repopulated, through the importation of slaves from Africa since the sixteenth century and, later in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, through the importation of indentured labourers from India, with smaller groups of migrants from Europe, the Middle East, and China.1 Trinidadian society today is mostly constituted by the descendants of a plurality of immigrant ethnic groups and a significant section of the progeny of mixed ethnic groups. Demographically, Trinidad and Tobago is one of the most diverse countries in the world in terms of ethnicity, culture, and religion. It is often described as a ‘Rainbow Country’2 or more fondly as a ‘callaloo’, a local dish prepared by blending a variety of ingredients. However, Indo-Trinidadians (or the East Indians, as they are officially called) and Afro-Trinidadians (or Africans, as they are officially called) constitute the two numerically dominant ethnic communities.3 Most of the IndoTrinidadians live on the main island of Trinidad, where they constitute the single largest community (37.01% of 1,267,145); they constitute only 2.54% (of 60,874)

1

It is reported that by 1784 in Trinidad there was a total of almost 4500 non-native people and only 1495 native Amerindians. By 1797, the population of non-natives, including Europeans, slaves, and people of mixed blood, had increased to about 16,000 and that of the native Amerindians had dwindled to about 1000 (Johnson, 1988: 19; Moore, 1995: 111). According to the 2011 Housing and Population Census, in the total population of 1,328,019, there were only 1294 Amerindians, most of them mixed, constituting just 0.1% of the population (Central Statistical Office, 2012: 1 and 6). There is no longer a distinct racial presence of Arawak or Carib. 2 This description is attributed to the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu (https://www.semesteratsea. org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/8.-TRI-Publish-Program-FA16-FINAL.pdf [accessed December 4, 2020]). 3 According to the 2011 Housing and Population Census, 35.43% of the population were ‘East Indians’, and 34.22%, were ‘Africans’. As much as 22.81% of the population was mixed, and 7.70 percentage points of this was the mixture between Africans and East Indians, and are called Dougla (Central Statistical Office, 2012: 6).

1 Introduction

3

of the population in the secondary island of Tobago (Central Statistical Office, 2012: 6).4 The Indo-Trinidadians are the descendants of 143,939 indentured labourers, who were brought into Trinidad over 73 years to mainly work in the sugar plantations. The first batch of these labourers landed in the Gulf of Paria by the ship Fatel Razack 5 on 30 May 1845, before being transported to the capital Port of Spain, and the last batch, by the ship S. S. Ganges on 22 April 1917, the year in which the system of indentured labour migration was ended in British India. Called girmitiyas6 because they were recruited through an agreement (girmit, corrupt form in Bhojpuri and Hindi), they were predominantly single and male. This book explores the dynamics of the socio-cultural baggage that these, mostly indigent, indentured migrants took with them from their homeland, India, and the saga of their evolution as a vibrant girmitiya diaspora7 community in Trinidad over a century and half. The analysis presented in this book is mainly based on my fieldwork among Indo-Trinidadians during my three-year (1994–1996) sojourn at The University of the West Indies at its St Augustine Campus in Trinidad and the updating that I have done during the three short subsequent visits (in 2006, 2014, and 2017) to that island. My fieldnotes are analysed in the background of my reading of the history of girmitiya migration to Trinidad and the process of girmitiya settlement there after the completion of their indenture. Substantively, the book deals with key social institutions and cultural practices, and its analytical framework, as will be made clear later, is guided by the concept of metamorphosis. Before embarking on the analysis of the transformation of ‘Indians in Trinidad’ (or ‘East Indians’, as they have been officially labelled and also referred to by their significant others) into the hyphenated community of ‘Indo-Trinidadians’, it is only apposite to introduce the socio-historical context in which this transformation has 4

Most of Tobago’s population is Afro-Trinidadians (85.29%), who constitute the second largest community (31.76%) in Trinidad (Central Statistical Office, 2012: 6). 5 Fatel Razak (Arabic: Fath al Razak, Victory of Allah, the Provider) or Futtle Razak, as its name was entered on the ship’s manifest, was built in Aprenade for a trader named Ibrahim bin Yussef, an Indian Muslim merchant in Bombay (now Mumbai). It was constructed from teakwood and had a carrying capacity of 415 tons; a small ship considering that it had to sail across two oceans (Samaroo, 1995). Moore (2010), however, dismisses this as an etymological fancy, not a historical fact. According to him, the ship was named after its owner, Abdool Rozack Dugman, a Mogul merchant who resided in Calcutta. More recently, he has written that the ship was built in Denmark for Ibrahim bin Yussef, a wealthy Muslim merchant of Bombay (see Moore, 2020: xi). In his chronological table of events in Trinidad from 1782, Hart mentions the name of the ship as ‘Tuttle Rozack’ (1865: 52). 6 Girmitiya is derivative of girmit, which is the corrupt form of the English word ‘agreement’ in Bhojpuri and Hindi (see Lal, 2017). Since this word is repeatedly used in the following pages of the text, it is not italicised. 7 I use the term ‘girmitiya diaspora’ on the suggestion of the late Professor Brij Vilas Lal, a doyen of the studies in indentured labour migration from India (personal communication dated 24 October 2017). Since the publication of his book Girmitiyas: The Origins of the Fiji Indians (1983), the term girmitiya is widely used in the literature on Indian diaspora.

4

1 Introduction

come about. The following section describes the location of Trinidad and outlines its modern history up to the time of the recruitment of indentured labourers in India for migration to the Caribbean in general and Trinidad in particular.

1.1 Prelude to the Arrival of Indians: A Brief Social History of Trinidad8 Trinidad is the larger and more populous island of the twin-island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago.9 It is the southernmost of the Windward Islands. At 10° 27' 22.79'' N Latitude and -61° 14' 33.00'' W Longitude, it lies just 11 km of the northeastern coast of Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea and sits on the continental shelf of South America. With an area of 5131 km2 , this archipelagic republic is the fifth largest country in the West Indies. Though technically it is a part of the South American continent, socio-economically it is referred to as the southernmost island in the Caribbean (Fig. 1.1). The modern history of Trinidad begins with the Italian master navigator and admiral Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), acting as an agent of the joint Spanish monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I, sighting the island on 31 July 1498 during his third voyage (1498–1500) to the New World. In his yet another failed attempt to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, he had been overjoyed to sight the three peaks joined at their base on the island, as his ship was running out of water. On landing on the island, he named it ‘La Trinite’ (in Spanish, to later become Trinidad) after the Holy Trinity whose protection he had invoked for the voyage. There were further incursions into Trinidad throughout the sixteenth century, and the island was used as a launching pad for expeditions into Guyana in search of El Dorado, the mythical city of gold. The first Spanish settlement was established on the island only in 1592 by Demingo de Vera at St Joseph. Archaeological excavations and historical records suggest that, towards the end of the fifteenth century, Trinidad was inhabited by several distinct Amerindian tribes of which the Arawak and the Carib were prominent. ‘The Caribs tended to settle for the most part in the North and West, around what is today Port of Spain; two of their principal settlements were located in Arima and Mucarapo. The Arawaks seem to have concentrated above all in the south-east …’ (Williams, 1993: 3). Within six years after the discovery of the island by Columbus, these tribal communities were brought into ‘the whirlpool of modern colonialism’ (ibid.: 4). The arrival of the Spaniards in Trinidad entailed the inevitable clash of cultures between the conquistadors and the indigenes. As it had happened in colonial conquests elsewhere, ultimately the former won; as historian Eric Eustace Williams (1911–1981), who later became the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, describes, this conquest represented 8

The descriptor ‘Trinidad’ is used in the book as a socio-geographical label. In 2011, Trinidad and Tobago had a total population of 1,328,019, 95.42% of this population lived in the main island of Trinidad (Central Statistical Office 2012: 5).

9

1.1 Prelude to the Arrival of Indians: A Brief Social History …

5

Fig. 1.1 Political map of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Source https://www.ezilon.com/ maps/north-america/trinidad-and-tobago-maps.html (accessed on 23 November 2018) the victory of armour over roucou paint,10 of the sword and lance over the bow and poisoned arrow, of horsemen over foot soldiers who had never seen a horse, of a society whose diet was wheat over a society whose diet was cassava. (ibid.: 8)

The direct or indirect enslavement of Amerindians by the Spanish conquistadors, ‘openly avowed or casuistically concealed’ (ibid.: 23) gradually led to their decimation. To fill in the labour void this created, Spaniards brought into Trinidad and other Caribbean islands slaves captured from Africa, just as other Europeans were to do after them. Thus, the Africans entered as an important addition to the population of Trinidad. Similarly, as a solution to the problem of estate management, French planters were brought into Trinidad. Accepting the proposal of Roume de St Laurent, a French planter from Grenada, the King of Spain issued the famous cedula 10

An orange-red body-colour was used by the indigenous tribes in Trinidad to protect themselves from inimical forces. It is extracted from roucou, a fruit of the achiote tree (Bixa orellana). Today, this extract is widely used in South America as a food-colouring called Annatto.

6

1 Introduction

(order or authorisation) of population allowing for foreign immigrants to Trinidad under certain conditions (see Williams, 1993: 41–42). This was perhaps the first instance of incentives offered to attract foreign capital anywhere in the world; the French sugarcane planters also brought their African slaves with them. In effect, this migration gradually transformed Trinidad from being ‘a backward Amerindian colony governed by Spain into a Spanish colony run by Frenchmen and worked by African slaves’ (ibid.: 40). Trinidad remained a neglected Spanish possession for almost 300 years until it was surrendered by the Spanish Governor Don José María Chacón (1749–1833) to a British naval expedition commandeered by Sir Ralph Abercromby (1734–1801) on 18 February 1797, when Spain and Britain were at war. Sir Abercromby appointed Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Picton (1758–1815)11 as the military governor of Trinidad. Trinidad was formally ceded to Britain in 1802 as a British colony, ending three centuries of Spanish colonialism there.12 At the time of its annexation by Britain, Trinidad had a total population of 17,643, out of which 10,009 were African slaves, most of whom worked on the sugar plantations.13 These African slaves had become, as the Brazilian sociologist, Gilberto Freyre (1900–1987) describes, ‘the white man’s greatest and most plastic collaborator in the task of agrarian colonisation’ in the western hemisphere (quoted in ibid.: 37), especially after the collapse of the cocoa in 1733.14 The tremendous spurt which Trinidad’s economy had made was the result of slave labour (ibid.: 48). However, slavery on the sugar plantation in Trinidad, as elsewhere in the West Indies, allowed the slaves neither time nor scope nor encouragement to develop their native capacity and to reproduce their native arts and crafts. Deliberately divided to break up not only families but also tribes in order that they might more easily be ruled, the absence of a common language and the mixing up of different customs and cultural traits were further obstacles in their way. (ibid.: 37)

The story of slaves, as H. Orlando Patterson describes, is ‘one prolonged agony of dispossession, enslavement, and colonisation’ (quoted in Lowenthal, 1972: 39); 11

Historically, in Britain, Picton has been hailed a public ‘hero’: ‘he was the highest-ranking British officer to fall at the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium in 1815’ (Prior, 2015). But, ‘his governance of Trinidad and his treatment of slaves marks him out as a particularly cruel leader’; he has been dubbed ‘the Tyrant of Trinidad’ and ‘the Blood-Stained Governor’ (Note on Sir Thomas Picton’s portrait by Sir Martin Archer Shee [1769–1850]; Amgueddfa Cymru/National Museum Wales nd.). 12 Tobago, just 30 km from Trinidad, was ruled at one time or the other by a myriad of European powers, including the Spanish, Dutch, French, and British, and was finally annexed to Trinidad in two stages between 1888 and 1898. The 1899 Act of Union made the two islands one single colony. 13 In his despatch to the Secretary of State dated 30 July 1799, Picton had emphasised that ‘Trinidad should be regarded as a sugar Colony, the lands being generally more favourable to the production of [sugar]Cane, than of Coffee or Cotton’ (quoted in Williams, 1993: 74). 14 For 15 years from 1718, Trinidad was identified in world economy with cocoa. For various alleged reasons—religious (refusal of the Spanish planters to pay the tithes to the Church), climatic (the north winds and severe draught in that year), botanical (the variety of cocoa then planted being more tender and less hardy than the forastero variety from Brazil), the coca crop failed in 1733 and the economy based on it collapsed. This was ruinous to Trinidad (Williams, 1993: 22).

1.1 Prelude to the Arrival of Indians: A Brief Social History …

7

brought into the West Indies ‘by force and forcibly held there’, the African slaves ‘felt it as a prison’ (ibid.). Slavery, was indeed the most inhuman form of exploitation, oppression, and cruelty perpetrated by one category of human beings on another. At the time of the British annexation of Trinidad as a crown colony, the moral abhorrence of slavery had begun to spread and the British Parliament had been seized of the criticism against slavery. William Wilberforce (1759–1833) inside the Parliament and Thomas Clarkson15 (1760–1846) outside of it were leading the movement for the abolition of slave trade. Apart from the injustice and inhumanity of slavery, it was also argued to be unprofitable. In principle, the Parliament had committed to gradual abolition of slave trade. Realising that slavery was on its last legs, the capitalist class was getting ready to pursue the accumulation of profit sans slave trade and slavery. Slavery was formally abolished in Great Britain in 1833,16 but the slaves were liberated, after a period of five to six years of apprenticeship, only on 1 August 1838. The abolition of slavery became effective in Trinidad by an Order in Council proclaimed in Port of Spain on 2 December 1838 (see Carmichael, 1961). With this the plantation economy in Trinidad, as elsewhere in the European colonies,17 was plunged into a crisis. The plantation economy in these colonies revolved around monocrop culture, namely, sugarcane:18 (a) growing of sugarcane and manufacture of sugar, (b) processing of the by-products of sugarcane and manufacture of rum, and (c) transportation of sugar and rum. Besides a high degree of organisation and a lot of capital equipment, this economy was labour intensive, and was heavily dependent on the unskilled slave labour, which was cheap and easily controlled (see Lowenthal, 1972: 15; Look Lai, 1993: xxv). With their liberation, the ex-slaves withdrew from plantations and the wages of free labour shot up, thereby jolting ‘the British colonial sugar industry, leading to a universal decline in sugar production’ (North-Coombes, 1984: 79). This sounded alarm bells in the imperialist economy in which sugar had a large share. Several alternative sources of labour, with varying degrees of practicability, were tried to overcome the acute shortage of labour: (a) use of ‘liberated Africans’ or ‘freed slaves’ as free wage labour; (b) import of labour from the Portuguese Madeira and the Azores, which was facing unemployment among the vineyard labour, and China; and (c) intra-Caribbean shift in labour. None of this was, however, successful. The cost of recruitment and transportation was high, the labour so recruited was unreliable 15

The founder of ‘The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade’ (established in 1823), also known as ‘The Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade’. 16 France abolished slavery in 1848 and Holland, in 1863. 17 Mention may here be made of the other British colonies of Mauritius, Fiji, Natal (South Africa), British Guiana, and Jamaica; the Dutch colony of Suriname; and the French colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique. 18 Sugarcane, no doubt, did not entirely supplant other crops; coffee, cacao, and cotton were grown for export. But the planters preferred sugarcane, ‘a rich man’s crop’, which pushed these other crops to the margins of the economy (Lowenthal, 1972: 28, 27). Furthermore, as North-Coombes points out, the labour crisis did not much affect the colonies where ‘agriculture became more diversified’ (1984: 85).

8

1 Introduction

and drifted away from the plantations,19 and the Chinese and the European labour could not cope with the tropical climate.20 Thus, as a last resort, the planters turned to importing labour from India. In his despatch to Earl Bathurst, Secretary of State for the Colonies, dated 3 October 1814, Sir Ralph James Woodford (1784–1828), the then Governor of Trinidad wrote: The cultivators of Hindostan are known to be peaceable and industrious. An extensive introduction of that class of people accustomed to live on the produce of their own labour only, and totally withdrawn from African connections or feelings, would probably be the best experiment for the population of this Island … (quoted in Williams, 1993: 77, and Kirpalani et al., 1945: 25 and 29)21

India was a source of cheap and controlled labour, and since India was under British rule, transporting Indians as subjects from one colony to another was easy. Initially, there was, no doubt, considerable apprehension about the importation of labour from India. James Stephen of the Colonial Office even warned that such importation might, instead of reducing the wages, increase them, as it would imply an increase in expenditure on housing the immigrant labour and providing them with food and clothing. According to him, ‘only by the natural increase of the species that Trinidad or any other place can ever attain to that balance between capital and manual labour which secures to capital the maximum of profit, which is compatible with the general prosperity of the labourers’ (quoted in Williams, 1993: 99). These arguments were appealing to the abolitionists in the House of Commons. George Thompson, a vigorous opponent of such importation of labour, even argued that the Indian immigrants into Mauritius were anything but agricultural labourers and that they were ‘a deeply demoralised class of human beings’ (quoted in Williams, 1993: 99). He, therefore, argued that ‘The system of emigration had been false, and to attempt to carry it out extensively, would only be to create a new slave trade under the false colours, and of a modified description …’ (quoted in Williams, 1993: 99). Notwithstanding such apprehension and opposition, the British government went 19

With reference to ‘freed slaves’ in Mauritius, a European observed, ‘Is it reasonable to expect that, indolent as they are, childishly reckless of the future, and intoxicated with misty notions of their new-found independence, they [the apprentices] will … tranquilly and regularly resume as free labourers, the employments they had exercised in a stage of bondage’ (quoted in North-Coombes, 1984: 81–2). There is, however, another explanation for the antipathy of ‘freed slaves’ to field labour. According to missionary Rev. Patrick Beaton, who resided in Mauritius during 1851–1856, ‘The remembrance of the horrors of slavery is engraven [sic] upon their memories with a pen of iron and no lapse of time will ever erase it. Labour in the fields will ever be regarded by them as a mark of degradation on account of the painful associations and memories which it awakens’ (quoted in North-Coombes, 1984: 82). Thus, as the Baptist Missionary Rev. W. H. Gamble observed: ‘The Creoles [local born Africans] are very willing to be mechanics, stock-keepers, drivers of mules, boiler-men, woodcutters, [etc.], but as a class, they dislike cutting canes, and dislike much more the weeding of them’ (Gamble, 1886: 31–32). 20 Lowenthal writes, ‘Chinese and Madeiran immigrants at the outset suffered heavy mortality, and the survivors soon left agriculture to take up peddling and retail shopping’ (1972: 62). 21 This idea was given to Sir Woodford by William Hardin Burnley (1780–1850), the largest slaveowner in Trinidad in the nineteenth century and a member of the Governor’s Council.

1.1 Prelude to the Arrival of Indians: A Brief Social History …

9

ahead and introduced an entirely new population in Trinidad and other sugar colonies in the Caribbean Basin and South America.22 Interestingly and ironically, the entire project of what came to be known as indentured labour migration from India was done at public expense.23 As expected, it provided economic salvation to Trinidad and other sugar-producing colonies, not only British but also Dutch and French.24 According to Keith O. Laurence (1971: 7ff), indentured labour served two objectives: in the short run, it remedied the shortage of labour, actual or expected; in the long run, it created a competition for employment and kept wages (of liberated African slaves) down. Immigration of indentured labour from India, ‘begun as a short-term remedy for falling production’ became ‘permanent and regular, providing a steady reservoir of dependable labour’ (ibid.: 25). In decades to come, this drastically changed the demographic composition of these colonies, Trinidad included. As mentioned earlier, the first ship Fatel Rozack to bring girmitiyas (indentured labourers) from India docked in the Gulf of Paria on 30 May 1845.25 It brought 227 indentured Indian labourers.26 On hindsight, symbolically appropriate enough, the first name on the ship’s passenger register was Bharat (from Bh¯arata in Sanskrit), a Hindi synonym for India, a ‘male, aged twenty’ (Haraksingh nd). He was the first of the 143,939 girmitiyas to be brought into Trinidad, the last batch of Indians arrived on 22 April 1917 by the ship S. S. Ganges (see Table 1.1). After the long ship journey from Calcutta (now Kolkata) or Madras (now Chennai) to Port of Spain, respectively a distance of 21,452 or 19,803 nautical km covered in 100 days on 22

Indentured immigration in the region first began in British Guiana (Guyana) (1838), then in Jamaica and Trinidad (1845), and later in Martinique (1853), French Guiana (Guyane) and Guadeloupe (1854), Grenada (1857), Berlize and St Lucia (1859), St Vincent and St Kitts (1861), St Croix (1863), Dutch Guiana (Suriname) (1873), and Nevis (1874). 23 Laurence (1994: 324–361) provides a detailed account of the system of financing the indentured labour migration. The funding pattern was not the same across the colonies. In British Guiana, it was cent per cent met by the planters. In Trinidad, according to a formula imposed by the Duke of Newcastle, as Secretary of State for the Colonies, one-third of the total cost, including the immigrant’s passage from India to Trinidad and any return passage that might be involved on the expiration of immigrant’s contract, and the support of government staff both in Trinidad and in India, was met by General Revenue). The other two-thirds was to be paid by the planters (partly by ‘indentured fee’ per migrant employed and partly from ‘export duty’ on sugar and rum). With some modification, this basic ratio was in force from 1860 to 1911 (see Ramesar, 1994; Brereton, 1985: 22). The colonial government’s financial support for indentured labour migration, even if it was only partial, was justified on the ground that it benefitted the whole community and not just the planters! 24 As one planter in British Guiana wrote, ‘Give me my heart’s desire in coolies [indentured labourers], and I will make you a million hogsheads of sugar without stirring the Colony’ (quoted in Bronkhurst, 1883: 98). 25 30 May is now celebrated in Trinidad as the Indian Arrival Day. 26 ‘Two hundred and thirty-one had left Calcutta and six had died on the voyage. The agent, however, had failed to report two infants probably born on the voyage. These two additional persons appear on the Captain’s list’ (Samaroo, 1995: 1). One hundred ninety-five of them were under 30 but above 10 years of age; the oldest was Ruchparr, a man who was 40 and the youngest was Faizan, a baby girl of four years (Anthony, 1985: 84).

10

1 Introduction

Table 1.1 Indians introduced into Trinidad, mainly under indenture, 1845–1918, and known to have returned to India Period

Introduced

Returned Number

1845–1850

5568

0

1851–1855

5054

1395

Percentage 0 27.60

1856–1860

11,208

982

8.76

1861–1865

7474

817

10.93

1866–1870

11,836

772

6.52

1871–1875

11,868

970

8.17

1876–1880

12,763

1875

14.69

1881–1885

11,551

2265

19.61

1886–1890

13,988

2924

20.90

1891–1895

13,565

3775

27.83

1896–1900

7414

3638

49.07

1901–1905

12,433

3838

30.87

1906–1910

12,547

3471

27.66

4051

2726

67.29

1911–1915/16 1916–1918 Total

2619

0

143,939

29,448

0 20.46

Source Adapted from Roberts and Byrne (1966: 129)

an average, the Indians landed27 at Nelson Island28 where they were quarantined, rested, and ‘processed’29 before being transported to Port of Spain. The healthy among them were then assigned to various sugarcane, cocoa, and coconut estates across the colony. Gérard A. Besson, in his note on ‘Nelson Island’ for The Caribbean History Archives (2011), writes about an interesting episode relating to the arrival of the last batch of Indians by the ship S. S. Ganges. Gregory Duruty, who in his youth worked in the Colonial Secretary office in Port-of-Spain, had arrived on Nelson Island to take pictures of the newly arrived Indians. Interestingly, the record that Duruty played on his gramophone that day was the popular song ‘I ain’t got nobody, and nobody cares 27

‘Landed alive’, as the ship’s papers would describe them. Nelson Island is the largest of a group of five islands (Nelson, Pelican, Lenegan, Caledonia, and Craig and Rock), called by the Spanish invaders as the islands Los Cottoros (the parakeets) in 1498. The British colonial administrators called it Stephenson’s Island and used it for quarantine purposes. It was later renamed as Nelson Island, after the slave-owner Thomas Neilson [1789–1866]) (The National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago nd). 29 That is, ‘their documents were checked, their names, places of birth and religions were verified’. The island was also used as an assembly and repatriation centre until 1936 for those indentured labourers who wished to return to India’ (The National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago nd). 28

1.1 Prelude to the Arrival of Indians: A Brief Social History …

11

for me!’ (sometimes referred to as ‘I’m So Sad and Lonely’)30 sung by Rudy Vallée (Hubert Prior Vallée [1901–1986]). This refrain, played over and over as the Indians stood in rows for their photographs to be taken, seemed ironic. As Besson writes, The significance of the words of the song may well have been lost on all of them, and the significance of the occasion, it being the last of the indenture to arrive in Trinidad, hardly grasped. Such is the naiveté of beginnings on the one hand and the enormity of an ending on the other! (ibid.)

The nature and dynamics of the indentured labour system is discussed in detail in Chap. 2. The reality of the girmitiyas’ life in the estates was harsh, a fact that has been invariably documented by several official reports investigating it as well as all labour historians writing about it. As David Lowenthal observes, they ‘endured conditions reminiscent of slavery if not worse…. The planters viewed them, like the slaves, simply as sugar-producing machines’ (1972: 62). As early as 15 February 1840, Lord John Russell (1792–1878) described the indentured labour system as ‘a new system of slavery’ (quoted in Twaddle, 1993: 1).31 What is to be appreciated, as Hugh Tinker writes, is that ‘If the Indians were to survive, as human beings, their survival depended largely on their own powers of resilience’ (1993: 178). It is this power of resilience which became crucial in the making of the diasporic Indian community in Trinidad in the post-indenture period. Of the 143,939 girmitiyas who were introduced into Trinidad over 73 years, from 1845 to 1917, only 29,448 or 20.46% returned to India after the expiration of their indenture (see Table 1.1). The book analyses the transition of these migrant ‘Indians in Trinidad’ to a distinct ethnic group, a hyphenated community, ‘Indo-Trinidadians’. The analysis covers a saga of 150 years: from 30 May 1845, when Bharat and his compatriot girmitiyas landed in Trinidad, to 9 November 1995, when Basdeo Panday, a grandson of an indentured cane-cutter, became the prime minister (the first of Indian origin) of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. This transition took place over decades when Trinidad itself underwent a significant political change: from being a British Crown colony till 31 August 1962 to a twin-island republic (Trinidad and Tobago) on 1 August 1976.

30

The lyrics of this song (see www.youtube.com) was written by Roger A. Graham (1855–1938) and composed by Spencer Williams (1889–1969). 31 Addressing the British Parliament on 15 February 1840, Lord John Russell said, ‘I should be unwilling to adopt any measure to favour the transfer of labourers from British India to Guiana. … I am not prepared to encounter the responsibility of a measure which may lead to a dreadful loss of life on the one hand, or, on the other, to a new system of slavery’ (quoted in Twaddle, 1993: 1). (This quotation also appears as Epigraph in Tinker’s book, which is also titled, A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas 1830–1920 [1993]). Lord Russell later became the prime minister of Britain from 1846 to 1852 and again from 1865 to 1866, but did nothing to abolish the indentured labour system!

12

1 Introduction

1.2 Understanding the Making of a Girmitiya Diaspora32 The formation and development of Indian immigrants as an ethnic community in Trinidad was not smooth. The process confronted many challenges to which the early settlers had to respond. Some of these challenges had to do with the nature of indentured migration itself. Others had to do with the lived experience of the migrants during the period of their indenture and as colonial subjects thereafter, both of which, as we shall see in the next chapter, were defined by the policies of the colonial rulers and the negative predisposition of the liberated Africans towards the Indians. Trinidad experienced the third longest duration of indentured immigration (i.e., 73 years, after British Guiana [79 years] and Mauritius [78 years]). It received the fourth largest number of Indian indentured immigrants (after Mauritius, British Guiana, and Natal) and the second largest number (after British Guiana) in the Caribbean (see Table 1.2). It is often pointed out that 90% of these immigrants came from the Gangetic plains, mainly from the United Provinces (Basti, Fyzabad, and Gonda), Bihar, and Orissa. The remaining 10% came from other parts of India, from the Bengal Presidency, North-West Provinces, and Madras Presidency. Those who emigrated from the port in Calcutta were called Kalkatiyas and those who emigrated from Madras, Madrasis. The fact that the Kalkatiyas and the Madrasis constituted two main streams—the former the overwhelming majority, and the latter a small minority—does not mean that either of them was homogenous; they represented the phenomenal socio-cultural diversity that is India. Socio-cultural diversity apart, the very nature of indentured recruitment for Trinidad posed a challenge. Under the kangany system of recruitment of labour for migration to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Malaya (now Malaysia) and the maistry system, to Burma (now Myanmar), ‘the kangany or maistry (himself an Indian migrant) recruited families of Tamil labourers from villages in the erstwhile Madras Presidency’ (Jayaram, 2011: 231).33 For Trinidad (and other colonies in the Caribbean), labourers were recruited individually by an agency. The recruits were drawn from different areas and from different villages within a given area (Laurence, 1994: 104–110; Vertovec, 1992: 232–243). The catchment area differed in socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. The recruits were predominantly in the age group of 20–30 years. Most of them were unmarried individuals, largely men; in the later years of recruitment, some came as small family units. On arrival in Trinidad, they were dispersed among the various estates on the island. According to Kusha Haraksingh, the process of recruitment for indenture, like ‘a whirlpool in the ocean of life, had a way of turning up the flotsam and the jetsam, those most susceptible to push factors, and those most unlikely to resist’ (1987: 32

In writing this and the following section, I have drawn from my Keynote Address delivered at The Hague Seminar held on 5–7 October 2017 (Jayaram, 2017). 33 The terms kangany and maistry are both derived from Tamil; the former meaning foreman or overseer and the latter meaning supervisor. The labourers recruited under these systems were legally free, as they were not bound by any contract or fixed period of service. These systems, which began in the first and third quarter of the nineteenth century, were abolished in 1938 (Jayaram, 2011: 231).

1.2 Understanding the Making of a Girmitiya Diaspora

13

Table 1.2 Indians introduced into various colonies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Colony (Country)

Coloniser

Period

Number of Indians introduced

Mauritius

Britain

1834–1912

453,063

British Guiana (Guyana) Britain

1838–1917

238,909

Natal (South Africa)

Britain

1860–1911

152,184

Trinidad (Trinidad and Tobago)

Britain

1845–1917

143,939

Reunion

France

1829–1924

118,000

Fiji

Britain

1879–1916

60,969

Guadeloupe

France

1854–1885

42,326

East Africa (Kenya/Uganda)

Britain

1895–1901

39,771

Jamaica

Britain

Dutch Guiana (Surinam) The Netherlands

1854–1885

36,420

1873–1916

34,000

Martinique

France

1854–1889

25,509

French Guiana

France

1804–1876

19,296

Seychelles

Britain

1899–1916

6319

St Lucia

Britain

1858–1895

4350

Grenada

Britain

1856–1885

3200

St Vincent

Britain

1861–1880

2472

Note Vertovec composed the original table based on various sources. He clarifies, ‘For various reasons (cited by the source authors), these figures are not entirely accurate. However, they do provide a relative indication of proportions. Further, … these figures do not represent net immigration)’ (ibid.: Fn 1 to the Table 1.1) Source Adapted from Vertovec (1992: 4 [Table 1.1])

66).34 The recruits generally consisted of people who had ‘experienced personal misfortune’: those who had lost land, antagonised village bigwigs, had run afoul of authority, borrowed heavily, deserted the army, etc. (ibid.: 66). In 1877, the Trinidad Emigration Agent in Bengal described most recruits as ‘paupers, whose garments were barely consistent with the requirements of decency; ornaments, save a few bangles of lead or glass of insignificant value, they have none. The average coolie’s whole stock of goods would be dear at one rupee’ (quoted in Gillion, 1956: 154). It is not that the system deliberately sought out the weak, though certain categories of people, regarded as ‘potential trouble makers’, were consciously excluded. Among these included (a) disbanded soldiers (especially after the 1857 Mutiny); (b) higher castes, particularly Brahmins, because being learned and politically

34

For a profile of the indentured emigrant in India, see Tinker (1993: 39–60).

14

1 Introduction

more conscious, were suspected to be likely strike leaders35 ; and (c) second-time emigrants/re-indenture cases, since they know the ropes. One can well imagine the human resources from which the immigrant Indians had to form and develop a community. In this, a key resource was the brotherhood/sisterhood they established aboard the ships transporting them to the colonies, a relationship that sustained long after the indentured period. It is an example of ‘cultural versatility’, ‘for it transcended ordinary divisions of caste and religion, thereby demonstrating that Indians were prepared to devise new approaches for new circumstances’ (Haraksingh, 1987: 73). In the socio-cultural lingo of IndoTrinidadians, terms such as jahaaj, the ship or vessel that brought the indentured immigrants to Trinidad; jahajis (jahaji [male] and jahajin [female]), the shipmates; and jahaji-bhai (ship-brother; brotherhood of the ship) and jahaji-bahin (ship-sister; sisterhood of the ship), the enduring bonds formed on the long ship journey to Trinidad, are prevalent today, a century after the abandonment of the indenture labour migration. The indigent jahajis carried their worldly belongings usually wrapped in cloth and slung over the shoulders or carried on the head; this baggage of theirs was called jahaji bundal (bundle) in Trinidad and girmitiya’s ghatri in some diaspora locales. Besides their worldly belongings, metaphorically they also carried a socio-cultural bundal or ghatri, which consisted of such social institutions as religion, caste, and family, and cultural elements as language, music, art, dress, cuisine, etc., often in the folk form and in their regional variants. Much of the academic engagement of the anthropologists and sociologists, as also some historians, especially in the initial stages, was with what has happened to this socio-cultural baggage which the ancestors of specific diasporic communities brought with them to the colonies.36 Scholars researching on the social institutions and cultural practices among different diasporic communities have generally sought a categorical answer to the question of whether or not a particular social institution or a cultural practice originally brought into the colony exists there. They have found that the Indians in the Caribbean remain more ‘Indian’ in some ways than in others. But, as Lowenthal comments, ‘trait-by-trait generalizations grossly oversimply; degrees and types of “Indianness” vary from place to place, from city to countryside, from old to young’ (1972: 154). They have sought to explain these differences by the variations in the historical and other circumstances of Indians in the diaspora.

35

In his Annual Report of 1881, R. W. S. Mitchell, the then Immigration Agent-General of British Guiana, included a list classifying the ‘the value of the members of the different castes as labourers’, based on ‘“the results of several years of experience in selecting emigrants at Calcutta”’. This list classified six categories of labourers: ‘best’, ‘good’, ‘fairly good’, ‘indifferent’, and ‘worthless’ labourers. In the last category were included ‘Beneah—Brahmin—Kaet—Sonar—Jogee—Bhat— Jolla—Boyeddo—Gossoye—Autit—Fukeer—Kehtree’ (quoted in Comins, 1893b: 79). Ramnarine cites a resolution passed by the Planters’ Association in British Guiana instructing the Emigration Agent in Calcutta ‘to exclude all high caste people and Brahmins’ (1987: 125). 36 Some such early studies of the diasporic Indians in Trinidad include Niehoff and Niehoff (1960); Klass (1988); Clarke (1967); Schwartz (1967); Weller (1968); and Nevadomsky (1980b).

1.2 Understanding the Making of a Girmitiya Diaspora

15

Such analyses of the social institutions and cultural practices among diasporic Indian communities invariably posit an ideal type of those institutions and elements— such as was supposed to have existed in the past, or as exists in India now. Accordingly, in the writings of scholars on the Indian diaspora we can discern two distinct strands: one emphasising persistence or retention (e.g., Klass, 1988) and, the other, change (e.g., Nevadomsky, 1980a). They marshal selective data on village social structure, religious beliefs and practices, caste system, family patterns and kinship forms, etc., to make the case for their ‘(hypo)thesis’. It is true, as Lowenthal observes, that the extent to which the Indian immigrants living in a distant island, ‘long cut off from intimate contact with the homeland [of their ancestors] retain Indian ways depends on how cultural persistence is understood’ (1972: 146). This is illustrated by Chandra Jayawardena’s observation and question: ‘The customs and organizational principles of peasant communities of Oudh before the Mutiny persist in, say, Trinidad, whereas in all likelihood they have changed in India’. ‘If the Kenyan grandsons of a Patidar farmer from Gujarat lead the life of the Bombay urban upper class, learned from the Indian Illustrated Weekly, does this represent persistence or change?’ (1968: 439). In An Area of Darkness, Trinidadborn Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul, who had otherwise ‘rejected tradition’, records his ‘feeling of outrage when I heard that in Bombay they used candles and electric bulbs for the Diwali festival, and not the rustic clay lamps, of immemorial design, which in Trinidad we still used’ (1968: 36). More importantly, there is a serious problem with both these hypotheses, that is, their point of reference, the ideal typical notion of the ‘Indian’, is presumed to have remained unchanged. At best, this holds well for the diasporic imagination of the ‘civilisational India’, but not the ‘existential India’, which is characterised by diversity and change in its social institutions and cultural practices since the time the diasporic ancestors left the country. Viewed thus, the ‘India’ that the diasporics have in mind itself needs to be reviewed (Jayaram, 2011). In this context, it is important to note that the boundary of what is called ‘India’ has not remained the same even during the last one hundred years. Thus, for those who left ‘India’ before Partition (in 1947) and their descendants, the reference point is ‘the subcontinental India’ (which includes the present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh); whereas for those leaving ‘India’ after Partition, it is the political state of India as it exists now. For many who experienced Partition, the reference point is often ambivalent. I have elsewhere analysed the implications of this for the girmitiya diasporic communities’ orientation to India (see Jayaram, 1998, 2011). It is insightful that, in a comparative study of rituals and festivals in Trinidad and parts of India (1990–2014), Satnarine Balkaransingh refers to India as the ‘Grandmother’ country (2016: 8). In the discourse of the first two or three generations of Indian immigrants in Trinidad, as elsewhere in the girmitiya or old diaspora, India was the ‘Mother Country’.37 For the present generation of Indo-Trinidadians, Trinidad is the ‘Mother Country’. In fact, for all members of the girmitiya or old diaspora 37

This appellation, and the invocation of the ‘Motherland’, is very much in vogue in the new diaspora.

16

1 Introduction

who have been ‘doubly displaced’ or ‘twice banished’, it is the country that they left which is the point of reference as ‘Mother Country’. Another major problem with the ‘persistence’ versus ‘change’ dialectic is that it leaves little or no scope for the agency of the diasporic community and for the diasporic imagination to adapt, adopt, and innovate its social institutions and cultural practices, depending upon the internal and the external changes which it has been constrained to confront. This is all the more significant considering that the recruitment under indentured immigration to the sugar colonies, as mentioned earlier, consisted of single persons from various locations, not families or groups from single villages. Mostly they were drawn from indigent sections of the rural population of British India and were illiterate with very little cultural capital of the so-called ‘Great Tradition’; what they carried in their cultural bundal was memories and intangible fragments of the ‘Little Tradition’.38 Considering the long distance from their homeland, the enormous time that took them to travel to the colonies, and the absence of efficient and inexpensive communication facilities between the colonies and British India, their relationship with their ‘Mother Country’ was tenuous, if any. Thus, the only way they could reinforce the social and cultural memory of their native regions in India was through the arrival of successive batches of their compatriots; this, too, ended with the abolition of indentured labour migration. As Balkaransingh observes, ‘Each arriving individual was a microcosm of the macrocosm that was India and its existing culture during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’ (ibid.: 6). Drawing from their individual and collective memories, and against all odds as a subject population, they reconstituted their social institutions and cultural practices and evolved as a diasporic community. As Peter Manuel emphasises, what exists now are not ‘simple transplants or degraded versions of that of the mother country’; they are ‘distinctive entities often with original and dynamic … forms’ (2000: xiii–xiv). To me, as a sociologist, the articulation and expression of ‘Indo-Trinidadian’ as a distinctive and vibrant identity in a socio-cultural context that was ethnically uncongenial and antagonistic39 is a remarkable socio-cultural achievement. 38

The distinction between ‘Great’ and ‘Little’ traditions, originally introduced by Robert Redfield in his study of peasant society and culture in Mexico, was adopted by Milton Singer and McKim Marriott to understand social change in India. It essentially points to the distinction between two levels of social and cultural traditions: that of ‘the folks or unlettered peasants’ (Little tradition) and that of ‘the elite or the “reflective few”’ (Great tradition) (Singh, 1973: 13). 39 ‘Coolie’ is derived from the Tamil word kuli, meaning wages or hire. It was a word often used to refer to, or even address, an Indian immigrant in Trinidad in the early nineteenth century and meant simply a labourer of Asian origin (see Tinker, 1993: 41–43); it later acquired a derogatory connotation referring to the lowliness in the estate hierarchy based on race. It was transformed from a job descriptor to inheritable and inescapable marker of ethnic identity. ‘Even if Indians in the West Indies became milk-sellers, or village shopkeepers, or rice farmers – or, generations later, teachers or lawyers – they were still called coolies’ (Bahadur, 2013: xx). Everything ‘Indian’ about the immigrants came to be derisively qualified by the epithet ‘coolie’—coolie religion, coolie marriage, coolie music, coolie food, etc.—not only by the white Anglo-Saxon British rulers and planters, but also by the liberated former black slaves. The fact that ‘coolie’ has survived to this day in Trinidad as an abusive term, an ethnic slur, exclusively reserved for Indo-Trinidadians is proof of the entrenched prejudice and antipathy of their significant others.

1.3 Metamorphosis as an Analytical Device

17

1.3 Metamorphosis as an Analytical Device It is in understanding the evolution of this unique hybrid or hyphenated identity, ‘Indo-Trinidadian’, which is indicative of both persistence and change, but neither of them exclusively, that I find metamorphosis to be a useful analytical device. In my exploration of the dynamics of social institutions and cultural practices of the Indo-Trinidadians during the last twenty-five years, I have found the ‘persistence versus continuity’ juxtaposition to be unhelpful. To say in a matter-of-fact fashion that some institutions and practices have persisted and some have changed is not to say much; it does not explain the dynamics of the phenomenon on hand. In fact, such a juxtaposition as the guiding principle not only narrows down the scope of our study of the social institutions and cultural practices of the diasporic community, but also distorts their understanding and clouds their fascinating nuances.40 Alternatively, I have found the concept of metamorphosis to be an instructive heuristic device for the study of the dynamics of social institutions and cultural practices in the girmitiya diaspora. In its noun form, the English word metamorphosis is derived from Latin metamorph¯osis, from Greek, metamorphoun meaning ‘to transform’—meta-, meta- + morph¯e, form; metamorphose is its verb form (Biology Online nd). In biology, the term metamorphosis refers to the process by which ‘an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal’s form or structure through cell growth and differentiation’ (ibid.). Furthermore, ‘some insects, amphibians, molluscs, crustaceans, cnidarians, echinoderms and tunicates undergo metamorphosis, which is usually (but not always) accompanied by a change of habitat or behaviour’ (ibid.). And, in the biological world, metamorphosis may be incomplete or complete. Adapting a biological concept in a sociological analysis invokes the organic analogy; one should, of course, be cautious about the possible reification and homologising that this analogy may lead to. What the biological concept of metamorphosis suggests sociologically is succinctly explained by Peter Medawar, Nobel Laureate in Medicine: ‘A more or less radical rearrangement of parts that occurs in the development of those animals of which the embryonic or larval forms differ greatly from the corresponding adult forms’ (1977: 385–386). In the case of girmitiya diaspora, the socio-cultural bundal or ghatri that individual immigrants brought with them undergoes a profound change in form from the time of their arrival in the colony to the time they emerge in the new habitat as a community with a unique identity, that is new and, notwithstanding some similarities, can hardly be traced in its essence to their ‘Motherland’.

40

The geographer Colin Clarke, who is well known for his work on ‘East Indians’ in an urban setting (San Fernando) in the mid-1960s (Clarke, 1986) was awarded a fellowship of the Research Institute for the Study of Man (RISM), New York to find out if ‘East Indian isolation, cultural retention, and hostility to Creole domination’ observed by Vera Rubin, the director of RISM, was true of urban East Indians, too (Clarke & Clarke, 2010: 1; emphasis added).

18

1 Introduction

The concept of metamorphosis as applied to the dynamics of social institutions and cultural practices in the girmitiya diaspora is represented in Fig. 1.2. Analysing these dynamics necessarily involves comparison. The conceptual frameworks developed by sociologists to analyse social change in India (L1 , T1 → L2 , T2 ), whether planned or unplanned, endogenous or exogenous have little or no significance in understanding the dynamics of a girmitiya diaspora community. Comparing the girmitiya diaspora community today (L2, T2 ) with what exists in India today (L1 , T2 ) is invidious. Also problematic is comparing the girmitiya diaspora community today (L2, T2 ) with what (is supposed to have) existed in India at the time of initial migration (L1 , T1 ). The most appropriate comparison, therefore, would be between present-day girmitiya diaspora (L2 , T2 ) with what the girmitiyas brought with them to Trinidad during indentured immigration (L2 , T1 ). Chapters 6 through 11 analyse the challenges that the social institutions and cultural practices the indentured immigrants brought with them to Trinidad faced and the process of metamorphosis they underwent there. The focus is on the deconstitution that these institutions and practices experienced and their metamorphosed forms through reconstruction—from ‘East Indian’ to ‘Trinidad Indian’ to ‘Indo-Trinidadian’. Chapters 6 and 7 deal with structurally uniting related reproductive institutions of marriage, family, kinship, etc.; Chaps. 8, 9, and 10 deal with

India in the nineteenth and early twentieth century

Fig. 1.2 Diagrammatic representation of metamorphosis in diaspora. Source Prepared by the author

References

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ethnicity, belief systems, and identity-mediating institutions like religion and caste; and Chap. 11 deals with language and foodways. To provide a background in which the analyses in these chapters become meaningful, Chaps. 2 and 3 explain the nature of the indenture system under which the Indians went to Trinidad and the process through which they settled down there, and Chaps. 4 and 5 examine the ethnic mobilisation of Indians in Trinidad and their participation in electoral politics. Thus, the book blends history and sociology for elucidating the making of a girmitiya diaspora in Trinidad. The thrust of this book is well encapsulated in the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘banyan tree’ analogy and its elucidation by Hugh Tinker. Tagore said, To study a banyan tree, you not only must know its main stem in its own soil, but also must trace the growth of its greatness in the further soil, for then you can know the true nature of its vitality. The civilization of India, like the banyan tree, has shed its beneficent shade away from its own birthplace…. India can live and grow by spreading abroad—not the political India, but the ideal India. (Quoted in Tinker, 1977: iii)

Tinker clarifies, The banyan tree has thrust down roots in soil which is stony, sandy, marshy—and has somehow drawn sustenance from diverse unpromising conditions. Yet the banyan tree itself has changed; its similarity to the original growth is still there, but it has changed in response to its different environment. (Tinker, 1977: 19)

References Amgueddfa Cymru/National Museum Wales (n.d.). https://museum.wales/collections/online/ object/4adfdd41-6370-36bf-a907-c74f5ad7d4a5/Lieutenant-General-Sir-Thomas-Picton-17581815/. Accessed December 26, 2020. Anthony, M. (1985). First in Trinidad. Circle Press of Long Circular Road, St James. Bahadur, G. (2013). Coolie woman: The odyssey of indenture. Hachette Book Publishing. Balkaransingh, S. (2016). The shaping of a culture: Rituals and festivals in Trinidad compared with selected counterparts in India, 1990–2014. Hansib Publications. Besson, G. A. (2011). Nelson Island. In The Caribbean history archives. Paria Publishing. http://car ibbeanhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2011/10/nelson-island.html. Accessed December 25, 2020. Biology Online. (n.d.). http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Metamorphosis. Accessed September 23, 2017. Brereton, B. (1985). The experience of indentureship: 1845–1917. In J. G. La Guerre (Ed.), Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (2nd ed., pp. 21–30). Extra Mural Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Bronkhurst, H. V. P. (1883). The colony of British Guiana and its labouring population. T. Woolmer. Carmichael, G. (1961). The history of the West Indian islands of Trinidad and Tobago, 1498–1900. Alvin Redman. Central Statistical Office. (2012). Trinidad and Tobago 2011 Population and housing census— Demographic report. Port of Spain, Trinidad: The Central Statistical Office, Ministry of Planning and Sustainable Development, Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Available at https://cso.gov.tt/stat_publications/2011-population-and-housing-census-demographicreport/. Accessed November 28, 2020.

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Clarke, C. G. (1967). Caste among Hindus in a town in Trinidad: San Fernando. In B. M. Schwartz (Ed.), Caste in overseas Indian communities (pp. 165–199). Chandler. Clarke, C. G. (1986). East Indians in a West Indian town: San Fernando, Trinidad, 1930–1970 (London Research Series in Geography, 12). Allen and Unwin. Clarke, C. G., & Clarke, G. (2010). Post-colonial Trinidad: An ethnographic journal. Palgrave Macmillan. Comins, D. W. D. (1893b). Note on emigration from India to Trinidad. Bengal Secretariat Press. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1951). Social anthropology. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Gamble, W. H. (1866). Trinidad: Historical and descriptive: Being a narrative of nine years’ residence in the island (with special reference to Christian missions). Yates and Alexander. Gillion, K. L. (1956). The sources of Indian emigration to Fiji. Population Studies, 10(2), 139–157. Haraksingh, K. (n.d.). 90 days of horror: The voyage of the Fatel Razack to Trinidad in 1845. https://web.archive.org/web/20080302004135/http://www.indocaribbeanheritage.com/ content/view/17/38/. Accessed 25 December 2020. Haraksingh, K. (1987). Control and resistance among Indian workers: A study of labour on the sugar plantations of Trinidad, 1875–1917. In D. Dabydeen & B. Samaroo (Eds.), India in the Caribbean (pp. 61–77). Hansib/University of Warwick. Hart, D. (1865). Historical and statistical view of the island of Trinidad, with chronological table of events from 1782. Judd and Glass. Jayaram, N. (1998). Social construction of the other Indian: Encounters between Indian nationals and diasporic Indians. Journal of Social and Economic Development, 1(1), 46–53. Jayaram, N. (2011). Heterogeneous diaspora and asymmetrical orientations: India, Indians, and the Indian diaspora. In N. Jayaram (Ed.), Diversities in the Indian diaspora: Nature, implications, responses (pp. 227–247). Oxford University Press. Jayaram, N. (2017). Towards theorising the ‘old’ Indian diaspora: Beyond ‘persistence’ and ‘change’. Keynote speech delivered at the Global Conference on ‘Challenging Perspectives on the Indian Diaspora’ organised by Stichting Diaspora Leerstoel in Lalla Rookh in collaboration with Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague, and the Municipality of The Hague, in The Hague, 5–7 October 2017. Jha, J. C. (1985). The Indian heritage in Trinidad. In J. G. La Guerre (Ed.), Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (2nd edn) (pp. 1–18). Extra Mural Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Johnson, K. N. (1988). In the beginning. In E. Saft (Ed.), Trinidad and Tobago (pp. 19–21). APA Publications. Kirpalani, M. J., Sinanan, M. G., Rameshwar, S. M. & Seukeran, L. F. (Ed.). (1945). Indian centenary review: One hundred years of progress, 1845–1945, Trinidad, B. W. I. Indian Centenary Review Committee. Klass, M. (1988/1961). East Indians in Trinidad: A study of cultural persistence [reissued edition]. Waveland Press. Lal, B. V. (1983). Girmitiyas: The origins of the Fiji Indians. Journal of Pacific History Monographs. Lal, B. V. (2017). Girmit. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 40(2), 313–315. Laurence, K. O. (1971). Immigration into the West Indies in the 19th century (Chapters in Caribbean history 3). Ginn. Laurence, K. O. (1994). A question of labour: Indentured immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana, 1875–1917. Ian Randle Publishers. Look Lai, W. (1993). Indentured labor, Caribbean sugar: Chinese and Indian migrants to the British West Indies, 1838–1918. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Lowenthal, D. (1972). West Indian societies (American Geographical Society Research Series – Number 26). Oxford University Press (published for the Institute of Race Relations, London in collaboration with the American Geographical Society, New York). Manuel, P. (2000). East Indian music in the West Indies: Tan singing, chutney and the making of Indo-Caribbean culture. Temple University Press.

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Marx, K. (1963). Selected writings in sociology and social philosophy (trans: Bottomore, T. B. and Rubel, M). Penguin Books. Medawar, P. (1977). Metamorphosis. In A. Bullock & O. Stallybrass (Eds.), The Fontana dictionary of modern thought (pp. 385–386). Fontana Books. Moore, D. (1995). Origins and development of racial ideology in Trinidad: The black view of the East Indian. Chakra. Moore, D. (2010). The true story of the ‘Fatel Rozack’. https://www.caribbeanmuslims.com/thetrue-story-of-the-fatel-rozack/ (posted on 6 June 2010). Accessed November 7, 2018. Moore, D. (2020). The first East Indian to Trinidad: Captain Cubitt Sparkhall Rundle and the Fatel Rozack. Kindle Direct Publishing. Nadel, S. F. (1951). The foundations of social anthropology. Cohen and West. Naipaul, V. S. (1968/1964). An area of darkness. Penguin Books India. Nevadomsky, J. J. (1980a). Abandoning the retentionist hypothesis: Family changes among the East Indians in rural Trinidad. International Journal of Sociology of the Family, 10(2), 181–197. Nevadomsky, J. J. (1980b). Changes in Hindu institutions in an alien environment. The Eastern Anthropologist, 33(1), 39–53. Niehoff, A. & Niehoff, J. (1960). East Indians in the West Indies (Milwaukee Public Museum Publications in Anthropology No.6). Milwaukee Public Museum. North-Coombes, M. D. (1984). From slavery to indenture: Forced labour in the political economy of Mauritius, 1834–1867. In K. Saunders (Ed.), Indentured labour in the British Empire, 1834–1920 (pp. 78–125). Croom Helm. Prior, N. (2015). Battle of Waterloo: Thomas Picton, the hero and villain. BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] News, 18 June 2015. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-33110128. Accessed December 26, 2020. Ramesar, M. D. S. (1994). Survivors of another crossing: A history of East Indians in Trinidad, 1880–1946. School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Ramnarine, T. (1987). Over a hundred years of East Indian disturbances on the sugar estates of Guyana, 1869–1978: An historical overview. In D. Dabydeen & B. Samaroo (Eds.), India in the Caribbean (pp. 119–141). Hansib/University of Warwick. Roberts G. W. & Byrne, J. (1966). Summary statistics on indenture and associated migration affecting the West Indies, 1834–1918. Population Studies, 20(1), 125–34. Samaroo, B. (1995). The first ship: Fath al Razak. In B. Samaroo et al. (Ed.), In celebration of 150 years of the Indian contribution to Trinidad and Tobago – Volume II: The sesquicentenary review, 50 years later—1945–1995) (pp. 1–14). D. Quentrall-Thomas. Schwartz, B. M. (1967). The failure of caste in Trinidad. In B. M. Schwartz (Ed.), Caste in overseas Indian communities (pp. 117–147). Chandler. Singh, Y. (1973). Modernization of Indian tradition: A systematic study of social change. Thomson Press (India). The National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago. (n.d.). Nelson Island. Port of Spain: Ministry of Planning and Development, Government of Trinidad and Tobago. https://nationaltrust.tt/heritage-sites/nel son-island/. Accessed December 25, 2020. Tinker, H. (1977). The banyan tree: Overseas emigrants from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Oxford University Press. Tinker, H. (1993/1974). A new system of slavery: The export of Indian labour overseas, 1830–1920. Hansib. Twaddle, M. (1993). Visible and invisible hands. In M. Twaddle (Ed.), The wages of slavery: From chattel slavery to wage labour in Africa, the Caribbean and England (pp. 1–12). Frank Cass. Vertovec, S. (1992). Hindu Trinidad: Religion, ethnicity and socio-economic change. Macmillan. Weller, J. A. (1968). The East Indian indenture in Trinidad. Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico. Williams, E. (1993/1942). History of the people of Trinidad and Tobago. A & B Books Publishers.

Chapter 2

Indentured Migration to Trinidad: Recruitment, Journey, and Life in the Estate

They came in ships. From across the seas, they came. Britain, colonising India, transporting her chains from Chota Nagpur and the Ganges Plain. [….] Some came with dream of milk-and-honey riches, fleeing famine and death: dancing girls, Rajput soldiers, determined, tall, escaping penalty of pride. Stolen wives, afraid and despondent, crossing black waters, Brahmin, Chammar, alike, hearts brimful of hope. —Mahadai Das (1987: 288)

The Indo-Trinidadians are the descendants of the Indian labourers introduced into Trinidad between 1845 and 1917. They were recruited in British India, taken to the British colony of Trinidad, and mostly employed in sugar plantations there under a system called ‘indentured immigration’.1 This system, it is popularly believed, was introduced to address the acute labour shortage in the sugar colonies consequent upon the abolition of slavery2 there. This is only partially true. The Indian indentured labourers, no doubt, saved the sugar industry in the colonies from certain collapse; they even made it profitable.3 But the export of Indian labour overseas predated the 1

For detailed analyses of the indentured migration from India, see Tinker (1993), and with special reference to Trinidad, see Laurence (1971, 1994); Look Lai (1993); Ramesar (1994). 2 It may be recalled, slavery was formally abolished in Great Britain in 1833, but the slaves were liberated, after a period of apprenticeship, only on 1 August 1838. The abolition of slavery became effective in Trinidad on 2 December 1838. In fact, ‘after 1 May 1807, no British ship was permitted to clear port with a cargo of slaves, and from 1 March 1808 no slave could be landed in a British colony from any ship’. Since clandestine smuggling of slaves continued, in 1811, the trafficking of slave was made ‘a felony, punishable with transportation’ (Tinker, 1993: 1). 3 In 1892, 47 years after the introduction of Indians in Trinidad, James H. Stark observed: ‘Since the importation of the coolies (East Indians), commerce has taken wonderful strides, the export of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7_2

23

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abolition of slavery. Mauritius, by then, already had Indian labourers4 (see Tinker, 1993: 17–19). Post slavery, the indentured immigration was formalised as a system and, in some colonies, even subsidised through public funding. The system sought to address some of the major concerns which had led to the abolition of slavery. The Immigration Ordinance of 1854, which was periodically altered in minor details, provided the legal framework for the indenture system.5 Protocols and procedures were put in place defining and regulating the recruitment of labourers, the arrangements for their journey to the colony and the conditions for their return passage, the working and living conditions in the estates, etc. In Trinidad, these protocols and procedures were overseen by a Superintendent or Agent-General of Immigration, later called the Protector of Immigrants (a post which replaced that of Protector of Slaves).6 From 1861, he was assisted by a sub-Agent/sub-Protector of Immigrants, and there were Inspectors of Immigrants in different divisions, with interpreters attached to each division (Ramesar, 1994: 49). The laws relating to immigration and Indian immigrants in Trinidad were consolidated and amended by an Ordinance of 17 July 1899.7 The various efforts at protecting the indentured labourers, however, mostly remained on paper. The Protector was the coordinator for the inspection of plantations to see that there were no abuses of the terms of indenture (Brereton, 1985: 22). In practice, however, the Protectors were ‘pressured into becoming protectors of planters, and squeezed into restricting the meager rights of the indentured people until their status was, as nearly as possible, equal to that of slaves’ (Tinker, 1989: 67).8 In retrospect, the indenture system turned out to be ‘a new system of slavery’,

sugar has increased fivefold and that of cocoa threefold’ (quoted in Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 29; see also Kirpalani et al., 1945: 49). 4 Indian labourers were exported to French Guiana and Reunion, both overseas departments of France, from as early as in 1804 and 1829 respectively. But, the first recorded evidence, according to Mangru (1987a: 53), points to 1830, when the French merchant Joseph Argand contracted 130 artisans to work in the French colony of Bourbon. 5 For the salient features of this Ordinance, see Moore (1995: 81–83). Mangru (1992) provides an analysis of the British Indian government’s policy towards labour recruitment for the sugar colonies during 1838–1883. 6 The Protector of Immigrants was a senior colonial servant, with extensive powers: ‘He was, ex officio, a member of the Legislative Council, Chairman of its Immigration Committee and responsible to the Governor’ (Ramesar, 1994: 49). This post was abolished in 1917, the year in which the indenture immigration ended. 7 This comprehensive Ordinance consisted of 276 paragraphs in 52 printed pages. Williams describes this Ordinance as ‘the best available evidence of the treatment to which the Indian immigrants were subjected in Trinidad’ (1993: 102–105). 8 Three officials, however, were exceptional: Charles Mitchel, Frank Gibbon, and Major James Fagan. Major Fagan, on the retirement list of the Bengal Military Establishment, who was appointed the first Agent General of Immigrants in Trinidad, was called ‘the coolie magistrate’, because he defended the cause of the immigrants.

2 Indentured Migration to Trinidad …

25

as Lord John Russell had so prophetically described it as early as 15 February 1840 (quoted in Twaddle, 1993: 1; see Chap. 1, Fn 31). Lord Russell later became the prime minister of Britain from 1846 to 1852 and again from 1865 to 1866, but did precious little to abolish the indenture system. In Trinidad, there had been some opposition to Indian indentured immigration from early on, on the grounds that Indians were ‘immoral heathens’ and that the cost of introducing them would bring debt and increase taxation. From the early 1900s, state aid to immigration was opposed by Henry A. Alcazar and C. Prudhomme David (in the Trinidad Legislative Council) and Trinidad Workingmen’s Association in Trinidad and by Thomas Summerbell and Joseph Pointer of the Labour Party (in the House of Common in London). Alcazar attacked the system also on the ground that it was semi-servitude. In 1909, in his testimony before the Sanderson Committee in London, George F. Fitzpatrick9 of the East Indian National Association assailed abuses of the indenture system and urged better conditions and treatment for the indentured Indians (see Williams, 1993: 112–119; Ramesar, 1994: 118–129; see also Tinker, 1993: 236–287). Besides the anti-slavery groups in Britain, the system came to be opposed by enlightened Indians, too (see Tinker, 1993: 288–233). Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi10 (1869–1948), Gopal Krishna Gokhale11 (1866–1915), Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya12 (1861–1946), among others, were supported at various times by Lord Curzon13 (1859–1925), Lord Hardinge14 (1858–1944), Charles Freer Andrews15 (1871–1940), and William Winstanley Pearson16 (1881–1923) in voicing opposition to the indentured labour migration. After protracted opposition, on 20 March 1916, Pandit Malviya moved a resolution in the Indian Legislative Council for the abolition of the indenture system, and the British government accepted the

9

George F. Fitzpatrick (1875–1920) was a prominent barrister of Indian descent and a member of Trinidad and Tobago’s Legislative Council (Campbell, 1996: 168). 10 Later to become Mahatma Gandhi. 11 Gokhale was a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and the founder of the Servants of India Society. In his speech in the Imperial Legislative Council on 4 March 1912, calling for the prohibition of Indian indentured migration, he described it as ‘a monstrous system, iniquitous in itself, based on fraud and maintained by force … a system wholly opposed to modern sentiments of justice and humanity is a great blot on the civilization of any country that tolerates it’ (Gokhale, 1912: 350). 12 Malviya was a scholar, freedom fighter, and founder of the Benares Hindu University and the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha. 13 George Nathaniel Curzon was the Viceroy of India (1899–1905). 14 Charles Hardinge was the Viceroy and Governor-General of India (1910–1916). 15 Andrews was a missionary, social reformer, and ‘friend of India’; he became a close friend of Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi. For his critical analysis of the Indian indentured labour in Fiji, see Andrews and Pearson (1918). 16 Pearson was a pastor who taught at Tagore’s school in Bolpur and Santiniketan, translated Tagore’s work into English, and in 1916, became Tagore’s secretary. He was an ardent supporter of Mahatma Gandhi. He was the co-author of Andrew’s book, see Fn. 15.

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resolution and formally banned the system in 1917 and legally abolished it in 1920.17 As Hugh Tinker observes, ‘This was the first major Indo-British political and social issue to be decided in dependent India, and not in metropolitan Britain’ (1993: 288).18 This chapter is devoted to an understanding of the indenture system. It mainly focuses on the process of recruitment of the labourers in India, their ship voyage to Trinidad, and their life on the sugar plantations there. It delineates the organisation and function of indentured labour immigration as a new system of slavery and to highlight the severe challenges that ‘India’ in the socio-cultural baggage that the migrants carried with them had to encounter. It also seeks to explain the uncompromising conditions under which their ingenuity worked in the selective adoption, adaption, and innovation of social institutions and cultural practices in creating a girmitiya diasporic community that is well known today as Indo-Trinidadians.

2.1 Recruitment of Labourers 2.1.1 The System The process of recruitment of labour for indentured emigration remained more or less the same for all the sugar colonies.19 For Trinidad, it began with the submission of requisition for labourers by the planters to the Immigration Committee of the Trinidad Legislative Council. The approved indents were forwarded by the Governor of Trinidad to the Colonial Office in London with the assurance that the colony could afford to introduce the proposed number of immigrants. The indent, if endorsed by the Colonial Office, was sent to the Government of Trinidad’s Emigration Agent in Calcutta.20 To assist him in his work, which was primarily commercial in nature, the Emigration Agent appointed sub-agents who, in turn, appointed paid recruiters to travel to the distant districts for this purpose. The recruiters depended on unlicensed assistants or touts, called arkatias, who made the first contact with the prospective labour recruits, called ‘the catch’. The sub-agents were paid by commission, and they

17

Since the term of indenture was five years, those recruited in 1917 remained indentured on the estates in the colonies until 1922. Laurence (1994: 432–483) provides a detailed account of the abolition of indentured emigration system. With many immigrants becoming free-wage labourers post their indenture, the sugar industry survived without indentured immigration. 18 For a detailed account of the British Indian government policy towards indentured labour migration to the sugar colonies, see Mangru (1992). 19 For recruitment in general, see Saha (1970: 78–94) and for recruitment to British Guiana, (see Ruhomon, 1947: 93–100). The following account of the system of recruitment for Trinidad is based on Ramesar (1994: 9–25). 20 Since it was expensive for each colony to maintain an agent of its own, later Trinidad joined Fiji, Jamaica, and Mauritius to have a common agent. But British Guiana and Dutch Guiana had their own agents. All these agents were headquartered in the main port of embarkation, Calcutta.

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27

made their own arrangements with the recruiters and they, in turn, with the arkatias.21 As will be mentioned later, the institution of commission-based recruitment, a chronic weakness of the indenture system, resulted in abuses and brought it disrepute. To avoid the conflict of interest caused by competition among colonies, at any given time, recruitment was done for one colony only, until its quota was filled. To complete the emigration formalities, the recruitment began about six to eight weeks before the sailing date of an emigrant ship. With experience, a well-organised system was put in place and a regular time-table was followed. For Trinidad, the sailing dates were from September/October to March and recruitment was done from 1 August. The prospective recruits who, often with half or false knowledge of the system, ‘assented’ to indentured migration were taken to the nearest sub-depot. The sub-depot was most often the sub-agent’s house, where the recruit stayed and was fed awaiting medical examination. Once the recruit was medically examined, however perfunctorily, and found fit by the Emigration Agency’s travelling doctor, he was produced before a registering officer for questioning and registration. This officer, usually a sub-divisional magistrate, British or Indian, interviewed the recruit separately from the recruiter, to ascertain if s/he had understood the terms of the agreement and was willing to emigrate. If the recruit assented, s/he signed an agreement in triplicate in the presence of the registering officer. This ‘Form of Agreement for Intending Emigrants’ (Colonial Emigration, Form No. 5) contained the name of the emigrant; name(s) of dependents, if any; emigrant’s address (district, thana, village/town/mohalla); name of the successor(s) to estate in India, her/his father’s name, and relationship to the emigrant; and the emigrant’s sex, age, caste, and occupation. Based on the information provided by the recruit, this form was filled up in English. This form also carried a declaration by the emigrant: ‘I agree to emigrate on the conditions of service specified on the reverse.’ These ‘conditions of service’ were ‘terms of agreement’ which the recruiters for Trinidad were authorised to offer to the intending emigrants, and they were signed by the recruiter for Trinidad in the presence of the registering officer and endorsed by the Emigration Agent for Trinidad and the Protector of Emigrants.22 These terms of agreement were printed in different languages, depending on the region from which the emigrants were recruited: in Hindi and Bengali, for those from the lower provinces of Bengal; in Urdu, for Agra and Oudh, and for the Punjab; in Hindi and Marathi, for the Central Provinces; in Marathi, for Bombay; and in Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam, for Madras.

21

Nath (1970: 95), who was a Senior Immigrant Agent, British Guiana Civil Service, records that the sub-agent’s commission ranged from Rs 45 for a man or Rs 75 for a woman to Rs 100 for a woman towards the end of the system. Additionally, the sub-agent was given a bonus of Rs 50 for every 250 emigrants despatched during the season. 22 For a facsimile specimen of this Form and the terms of agreement therein as used in 1889, see Ramesar (1994: 156–157 [Appendix A 2: Copy of an Indenture Contract]). The print-font in this facsimile is too small, partially cut on the left-side, and illegible. The text of the Form, as used in 1909, is reproduced from Sanderson Report in Laurence (1994: 537–538 [Appendix VII: Form of Indenture Contract, 1909]).

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The ‘conditions of service’ and ‘terms of the agreement’ remained the same, with minor modifications, throughout the period of indentured labour migration. In 1909, these conditions and terms were as follows: Period of service: For male emigrants, five years from the date of allotment; for female emigrants, three years from the date of allotment.23 Nature of labour: Work in connection with the cultivation of the soil or the manufacture of the produce on any plantation [sugar, cocoa, and other]. Number of days on which the emigrant is required to labour in each week: Everyday, excepting Sundays and authorised holidays.24 Number of hours in each day during which the emigrant is required to labour without extra remuneration: Nine, inclusive of half-an-hour for rest and refreshment. Monthly or daily wages or task-work rates: Able-bodied adults of and above 16 years of age shall be paid 1Shilling and ½ Penny [which was then equivalent to 12 Annas and 6 Pie] for each day’s work. Adults not able-bodied or minors of and above 10 years and under 16 years of age shall be paid 8 Penny [which was then equivalent to 8 Annas] for each day’s work. Extra work shall be paid in proportion for every extra hour of work. Wages earned will be paid fortnightly. If the emigrant be required to work by task instead of by time, the same wages shall be paid as to unindentured labourers on the same or other neighbouring plantations, or to indentured labourers on the neighbouring plantations, and such wages may be more, but shall not be less than the minimum wages payable for time work.25 Conditions as to return passage: The emigrant on completing a continuous residence of ten years in Trinidad, and holding or becoming entitled to a certificate of exemption from labour shall, with family, if any, should they not be under indenture, or, if under indenture, should commutation money have been paid to their employer, to be provided with a return passage back to Calcutta26 on payment of one-half of the passage money in the case of men, and one-third in the case of women.27 Provided that every such emigrant who is destitute or disabled shall, with dependents, be entitled to a free return passage. Persons who have previously proceeded to the colony and returned to India shall not be entitled to return passages. After completing a continuous residence of five years and holding or becoming entitled to a certificate of exemption from labour, the emigrant may return to India at his own cost. Blankets and warm clothing are supplied gratis on leaving India, but not for the return voyage. Other Conditions: Full rations will be provided for adults and minors by the employer for twelve calendar months following the date of allotment, according to the scale sanctioned by the Government of Trinidad, at a cost of 3 Penny [which was then equivalent to 3 Annas] each daily, and to each infant under ten years of age one-third of a ration free of cost. 23

In 1845, resisting restrictive work practices, the Colonial Office had introduced one-year contract. Three-year contract was introduced in 1850, and five-year contract, in 1862. For both female and male emigrants, the standard ‘period of service’ remained five years through the 1880s. 24 In the 1880s, five-day week was the norm, excepting during ‘the gathering in of the crops’, when the emigrants were expected to work for six days in a week. 25 These wage rates remained unchanged since the 1880s. 26 Not to Madras, even if the emigrant had boarded the ship for the onward journey from there. 27 In the beginning, five years of labour in Trinidad entitled the emigrant to free return passage. From 1854, this period was extended to ten years of continuous residence in the colony, five years having been passed under indenture. After 1895, return passage was not completely free; it was subsidised: ‘the men paid one-quarter; and the women one-sixth, plus the cost of warm clothing for the voyage. Those arriving after 1898 paid an increased proportion: one-half for the men, and one-third for the women, plus clothing costs’ (Ramesar, 1994: 60).

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29

Suitable dwelling will be assigned to emigrants free of rent, and such dwellings will be kept by the employer in good repair. Hospital accommodation with medical attendance, comforts, etc., will be provided free of charge to all emigrants under indenture and their families. (Quoted from ‘Form of Indenture Contract, 1909’, as reproduced in Laurence, 1994: 537–538 [Appendix VII])

The details of the agreement are reproduced in full here to describe the nature of work in a far-off colony that the recruits from India were signing into before their emigration. The reality of what this agreement meant for their life in Trinidad is discussed in a subsequent section. But it is important to note that the idea of ‘agreement’—girmit, in the lingo of the emigrants—came to be so etched in the imagination of the emigrants that the term and the concept encapsulated by it has survived in the diaspora community. Here lies the sociological significance of the nomenclature ‘girmitiya diaspora’ (Chap. 1, Fn 7) to describe the Indian communities that came into existence in the former sugar colonies. It is often emphasised that indenture, unlike slavery, which was enforced (the slaves being captured or kidnapped and sold), was voluntary in nature; the indentured persons signed a contract on their own volition.28 That the reality was otherwise is a different matter (see Tinker, 1993). Even if we accept this difference at its face value, the question to ask is, whether the indentured persons understood the implications of what they were signing for. Either they could not read the contract or they did not understand its nuances even if they could read it in a language familiar to them.29 The demand for indentured labour always exceeded its supply. The Emigration Agent in his eagerness to recruit the required number of labourers for emigration often turned a blind eye to minor violation of the rules. And the opportunity to increase their commission resulted in the adoption of deceit and fraudulent recruitment practices on the part of the recruiters and arkatias. ‘They caught us one by one and told us a lot of lies’,30 recounts centenarian Deeda in Jahajin (Mohan, 2007: 16). In 1873, John Geoghegan, Under-Secretary to the Department of Agriculture, Revenue and Commerce, in his Note on Emigration from India observed that: … very grave abuses had prevailed in India, emigrants having been, in too many cases, entrapped by force and fraud and systematically plundered of nearly six month’s wages, nominally advanced to them but really divided, on pretences more or less transparent, among the predacious crew engaged in the traffic. (1873: 6) 28

Other differences include (a) indenture was for a specified period, whereas slavery was perpetual (a lifetime experience); (b) involved only the individual signing the contract, whereas the wife and children of a slave were also enslaved; and (c) indenture was officially monitored and regulated, whereas there was weak or no monitoring of slavery. 29 As late as 1910, the Sanderson Committee concluded that emigrants continue to leave India without fully understanding the implications of what they had signed for (cited in Laurence, 1994: 56). 30 A popular lie was the alluring description of Trinidad as ‘Chini-dad’ (literally, ‘land of sugar’), and the work there being easy and salary attractive (see Bhagirathee, 2003: 55–6). During his fieldwork in central Trinidad in 1957–1958, Klass was told by some India-born immigrants that the arkatias ‘played upon their youth and ignorance with stories of “high wages” and “easy work” …’ (1988: 9).

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The Annual Report [of Bengal Protector of Emigrants] on Emigration from the Port of Calcutta to British and Foreign Colonies for the year 1908 lists such malpractices as employing unlicensed men as recruiters, kidnapping and coercing people (especially women31 ) to register, and keeping them illegally in sub-depots (cited in Ramesar, 1994: 11; see also Jenkins 1871: 187, 435–436; Weller 1968: 5–7). The licenses of sub-agents/recruiters found guilty of misconduct and malpractices were revoked and they were punished, too. In later years, recruitment was restricted to fewer areas: to north and south Bihar and the eastern districts of the United Provinces. Nevertheless, deception in recruitment continued throughout the indentured emigration. The unscrupulous recruiters/arkatias told lies about the conditions of work and payment. They tailored their story to suit their targets; the ignorant and gullible were given fewer details of indenture, and the literate and those shy of belief were given more details—but they were never told about the harsh penal laws governing indenture. Some of the recruits had no idea they would be taken tens of thousands of km from their native place. The following song sung by descendants of indentured immigrants in British Guiana well captures the deceitfulness of the recruiters/arkatias: Oh recruiter, your heart is deceitful, Your speech is full of lies! Tender may be your voice, articulate and seemingly logical, But it is all used to defame and destroy The good names of people. (Vatuk, 1964: 224)

2.1.2 Catchment Area The catchment area for the recruitment of indentured emigrants varied over the years. In the early stages, the recruits were mainly drawn from Dhanagars, non-Hindu agricultural labourers belonging to tribal communities like Oraons, Kols, Santals, and other semi-aboriginals in the Chota Nagpur (also known as South-West Frontier) an administrative sub-division of the Bengal Presidency.32 Called ‘hill coolies’ or ‘junglees’, they were regarded as sturdy but docile labourers; they proved to be ‘reliable, effective workers’ (see Mangru, 1987a: 53). But, after the 1860s, with the expansion of tea plantations in Assam and adjoining areas, they were in great demand, especially to clear the jungle. They also found the climate of Assam similar to that which they were accustomed. With the drying up of tribal labour supply from Chota Nagpur, the recruiters shifted the area of their operation to cover the Bhojpuri-/Hindi-speaking western districts of United Provinces and western Bihar. With the annexation of Oudh in 31

The demand for women recruits was high as it was very difficult to meet the required quota. For women recruits, the recruiters/arkatias received higher commissions and even bonuses. 32 It included most of the present-day Jharkhand and the adjacent areas of West Bengal, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh.

2.1 Recruitment of Labourers

31

1856 and in the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of 1857,33 they turned to Agra and Oudh. Based on the data from the Annual Reports of the Emigration Department for the years 1877–1886, Donald Wood writes, … for the seasons 1866–7, 1877–8, and 1878–9, 46.5 per cent (2977) of the 6384 men, women, and children registered for Trinidad came from the North-West Provinces, 27.9 per cent (1786) from Oudh, 16.2 per cent (1037) from Bihar, and only 5.4 per cent (346) from all Bengal. The remaining 4 per cent were from central India (36), the Punjab (27), Orissa (22), native states (11), and from ‘miscellaneous places’, including Bombay and Madras (196). (1968: 145)

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the North-West Provinces (known as the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh after 1902) sent many more migrants than the Bengal Presidency. Even those who were recruited in Bengal, originated in the United Provinces, as Bengal, and particularly Calcutta, had ‘a magnetic pull on immigrant labour’ (Mangru, 1987a: 64). In the twentieth century, most emigrants were from the United Provinces. Gradually, recruiters for Trinidad were sourcing the emigrants from Raipur and Bilaspur in the Central Provinces. In the early twentieth century, they had begun recruiting emigrants from Delhi, Rajputana, and Bundelkhand. Based on whatever data is available on the provinces of origin of emigrants who embarked from Calcutta for Trinidad during 1876–1917, we find that 92.2% of them came from United Provinces (50.81%), Oudh (25.08%), and Bihar (16.31%) (computed from Ramesar, 1994: 16 [Table 1.1]). The recruits for emigration to Trinidad, as to other sugar colonies, originated in large numbers from particular districts (see Table 2.1). It was easy to recruit emigrants from some districts rather than others. For instance, the landless poor of Basti district, who would wander off in search of employment were easy to be persuaded to sign up for emigration. The Hindu pilgrims who flocked to Benares were also an easy prey to recruiters’ guiles.34 However, some categories of recruits from some districts were considered undesirable, e.g., Rajputs (from Rajputana) and Punjabis, Sikhs, and Pathans (from Punjab) were considered difficult to be managed, some even unruly and troublesome. There were fewer recruits from the Madras Presidency in south India: by 1892, i.e., after 40 years of steady indentured emigration, ‘Trinidad had only received some 5265 Madrasis out of a total of about 93,569 immigrants, a mere 6%’ (Ramesar, 1994: 18). By their experience, the planters and the government had learnt that, as compared to the emigrants from northern India, those from Madras area were an almost total failure as field workers and were more difficult to manage (see Laurence, 1994: 104). Since they were better than nothing, Trinidad used Madras Presidency for 33

Also called ‘the Sepoy Mutiny’ (by British historians) and ‘First War of Independence’ (by Indian historians), this was a widespread but unsuccessful rebellion against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. Begun in Meerut by Indian troops in the service of the Company, it spread to Agra, Delhi, Kanpur, and Lucknow. In 1858, the Company was abolished in favour of the direct rule of India by the British government (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2020). 34 In 1913, Arthur Marsden, a Trinidad Emigration Agent, was put in charge of recruitment in Benares.

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Table 2.1 Main recruitment districts (1845–1917) North India

Central India

North-west Provinces/United Provinces [Uttar Pradesh]

Bhopal [in Madhya Pradesh]

Agra

Jabbalpur [Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh]

Allahabad [Prayagraj] Azamghur [Azamgarh]

South India

Bareilly

Madras Presidency

Basti

North Arcot [in Tamil Nadu]

Benares [Varanasi]

South Arcot [in Tamil Nadu]

Bundelkhand

Chingleput [Chengalpattu in Tamil Nadu]

Cawnpore [Kanpur]

Godavari [East Godavari and West Godavari in Andhra Pradesh]

Fyzabad

Kistna [Krishna in Andhra Pradesh]

Ghazipur

Malabar [Palakkad, Malappuram, Kozhikode, Kannur, Kasargod and Wayanad in Kerala]

Gonda

Nellore [in Andhra Pradesh]

Gorakhpur

Tanjore [Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu]

Jhansi

Tinnevelly [Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu]

Jaunpur Lucknow Mathura Mizzapur [Mirzapur] Punjab Delhi [state of Delhi] Rhotak [in Haryana] Rajputana [Rajasthan] Ajmere [Ajmer] Jaipur Bihar Darbhanga Gaya Patna Shahabad Bengal [West Bengal] Burdwan [Bardhaman] Calcutta [Kolkata] 24 Parganas Chota Nagpur [in Jharkhand] Note The names of the districts and their location in states now are given brackets Source Adapted from Ramesar (1994: 8 [Map III]) and Laurence (1994: 109–110)

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33

recruitment only to make up its quota during periods of shortage of emigrants. Thus, in 1905, despite the additional costs for appointing Tamil and Telegu interpreters in the colony, Trinidad (jointly with Fiji and Mauritius) set up a temporary agency in Madras. After a lapse of many years, two ships—Lena (1905) and Indus (1906)— carried emigrants from Madras. The Madras Agency was reopened in 1910 to repeat the exercise. Recruiters for Trinidad travelled long distances from Nellore in the north of the Presidency to Tanjore (Thanjavur) and Tinnevely (Tirunelveli) in the south (see Table 2.1). The Trinidad planters were clear in their objective as regards indentured immigration: ‘to secure for their estates a regular, tractable labour force of working age, preferably males, to do plantation labour at the lowest possible cost’ (Ramesar, 1994: 19). Besides children and the elderly, they did not want those unaccustomed to manual work to be recruited. For instance, the Annual Report of the Trinidad Emigration Agent, dated 15 November 1875, reports that among those rejected included ‘one Sipahi [soldier], one Parawallah [policeman], one Tailwallah [oilman], one Jolah [weaver], and one Baniah [shopkeeper]’ (quoted in Ramesar, 1994: 19). Trinidad planters often voiced their complaints about the emigration agency sending people who were useless as field labourers.

2.1.3 The Push to Emigration It is well known that villagers and tribal people in colonial India were habituated to temporarily leaving their homes to seek employment in adjoining districts or even in distant provinces. They also travelled to places of pilgrimage. In fact, a large number of indentured labourers were recruited outside their native places, particularly in urban areas, where they had migrated to find work, and in pilgrimage centres (see Lal, 1983: 67–68). Tinker mentions how, in Bihar, low-caste landless labourers left their homes and bonded themselves in kamiuti, ‘a kind of semi-slavery’ (1993: 53). This does not mean that the poor village folk could be persuaded to embark on a ship voyage to a place far away from their native place about which they knew next to nothing. Apart from a general fear of the unknown, they were bound by strong social ties, which was antithetical to individual adventurism. There were religious injunctions against sea journey and the fear of a forced conversion to Christianity (see Gillion, 1956: 142). Therefore, their vulnerability to the guile of the recruiters/arkatias and their decision to indenture themselves must have come from a variety of pressures to which they were exposed. In other words, the push to indentured emigration must be viewed as a response to the challenge of survival. Steven Vertovec (1992: 6–8) lists 12 severe economic conditions which, in combination, pushed the poor peasants and landless labourers to indentured emigration. These included the four severe famines (in 1804, 1837, 1861, and 1908) and 20 localised famines and food shortages (between 1860 and 1908), population growth and increasing population density, declining local handicraft industries, the transformation of traditional landlord–tenant relations, the enormous pressure of paying

34

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rent in cash, sub-division and subletting of land, and eviction of those who could not pay their rents.35 Romesh Dutt quotes the Commissioner of Fyzabad, an area from which a large proportion of Indians emigrated to Trinidad, that. It has been calculated that about 60 per cent of the entire native population are sunk in such abject poverty that, unless the small earnings of child-labour are added to the small general stock by which the family is kept alive, some members of the family would starve. (In Dutt, 1904: 611)

While economic reasons were more decisive as push factors in emigration, there were non-economic reasons, too. The oppressive policies following the Indian Rebellion of 1857 was one such factor (see Metcalf, 1964). A large number of emigrants left Calcutta in 1857, 1858, and 1859. In October 1857, Thomas Caird, the Emigration Agent reported that many emigrants arrived (some with their families) in Calcutta depot after many days of walk from some of the most disturbed areas of north India (Tinker, 1993: 134). It is surmised that the emigration authorities may have smuggled them out of India without detection. Jagdish Chandra Jha (1972) claims that, during 1858–1860, some Bhojpuris arrived in Trinidad without the customary official record being made of their zillah (district), pargana (revenue division), village, or name of kin (see also Samaroo, 2012).36 Among other non-economic reasons, there were personal reasons which pushed some individuals to indentured emigration. Some surviving indentured immigrants in Trinidad mentioned family quarrels as responsible for their leaving India. Criminals and vagrants also found an escape in indentured emigration. For many women recruits to Surinam, emigration was a vehicle of emancipation—an escape from starvation, social disabilities, and personal problems (see Emmer, 1986: 251); this was true in the case of Trinidad and other sugar colonies, too. Personal ambition for social mobility that was promised to them by the recruiters/arkatias and the ‘adventurous spirit’ (Saha, 1970: 74) characteristic among youth37 also played an important role.

35

By 1873, ‘notices of eviction were being issued at a rate of 60,000 annually, with the object not of clearing the land but of forcing the tenant to submit to an enhanced rent’ (Metcalf, 1964: 134). 36 Edward Bean Underhill, a London-based Baptist Missionary ‘discovered some rebel sepoys from India’ at a plantation in Arouca (Trinidad). When they learnt that he ‘knew those parts of India from which they came, they quickly walked off, apparently fearing that the discovery of their connection with the mutiny might in some way compromise them’ (quoted in Samaroo, 2012: 89). 37 In the novel Chalo Chinidad, Mohan the protagonist and narrator tells his mother that indentured emigration to Trinidad is a ‘golden opportunity’ that he did not ‘intend to let it slip-by’ (Bhagirathee, 2003: 58).

2.2 The Passage

35

2.2 The Passage 2.2.1 Emigration Depot The recruits were first lodged in sub-depots located in district headquarters or towns in north India (like Patna, Muzaffarpur, Gorakhpur, Fyzabad, Cawnpore [Kanpur], and Allahabad [Prayagraj]). From there they were transported in batches to the emigration depot in Calcutta or Madras,38 initially by foot39 and later by train40 with the building of railway stations in Howrah (twin city of Calcutta) in 1854 and Madras in 1873. There they were interviewed by the provincial Protector of Emigrants, who supposedly ascertained their willingness to emigrate and were medically examined by the Bengal Government’s Medical Inspector of Emigrants to ensure their physical fitness for the long ship journey and for field labour in the colony. Once formally selected and registered, they were housed in the depot, and were given food and clothing. They remained there, while the remaining recruits were collected and processed, and until embarkation. The emigrants’ life in the depot was often harsh; to Hindus, it was especially shocking as they were ‘herded together without respect to caste differences’ (Ramesar, 1994: 24). Located on undrained land, which became stagnant pools after rains, some depots were ‘filthy’; there was always the threat of contracting dysentery, typhoid, or cholera. According to Tinker, ‘throughout the time of heaviest emigration, from the 1850s to the 1870s, the depots were seldom altogether clear of epidemic disease’ (1993: 141). However, by early twentieth century, the physical conditions and health facilities in the depots had improved. It is in the depot that the emigrants met and interacted with strangers with whom they would make the long voyage to Trinidad. The day on which the emigrants left the depot to embark on board ship, was poignant; it was their last day on Indian soil, as most of them would not return to their mother land, a fact that they did not know or which escaped their imagination.41 As Tinker writes, ‘It was an occasion of bewilderment and some confusion, if also of some excitement’ (1993: 143). On this day, the Protector of Emigrants was present to see them aboard. ‘Each emigrant was issued with a pass and a “tin 38

Each colony had its own main depots (in Calcutta and Madras) and sub-depots. According to Arthur H. Hill, by 1915, there were 58 such sub-depots (quoted in Vertovec, 1992: 5). 39 In 1858, Emigration Agent Thomas Caird reported that the journey from the districts around Benares and Patna took 30–40 days; and many of them, especially women and children, arrived in Calcutta with ‘footsore’ (cited in Tinker, 1993: 134). 40 The train journey, though tedious it was (‘the emigrants were squeezed together … in a third-class compartment’), took ‘no more than two days’ (Tinker, 1993: 134). From the railway station to the depot, they had to walk the distance of about 10 km. 41 The poignancy of this scene is well captured in the refrain ‘Apni kahani chhod ja, kuchh to nishani chhod ja; kaun kahe is or, tu phir aaye na aaye’ [Oh brother! … leave your story behind/ leave some token of remembrance may be/ who can tell here/ you will come by or not] in a song penned by Shailendra and sung by Manna Dey and Lata Mangeshkar in Bimal Roy’s 1953 film Do Bhiga Zameen. I thank Sachin Tiwari for helping with poetic translation of the refrain.

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ticket” (an identification disc42 ) hung round the neck or strapped to the arm’ (ibid.: 143). After a final medical inspection by the Medical Inspector of Emigrants and the ship’s Surgeon-Superintendent, in a single file, the emigrants ‘marched aboard, single women first, families next, single men last, to begin a journey across the world and time’ (Ruhomon, 1947: 97).43

2.2.2 The Ships The sea voyage from Calcutta and Madras in India to Port of Spain in Trinidad was long—21,452 or 19,803 nautical km. The ‘sailing ships’ (pal jahaj) took three to four months, at an average of 100 days in the beginning. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the introduction of ‘steam ships’ (steamer) in the mid-1880s, the duration of the journey was reduced considerably.44 These ships, called ‘coolie ships’, as they carried indentured emigrants, were specially licensed by the provincial government of India after due examination of their sea-worthiness and suitability for the transportation of ‘human cargo’. The ‘coolie carrying trade’ was so profitable that prominent companies like (a) James Nourse of London and (b) Sandbach, Tinne and Company of Liverpool had made it their speciality. By the late nineteenth century Nourse was carrying the bulk of emigrant transportation between India and Trinidad (Photograph 2.1). During the course of 73 years (1845–1917) when indentured labour migration was in force, in all, the ships made 317 voyages (see Appendix 2.1). Every year, excepting 42

This disc identified the emigrant as ‘coolie’—a homogenised identity disrupting traditional rank and status. Embossed on the disc was a serial number through which an emigrant and her/his relatives in India could be traced at any time thereafter, if the particulars s/he gave the agency were correct. However, some emigrants gave false particulars precisely because they (a) wished to cut ties with their homes, (b) wanted to avoid being identified as belonging to a particular caste or place, or (c) were escaping from being pursued by creditors or police. 43 The pathos of embarking on an unknown journey is poignantly expressed in a parting song, sung by the descendants of indentured labourers in British Guiana: Listen, oh Indian, listen to the story of us emigres, The emigres who cry constantly, tears flowing from their eyes. When we left the ports of Calcutta and Bombay, Brother left sister, mother left daughter. In deep love of the mother country we cried; Water flowed from our eyes. … Painful is our story, choking is our voice… (Vatuk, 1964: 225). 44 The voyage of Virawa (2158-ton steamer), which arrived in Port of Spain on 17 October 1901, had taken 53 days (see Appendix 2.1). Later steamers took only five weeks to complete this journey. By the early twentieth century, the steamers were gradually replacing sailing ships. Besides, reducing the duration of the voyage, steam ships had the additional advantage in that they were not seasondependent; sailing ships had to avoid the south-east monsoon and were dependent on favourable wind for sailing.

2.2 The Passage

37

Photograph 2.1 Rhine (with the studding sails set), the ship that made nine trips to Trinidad from India between 1888 and 1906 carrying girmitiyas (see Appendix 2.1). Source https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:StateLibQld_1_174583_Rhine_(ship).jpg (Courtesy John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland copyright free) (Accessed 31 January 2022)

in 1849 and 1850 (when the system remained suspended for lack of finance), there was at least one voyage (as in 1845, 1851, 1855, 1866, and 1900) from India to Trinidad, the maximum being ten (as in 1859), working out to an annual average of 4.46 voyages. Of the 317 voyages to Trinidad, 307 originated in Calcutta (seven of them picking passengers from Madras on the way) and 11 from Madras. Some ships arrived in Trinidad twice in the same year: Avon (1903), Chenab (1912, 1916), Indus (1912), Jura (1866, 1889), and Mutlah (1911, 1913).

2.2.3 The Voyage45 On the ship, the emigrants were allocated places in the ‘coolie deck’ as follows: The single women were berthed aft, in the rear section of the ship. Then married couples and children were accommodated amidships; sometimes the married men were berthed on one side, and the wives and children were berthed separately. The single men – usually the main group – were put in the forward part of the ship. (Tinker, 1993: 152) 45

For some first-hand account of the voyage see, Ramchand and Samaroo, 1995; and Ramdin, 1994. Biographies of the immigrants to Trinidad invariably make a reference to the voyage (see Mahabir, 1985; de Verteuil, 1989; see also Ramesar and Bhupsingh, 1988: 9–14 [Andrew Guyadeen’s biography]). Vignettes of the voyage of their ancestors are also available in contemporary autobiographical fictions (see Bhagirathee, 2003; Mohan, 2007). In his diary, Dr Theophilus Pellatt Richmond (1815–1838), ship’s surgeon aboard the Hesperus that sailed from Calcutta to Georgetown in British Guyana in 1838, records his experience of the voyage (see Dabydeen et al., 2007: 153–163).

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The different sections were barricaded; men (including the crew) were not allowed to enter the women’s section, the sole exception being the surgeon-superintendent who entered the women’s section to attend to medical emergencies.46 The hospital was amidships; the dispensary, on the top deck, and aft. The kitchen, cookhouse as it was called, was in the forward galleys. ‘This was the world of the emigrants for many weeks and months’ (ibid.: 152). For many emigrants, the long ship journey was not comfortable. In very rough seas (pagla samundar), the journey could even be risky; ‘the coolie ships encountered their share of maritime peril and catastrophe …’ (ibid.:166). This was more so in the case of sailing ships; the steam ships fared much better. Among the risks involved fire at sea (especially with a cargo of jute), hurricane and storm, shipwreck, and mutiny by the crew. Tinker (ibid.: 166–168) describes such accidents to the ‘coolie ships’ on the ocean, some resulting in the death of all but one or two of the coolies. Fortunately, all the Indians were saved when the Hanover, on voyage from Calcutta to Trinidad, ran ashore at St Helena in 1859. The diet on the ship consisted of boiled rice, dhal, and vegetables (often spoiled).47 In the earlier stages, the poor diets coupled with unhygienic conditions on the ships48 resulted in outbreaks of illness and even epidemics of contagious diseases like measles (khesariya ke mahamari), mumps, meningitis, and even cholera. This explains the high mortality on board the coolie ships in the 1850s and 1860s.49 Based on surviving mournful narratives of two voyages from Calcutta to Port of Spain—Salsette (1858) and Dilharee (1872),50 Tinker writes: On the Salsette, the mortality accounted for over 38 per cent of the emigrants [124 of the 323 who boarded, most of whom were hill coolies from Chota Nagpur]: it was the worst on any coolie ship, other than those that were wrecked. The death-rate on the Delharree [Dilharee] was over 8 per cent, not exceptionally bad by the awful standards of the time, but bad enough. (ibid.: 158)

Although 1836 emigrants died on board between 1869 and 1917, the death rate was generally low; excepting 1906/1907, 1910/1911, and 1917, it was less than 1% (see Laurence, 1994: 92–95; 532–535 Appendix V). Not all death on the journey was due to personal physical ailments, epidemics, or contagious diseases. Some emigrants, out of disorientation, suffering cruelty by the 46

Nevertheless, women were routinely subjected to the ordeal of ‘sexploitation’ on board the ship. Shepherd (2002) narrates the tragedy of a young woman who died on a passage in the nineteenth century apparently after being raped by crewmen. She reproduces verbatim the testimonies of girmitiyas at an 1885 enquiry to recover their voices which are rarely heard in the official documentation. 47 The outbreak of beriberi, a disease caused by vitamin B-1 (thiamine) deficiency, on some early voyages is traced to the poor dietary provision for the emigrants on board the ship. 48 Gangulee describes the conditions on these ships to have been ‘appalling’ (1947: 44). 49 According to Laurence, mortality on board in some years and on particular ships was ‘exceptionally high’: of the 4994 passengers who left Calcutta in 12 ships, 707 (14.16%) died on the voyage. This repeated in 1864–1865 (Laurence, 1994: 92). 50 Tinker reproduces excerpts from the diaries of Captain E. Swinton’s for Salsette and Surgeon Superintendent Dr Wiley for Dilharee respectively (1993: 158–159 and 159–161).

2.2 The Passage

39

crew, anxiety or depression, committed suicide by jumping over board (de Verteuil, 1989: 12). Officials on some ships were callous about the loss of Indian life. For instance, Dr William Johnston, in his diary of the voyage to Trinidad in 1873 recorded such loss thus: 26 October 1873: Another coolie whelp skedaddled to kingdom come. … 29 October: Another coolie infant vermosed [sic]. … 7 November: One of the coolies jumped overboard [the third] assigning as a reason that he had not enough grub. The amusement is getting rather too common. (Quoted in Tinker, 1993: 150)51

With stricter selection of emigrants, improvements in their diet and personal hygiene and exercise, and periodical inspection by the surgeon-superintendents on the ships there was an overall improvement in their health on the journey. A ‘morality squad’ was instituted to both keep an eye on women emigrants and protect them from physical harm. The emigrants on the ship kept their spirits high and warded off travel weariness by group-singing on the deck or in the dormitory below accompanied by the music from the instruments like sarangi and tabla that some had brought.52 ‘Through all the miseries and dangers of the ocean, the Indians preserved that stoical acceptance of fate which is the strength of the Indian poor’ (Tinker, 1993: 168). Moreover, on the long voyage, they, the jahajis, formed enduring social bonds cutting across religions and castes, called jahaji-bhai (ship-brother; brotherhood of the ship) and jahaji-bahin (ship-sister; sisterhood of the ship), bonds that later sustained their existence in Trinidad.53

2.2.4 The Arrival After the long ship voyage, the emigrants landed on Nelson Island off Port of Spain. The Protector of Immigrants along with the Medical Officer met them at the Immigration Depot there and based on his inspection of the ship and its passengers he sent his report to the Governor of Trinidad. Towards the turn of the nineteenth century, it was the standard practice for the Protector to read the Immigration Ordinance aloud to the assembled immigrants to familiarise them with the law under which they worked. But, by the time they landed, indenture was fait accompli for them (Photograph 2.2).

51

The Surgeon-General of Trinidad (Dr S. L. Crane) and the Governor of Trinidad were aghast by this most disgraceful conduct of a member of ‘a humane and educated profession’. Johnston was removed from the emigration service in 1874 (see Tinker, 1993: 150, 396 [En. 23]). 52 The reminiscence of Andrew Guyadeen of his ship journey to Trinidad in 1881 (cited in Ramesar and Bhupsingh, 1988: 10). 53 In my interaction with Indo-Trinidadians, I have also come across the term ‘ghar ka adami’ (literally, home people), a survival from the indentured days, to refer to bonds developed by fellow Indians on the estates regardless of religion, caste, or place of origin in India. Such bonds lasted long after the end of indentureship on the estate.

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Photograph 2.2 Newly arrived girmitiyas in Trinidad, c. 1897. Source https://commons.wikime dia.org/wiki/File:Newly_arrived_coolies_in_Trinidad.jpg (copyright free) (Accessed 31 January 2022)

The immigrants were quarantined at the depot and their bundles were fumigated. The immigrants who ‘landed alive’, as the ship’s papers described them, were categorised into four groups: (a) the ‘healthy’, were sent to the estates; (b) ‘the sick’, were sent to the Colonial Hospital at Port of Spain; (c) ‘the convalescent’ (unfit for immediate labour), who needed rest and care before being sent to estates, were housed temporarily in the depot; and (d) ‘the misfits’, were repatriated.

2.3 Life in the Estate After the immigrants were quarantined, rested, and ‘processed’ (Chap. 1, Fn 29), they were assigned54 to one of the 179 estates spread all over Trinidad, excepting the east coast (see Deen, 1994: 266).55 It is on these estates that most of them spent the first five years of their life in Trinidad, and then they became ‘free’ and were categorised as ‘time-expired Indians’ (Ramesar, 1994: 77). It is on the estate that they faced the reality of indentured work first-hand, a reality that had changed little from the period of slavery. It also confirmed the suspicions that they may have developed during the voyage about the cajolery of the recruiters/arkatias.56 54

They had little choice in the matter of their employers; sometimes friends were knowingly and arbitrarily separated. 55 Appendix 2.2 provides an alphabetical list of all the estates in Trinidad. 56 Klass writes that most of the participants in his study who were the indentured immigrants recalled spending ‘their first years in Trinidad “crying” as they remembered their homes and realized how

2.3 Life in the Estate

41

Throughout the period of indenture, the immigrants were with a single employer and they were bound by the terms and conditions of the contract which they had signed. As mentioned earlier, most of them being illiterate in all the languages in which the contract was signed, they could have hardly understood what they were getting into. They had virtually surrendered their freedom to the employer during the period of their indenture: they could not leave the employer they were allotted to; they could not refuse to do the work they were assigned; they could not demand higher wages; and they could not leave the estate without their employer’s permission (‘ticket of leave’).57 The slightest breach of the terms of contract invited penal sanctions (see Brereton, 1985: 22–23; Ramesar, 1994: 33–35).58 Keith O. Laurence (1994: 131–166) provides details of the enforcement of indenture in Trinidad. The penalty for unlawful absence was seven days’ imprisonment and the second offence carried up to 30 days’ imprisonment and extension of the indenture. Women, however, had the option of a fine in lieu of imprisonment. By 1875, pregnant women were allowed to absent themselves from work for up to ten months; they were not required to make up time lost through pregnancy, i.e., their indenture was not extended beyond the five-year period. The harsh nature of the indentured system is revealed by the number of prison sentences handed down. Between 1873–1874 and 1878–1879, 2042 (3.22%) indentured Indians had received prison sentences, at an annual average of about 340 sentences. This number increased sharply between 1879 and 1890: 8656 sentences at an annual average of about 721 sentences; they covered 6.98% of the indentured Indians.59 To this if we add the number of informal ‘fines’ for minor labour offences or for stealing or damage to property on the estate, the number of those penalised would be much higher. Illegal though it was, the system of informal fines60 was preferred by both the employers and the offenders, to avoid the trouble of going to the court of law. The physical work on the estate was arduous61 ; the working hours were long (45 h per week generally, and 54 h per week during the crop season), if it was ‘time badly they had been “tricked”’ (1988: 10). The Trinidad-born Indians were ‘almost unanimous in their belief that their forebears were “damn fools” for allowing themselves to be tricked’ (ibid.: 10). 57 As many as 264 indentured immigrants had been convicted in a single year for violating this. In 1909, in his statement to Sanderson Committee, George F. Fitzpatrick (see Fn. 10) complained, ‘It does not seem right that a man who has done his daily work should not have the right to visit a friend or a relation who may live on a neighbouring plantation, without going through the ordeal of getting a written pass from his employer’ (quoted in Ramesar, 1994: 34). 58 For the situation on estates in British Guiana, see Ruhomon (1947: 118–148) and Laurence (1994: 131–166), and for Jamaica, see (Shepherd, 1993: 53–65). 59 Thus, during the period of their indenture, the Indian immigrants virtually ‘lived in the shadow of the jail’ (Williams, 1993: 107). Brereton aptly describes the legal framework of indentured work as ‘the most obnoxious feature of the system’ (1985: 24). 60 Some estates even instituted a ‘fine book’ (see Laurence, 1994: 145). 61 It involved ‘forking, weeding, cutting canes, and all the operations connected with the preparation and cultivation of the ground, and the harvesting of the crop’ (Comins, 1893b: 218). In the novel Jahajin, Mohan (2007: 120–124) reproduces an account of the nature of work that girmitiyas did on the sugar plantation as provided by the protagonist Deeda.

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work’, and the work was heavy, if it was ‘task work’. The work was overseen by sardars and whip-holding drivers.62 In appointing the drivers, the estate managers adopted a shrewd policy of ‘divide and rule’: putting ‘Creole Blacks over Indians’, or ‘Madrasis over men from Upper India’, and low-caste Indians over high-caste Indians (Tinker, 1993: 222–223). Thus, cultural exploitation was used to reinforce economic subjection. The indentured Indians lived in single-story barracks previously occupied by slaves. On most estates, the physical conditions of the barracks, barely raised from the ground on short stumps and partitioned into small rooms, were ‘wretched’ (Brereton, 1985: 25; see also Laurence, 1994: 229–232),63 and the immigrants suffered from diseases.64 On the social side, the barrack housing militated against privacy and family life, and facilitated sexual harassment and exploitation (Robert Guppy cited in Ramesar & Bhupsingh, 1988: 3) (Photograph 2.3). With many restrictions, physical and social, with little scope for diversion and recreation, and in the absence of family life they were deprived of the socio-cultural life that they had back in India, alcoholism and physical violence were easy recourse.65 As Kusha Haraksingh writes, ‘neither the plantation nor the life which it dictated was in practice an easily malleable institution’ (1987: 67). All this sapped their will and initiative and kept them responsive to authority. Some, overcome by an attitude of resignation and defeatism, even committed suicide.66 But, the majority, manifesting an attitude of passive resistance, and sometimes through active protest,67 struggled to forge an ethnic identity, the Indians in Trinidad, or ‘East Indians’, as the European 62

‘Sardar’ was an Indian headman on the estate (as also on-board ship). ‘Driver’ was a workforeman who was responsible for a gang of workmen; he was to ensure that the workmen performed the tasks assigned to them. On the organisation of large estates during indenture system, (see de Verteuil, 1989: 82–84). 63 Ryan quotes the description of the barracks in 1937 by Dr Vincent Tothill, an English doctor who practised in south Trinidad: They were filthy, verminous, full of rats, leaking and very dark. No water was laid on. The people really were no better off than the rats who lived with them. These are not isolated cases, and up to 1937 they were the rule rather than the exception. (In Ryan, 1996: xv) 64

Laurence (1994: 197–228) and Ramesar (1994: 56–59) provide detailed accounts of the health conditions and medical care of indentured immigrants in Trinidad. The diseases afflicting Indians most were ‘dysentery, malaria, anaemia, ancylostomiasis, digestive system ailments, and ground itch’ (see Moore, 1995:157). 65 The Office of the Protector of Immigrants was supposed to ensure that there were no abuses of the terms of indenture. But, as noted earlier, in practice, it was pressured to protect the interests of the planters. 66 Data on suicide among indentured Indians in Trinidad is hard to come by, but it certainly appears to have been rather high: between 1903–1904 and 1912–1913, when the system was not as harsh as it was in its first few decades, 142 Indians had committed suicide in Trinidad, of which 42 (30.28%) were indentured. No wonder, those who opposed the system of indenture, produced these figures to show that ‘suicide was abnormally frequent, and insisted that this must reflect a pattern of life which was peculiarly oppressive’ (Laurence, 1994: 260). 67 For a detailed discussion on the unrest in the estates, see Sect. 4.1.1.

2.3 Life in the Estate

43

Photograph 2.3 Indian woman, Trinidad, c. 1890–1896. Source https://commons.wikimedia.org/ wiki/File:Indian_Woman,_Trinidad_(13226374243).jpg copyright free courtesy DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA) (Accessed 31 January 2022)

planters called them to distinguish them from native Americans. This reminds us of Shakespeare’s adage; Sweet are the uses of adversity; Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything. (Duke Senior in As You Like It [Act Two, Scene I], by William Shakespeare [1964: 260])

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References Andrews, C. F., & Pearson, W. W. (1918). Indian indentured labour in Fiji. The Colortype Press. Bhagirathee, J. B. (2003). Chalo Chinidad: ‘Let’s go Trinidad’ – Our historical novel, 1900–1950 (2nd ed.). J. B. Publications. Brereton, B. (1985). The experience of indentureship: 1845–1917. In J. G. La Guerre (Ed.), Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (2nd ed., pp. 21–30). Extra Mural Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Campbell, C. C. (1996). The young colonials: A social history of education in Trinidad and Tobago, 1834–1939. The Press University of West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. Comins, D. W. D. (1893). Note on emigration from India to Trinidad. Bengal Secretariat Press. Dabydeen, D., Morley, J., Samaroo, B., Wahab, A., & Wells, B. (Eds.). (2007). The first crossing – being the diary of Theophilus Richmond, ship’s surgeon aboard the Hesperus, 1837–9. The Derek Walcott Press. Das, M. (1987). They came in ships. In D. Dabydeen & B. Samaroo (Eds.), India in the Caribbean (pp. 288–289). Hansib/University of Warwick. de Verteuil, A. (1989). Eight East Indian immigrants. Paria Publishing. Deen, S. (1994). Solving East Indian roots in Trinidad. The Author. Dutt, R. (1904). The economic history of India (Vol. II – From the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to the commencement of the twentieth century). Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner. Emmer, P. C. (1986). The great escape: The migration of female indentured servants from British India to Surinam, 1873–1916. In P. D. Richardson (Ed.), Abolition and its aftermath (pp. 245–266). Frank Cass. Gangulee, N. (1947). Indians in the empire overseas. The New India Publishing House. Geoghegan, J. (1873). Note on emigration from India. Office of Superintendent of Government Printing. Available at https://books.google.co.in/books?id=3ogIAAAAQAAJ. Accessed January 13, 2021. Gillion, K. L. (1956). The sources of Indian emigration to Fiji. Population Studies, 10(2), 139–157. Gokhale, G. K. (1912). Prohibition of indentured labour (Resolution moved in the Imperial Legislative Council on 4 March 1912). In Proceedings of the Council of Government, Legislative Department, Government of India. https://www.coolitude.shca.ed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Spe eches%20and%20Writings%20of%20Gopal%20Krishna%20Gokhale%20Vol.%201%20Econ omic.pdf. Accessed January 14, 2021. Haraksingh, K. (1987). Control and resistance among Indian workers: A study of labour on the sugar plantations of Trinidad, 1875–1917. In D. Dabydeen & B. Samaroo (Eds.), India in the Caribbean (pp. 61–77). Hansib/University of Warwick. Jenkins, E. (1871). The coolie: His rights and wrongs: Notes of a journey to British Guiana, with a review of the system and of the recent commission of inquiry). George Routledge and Sons. [London: Strahan and Co.]. Available at https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/The_Coo lie_His_Rights_and_Wrongs_Notes_o/ncok7PyxQsAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover. Accessed December 20, 2021. Jha, J. C. (1972). The Indian mutiny-cum-revolt of 1857 and Trinidad (West Indies). Indian Studies: Past and Present, 13(4), 419–430. Kirpalani, M. J., Sinanan, M. G., Rameshwar, S. M. & Seukeran, L. F. (Ed.). (1945). Indian centenary review: One hundred years of progress, 1845–1945, Trinidad, B. W. I. Indian Centenary Review Committee. Klass, M. (1988/1961). East Indians in Trinidad: A study of cultural persistence, (reissued edition). Waveland Press. Lal, B. V. (1983). Girmitiyas: The origins of the Fiji Indians. Journal of Pacific History Monographs. Laurence, K. O. (1971). Immigration into the West Indies in the 19th century (Chapters in Caribbean history 3). Ginn. Laurence, K. O. (1994). A question of labour: Indentured immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana, 1875–1917. Ian Randle Publishers.

References

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Look Lai, W. (1993). Indentured labor, Caribbean sugar: Chinese and Indian migrants to the British West Indies, 1838–1918. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Mahabir, N. K. (1985). The still cry: Personal accounts of East Indians in Trinidad and Tobago during indentureship, 1845–1917. Calaloux Publications. Mangru, B. (1987a). Benevolent neutrality: Indian government policy and labour migration to British Guiana. Hansib. Mangru, B. (1992). Indian government policy towards labor recruitment for the sugar colonies, 1838–1883. Journal of Third World Studies, 9(1): 118–138. [Reprinted as ‘Indian government policy towards indentured labour migration to the sugar colonies’, In D. Dabydeen & B. Samaroo (Ed.), Across the dark waters: Ethnicity and Indian identity in the Caribbean (pp. 162–174). Macmillan Education, 1996.] Metcalf, T. R. (1964). The aftermath of revolt: India 1857–1870. Princeton University Press. Mohan, P. (2007). Jahajin. HarperCollins Publishers India (with The Indian Today Group). Moore, D. (1995). Origins and development of racial ideology in Trinidad: The black view of the East Indian. Chakra. Nath, D. (1970/1950). A history of Indians in Guyana (2nd rev. edn). Butler and Tanner, for the author. Niehoff, A. & Niehoff, J. (1960). East Indians in the West Indies (Milwaukee Public Museum Publications in Anthropology No.6). Milwaukee Public Museum. Ramchand, K. & B. Samaroo (Ed.). (1995). A return to the middle passage: Captain W. H. Angel’s The Clipper Ship ‘Sheila’ (1921). Caribbean Information Systems and Services. Ramdin, R. (1994). The other middle passage: Journal of a voyage from Calcutta to Trinidad, 1858. Hansib. Ramesar, M. D. S. (1994). Survivors of another crossing: A history of East Indians in Trinidad, 1880–1946. School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago Ramesar, M. D. S. and Bhupsingh, H. (1988). Celebration: A centenary history of Aramalaya Presbyterian Church, Tunapuna, Trinidad, 1881–1981. Aramalaya Presbyterian Church. Ruhomon, P. (1947). Centenary history of the East Indians in British Guiana, 1838–1938. The Daily Chronicle. Ryan, S. D. (1996). Pathways to power: Indians and the politics of national unity in Trinidad and Tobago. Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Saha, P. (1970). Emigration of Indian labour, 1834–1900. People’s Publishing House. Samaroo, B. (2012). The Caribbean consequences of the Indian revolt of 1857. In R. L. Hangloo (Ed.), Indian diaspora in the Caribbean: History, culture and identity (pp. 71–93). Primus Books. Shakespeare, W. (1964). As you like it. In P. Alexander (Ed.), William Shakespeare: The complete works (ELBS edition) (pp. 254–283). The English Language Book Society and Collins. Shepherd, V. A. (1993). Transients to settlers: The experience of Indians in Jamaica, 1845–1950. Centre for Research in Asian Migration, The University of Warwick and Peepal Tree Books. Shepherd, V. A. (2002). Maharani’s misery: Narratives of a passage from India to the Caribbean. University of the West Indies Press, Kingston, Jamaica. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2020). Indian Mutiny. In Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Indian-Mutiny. Accessed January 15, 2021. Tinker, H. (1989). The origins of Indian migration to the West Indies. In F. Birbalsingh (Ed.), Indenture and exile: The Indo-Caribbean experience (pp. 63–72). TSAR in association with the Ontario Association for Studies in Indo-Caribbean Culture. Tinker, H. (1993/1974). A new system of slavery: The export of Indian labour overseas, 1830–1920. Hansib. Twaddle, M. (1993). Visible and invisible hands. In M. Twaddle (Ed.), The wages of slavery: From chattel slavery to wage labour in Africa, the Caribbean and England (pp. 1–12). Frank Cass. Vatuk, V. P. (1964). Protest songs of East Indians in British Guiana. The Journal of American Folklore, 77(305), 220–235.

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Vertovec, S. (1992). Hindu Trinidad: Religion, ethnicity and socio-economic change. Macmillan. Weller, J. A. (1968). The East Indian indenture in Trinidad. Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico. Williams, E. (1993/1942). History of the people of Trinidad and Tobago. A & B Books Publishers. Wood, D. (1968). Trinidad in transition: The years after slavery. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 3

Settlement and Community Formation

Those who eat the cascadura will, the native legend says, Wheresoever they may wander, end in Trinidad their days. —Allister Macmillan (1984: 42)

Whether or not they ate cascadura1 and whether or not they wandered anywhere outside Trinidad, post their indenture, most Indian immigrants remained in Trinidad and died there. They had come to Trinidad as sojourners, but they settled themselves there and evolved as a distinct community. This chapter analyses the process through which this took place. It explains the reasons behind the decision of ‘time-expired Indians’ to stay back in Trinidad and describes the evolution of a village community there which was Indian in its socio-economic base and socio-cultural spirit. This chapter provides the context in which the Indians in Trinidad chiselled out a distinctive hybrid community identity, namely, Indo-Trinidadians. It also provides the background in which their socio-cultural bundal metamorphosed in the diaspora.

3.1 The Evolution of a Girmitiya Diasporic Community The formation of any community is a gradual evolutionary process. The girmitiyas from India were introduced into Trinidad in instalments spread a little over seven decades. They were drawn from different areas of their native land and were diverse in their socio-cultural background. They were supposed to be sojourners in a land which was quite unlike the one from which they had hailed; few would have set out with the deliberate object of making a home there; they thought they were simply making a change for the better, but would eventually get back. Obviously, given the uncertain conditions of their life in Trinidad, no serious effort at community formation was noticeable in the first two decades of indentured migration. Whatever effort the Indian immigrants made at constituting a community was restricted to the estate on which they lived, as their contact with the world outside the estate was 1

Cascadura is a small Trinidadian freshwater catfish with tough scaly skin.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7_3

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minimal. However, by 1870, i.e., 25 years after their landing on this island, Indians in Trinidad had begun the process of community formation. They had begun to be called ‘East Indians’. According to Gerad Tikasingh, we can identify two phases of community formation among the Indians in Trinidad: (1) 1870–1900: ‘period of the emergence of the Indian community’ and (2) 1900–1921: ‘period of the consolidation of that community’ (1982: 12). In these two phases, the Indian immigrants were busy settling down in what was to become their new homeland. Although they had to face umpteen hurdles in the process, struggling against oppressive policies and countering negative and antagonistic attitudes and prejudices,2 they had not embarked on a political journey yet. That journey was to start in the third decade of the twentieth century and galvanise since independence in 1962 and culminate in the grandson of an indentured cane-cutter becoming the prime minister of the republic in 1995. This period, starting roughly in 1921, could be described as one which led to the politicisation of East Indians. The community deployed its ethnicity adroitly in its struggle for political power; it is now a firm and distinct part of the socio-political landscape of Trinidad as a hybrid community, Indo-Trinidadians. The formation of a viable community entails several prerequisites. First and foremost, there must be a sizeable number of people sharing similar characteristics and common experience. Second, these people must have a geographical area to settle themselves in. Third, they must engage themselves in economic activities to sustain themselves. Four, they must constitute or reconstitute a set of social institutions and norms to regulate their behaviour in such a manner that there is a discernible uniform pattern which is also somewhat predictable. Five, as a glue to reinforce the ‘consciousness of kind’3 in the community, they must have a shared system of beliefs and practices. Finally, in a plural polity, they must be willing to compete for political power and, to facilitate this, they must use their ethnicity and ethnic solidarity. In the remainder of this chapter, the discussion will focus on the first three foundational elements of community formation with reference to Indians in Trinidad, namely, population, land, and economic activity, and the emergence of the ‘Indian’ village there. The next two chapters explain the politicisation of East Indians as a community and the nature of the ethnic politics they have engaged in as Indo-Trinidadians. The metamorphosis experienced by the social institutions and behavioural norms and the cultural beliefs and practices that the immigrants had brought with them will be discussed in the subsequent chapters.

2

The Trinidad born half-Indian writer, Samuel Selvon (1923–1994) talks of the gut feeling that he had as a child in San Fernando that ‘the Indian was just a piece of cane trash’ (1987: 31). 3 This concept, introduced into sociology by the American sociologist Franklin Henry Giddings (1855–1931), is derived from Adam Smith’s conception of ‘sympathy’ or shared moral reactions. It refers to ‘a state of consciousness in which any being, whether low or high in the scale of life, recognizes another conscious being as of like kind with itself’ (Giddings 1896: 17). It fosters a homogenous community resulting from the interaction of individuals and their exposure to common stimuli. It is regarded as a euphemism for the herd instinct.

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3.1.1 Population: The Settlers On completion of their indenture, the girmitiyas could either re-indenture themselves for another period of five years or become free. Those who became free were described as ‘time-expired Indians’ and were given a ‘Certificate of Industrial Residence’, an important document that certified an immigrant as being no long under indenture. They could either continue to work on the estate as free-wage labourers, either staying on the estate or outside. Alternatively, they could (a) work as free-wage labourers outside the estate or (b) engage themselves in agriculture or business, or (c) both. The ‘time-expired Indians’ could return to India if they chose to do so. However, if they wanted to avail themselves of free return passage, they had to put in 10 years of continuous residence in Trinidad (see 2.1.1). After 1895, return passage was not completely free; it was subsidised and even this subsidy was reduced for those arriving after 1898. Those wishing to claim their return passage were required to register for repatriation and await until a ship was chartered for the purpose.4 Starting with 1851 and until the end of the indenture system and for some years beyond, there were always repatriates to India. Some were proud to return in prosperity,5 but many returned empty-handed. All had mixed feelings, recorded Rev. John Morton, the pioneer missionary of the Canadian Presbyterian Church in Trinidad, who saw off a batch of repatriates on their return journey in October 1885 (see Morton, 1916: 272–273).6 The experience of returning girmitiyas was not always a happy one. Not surprisingly, some repatriates tried to re-indenture, but were generally discouraged by the authorities as they were regarded as too independent. In all, between 1851 and 1916, 29,448 girmitiyas returned to their motherland; they constituted only 20.46% of the 143,939 Indians introduced into Trinidad under the indentured labour system during 1845–1917 (see Table 1.1). Keith O. Laurence’s estimate puts the number of returnees at 30,099 (20.91%) (1994: 540–541). To this, if we add 8616 immigrants who returned to India between 1920 and 1936, the total number of returnees will be 38,717 (26.90%). That is, nearly three-fourths of the number of girmitiyas introduced into Trinidad stayed back after they became free of their contractual obligations. 4

Laurence (1994: 362–383) and Ramesar (1994: 61–64) provide a detailed account of the return voyage of the immigrants and their arrival in Calcutta. In a separate essay, Ramesar (1996) analyses a first-hand account of repatriating immigrants and their return voyage to India recorded in an interview Linton Gibbon gave his granddaughter in 1976. Linton was son of Frank Gibbon, Senior Inspector of Immigrants at the time of the voyage. Linton, born in Trinidad in 1888 was 15/16 years of age when he made the voyage in 1904. 5 In his report for 1908–1909, the Protector of Immigrants in Trinidad recorded that Sutlej was the ‘richest ship to leave Trinidad, with repatriates taking a total of remittances valued at £ 17,426 in cash, £ 286 in gold coins, and at least £ 1,500 worth of personal jewellery (cited in Ramesar 1994: 60). 6 Rev. Morton writes, ‘Mothers counted their children, or gazed anxiously for gown-up sons, who had not yet turned up. Some wept for friends left in Trinidad; the faces of others were bright with vision of a long-awaited happiness drawing on to realization’ (1916: 273).

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The number of those who stayed back in Trinidad grew gradually. Marianne Soares Ramesar points out that, by 1891, that is, 46 years after the indentured immigration began, ‘“free” Indians outnumbered the indentured by nearly 6–1 (59,536: 10,7827 )’ (1994: 77). There was a rapid decline in the number of Indians residing on the estates: from 23,484 (33.44%) of 70,218 in 1891 to 16,643 (19.44%) of 85,615 in 1900 (Laurence, 1985: 112–113). As Walton Look Lai observes, the Indians had begun to see Trinidad and other sugar colonies ‘as adopted homes rather than as places of temporary compulsory labor, as lands of possible new opportunities for self-expansion and creative growth and mobility rather than as societies constricted by planter exploitation’ (1993: 217–218). A more important demographic fact was the substantial increase in the number of locally born Indians.8 The 1871 census had put this number at approximately 16.5% of the total Indians in Trinidad and, by 1881, this percentage had risen to 26 (Look Lai, 1993: 226). According to Jack Harewood (1975: 96–97), while the growth of the Indian population up to 1901 was principally due to immigration, in the decade 1901–1911, for the first time, ‘natural increase’ became the contributory factor, accounting for 43% of this growth.9 Since 1921, obviously, ‘natural increase’ has been the sole factor. This demographic transition is important in that it introduced ‘hybridisation of place loyalties’ among those born of Indian parentage in Trinidad (ibid.). The ‘time-expired Indians’ who stayed back in Trinidad and their descendants provided the base for the constitution of what came to be called ‘East Indian’ or ‘Trinidad Indian’ community. The birth of a settled Indian population in Trinidad was made possible by the substantial group of immigrants who had effectively abandoned the notion of returning to India.10 As Laurence writes, For a great many immigrants the moment of such abandonment no doubt never arrived, though the practical possibility of a return to the land of their birth gradually vanished as they grew older.11 Perhaps for the great majority, who remained agricultural labourers to the 7

These are ‘approximate figures, since the total number of the indentureds [sic] differed from one source to another’ (Ramesar 1994: 174, En 2). 8 By contrast, societies in which the Indian immigrants formed an ‘invisible’ minority (as Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Saint Vincent, Grenada, and to some extent even Jamaica), they got assimilated into the dominant Creole life-style and values. 9 Harewood (1975: 96) clarifies that these are rough estimates, as information on the ethnic origin was not required at the registration of births and deaths, and the identification of Indians in the vital statistics was based on the names of the persons concerned only. The 1946 Census report, while admitting that this method was ‘open to severe criticism’, nevertheless reasoned that it ‘seems to give the results not far from the truth’ (quoted in ibid.: Fn. 2). 10 There could be many reasons for the immigrants to stay back in Trinidad. Economically, they could not afford the cost of return journey; personally, they may have been apprehensive about the ship voyage; socially, they may have had doubts about the reception they would get back home, especially those who had contracted inter-caste marriage. Many, of course, took the economic opportunities that came their way post indenture. 11 That many of the first-generation immigrants stayed back in Trinidad without making a calculated decision is well captured by V. S. Naipaul in his novel A House for Mr Biswas: the old men who assembled in the arcade of the Hanuman House every evening told stories and ‘continually talked

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end of their lives, the emergence from indenture to free status was never followed by any conscious determination to end their days in their new place of residence. (1994: 384)

3.1.2 Land: The Settlements When the system of indentured labour migration was introduced, the colonial masters did not envisage that the girmitiyas might eventually become permanent settlers in the colonies. In Trinidad, the government offered the time-expired Indians a stake in the colony by providing inducements to settle on the island. Starting with 1851, the government paid £ 10 to those who forfeited their return passage; 1010 availed themselves of the offer. In 1869, this was replaced by a land grant of 10 acres and, in 1873, by 10 acres or 5 acres plus £ 5.12 The response to the scheme improved gradually: 12 grants were made in 1869, 22 in 1870, 140 in 1871, 162 in 1872; 353 in 1873, and peaked at 720 in 1875. In 1880, the offer of land was withdrawn; cash became the sole inducement until 1889, when the scheme was abandoned altogether. In all, between 1869 and 1889 there were 3979 land and/or cash grants in lieu of return passages and this involved a total of 11,933 persons (including men, women, and children) (Laurence, 1994: 388).13 For the colonial government, the land-grant-in-lieu-of-return-passage scheme reduced the financial burden of transporting the time-expired Indians back to India. For the planters, it ensured continued supply of cheap and unencumbered (i.e., without any extra obligations) labour. And for the time-expired Indians, it made ample availability of land, which they could cultivate on their own, besides working for the planter during the crop-time. The Indians later discovered that not all land granted under the scheme was suitable for cultivation; some accepted the cash and left the land. With the scheme losing its vitality and becoming administratively inconvenient, it had to be abandoned in 1889. But by then the Indians had got the idea that they could make Trinidad their home by purchasing land independently (see Ramesar, 1994: 83; Laurence, 1994: 396).14 The emerging small peasantry of Indians since the 1870s crystallised into ‘a distinct and vibrant segment of Trinidad

of going back to India, but when the opportunity came, many refused, afraid of the unknown, afraid to leave the familiar temporariness’ (1969: 194). 12 The shift in the scheme in 1873 was due to the colonial government’s realisation that ten acres of land was more than an Indian could cultivate unaided, and it did not want any competition between the Indian landowners and the planters in employing labour. Incidentally, the lure of cash led to a higher rate of commutation (Laurence 1994: 387). 13 This commutation scheme was not introduced in British Guiana, ‘where only the narrow coastal strip was arable’ (Tinker 1989: 70). 14 In retrospect, Sir Henry Irving, Governor of Trinidad was right when he defended the commutation scheme in his letter to Lord Carnarvon dated 31 January 1877. He wrote: ‘It converts the Immigrant who is a mere sojourner, living with an undefined intention of returning someday to his own Country, into a “settler” having his permanent home in the Country of his adoption, and it thereby renders him unquestionably a more valuable member of the community’ (quoted in Laurence 1994: 392).

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society, giving the thrust towards post-indenture landownership a legitimacy that it did not have in the pre-1870 period’ (Look Lai, 1993: 229).15 In 1893, Surgeon-Major Dennis Wood Deane Comins reported that. … they [the Indians] have recently discovered that the lagoon lands, which have been considered worthless and can be bought for a nominal price, are capital places for growing rice, and they are eagerly buying up all they can get, for, owing to the scarcity of rice and the high import duty, rice growing is a most profitable business. (1893b: 16)16

The purchase of land by Indians was facilitated by the adoption in 1869 of a liberal land policy by the Trinidad government under the governorship of Sir Arthur Charles Hamilton-Gordon (1866–1870).17 In the early stages, they bought land in plots of 5– 10 acres, located very close to the commutation settlements. By 1890, they had begun to join together and collectively apply for land; the applicant’s name was decided through an age-old Indian institution called the chitty (rotational lottery).18 Based on the annual reports of the Sub-Intendant for Crown Lands, it is found that, between 1885 and 1917, 8922 Indians became landowners by purchase of Crown Lands, with land sales to Indians being 30.62% (75,259 acres) of the total land (245,773 acres) sold during the period.19 Among landholding Indians in Trinidad in 1913, James McNeill and Lala Chimman Lal found a majority holding five to 20 acres of land, ‘cultivated partly by household labour and partly by paid labourers, most of the latter being Indians’; ‘several others have upwards of 100 acres’. One of them owned ‘over 500 acres of land, mostly under cocoa’ and employed ‘60 indentured labourers’ (1915a: 42). This was Boodoosingh, who came to Trinidad as a girmitiya over 40 years before and in 1913 was the proud owner of Patna cocoa estate at La Brea in Victoria County (Look Lai, 1993: 235). This was not an isolated case. Barathsingh, who had arrived in Trinidad as a girmitiya in 1856 and become a shopkeeper in 1859 and landowner in 1872, had become the owner of the 200-acre sugar- and rice-growing Corial estate (estimated to be worth £ 11,000) also in the Victoria County in 1877. He employed several indentured labourers: nine in 1879, eight in 1880, 23 in 1881, and 35 in 1882 (Laurence, 1971: 77–78; Look Lai, 1993: 235). No wonder, exaggeration as it definitely was, Comins noted that ‘it looks very much as if (the East Indians) were going in the course of years to take entire possession of this beautiful land …’ (1893b: 15–16). The prospect of owning land, a highly desired value among immigrant Indians, and the prospect of finding jobs related to their skills meant that most Indians remained 15

Three new villages came into existence in the first two years of the implementation of the landgrant-in-lieu-of-return-passage scheme. 16 Although the average landholding among Indians was in the range of 5–20 acres, there were gross inequalities in landownership with some major large-scale proprietors owning several hundred acres. 17 This policy was not a new idea; it was proposed by Governor George Francis Robert Harris (1810–1872) as early as in 1850, but was not implemented. Governor Hamilton-Gordon’s policy continued with minor modifications until 1911 when the government began to reserve the Crown lands for oil prospecting. 18 Chitty was an institution for raising money through joint savings; the Creoles called it susu. 19 The figures are computed from data provided in Table 4.5 in Ramesar (1994: 84).

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53

in the rural areas or in towns near the estates. Interestingly, ‘the earliest land grants in lieu of return passages were made at Couva and Pointe-á-Pierre, close to the estates where the original petitioners had worked’ (Laurence, 1994: 387). This was followed by land grant at Montserrat Ward, which accounted for about half of all grants made. Subsequently, a dozen settlements were established on Crown lands in areas on the fringes of the sugar districts in the counties of Caroni, Victoria and St Patrick. Those included Madras settlement, Coolie Town, Caratal, Caracas, Calcutta Settlement, Guaracara, Chandernagore and Piparo in central areas; and Lengua, Barrackpore, Fyzabad and Rousillac in the south. Grants were also made in the Oropouche Lagoon, in the ward of Arima, and a few were scattered through the Wards of Tacarigua, Toco, Diego Martin, Pointe a Pierre, Couva and Cedros (ibid.: 387–388).

In all about 27 settlements were thus established or augmented20 (ibid.: 388). Interestingly, the Indians named many of their settlements after cities and towns in India (see Jokhan, 2015), e.g., Barrackpore, Basta Hall (Basti), Calcutta Settlement, Cawnpore (Kanpur), Chandanagore (or Changar or Chandinagar as some people refer to it), Fyzabad (Faizabad), Golconda, Malabar, Madras Settlement, Matura (Mathura), and Patna. The present-day town of St James was once known as Coolie Town. Two settlements are named after Kandahar and Nepal, from where some immigrants had come. Some settlements were named after prominent people of Indian origin, e.g., Gandhi village, Abdul village, Samaroo village, Sagan drive, Somaria trace, Jokhan trace, Suchit trace, Ramai trace, Boodhoo trace, and Gopee trace.

3.1.3 Economic Activities: The Material Basis for Settlement With the acquisition of the Crown land, either through commutation of return passage or outright purchase, there arose an Indian peasantry in Trinidad. Agriculture was the primary economic activity of the vast majority of the settlers, either as estate labourers or as independent cultivators.21 According to Bridget Brereton, in ‘a real sense’, Indians were the ‘pioneers of cultivation’ (1985: 28). As early as 1893, Comins had pointed out that, ‘It is by the free coolies that most of the steady development of the rich but uncultivated lands in the interior is due’ (1893b: 16). It is often said that the history of agriculture in Trinidad cannot be understood without considering the contribution of the Indians. Of the various immigrant groups brought to the island to serve as agricultural workers, only the Indians proved ultimately successful. As the Barbadian novelist and poet George Lamming put it,

20

Among the existing settlements in which land grants were made in commutation of return passages included Simla, Malabar, Mausica, Caurita, Cunaripo, Cocorite, Whitelands, Coromandel, Las Lomas, Demson, Patna, Philippine and Granville (Laurence 1994: 610, En 17). 21 The majority of Indo-Trinidadians have always remained rural residents.

54

3 Settlement and Community Formation If labour is the foundation of all culture, then the Indian in Trinidad was part of the first floor on which the house was built. …there can be no history of Trinidad or Guyana that is not also a history of the humanization of those landscapes by Indian labour’22 (1989: 47).

This is hardly surprising considering that most of the immigrants were from rural areas in India and that they had been small peasants or landless labourers there. Some had begun the hobby of cultivation even during their indenture. In her narrative in Jahajin, Deeda mentions that, with the permission of the estate manager, they were planting ‘things for themselves in the cane rows between the new plants’. They grew ‘hardee [turmeric], arooi or dasheen [tuber of the taro plant, Colocasia esculenta], and reheri ke dal [arhar dal, pigeon peas]’—a practice called jarda in French Creole (Mohan, 2007:146).23 In some estates, the employers allowed the indentured immigrants to cultivate unused land on the estate ‘as they could manage on their own account without endangering their estate work, and to pasture stock on estate land’ (Laurence, 1994: 384). Most of the free Indians remained peasants or agricultural labourers until their death. As landowners or tenants who rented plots from private landowners, they cultivated rice and other food crops such as maize, peas, and ground provisions as subsistence crops.24 The familiarity of the immigrants from the United Provinces and Bihar with rice cultivation, especially in jhils (swamps), enabled them to raise paddy in the Caroni and Nariva swamps and in the Oropauche lagoon (see Jha, 1985: 13). By 1904, 12,000 acres of land had been brought under rice cultivation. Arthur and Juanita Niehoff recall the following interesting incident with reference to rice cultivation by Indians in Trinidad: It is a widespread conception among Negroes that a special kind of constitution, which they feel they do not have, is required for this kind [rice cultivation] of field work. In a taxi which was passing through the Caroni Lagoon at the height of the rice planting season, a Negro passenger watched, mile after mile, the Indian planters knee-deep in water in the fields. He turned and said, ‘Them Indian people is a different breed. How they can stay in that water all day long I don’t understand.’ (1960: 32).

22

‘Humanization of nature’ is an expression used by the Guadeloupian novelist Ernest Moutoussamy to capture the essence of the Indian experience in the French colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe: ‘There is no doubt, however, that in … [Martinique and Guadeloupe], the Indian immigrant took part in the humanization of nature, helped to cultivate the fertile land, invigorated animal farming with his love of the sacred cow and, in the process, came to love and accept Martinique and Guadeloupe as home’ (Moutoussamy, 1989: 27). 23 Deeda recalls that her shipmate Ramsukh was ‘carrying different kinds of mango seeds … from all the varieties that they had in his village’ to plant in Trinidad. Another shipmate, a woman, ‘was carrying some damp soil from muluk [one’s country], and growing in that soil was a root of hardee [turmeric]’ (Mohan 2007: 64). 24 It is noteworthy that the Trinidad Indians cultivated rice despite it receiving ‘very little support by the government in comparison to the subsidies and economic safeguards applied to cocoa and sugar agriculture’ (Niehoff & Niehoff 1960: 31). In fact, while the sugar industry’s machinery and equipment enjoyed import duty exemption, the agricultural implements of small farmers like shovel and cutlass were taxed.

3.1 The Evolution of a Girmitiya Diasporic Community

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The Niehoffs highlight the ‘traditional sentimental value’ and ‘religious rites’ associated with growing of rice among Hindus and the ritual significance that rice and rice preparations have in Hindu rituals and ceremonies. While sugar and cocoa are grown strictly on a matter-of-fact basis, and there are no supernatural beliefs associated with them … rice fields have guardian spirits to which most Hindus make offerings at the time of harvest. …the rice field is treated ceremonially in contrast to the other crops grown…. The only other crops … to which religious ceremonialism is attached are watermelons and cucumbers [and] … both of these are grown in the rice fields during the dry season. That is, the fields which produce rice take on some of the sacred character which is attached to the grain itself. (ibid.: 35).

In addition, the settlers produced large quantities of plantains, breadfruit, oranges, mangoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Then they began taking an interest in such cash crops as cocoa, sugarcane,25 and coconuts. The enterprising among them enlarged their holdings, enticed their still indentured compatriots to desert their estates (Sir Henry Jackson’s assertion cited in Laurence, 1994: 151). Of course, they could always employ the free Indian agricultural workers. Some of them who had only small holdings and were looking for supplementary income could get work for wages in nearby estates. Thus, as Comins observed, Here [in Trinidad] the cooly [sic], who in India has been accustomed to lead a life of drudgery to gain the daily pittance sufficient to keep him alive, finds himself the possessor of a comfortable homestead with an increasing farm of the richest and most fertile land around him on which he lives with his family and becomes in a small way quite an important person. (1893b: 16)

Those among the immigrants who had hailed from artisanal caste groups resumed their caste trade or occupation. The author-narrator in Jahajin mentions how her Nana,26 a descendant of a soonarin, a woman of the Sonar (goldsmith or jeweller) caste, retained the family (caste) trade despite converting himself to Christianity. For her, her caste meant ‘the little workshop behind our shop where the gold was smelted, milled, soldered, chiselled and electroplated gold-on-gold and the jewellery made’. She says, ‘Every boy in our family … had to learn the basic trade. He had to be able, at least, to produce a number of taabeej, amulets’ (Mohan, 2007: 143).27 There were quite a few enterprising among them; the author-narrator in Jahajin mentions the astoundingly fast and steep climb of her great-grandfather (Fa Mo Fa Fa) Ramesar who had come to Trinidad with his indentured mother Janaki-didi: from selling water to the thirsty cane-cutters in the fields through moneylending to ownership of an estate (see Mohan, 2007: 195–196). The successful story of Mohan (son of Ramprasad), who had come as an indentured labourer, and his Trinidad-born son, Suresh, is another case (see Bhagirathee, 2003). 25

Since 1903, Indians formed the majority of cane farmers. Mohan uses the term to refer to her Fa Mo Fa Fa, perhaps following her father’s use of the term. 27 The early resumption of their caste trade by the Sonars is explained by the demand for gold and silver jewellery for personal ornaments and in weddings, or for accumulating savings in physical form. 26

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The 1891 Trinidad census showed that Indians had begun diversification of their economic activity. Although 81.30% were still in the agricultural sector, as peasant proprietors (1.47%), estate owners or managers (0.05%), drivers or overseers (0.51%), or agricultural labourers (79.27%),28 the remaining had become general labourers, railway and municipal workers, carters, shopkeepers, shopmen and clerks, itinerant hucksters, priests and teachers, etc.29 Forty-three% of all shopkeepers in the country were Indians. They were becoming self-employed workers of one kind or another; they were pioneering in taxi and transport business in the rural areas. This diversification of economic activity by Indians was not taken to kindly; in 1871, in his Memo to the government, Charles Phillips, Secretary of the Workingmen’s Reform Club complained that Indians who had completed their indenture did not remain in occupations for which they had been brought into the colony and they were entering alternative occupations.30 The qualities of thrift and investment which Indians in general possessed played an important role in their economic prosperity. Based on the annual reports of the Supervisor of the Government Savings Bank, Ramesar reports that ‘During 1897– 1917 Indian depositors formed 42% of total depositors and possessed 33% of the total amount credited to depositors’ (1994: 89).31 Of course, much of their savings was invested in land and in gold and silver jewellery. The attitude and behaviour of Indians about money and property, no doubt, ‘excited much invidious comment’ from the Creoles32 ; they viewed Indians as ‘avaricious, stingy, and secretive’ (Lowenthal, 1972: 160, 161).33 Thrift, an estimable virtue for the Victorians, appeared as almost a ‘vice’ among the Indians, and it was condemned as ‘avarice or ostentation’ (see Wood, 1968: 155– 156). Indian women wearing silver and gold ornaments were seen as ‘a walking repository of the wealth of their husbands’ (ibid.: 156). The Indians melted down gold coins to make these ornaments as secure savings. While the Sonars found ready business in smelting gold, the colonial administration regarded it as a threat to the supply of ready money in Trinidad. More importantly, they were accused of depressing internal trade because they were saving instead of spending their money. 28

In 1891, Indians constituted 62% of the total population engaged in agriculture (48%) in Trinidad; in 1921, they formed 60% of such population (40%) in Trinidad and Tobago together (Ramesar 1994: 72). 29 These percentages are computed from the table on occupational distribution of Indian immigrants in British Guiana and India, according to 1891 census in these colonies, in Laurence (1994: 418). 30 Notwithstanding this occupational diversification among Indians, each ethnic group in Trinidad has been traditionally confined to a certain range of occupations’ (Yelvington 1993: 99). This was satirised by V. S. Naipaul in his ‘The Baker’s Story’ (2002a). 31 There is no data on the additional amounts Indians deposited in the private Colonial Bank. 32 In Trinidad, the term Creole refers to any Trinidad-born African or a person of mixed ancestry but with primarily African parentage. 33 This view of Indians was widely held among the Creoles in other sugar colonies, too. During his fieldwork in rural British Guiana, anthropologist Despres was told by a villager that ‘de coolieman taking over de whole country. … Dey smart people, you know. Cunning. Dey work cheap, eat cheap, and save and save’ (1967: 93).

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57

Photograph 3.1 Women and children in a rural settlement, Trinidad, c. 1914. Source https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Collectie_Nationaal_Museum_van_Wereldculturen_TM-006 2002_Groepsfoto_van_vrouwen_en_kinderen_Trinidad_fotograaf_niet_bekend.jpg (copyright free) (Accessed 31 January 2022)

It must be pointed out, however, that not all free Indians became landlords or achieved economic success. Most of them remained low-paid agricultural labourers and some were paupers at the end of their indenture (Photograph 3.1). In his evidence before the Sanderson Committee in 1909, C. P. David stated that ‘we hear more of the successful cases than of the unsuccessful ones; but the unsuccessful ones are certainly the majority’ (quoted in Ramesar, 1994: 95). His view was echoed by the Colonial Secretary, Samuel W. Knaggs. Nevertheless, the apologists for the indenture system gave publicity to the examples of Indians who had risen to wealth and prominence. In 1912, Commander W. H. Coombs, Protector of Immigrants in Trinidad submitted a list of wealthy and prominent East Indians in various districts of Trinidad.34

3.2 Village Community In the early twentieth century, American travel writer Harry Alverson Franck described two south Trinidad villages as follows: Debe, ‘almost wholly a Hindu town, with a stream of many castes pouring down its highway’ and Penal, ‘with 34

Illustratively, Ramesar (1994: 93–95) reproduces excerpts from this list to give a profile of a small group of indentured immigrants who moved up the socio-economic ladder successfully.

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its miles of Hindu vegetable gardens and its mud-and reed huts that seem to have been transported direct from India’ (1920: 398). Similarly, he found Tunapuna in the north. as Hindu as St Joseph is Spanish. The domes, or, more exactly, spheres of a white Brahmin temple bulk high above its low houses. These are little mud-plastered houses, for the most part, with dents poked in their walls before they have dried, by way of decoration …. it looked like a village of India in which a few African settlers had taken up their residence. (ibid. 392–393)

About the city of San Fernando, Franck writes, Its population is so overwhelmingly East Indian that even the English residents are forced to learn Hindustanee … on certain days of the week the visitor who strolls through its wide, asphalted streets might easily fancy himself in a market city of central India. Such signs as ‘Sultan Khan, Pawn Broker’, ‘Samaroo, Barber’, or ‘Jagai, Licensed to Deal in Caçao and Licenseable Produce’ are triply as numerous as the shops bearing such patently negro mottoes as ‘To Trust is to Burst’. (ibid. 398)

By the time anthropologists like the Niehoffs (1960) and Morton Klass (1988) conducted their pioneering anthropological fieldwork in Trinidad in the late 1950s,35 many of the Indian settlements had developed as well-established villages.36 The layout of Amity (pseudonym), the village Klass studied (see 1988: xxiv–xxv), is typical of the villages that Indians established and developed since their settlement in Trinidad. In my travels and field visits in rural Trinidad during 1994–1996, and three subsequent visits to Trinidad (in 2008, 2014, and 2017) I observed isomorphism in the development of villages established around the estates. Of course, thanks to the development of the roadways, these villages are no more isolated; they are wellconnected to the cities, including San Fernando in the south and the capital city of Port of Spain in the north. These villages were more than spatial arrangements; they were highly integrated and cohesive communities, and structurally, they were ‘Indian rather than West Indian’ (Klass, 1988: 3, see also 239; emphasis original).37 They were economic 35

The Niehoffs did their six-month-long fieldwork in Penal and surrounding areas in southern Trinidad, in 1957. Klass did his year-long fieldwork in a village called Amity (pseudonym) in Caroni County in central Trinidad during 1957–1958; by then ‘all the founders of the village had died’ (Klass, 1988: 26). 36 Primnath Gooptar’s novel, Nandi Village: An East Indian Village in Central Trinidad (2019) describes an imaginary ‘East Indian’ village between 1920 and 1970, highlighting the social and cultural life of its inhabitants and infusing into the narrative some of the community’s leading personalities of the time. 37 An assimilationist like Erick Williams denied Klass’s findings; he was convinced that Trinidadians of Indian descent ‘were indistinguishable in their needs and aspirations’ from their African counterparts. However, Gordon K. Lewis intimated that Klass ‘had projected onto Indo-Trinidadians what he assumed was my personal (presumably ancestrally-derived [i.e., Jewish]) bias toward resistance against assimilation’ (Klass 1988: xxix and xxxiii, En 1; see also Lowenthal 1972: 173, Fn 2). Subsequently, Oxaal remarked that the problem was not that no such place (i.e., Amity) existed, but that this was a place which some leading People’s National Movement politicians (like its leader Williams himself) ‘felt ought not to exist’ (1968: 26; emphasis original). But the

3.2 Village Community

59

(agriculture) and cultural (religious) ensembles. As V. S. Naipaul writes in The Middle Passage, Living by themselves in villages, the Indians were able to have a complete community life. It was a world eaten up with jealousies and family feuds and village feuds; but it was a world of its own, a community within the colonial society, without responsibility, with authority doubly and trebly removed. Loyalties were narrow: to the family, the village. (1962: 82)

They were the cradle for the emergence of leadership in the community, a kind of ‘village-headman type of politician the Indian favours’ (ibid.) that has shaped the Indo-Trinidadian participation in national politics. Until independence, the informal village panchayat 38 functioned as a conflictresolution mechanism (see Sect. 4.2.1). As Natasha Sabrina Ramnarine notes, the fundamental concept on which the panchayat rested was that of ‘a shared morality to which all village members should respond’ (2004: 228). If the village provided a framework for shared morality, the practice of village exogamy (see Sect. 6.3) established kinship networks across villages and integrated the community at the national level. Klass was perhaps the first anthropologist to explain the fact that the Indian immigrants who developed their settlements as villages, in his case the village of Amity, were ‘able to reconstitute a community reflecting their society of origin’ (1988: 4).39 They achieved this despite considerable handicaps. As mentioned earlier, they mostly came as individuals from different areas of India and were diverse in their socio-cultural background; ‘… they were strangers to one another who shared only a common memory of membership in roughly similar kin groups and communities’ (ibid.: 24–25). Their social institutions got de-constituted or weakened in the estates; their ‘customs and religious practices were derided and even forbidden’ (ibid.: 25).40 They were exposed to what for them was different races of people and an alien sociocultural system and they had to reconstitute their community in the context of the larger society and culture in Trinidad. The age cohort of the Indian immigrants was another hurdle. Since the colonial planters sought the most able-bodied workers, the emigration authorities recruited those who were ideally in their early twenties. Thus, about 65% of those recruited for emigration between 1874 and 1917 were between the ages of 20 and 30 and less than 6% of them were above 30 years of age (see Table 3.1). This had ramifications for the emerging Indian community in Trinidad. As Chandra Jayawardena explains,

turn of developments discussed in the next two chapters vindicated Klass’ socio-anthropological observations. 38 Literally, a tribunal of five village elders. In rural Trinidad, the institution of panchayat often had more than five members, some as young as 38 years and these were drawn from all three religious communities—Hindu, Muslim, and Presbyterian (Ramnarine 2004: 228). 39 According to Klass (1988: 30–39), the village of Amity began to be settled in 1886, i.e., by the girmitiyas who had come to Trinidad during 1875–1880. 40 The Muslim and Hindu religious marriages had no legal standing until 1936 and 1946 respectively. It was only in 1953 that the Hindus gained permission to practice cremation.

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Table 3.1 Age of Indian emigrants to Trinidad (1874–1917) Age in years

Female Number

Male Percentage

Number

Total Percentage

Number

Percentage

– 2

1701

5.50

1708

2.62

3409

3.56

2–10

3184

10.40

4349

6.68

7533

7.87

10–20

5341

17.44

12,530

19.25

17,871

18.67

20–30

19,016

62.10

42,518

65.33

61,534

64.29

30–40

1313

4.29

3850

5.92

5163

5.40

40 +

68

0.22

129

0.20

197

0.21

Total

30,623

100.00

65,084

100.00

95,707

100.00

Source Adapted from Laurence (1994: Table on 120–122) The relative youth of the bulk of the population meant that there was no generation of seniors with a sufficient experience of village life to guide the younger people toward a sense of community and common tradition, even were they able to do so under plantation conditions. (1979: 61)

They had thus to draw upon their memory of a lived experience back in their native village and the indigenous knowledge that successive batches of immigrants brought with them. Their primary institution of family and kinship was also de-constituted in the initial years of their migration for yet another reason, namely, the serious imbalance in female–male sex ratio; throughout the indentured emigration from India to Trinidad, women constituted only about 32% of the migrants.41 But, less as may have been their number, the women among the Indian immigrants were better carriers of sociocultural knowledge, and their role in the emergence of the diasporic community in Trinidad was remarkable, especially in the reconstitution of family and the domestic sphere (Mohammed, 1999). The Indian settlers did not, however, live in isolation from other communities on the island. Their work or business and some of the routines of life brought them into contact with European, African, and the small communities of settlers from other countries. The relations with these communities were as important to them then, as it is now. However, these relations were never quite cordial. The European estate owners and officials generally were prejudiced against the Indians, whom they characterised as stubborn, untrustworthy, and deceitful (see Wood, 1968: 110–112, 153–155). This was compounded by the aversion of the nineteenth century Christian to Hindu and Muslim religious tenets and practices which were derided as ‘vile, degrading’, etc. (Brereton 1979: 187). Laurence reproduces some of the denunciations of Indian characteristics which appeared in the Port-of-Spain Gazette of 6 May 1851: The universal characteristics of the Hindoos are habitual disregard of truth, pride, tyranny, theft, falsehood, deceit, conjugal infidelity, filial disobedience, ingratitude (the Hindoos have no word expressive of thanks), a litigious spirit, perjury, treachery, covetousness, gaming, 41

For a detailed discussion on the gender imbalance in indentured immigration, see Chap. 6.

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servility, hatred, revenge, cruelty, murder, the destruction of illegitimate children … (1994: 281).

Such stereotyped views of Hindus, ‘unsurpassed in [its] violence’ (ibid.: 281), continued through the period of indentured immigration and beyond, and demolished any prospects of their assimilation into Trinidadian society at large. Nor did the Indians get any sympathy from the emancipated Africans. The fact that they undertook the tasks on the estates which the Africans had disliked and spurned, and kept wages down earned them their contempt.42 Moreover, ‘the legal disabilities summed up in the word “indentured” seemed to many Creoles to confirm that they were inferior, little different from slaves’ (ibid.: 281; see also Lowenthal, 1972: 63). Also, influenced by the white elite, the Africans regarded the Indians as ‘pagan’ and ‘heathen’: ‘they felt themselves more “native” and more civilized than the Hindus …’ (Ryan, 1972: 21). This hostile attitude was reciprocated by the Indians, who found the Africans ‘awkward, vulgar in manners and savage’ (Charles Kingsley’ observation in 1871 quoted in Ryan, 1972: 21).43 In fact, as Lowenthal observes, where East Indians settled and were numerous, Creoles generally departed (ibid.: 157). We may also recall here the quality of thrift, deferred gratification, and enterprise that Indians showed in their struggle for existence in Trinidad. This was in marked contrast to the Creoles, who notoriously lacked these qualities and who, consequently, failed to achieve the economic success that Indians could achieve as an ethnic group by the early twentieth century (see Brereton, 1974). The failure also contributed to the racial animosity of the Creoles towards Indians in a society in which both were competing ‘for resources and ontological security in the shadow of white domination’ (Kanhai, 1999: 218). The word ‘coolie’ (see Chap. 1, Fn 40) best captures the prejudice and animosity of both the Europeans and the Africans towards the Indian settlers. This word was banned in Trinidad after the twin-islands became independent in 1962 as ‘it was a racial slur of the worst kind aimed at an Indian, and it carried the lingering nightmare of the sugar estates and bonded labour. A dark part of our past,’ writes Peggy Mohan (2007: 241).44 That it has nevertheless persisted to this day as a derogatory word used to refer to or address the Indo-Trinidadians is proof of the entrenchment of this prejudice and animosity against them. It is important to note here that, notwithstanding the mutual prejudice and animosity between the Indians and the Africans, there were never any serious clashes between [them], though eruptions on an individual or small group basis there certainly were. Most of the struggles between the two communities 42

By the early twentieth century, the Creoles looked down on the jobs associated with Indians, even selling newspapers in Port of Spain, as ‘collies’ work’ (Singh 1985: 39–40). 43 With reference to British Guiana, Laurence makes a reference to the increasing instance of ‘the aversion of Indian parents to having their children taught by Creole school-teachers’ (1994: 284). 44 Mohan was shocked to hear the word ‘coolie’ being used to refer to porters in Lucknow railway station during her first visit to India: ‘The word stuck in my craw. I couldn’t get myself to say it. … Ajie [Fa Mo] would have a fit if she heard’ (2007: 141).

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Not surprisingly, faced as they were with racial hostility and religious prejudice and discrimination, the Indians started mobilising themselves as an ethnic group. They formed associations to protect their ethnic interests and protest racial and religious bias and discrimination. Given the nature of the political dynamics that had developed in multi-racial Trinidad in the first half of the twentieth century, it was inevitable that party politics formalised ethnic and racial divisions at the national level with the introduction of adult suffrage in 1945, and has remained so since then. The following two chapters trace the trajectory of the emergence of Indo-Trinidadians as an ethnic pressure group and their participation in electoral politics over the decades. The essence of the making of Indo-Trinidadians as a vibrant diasporic community is succinctly summarised by Naipaul when he observes, Everything which made the Indian alien in the society gave him strength. His alienness insulated him from the black-white struggle. He was taboo-ridden as no other person on the island; he had complicated rules about food and about what was unclean. His religion gave him values which were not the white values of the rest of the community, and preserved him from self-contempt; he never lost pride in his origins. (1962: 81)

References Bhagirathee, J. B. (2003). Chalo Chinidad: ‘Let’s go Trinidad’—Our historical novel, 1900–1950 (2nd ed.). J. B. Publications. Brereton, B. (1974). The foundations of prejudice: Indians and Africans in nineteenth century Trinidad. Caribbean Issues, 1(1), 15–28. Brereton, B. (1979). Race relations in colonial Trinidad, 1870–1900. Cambridge University Press. Brereton, B. (1985). The experience of indentureship: 1845–1917. In J. G. La Guerre (Ed.), Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (2nd ed.), (pp. 21–30). Extra Mural Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Comins, D. W. D. (1893b). Note on emigration from India to Trinidad. Bengal Secretariat Press. Despres, L. A. (1967). Cultural pluralism and nationalist politics in British Guiana. Rand Mc Nally. Franck, H. A. (1920). Roaming through the West Indies. The Century Co. Available at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044044496206&view=1up&seq=15&skin=2021. Accessed January 22, 2022. Giddings, F. H. (1896). The principles of sociology. Macmillan. Gooptar, P. (2019). Nandi village: An East Indian village in central Trinidad. Independently Published by the Author. Available on Amazon. Harewood, J. (1975). The population of Trinidad and Tobago (CICRED Series, 1974 – World Population Year). Paris: CICRED [Committee for International Cooperation for National Research in Demography). Available at http://www.cicred.org/Eng/Publications/pdf/c-c50.pdf. Accessed April 7, 2021. Jayawardena, C. (1979). Social contours of an Indian labour force during the indenture period. In V. Mishra (Ed.), Rama’s banishment (pp. 40–65). Heinemann. Jha, J. C. (1985). The Indian heritage in Trinidad. In J. G. La Guerre (Ed.), Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (2nd ed., pp. 1–18). Extra Mural Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad.

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Jokhan, S. (2015). Legacy of our East Indian ancestors, names of places in Trinidad of East Indian origin. The Indian Caribbean Museum of Trinidad and Tobago, Carapichaima, Trinidad. http://www.icmtt.org/index.php/information/print-resources/feature-articles/item/150legacy-of-our-east-indian-ancestors. Accessed February 5, 2021. Kanhai, R. (1999). Introduction. In R. Kanhai (Ed.), Matikor: The politics of identity for IndoCaribbean women (pp. xi–xv). School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Klass, M. (1988/1961). East Indians in Trinidad: A study of cultural persistence [reissued edition]. Waveland Press. Lamming, G. (1989). The Indian presence as a Caribbean reality. In F. Birbalsingh (Ed.), Indenture and exile: The Indo-Caribbean experience (pp. 45–54). TSAR in association with the Ontario Association for Studies in Indo-Caribbean Culture. Laurence, K. O. (1971). Immigration into the West Indies in the 19th century (Chapters in Caribbean history 3). Ginn. Laurence, K. O. (1985). Indians as permanent settlers in Trinidad before 1990. In J. G. La Guerre (Ed.), Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (2nd ed., pp. 95–114). Extra Mural Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Laurence, K. O. (1994). A question of labour: Indentured immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana, 1875–1917. Ian Randle Publishers. Look Lai, W. (1993). Indentured labor, Caribbean sugar: Chinese and Indian migrants to the British West Indies, 1838–1918. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Lowenthal, D. (1972). West Indian societies (American Geographical Society Research Series – Number 26). New York: Oxford University Press (published for the Institute of Race Relations, London in collaboration with the American Geographical Society, New York). Macmillan, A. (1984). Trinidad: Iëre, land of the humming bird. In History of the West Indies (Nelson’s West Indian Readers, Book III, Lesson 9, compiled by J. C. Cutteridge), 42–43. Cheltenham, UK: Nelson Thornes. Available online at http://guanaguanaresingsat.blogspot.com/2006/ 02/trinidad-ire-land-of-humming-bird_22.html. Accessed January 24, 2021. McNeill, J. & Lal, L. C. (1915a). East India (Indentured Labour): Report to the Government of India on the conditions of Indian immigrants in four British colonies and Surinam: Part I Trinidad and British Guiana. H. M. Stationery Office. Available at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id= umn.319510010510680&view=1up&seq=25. Accessed April 5, 2021. Mohammed, P. (1999). From myth to symbolism: The construction of Indian femininity and masculinity in post-indentured Trinidad. In R. Kanhai (Ed.), Matikor: The politics of identity for Indo-Caribbean women (pp. 62–99). School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Mohan, P. (2007). Jahajin. HarperCollins Publishers India (with The Indian Today Group). Morton, S. E. (Ed.). (1916). John Morton of Trinidad: Pioneer missionary of the Presbyterian Church in Canada to the East Indians in the British West Indies (Journals, letters and papers). Westminster Company. Moutoussamy, E. (1989). Indianness in the French West Indies. In F. Birbalsingh (Ed.), Indenture and exile: The Indo-Caribbean experience (pp. 26–36). TSAR in association with the Ontario Association for Studies in Indo-Caribbean Culture. Naipaul, V. S. (1962). The middle passage: The Caribbean revisited. André Deutsch. Naipaul, V. S. (1969/1961). A house for Mr Biswas. Penguin Books. Naipaul, V. S. (2002a/1962). The baker’s story. In V. S. Naipaul, The nightwatchman’s occurrence book and other comic inventions (pp. 448–459). Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan. Niehoff, A. & Niehoff, J. (1960). East Indians in the West Indies (Milwaukee Public Museum Publications in Anthropology No.6). Milwaukee Public Museum. Oxaal, I. (1968). Black intellectuals come to power. Schenkman. Ramesar, M. D. S. (1994). Survivors of another crossing: A history of East Indians in Trinidad, 1880–1946. School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad.

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Ramesar, M. D. S. (1996). The repatriates. In D. Dabydeen & B. Samaroo (Eds.), Across the dark waters: Ethnicity and Indian identity in the Caribbean (pp. 175–200). Macmillan Education. Ramnarine, N. S. (2004). The panchayat system as an early form of conflict resolution in Trinidad. In B. Samaroo & A. M. Bissessar (Eds.), The construction of an Indo-Caribbean diaspora (pp. 219– 238). School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Ryan, S. D. (1972). Race and nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago: A study of decolonization in a multiracial society. University of Toronto Press. Selvon, S. (1987). Three into one can’t go—East Indian, Trinidadian, Westindian. In D. Dabydeen & B. Samaroo (Ed.), India in the Caribbean (pp. 13–24). Hansib/University of Warwick. Singh, K. (1985). Indians and the larger society. In J. G. La Guerre (Ed.), Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (2nd ed., pp. 33–60). Extra Mural Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Tikasingh, G. (1982). Toward a formulation of the Indian view of history: The representation of Indian opinion in Trinidad, 1900–1921. In East Indians in the Caribbean: Colonialism and the struggle for identity (Papers presented to a Symposium on East Indians in the Caribbean, The University of the West Indies, June 1975) (pp. 11–32). Kraus International Publications. Tinker, H. (1989). The origins of Indian migration to the West Indies. In F. Birbalsingh (Ed.), Indenture and exile: The Indo-Caribbean experience (pp. 63–72). TSAR in association with the Ontario Association for Studies in Indo-Caribbean Culture. Wood, D. (1968). Trinidad in transition: The years after slavery. Oxford University Press. Yelvington, K. A. (1993). Ethnicity at work in Trinidad. In R. R. Premdas (Ed.), The enigma of ethnicity: An analysis of race in the Caribbean and the world (pp. 99–122). The School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad.

Chapter 4

Ethnicity and Ethnic Mobilisation

Diaspora consciousness is entirely a product of cultures and histories in collision and dialogue. —James Clifford (1994: 1)

As we have seen in the preceding chapter, population, land, and economic activity are the three foundational elements of community formation in the diaspora. But what provides the glue to the community is the ‘consciousness of kind’ (see Chap. 3, Fn 3) that its members share. This consciousness or the we-feeling among the members results from their interaction with one another and their exposure to common stimuli. It fosters homogeneity among them in terms of a given identity. Although the Indians in Trinidad belonged to different religious, caste, and linguistic groups, they shared a common ethnic identity in that they or their ancestors were indentured immigrants and hailed from India and had same or similar cultural beliefs and practices.1 This shared homogenous ethnic identity as ‘Indians’ or ‘East Indians’, as they were called by their significant others and later even by themselves, irrespective of their other regional and socio-cultural differences, was reinforced by their lived experience in a plural polity such as Trinidad. Right from the time of their arrival on the island through their settlement there, their relationship with other communities, especially the Creoles, was not a harmonious one. They faced discrimination, jealously, and hostility and, for their survival as aliens in a hostile environment, they had to resist and struggle as an ethnic group. Given their increasing numbers, they began functioning as an interest group, resisting and struggling against real and perceived injustice 1

Following Premdas (1993), I use the term ‘ethnicity’ as including three elements: collective consciousness, primordial bases of affinity, and behavioural propensities generated by group membership. The collective consciousness is behind an individual’s sense of identification with a larger community. The primordial bases of affinity consist of race, religion, language, customs, etc. These are objective factors underlying ethnic identity and consciousness, but they are subjectively held categories of ascription and identification by the individuals and their significant others (see Geertz 1973: 259). The behavioural propensities generated by group membership refer to the distinctive way individuals behave as members of a group. When ‘the personal quest for meaning and belonging into a group demand for respect and power’, ethnicity is politicised (Rothschild 1981: 6). Race is subsumed under ethnicity. For an elucidation of the relation between race and ethnicity, see Smith (1993). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 65 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7_4

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against them because of their country of origin and the nature of their immigration. There emerged orthogenetic leadership in the community; they formed associations to serve and to protect the community interests, published newspapers and magazines to spread awareness of their common cause, and started participating in political processes and elections. This chapter analyses the politicisation of the Indians as an ethnic community in Trinidad in the first century of their existence on the island. The impact of the politicisation of race and ethnicity on electoral politics since the introduction of universal adult suffrage in 1946 is discussed in the next chapter.

4.1 Resistance, Racial Animosity, and Cultural Resilience 4.1.1 Resistance and Struggle It is innate in the human spirit to resist and react to exploitation and oppression. The resistance and reaction may be passive or active, depending upon prevailing conditions. Resistance in the form of defiance which the indentured Indians had shown on board the ship continued in the sugarcane fields. In the fields, it was mainly directed at the driver rather than the employer. It manifested variously as absenting from work without lawful excuse, absence from estate without leave, malingering, habitual idling, refusing to begin or finish work, abetting others to desist from work, and neglect to obey lawful order; these accounted for 4250 (54.46%) of the 7899 cases prosecuted against indentured Indians during 1909–1912 (McNeill and Lal 1915a: 24).2 Though in smaller numbers, there were cases of damage to estate property and threat to the life of estate officials; these accounted for 85 (1.08%) and 365 (4.62%) cases of prosecution during the same period respectively (ibid.). These were cases of individual defiance.3 However, there were collective actions in the form of refusal to work. Strikes, on a varying scale, became regular since the 1860s (Laurence, 1971: 54–55). There was a major strike in the Cedar Hill estate, one of the properties of the Colonial Company, in September 1882 and a further 12 strikes in 1884 (Singh, 1988: 61–69; de Verteuil, 1984: 150, 164). There were strikes on the Petit Morne estate in 1897 and on the Harmony Hall estate in 1900 (Ramesar, 1994: 43–44). According to one calculation, ‘between 1870 and 1901 there were at least 52 strikes…’ (Look Lai, 1993: 146).4 Such strikes continued to the end of the indenture system—eight were reported in 2

In their report, McNeill and Lal record that ‘in the annual reports of the Protector of Immigrants no statistics of prosecutions are given prior to 1911–12’ (1915: 24). 3 Not every Indian had the singlemindedness of purpose to pursue the above strategy: some absconded to neighbouring Venezuela; others hit the bottle and alcoholism became a serious problem among the immigrants by the 1880s; and still others developed the attitude of resignation and longsuffering (‘resistance by turning off’) or committed suicide (i.e., turning off altogether), see Chap. 2, Fn. 66. 4 Surgeon-Major Comins, Protector of Emigrants at Calcutta, who visited Trinidad and other sugar colonies in the West Indies in 1891, learnt from Charles Mitchel, Protector of Immigrants in Trinidad

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1916 (Ramesar, 1994: 44). These strikes tended to be spontaneous (not coordinated) and limited to local or immediate issues (reduced wages, forced labour on Sundays, and excessive tasks) (Haraksingh, 1976: 33). Such collective actions had the potential to take on a general issue and even result in riots, as illustrated by the ‘Hosay riots’ in San Fernando in 1884. Following the Cedar Hill disturbances, the Government passed an Ordinance5 providing for the regulation of Indian festivals, including the Muharram (Hosay or Hosein, as it is called in Trinidad) commemoration.6 Though of Shia Muslim origins, the festival, which revolved around the symbolic tombs of Prophet Mohammed’s slain grandsons, attracted Hindus and working-class Creoles as well. Invoking the Ordinance, the authorities prohibited the customary ceremonial procession from entering the town of San Fernando on 30 October 1884. The confrontation that this prohibition, and the Ordinance in general, provoked between the Indian celebrants and the forces of ‘law and order’ resulted in the ‘Hosay riots’, when the colonial police, supported by a detachment of British soldiers, fired on the Indian procession,7 killing at least 16 of them and wounding over a hundred. Kelvin Singh describes this, ‘the Muharram massacre’, as ‘one of the most traumatic episodes in the history of the Indian sector’ of the Trinidad population (1988: 1; see also Look Lai, 1993:145). The stance of the apologists for colonialism, including the print media, was predictable. They squarely blamed the ‘intransigent’ Indians and endorsed the role of the authorities in upholding ‘law and order’. Indians were looked down upon with condescension: ‘the coolies were overbearing … and dangerous to the peace of the island’; they were ‘misguided men’ and ‘fanatics of an effete superstition and a corrupt form of ethics’ (see Singh, 1988: 28, 24, 11). H. W. Norman, who as the sole Commissioner enquired into the event, expectedly wrote a report favourable to the colonial authorities. Antipathic to the Indians as he was, Norman recognised, as did Presbyterian John Morton and others, that ‘the Indian immigrants looked upon the processions as a sort of means of demonstrating their power’ (quoted in ibid.: 29). Rev. John Hendrie put this even more appropriately in his statement to the Norman Commission: ‘these processions … are not of a religious nature, but are a sort of national demonstration’ (quoted in ibid.: 28). Thus, by the mid-1880s, the ethnicity of Indians and their formation as an ethnic group had begun to be recognised; they were showing ‘no signs of merging into the general mass of the population’ (Wood, 1968: 159).

that dissatisfaction among indentured immigrants had led to unrest on some estates; there were serious strikes on the estates in Naparima, El Socorro, and Laurel Hill (Comins 1893: 42). 5 Ordinance No. 9 of 1882 titled ‘An Ordinance for Regulating the Festivals of Immigrants’. 6 For a discussion of ‘Trinidad Hosay’ as an ethnic festival, see Sect. 8.2.2. 7 This was derogatorily called ‘the coolie procession’ by the colonial press (see Singh 1988: 87).

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4.1.2 Racial Animosity and Ethnicity Although Trinidad was a plural society at the time of the arrival of Indians on the island, by early twentieth century, it was becoming a bi-racial polity. By 1946, persons of African and Indian descent formed 46.9 and 35.1% of the total population respectively, with the mixed and the ‘others’ forming 14.1 and 3.8% respectively.8 The economic activity and routines of life of the Indian settlers inevitably brought them into contact with European, African, and the small communities of settlers from other countries. As discussed in the preceding chapter, they faced racial animosity and hostility from these communities (Sect. 3.2). Their dress (the male dhoti and the female joola) and personal appurtenances, language, foodways, frugality, and behaviour traits were all stereotyped and mocked and they were treated with contempt (see Laurence 1994: 280–282). The prejudice and animosity between the Africans and the Indians were mutual. For the Indians, racial animosity of the Africans towards them reinforced their ethnicity. Ethnic seclusion, David Lowenthal observes, encourages Creole and non-Creole to view each other as organic entities rather than as congeries of individuals or integrated groups…. [T]he East Indian social universe often divides into two realms, their own and that of all Creoles; and most Creoles likewise set East Indians apart. (1972: 145)

The Creole leadership was critical of the fact that the Indians were not creolising themselves and the Indians were apprehensive of losing their identity and interests by a creolisation which was African in tone and tenor (see Munasinghe, 2001).9 Besides, racial hostility, the Indians were facing religious prejudice and discrimination. Obviously, mobilising themselves as an ethnic group was the only way they could preserve their identity and protect their interests.

4.1.3 Cultural Resilience and Ethnicity Resistance and protest by individuals were often spontaneous and primarily determined by their personality and personal circumstances in the estate. But some of the issues that individual immigrants confronted were common to the work in the estate and the mode of resistance and protest was spontaneous. It depended on the knowledge of the immigrants, the connections that they had developed among their compatriots, and the leadership that could convert individual dissatisfactions into 8

It was in the 1946 census that race was first enumerated; earlier census reports only distinguished between the ‘East Indian population’ and the remainder, called the ‘General population’ (Harewood 1975: 95). 9 The Indians were understandably distrustful of the ‘Black Power Revolution’ in 1970, that eventually failed (see Sect. 5.3). As Grace Maharaj, an Indian averred then, ‘We want no part of your struggle because you talk nothing but destruction. We have toiled too long and too hard to give up what we have (and we have a hell of a lot)’ (quoted in Lowenthal 1972: 161).

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collective resistance and protest. In due course, the planters realised that such leadership came from higher caste immigrants, who were knowledgeable and could plan a course of action. This explains the considerable respect the higher caste immigrants commanded among their Hindu brethren on the estates (see Seesaran, 1994: 189– 90).10 It also explains the antagonistic attitude that the planters developed towards the politically more conscious Brahman and other higher caste immigrants as trouble makers, which led to the discouragement of their recruitment (see Jayaram, 2006: 149–150). According to Kusha Haraksingh, cultural resilience and adaptation might be regarded as the most outstanding as well as the most persistent form of resistance among Indian workers. It permitted a definition of otherness which amounted to defiance, both in the insulation and consequent feelings of solidarity which that engendered, as well as in the divergent concepts of status and rank which were implied. Culture defined an area to which Indians, after defeats at the work place, could retreat to heal and bind the wounds, before sallying forth again. The self, divided and degraded, could be refreshed and injected with new esteem. (1987: 73)

The ‘spirit of resistance’ among Indians, ‘fed by their sense of family and religion at the root of their community life’, observes Rev. Roy Neehall, ‘did not protect them from being knocked down, but it saved them from being knocked out’ (quoted in Ryan, 1996: 170). Talking about culture, as mentioned in the preceding chapter (Sect. 3.1.3), the Indians successfully resurrected their traditional skills—agriculture, gold-smithy, pottery, etc. Public festivals such as Hosay, as mentioned above, could also become ‘undisguised demonstrations against the established order’ (Haraksingh, 1987: 74). Also important were the enduring social bonds that the immigrants had formed during their long ship journey to Trinidad: jahaji-bhai (ship-brother; brotherhood of the ship) and jahaji-bahin (ship-sister; sisterhood of the ship) (see Sect. 2.2.3). Haraksingh highlights this as an example of ‘cultural versatility, for it transcended ordinary divisions of caste and religion, thereby demonstrating that Indians were prepared to devise new approaches for new circumstances’ (ibid.: 73). Another illustration of such cultural versatility was the institution of bhaiacharya (cooperative brotherhood), a rural Indian concept which was put to economic use in the diaspora in such practices as cooperation in agriculture, chitty (see Chap. 3, Fn 18) and box-money arrangement, etc.

10

Although Christianity did not believe in caste, the higher caste male immigrants ‘who came into contact with the Canadian Missionaries [of the Presbyterian Church] were regarded as prizes not to be released from their grasp’ (Seesaran 1994: 191). Brahmins were more welcome in the Presbyterian Church, as they could attract other converts; and for Brahmins, priestly vocation was acceptable and useful.

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4.2 Representation of Ethnic Interests: Leadership, Associations, and the Print Media 4.2.1 Village Community, Panchayats, and Local Leadership The rise of the Indian village community in Trinidad was accompanied by the reconstitution of some features of rural leadership which existed in north India in the late nineteenth century. Jagdish Chandra Jha notes that ‘pandits, money-lenders and landholders’ had ‘a say in important matters of the community. In many cases the sardars, maits, overseers, and even drivers of the estates had become prominent in the society on the strength of their newly acquired wealth’ (1973a.: 13). In his ethnographic study of Amity, Morton Klass found every neighbourhood of the village ‘has its “big men” [shopkeepers, wise old men, and estate drivers] who settle disputes’ and ‘help to keep peace …’ (1988: 208). In Central Amity, he found ‘the “big men” tend to be the most influential men in the entire village’ (ibid.: 208). Klass clarifies that age, a source of respect in the village, did not make a man ‘big’ in his neighbourhood. Age must be accompanied by some other factor; ‘true piety’, ‘wisdom and education’ (e.g., the headmaster), ‘wealth and economic power, control over jobs and riceland’, especially accompanied by ‘generosity’ are important (ibid.: 209). The earliest method of representation of interests or grievances outside of the estates was the traditional panchayats which were reconstituted once the Indians settled down in village communities (see Chap. 3, Fn 38). A small group of elders or ‘big men’ in the community, sitting in session as a committee, discussed matters relating to the community or, as a tribunal, adjudicated on disputes between its members.11 In 1957–1958, Klass’ oldest informant in Amity recounted that, in Beharri Settlement, in its earliest years, ‘four or five of the relatively rich pioneer settlers [of Ves Varna or higher]… kept the peace’ (1988: 192). Klass records that, in the late 1880s, one man, the India-born ex-indentured Brahman, Kublal Marajh (pseudonym), ‘took over undisputed control of Amity, and maintained it until his death shortly before World War I’ (ibid.: 193). As the old informants of Klass remembered, Kublal Marajh’s power. did not derive so much from his wealth … nor from his religious prestige, [but] from his physical strength,12 which was greatly feared and which was soon augmented by that of a squad of strong-arm supporters, and partly from the ‘justice’ and ‘wisdom’ he exhibited in settling disputes. (ibid.: 193).

Kublal Marajh did not rule by fiat and force; on many a dispute, he would summon a village panchayat. When he died, since he had no descendants in the village, 11

According to Klass, based on the functioning of the panchayat (panc¯eyt) in Amity, his ethnographic village, the term panchayat can be translated both as ‘committee’ and ‘court’ or ‘assembly’ (1988: 173, Fn. 24, 194, Fn. 3). In his Adventures of Gurudeva, Seepersad Naipaul provides a fictionalised account of the functioning of the panchayat (2001: 161–174). 12 Interestingly, Chanka Maharaj and Bhadase Sagan Maraj, the two later Hindu community leaders were wrestlers (see Jha 1985: 11).

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‘real authority left Amity forever’ (ibid.: 194). Nevertheless, the village panchayat remained in force in Amity for many years and the last time it was called was around 1950. Lacking legal authority to enforce its decisions, panchayat as an institution gradually declined among the Indian village communities. However, public opinion articulated by the community elders is still influential in rural Trinidad.

4.2.2 Ethnic Organisations and National Leadership By the end of the nineteenth century, small groups of the first-generation educated and confident Indians began protesting to the colonial authorities about the oppressive conditions in the estates and championing the indentured immigrants’ cause. The petition to the 1897 Royal Commission by a group of 78 Indian immigrants living in Princes Town, Couva, and St Joseph is an illustration of this (see Ramesar, 1994: 115). Obviously, they would have been emboldened by the pivotal role that some Indian property-owners played in influencing the outcome of San Fernando borough elections of 1889 (Tikasingh, 1976: 405). The growing self-confidence of Indians as an ethnic group and the potential they had as a pressure group heralded the birth of the first formal association, namely, the East Indian National Association (EINA). The immediate provocation for its founding was the proposal by the colonial authorities for a new Immigration Ordinance in 1897, which was regarded as unfavourable to the time-expired Indians. One clause of this Ordinance expected the time-expired Indians to carry a ‘Certificate of Exemption from Indentured Labour’ or be liable for penal action. This was protested by free Indians in their letters to the Port of Spain Gazette and was criticised by the Protector of Immigrants, Charles Mitchell as a discriminatory infringement of the civil rights of the Indians not suffered by Creoles in the society (see Jha 1973a). The EINA was formally constituted in Princes Town in 1898. It was primarily led by the Christian, mainly Presbyterian, converts who had been educated in the western tradition, but it included Hindu and Muslim leaders as well. Its stated aim was ‘to promote harmony among East Indians and their descendants’ (Ramesar, 1994: 115). As such, it championed the issues that concerned the Indians as a whole, including the recognition of the critical aspects of their culture.13 The President of EINA, George F. Fitzpatrick (see Chap. 2, Fn 9), was the official Indian representative to the Sanderson Committee in London in 1909; in his testimony before the Committee, he made out a case for a representative of Indian interests in Trinidad and Tobago’s Legislative Council besides the Protector of Immigrants. Thus, the EINA remained the main protagonist of the Indian cause until 1909 when the East Indian National Congress (EINC) was formed at Couva in central Trinidad. Some time-expired Indians were not satisfied with the EINA’s soft approach and its efforts to strengthen ties with the Crown and its authorities in Trinidad; they sought a 13

These issues, as Bissessar and La Guerre point out, constituted ‘the programme which united the community from 1897 to about the 1920s’ (2013: 20).

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measure of self-determination. Towards this a national panchayat was held in 1899 to censure Rev. John Morton for his views on the future of indentured immigration from India. The panchayat, which was attended by some 400–500 Indians, was conducted in the form of a tribunal with a chairman and a secretary and a council of 12 high-caste Hindus. After its deliberations, the panchayat disapproved of Morton’s views and ‘insisted that he agree to move a counter-motion’ before the Trinidad Agricultural Society of which he was the Vice-President, which he then sent to the EINA for consideration (Ramesar, 1994: 117). Based on the reports in the Port of Spain Gazette, dated 23 July 1899, Marianne Soares Ramesar writes, ‘There was dignity and determination in the conduct of the meeting, which seemed to reflect the desire of some Hindus to speak of their own group’ (1994: 117).14 In other words, through the panchayat, the Hindus were asserting themselves as a pressure group (Jha, 1985: 13). The panchayat highlighted the problem in uniting Indians, with their strong sense of religious identity, as an ethnic group; a problem which has had indelible impact on their participation in democratic elections once adult suffrage was introduced. The EINC was broader based in terms of its religious composition, with Rev. Charles David Lalla as President, Rampertab Pandit as Vice-President, and H. A. Patrick (Imamshah) as Hon. Secretary. Besides these three, its founding members included Pandit Permanand, ‘Babloo’ Lalsingh, F. E. Mohammed Hosein, Gobin, and James Durgah. Later, prominent Indians like A. Bharat, Lal Mathura Pandit, James Mungal, Capildeo Pandit, and Alladin were its office-bearers (see Jha 1973a). Like the EINA, the EINC too was not antagonistic to the Crown; both, in fact, wanted to strengthen ties with the colonial authorities to protect the interests of Indian immigrants. Also, both of them ‘drew inspiration from overseas Indian nationalist organisations: the Indian National Congress, the British Indian Association, and the East Indian Association of London’ (Ramesar, 1994: 116). Jha (1973a) points out that, on occasions, the EINA and the EINC joined hands; in 1913, their representatives met James McNeill and Lala Chimman Lal who were visiting Trinidad on a mission from the Government of India to report on the conditions of Indian immigrants on the island. Although they did not differ in their objectives fundamentally, they defied efforts at uniting them. Between the two, however, the EINC was more aggressive. The viewpoints expressed by the Indian leadership in Trinidad on various issues were seldom unanimous or stable (see Tikasingh, 1982), a problem that has persisted in the political life of Indians as an ethnic group to this day. Mention must here be made of Francis Evelyn Mohammed Hosein (1880–1936),15 the firebrand barrister who was associated with both the organisations, the EINA and 14

Jugmohunsingh, who was entrusted with the responsibility to assemble the most influential Indians throughout the island, was a prominent Tacarigua shopkeeper (Ramesar 1994: 117). 15 In 1901, Hosein became the first Indian immigrant in Trinidad to win an island scholarship to Oxford. After completing his legal education in 1906 and being called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn, he returned to Trinidad in 1908 and took active part in island politics. He was Mayor of Arima during 1929–1931.

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the EINC. Hosein was most vociferous in exhorting the Indians to resist deculturalisation and to preserve the purity and pride of their race; the language which he used was so vituperative and vitriolic that he came to be accused of using racist arguments against Trinidadians of African descent to further the growth of a narrow nationalist consciousness among the people of Indian descent (see Martin, 1996: 289–312). When Major Edward Frederick Lindley Wood (1881–1959), the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, visited Trinidad in 1921 as part of his investigation to test the preparedness of the colony for elective membership in the legislature, Hosein left both EINA and EINC and formed the Young Indian Party, which supported direct elections to Trinidad and Tobago’s Legislative Council. In his report Major Wood recommended the inclusion of elected members in the legislative council.16 Husein later became an elected Member of the Legislative Council (1928–1931). One of the Indian leaders attracted to this new party was the lawyer and trade unionist, Adrian Cola Rienzi (1905–1972).17 At 20 Rienzi was elected as the first president of the Trinidad Workingmen’s Association’s southern section. He was the first vice-president of the EINA and one of the founders and the first president of the India Club. He won four terms on San Fernando Borough Council (1937–1941), three of which he served as the Mayor of San Fernando. He was an elected representative of the Victoria County in Trinidad & Tobago’s Legislative Council for seven years (1938–1944), and became a member of the Governor’s Executive Council in 1943. He played an active role in the colony’s public service for about 10 years as its Second Crown Counsel (see Samaroo, 2005). Besides organising themselves as an ethnic group at the national level, by the end of the indentured immigration system, the Indians had begun organising themselves as religious communities. Two notable Hindu organisations were the Sanatan Dharma Board of Control of Tunapuna18 under the leadership of Pandits Sahadeo Tiwary, C. H. Budhu, and Jairam Gosine and the Sanatan Dharm Association19 of Couva, led by Michael Sarran Teelucksingh. When Teelucksingh’s leadership was criticised (as an Anglican heading a Hindu organisation), he was replaced by Pandit Ramjattan (Jha, 1982: 127).20 These two organisations were later united as the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS) in 1952 (Ramesar, 1994: 148). The SDMS is the largest, traditionalist, and politically conscious vibrant organisation of Hindus in Trinidad today. There 16

The elective principle was accepted by the Crown government and, in 1925, voters in Trinidad and Tobago could for the first time elect seven out of the 25 members in the legislative council. 17 Born Krishna Deonarine into a Brahman family in Palmyra, Princes Town in south Trinidad, he changed his name as Adrian Cola Rienzi, the first name after the English magistrate Adrian Clarke, who had a strong influence on him, and the middle and the last names inspired by the fourteenth century Italian patriot and activist Cola di Rienzo. In the final years of his life, Rienzi changed his name as Desh Bandu (Friend of the Nation). 18 Organised on 3 January 1932, registered as a Friendly and Benevolent Society on 21 January 1932, and incorporated in June 1932 (Jha 1982: 127). 19 Registered in May 1932. 20 Teelucksingh justified his leadership of a Hindu group by stating that was the religion of his forefathers (see Singh 1996).

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were multiple smaller organisations of Hindu ‘sects’ like Arya Pratinidhi Sabha (which later became Arya Samaj Association), Ramanandi Panth, Kabir Panth, Aghor Panth and Seunarine Panth (Shivanarinepath).21 An Islamic Guild was formed in Princes Town with Sayyad Abdul Aziz Meah, a kazi (the first in Trinidad) and an EINA leader, as president and Suckoor Mahomet as secretary, to press for the legal recognition of Muslim marriages. ‘They objected to the practice of registering Indian children as “illegitimate”, when their parents, especially Muslims, were married within their own religious laws’ (Ramesar, 1994: 118). By around 1926, he succeeded in uniting most Muslims in Tackveeyatul Islamic Association (Society for the strength of Islam) of Trinidad (TIA). In 1935, due to a schism among the Muslims in the colony, the Anjuman Sunaatul Jamaat Association (ASJA) came into existence. A further schism within TIA led to the formation of the Trinidad Muslim League (TML) in 1945. The issues and interests of the Indian immigrants who had got converted to Christianity was aired by the Church. Those who converted to Presbyterianism, which literally became an Indian church in Trinidad (see Jayaram, 2009), got western education and some of them rose to positions in the Church and schools run by its mission and in public life. Rev. Lalla, a founding member and the first president of the EINC, was appointed to the Legislative Council on the death of George F. Fitzpatrick in 1920. By the end of the indenture system, a small group of Indians had gained ‘respectable status’ gauged in terms of their educational attainment, occupational position, and material acquisitions. They had developed a stake in Trinidad. The articulate among them proudly acclaimed the achievements of their fellows. For instance, in 1921, Rev. Lalla, Member of the Legislative Council, declared that although the indentured immigration system had ‘aimed at making the Indians “hewers of wood and drawers of water”, they had been raised to the “highest pedestal of British citizenship”’ (quoted in Ramesar, 1994: 133). The Indians of the southern part of Trinidad boasted several firsts: the first Indian magistrate (Jules Mahabir), solicitor (Alexander Jamadar), medical doctor (D. Omah Maharaj), minister of the Gospel, mayor, and member of the legislative council (ibid.). Other Indians of importance included chocolate manufacturer A. A. Sobrian, race-horses owners C. W. Samalsingh and Boodoosingh, and cricketer Frank Mahabir. Though their numbers were small,22 for a community that had begun from scratch it was significant.

21

The Kabir Association of Trinidad was also incorporated around 1932. According to the 1931 Census, there were 637 Indians in the professional sector, constituting 12.41% of all professionals in Trinidad. Most of them were, however, teachers (440) or ministers of religion (181), and those in legal (9) and medical (7) professions were miniscule in number. Seventy-two (16.36%) of the 440 teachers were women and there was no woman in the other three professions (computed from Ramesar 1994: 134, Table 6.3).

22

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4.2.3 The Early Indian Print Media The mainstream print media, such as Port of Spain Gazette, Trinidad Guardian (and Weekly Trinidad Guardian), and New Era, controlled by the Europeans, were expectedly sympathetic to the colonial rulers and the planters and biased against the Indians. To counter the antipathy of and tendentious reporting by the mainstream newspapers and magazines, as also to report the activities of the Indian community and to voice its opinions, the Indians started their own magazines. As early as in 1899, Lallapee, an India-born merchant, brought out an ‘Indian’ newspaper, the Kohinoor Indian Gazette. The East Indian Herald (1919–1922), owned and edited by N. E. Ramcharan, a druggist and political activist, was another such venture. Around 1921, Teelucksingh partnered with Rev. Lalla to launch the East Indian Patriot, a monthly magazine which also served to promote the former’s political career. This magazine was succeeded by the East Indian Weekly, which appeared regularly from 1928 to 1932. It was owned and published by Leonard Walcott of African descent, but was edited by Chandra Bahadoor Mathura of Chaguanas. Brinsley Samaroo describes the East Indian Weekly as ‘the vanguard of Indian nationalism in Trinidad’ (quoted by Ramesar, 1994: 133). The other contemporary publications by Indians include The West Indian Magnet (first published in 1932 by A. C. B. Singh), The Observer (Organ of Indian Opinion) (first published in 1941 by founder-editor S. M. Rameshwar, with Martin Sampath and Dennis Mahabir as associate editors), The East Indian Advocate (1930s), The Indian (1940–1953) (edited by Chandra Bahadoor Mathura), The Sentinel (founded in 1946 and edited by A. R. Sammah, with E. Chokolingo and P. A. Sankarsingh as assistant editors), and The Statesman (edited by Dennis Mahabir). An important contribution of The Observer, especially by its editor Rameshwar, was the publication project which resulted in the Indian Centenary Review (see Kirpalani et al. 1945) to celebrate the centenary of the Indian arrival in Trinidad (see The Indian Review Press 1993: xxii–xxiii).23

4.3 Indians and the Labour Struggles, 1919–193924 and Beyond By the end of the First World War in November 1919, three changes had taken place in Trinidad which were to have decisive consequences for the colony and the Indians who had settled down there (Williams, 1993: 215–216). The first was the discovery of oil in commercially viable quantities in 1910, which made Trinidad an ‘oil colony’ 23

This celebratory volume was republished in the combined larger volume to celebrate the sesquicentenary of the Indian arrival in Trinidad (1845–1995) (see Samaroo et al., 1995). 24 For a timeline of the labour movement in Trinidad, see https://www.nalis.gov.tt/Resources/Sub ject-Guide/Labour-Day (accessed April 14, 2021). For a detailed discussion on the movement, see Basdeo (1982, 1983, 1986), Samaroo and Girvan (1972); Teelucksingh (2014).

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and shifted the focus of the economy from plantation crops to oil extraction and export. The second was the abolition of the indentured labour immigration, which in due course made free wage-labour the norm in the country, free of the earlier contractual obligations; but it also removed the social security system which had protected the labourers on the estate. The third change was the emergence of the working-class movement, which resulted in the revival of the Trinidad Workingmen’s Association (TWA) under Captain Arthur Andrew Cipriani (1875–1945), who later formed the Trinidad Labour Party (TLP). Post-war conditions were harsh for the labouring class in Trinidad; inflation had raised the prices of commodities and, with wages remaining static or not increasing commensurately, the cost of living had shot up. Like other labourers, the Indians too had been adversely affected by the resulting hardship. This led to serious labour unrest in Trinidad, as elsewhere in the British colonies. In December 1919, there was a slew of strikes in the Port of Spain docks, which later spread to all parts of the island and to Tobago over the next three years. The Indian workers participated in these strikes (Basdeo, 1983: 19, 27–28). The TWA, which was formed in 1897 by the Port of Spain druggist, Walter Mills to represent skilled African urban workers, was rejuvenated after the First World War by an executive committee that had been radicalised by international revolutionary movements. It began the publication of a paper, The Labour Leader, in 1922. In 1923, Cipriani became the president of the TWA and under his presidency (1923–1934) the TWA was ‘undisputedly the dominant left-wing political force in the British Caribbean’ (Ryan, 1972: 30) and it led several workers’ agitations. Although he was of white (French) planter descent, Cipriani gained the confidence of ‘hundreds of thousands of black people and East Indians’ (James, 1963: 403).25 Under his leadership ‘some Indians entered into the mainstream of labour and national politics’ (Ramesar, 1994: 138). Cipriani, accompanied by the Indian politician Timothy Roodal represented Trinidad in the 1930 Commonwealth Conference of the British Labour Party. On their return, Sahadeo Basdeo records, a large number of Indian workers journeyed from their counties ‘to join their West Indian brothers’ in the common cause of working-class solidarity (1983: 91). Although the labour government under Ramsay MacDonald responded positively to this and similar other appeals from the colonies and, in 1930, Sidney Webb circularised colonial governments urging them to introduce trade-union ordinances, the government of Trinidad and Tobago ignored the despatch until 1932. In the meanwhile, the workers were disillusioned with Cipriani and this led to what Basdeo calls ‘the politics of despair’ (ibid.: 102). The new Ordinance enacted by the government in 1932, though it legitimised trade unions by allowing them to be legally registered and recognised, was less useful to the workers, since ‘it omitted all provisions which would safeguard the right of unions to picket peacefully’ and ‘gave them no immunity against action in tort along the lines of the 1906 Trade Disputes Act in the United Kingdom. Cipriani 25

In the 1925 national elections, Cipriani won the Port of Spain seat with an overwhelming majority and he held the seat until his death in 1945.

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and the TWA protested, but to no avail’ (Ryan, 1972: 37). Hence, Cipriani, taking the advice of the British Trade Union Congress, refused to register the TWA under the new Ordinance. Instead, in 1934, the TWA renamed itself as Trinidad Labour Party and became a political party, ensuring that the labour movement was not destroyed in the courts for illegal industrial activities. Cipriani believed that political agitation must be given primacy at that stage of Trinidad’s development (see ibid.: 37–38). Thus, in 1934, in reaction to large tasks and low wages, and lay-offs, triggered by a drought and international economic depression, the sugar workers, mostly Indian, staged protests and undertook a hunger march to Port of Spain. There was violence on the estates and outside. The conservative recommendations of the commission of enquiry did not ease the hardships of the sugar and oil workers. In fact, this led to further radicalisation of the labour movement in Trinidad (see Basdeo, 1982, 1983: 110–116, 123). In 1935, the labour movement took a significant turn. In March that year, workers at the Apex Oilfields went on a strike. This marked the beginning of the emergence of Tubbal Uriah ‘Buzz’ Butler (1897–1977), a Grenada-born Spiritual Baptist preacher, as a labour leader in Trinidad. That year, together with Rienzi, he formed the Trinidad Citizens League. In 1936, Butler was expelled from the TLP for his extremist tendencies, and he formed his own political party, the British Empire Citizens’ and Workers’ Home Rule Party (BECWHRP). In the labour history of Trinidad, Butler is best known for leading a series of violent labour riots between 19 June and 6 July 1937; in the predominantly Indians-inhabited Fyzabad, two policemen and nine civilians were killed and 50 civilians were wounded. Butler went into hiding and was later arrested and imprisoned.26 When he was released, he formed the Butler Home Rule Party, which later became the Butler Party, which had as its objective the improvement of the working class. During Butler’s absence, Rienzi had become the de facto leader of the labouring class. In 1937, he presided over the formation of two trade unions and became their elected president: The Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU), the first registered trade union in Trinidad, and the All Trinidad Sugar Estate and Factory Workers Trade Union (ATSEFWTU), which too was registered. He was also instrumental in the formation of the Federated Workers Trade Union (Basdeo, 1983: 160).27 Unsurprisingly, in 1938, Rienzi became the first trade union leader to be elected to the Legislative Council. In 1939, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) was established and Rienzi became its first elected president. In the same year, the government amended the 1932 Ordinance to legalise peaceful picketing and gave unions immunity from actions for damages arising out of strikes. By the 1940s, the Indians had been actively participating in the affairs of the Trinidadian society at large and had developed a consciousness of kind as an ethnic 26

Incidentally, Butler was defended by Mitra Sinanan of Indian descent. In Port of Spain Assizes, Butler lost the case and was imprisoned. But Sinanan successfully appealed to the British Privy Council and Butler was released (Basdeo 1984: 14–16). 27 By the end of 1938, there were ten trade unions in Trinidad, more than in any other West Indian colony.

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group which was to protect the community’s interest in a racialised polity. Their associational life, which had been hitherto confined to rural areas and urban centres in south and central Trinidad, started showing expression through mainly urban middleclass Indians of Port of Spain. The emerging younger generation of Indians was no longer appealing to be included in the socio-economic and political system; they were demanding changes in the system. Their opinions, aspirations, and demands began to be championed in the monthly The Observer. These ‘progressives’ of the community, as The Observer proclaimed them (Ramesar, 1994: 149), were influenced by the radical ideas of Rienzi and the exhortations of visiting Indian nationalists like D. P. Pandia, President of the Servants of India Society, and Pandit H. N. Kunzru, member of the Council of State in Delhi. They insisted that Indians had ‘a right to a place in colonial Trinidad, without sacrificing traditional religion or identity’ (ibid.). The editorial in the May 1944 issue of The Observer proclaimed that ‘The Indian today is in no mood to be cajoled or to be threatened. …We are out to break the chains that hold our people to the earth and make them menials in a land of plenty’ (quoted in ibid.: 149–150). While they were proud of the legacy of India, they were critical of some prominent Indian elders, who were described as ‘Weak, Silent Men’ (ibid.: 149). One such ‘progressive’ was Hari Prasad Singh (1905–1979), popularly known as H. P. Singh or simply HP, son of Ramdhin and Bakti Singh of Princes Town, a businessman living in Port of Spain.28 He first joined the Minerva Club in Port of Spain, an Indian social and literary club founded by Jules and Minnie Mahabir. The Club began publishing a literary magazine, The Minerva Review in 1941 under the editorship of Martin Sampath. The Club folded up in the early 1940s, but it had provided a forum to many Indians who later became politicians and professionals. The Observer, referred to earlier, was a product of the Minerva Club. Thanks to the yeoman efforts of H. P. Singh, who was its editor for 24 years (1946–1970), The Observer survived all other Indian publications in the colony as the chief ideological mouthpiece of the Indian community. Another organisation with which H. P. Singh was associated was the Port of Spain-based India Club29 founded by a visitor from India, Dr Durai Pal Pandia, in early 1945. Thus, on the eve of the introduction of adult suffrage in Trinidad in 1946, inspired by the nationalist movement in India and the celebration in 1945 of the centenary of the Indian arrival on the island, the Trinidad Indians were more confident of their position in the colony. Their leaders had by now developed ‘an adequate sense of security under the British umbrella to demand a better deal … on behalf of their community’ (ibid.: 150). Expectedly, their self-conscious attempt to seek integration in the mainstream of Trinidadian polity on their own ethnic terms would bring them into conflict with those of African descent. Their sense of ethnic unity, on the one 28

The following account of H. P. Singh’s role in the development of Indo-Trinidadians as a girmitiya diaspora is based on his works compiled and introduced by Kamal Persad and Ashram B. Maharaj of the Indian Review Committee/Press (see Indian Review Press 1993). 29 The India Club is different from the two Indian Clubs in Port of Spain, one in St Vincent Street and the other at St James (Persad and Maharaj 1993: xxiv).

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hand, and the reality of intra-ethnic group divergences, on the other, would define their engagement with electoral politics in the decades to come.

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Samaroo, B., & Girvan, C. (1972). The Trinidad Workingmen’s Association and the origins of popular protest in a crown colony. Social and Economic Studies, 21(2), 205–222. Samaroo, B., Haraksingh, K., Ramchand, K., Besson, G., & Quentrall-Thomas, D. (Eds.). (1995). In celebration of 150 years of the Indian contribution to Trinidad and Tobago. Historical Publications Limited. Seesaran, E. B. R. (1994). Social mobility in the Indo-Trinidadian community, 1870–1917. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis in History. The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Singh, K. (1988). Bloodstained tombs: The Muharram massacre 1884. Macmillan. Singh, K. (1996). Conflict and collaboration: Tradition and modernizing Indo-Trinidadian elites (1917–56). NWIG: New West Indian Guide, 70(3/4), 229–253. Smith, M. G. (1993). Race and ethnicity. In R. R. Premdas (Ed.), The enigma of ethnicity: An analysis of race in the Caribbean and the world (pp. 23–58). The School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Teelucksingh, J. (2014). Labour and the decolonization struggle in Trinidad and Tobago (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies). Palgrave Macmillan. Tikasingh, G. (1976). The establishment of the Indians in Trinidad, 1870–1900. Unpublished PhD thesis. The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Tikasingh, G. (1982). Toward a formulation of the Indian view of history: The representation of Indian opinion in Trinidad, 1900–1921. East Indians in the Caribbean: Colonialism and the struggle for identity (Papers presented to a Symposium on East Indians in the Caribbean, The University of the West Indies, June 1975) (pp. 11–32). Kraus International Publications. Williams, E. (1993/1942). History of the people of Trinidad and Tobago. A & B Books Publishers. Wood, D. (1968). Trinidad in transition: The years after slavery. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 5

Elections and the Politicisation of Race and Ethnicity

… ethnicity has always been more relevant than cognitive evaluations in voting behaviour in Trinidad & Tobago … —Selwyn D. Ryan (1996: 31)

By the time universal adult suffrage was introduced in Trinidad and Tobago in 1946, race and ethnicity had developed as important elements in inter-group interactions in the society. It was only to be expected that these identity-definers would have a bearing on the periodical elections held for selecting people’s representatives to the legislative council, county council, etc. Once introduced, elections became the main channels for expressing racial/ethnic solidarity and contestations to gaining power or retaining it. This chapter analyses the resulting politicisation of race and ethnicity in Trinidad and Tobago during 1946–1995.1 Though elections to all representational bodies took on the race/ethnic colour, for want of space, the analysis here is limited to the elections to the legislative council. The period chosen is particularly relevant to the axial theme of the book, namely, the making of the girmitiya diaspora, as it was in the 1995 general elections, a third-generation descendant of an indentured immigrant from India became the prime minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, for the first time ever. It was also the year in which the Indians celebrated the sesquicentenary of the arrival of their forefathers on this island.

1

The most definitive account of the politicisation of race/ethnicity and its implications for electoral politics is provided by Ryan (1972). Starting with the origins of the race issue in Trinidad and Tobago in ‘the old colonial order, 1797–1919’ (ibid.: 17), he covers the developments till the 1971 general elections. Ryan’s focus in this book was largely on the nationalist preoccupations of the Afro-Trinidadian community. In a companion volume published after 24 years, Ryan (1996) focused on the developments vis-à-vis the Indo-Trinidadian community. Meighoo (2003) revisits Ryan’s analyses and updates the developments till 2001. Bissessar and La Guerre (2013) provide a comparative analysis of race and politics in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. This chapter has immensely benefitted from a close reading of these works. The verbatim reproductions of their statements are duly acknowledged at appropriate places.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7_5

83

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5 Elections and the Politicisation of Race and Ethnicity

5.1 Introduction of Universal Adult Suffrage Universal adult suffrage was introduced in Trinidad and Tobago immediately after the end of World War II in 1946, and the first general election under the system was held on 1 July 1946. For a total of nine elected legislative council seats, 42 candidates contested—21 representing five political parties and 21 as independents (see Table 5.1). Of the 41 candidates in the final fray,2 16 were of African descent; 13, of Indian descent; seven, of European origin, and six, of mixed descent (La Guerre, 1972: 197). Of the 259,512 eligible voters, 137,281 (52.9%) turned out to vote: considering the downpour on the voting day and slow voting due to the novelty of the voting procedure, Selwyn D. Ryan (1972: 77) regards this voter turnout as ‘creditable’, but considering the promotional and educational campaign by the government on the run up to the elections, Kirk Peter Meighoo (2003: 16) views it as ‘unremarkable’. Four of the seven members, who had been elected under limited franchise in 1938, contested the 1946 elections; of these four, only Timothy Roodal of Indian descent was elected. Roodal contested on both a Butler-founded British Empire Citizens’ and Workers’ Home Rule Party (BECWHRP) and Cipriani-founded Trinidad Labour Party (TLP); this was ‘reported without a comment in the Trinidad Guardian’ (ibid.: 17). Thus, in 1946, the authority and longevity of the political parties was limited; they ‘did not have clearly defined programmes, aims, or enforced constitutions’, they ‘were often electoral alliances formed by independent-minded candidates who sought additional votes’ (ibid.: 17–18). Furthermore, ‘although party [nominated] candidates won the most seats in the election, the greatest number of votes went to independent candidates’ and none of the party leaders won their seats (ibid.: 18). As V. S. Naipaul aptly observed later, in Trinidad, ‘There were no parties, only individuals’ (1962: 72).3 According to Ryan, the 1946 election campaign ‘differed from anything that had been witnessed in the colony before’ (1972: 75). It was ‘a bitter and confused campaign in which party labels and purposes were inextricably tangled with racial animosities and personal ambitions [of leaders]’ (Blanshard, 1947:160). Race and bribes, ‘the principal weapons in the contest’, were strategically used to mobilise ‘the previously inert masses of the population’ (Ryan, 1972: 76). Even if a party did not identify with any racial group, many contestants and the voters mutually identified themselves with their own racial or ethnic group.4 It must be clarified that, in Trinidad, racial politics did not begin with the 1946 general elections. Race and ethnicity were crucial factors in the social and political life of the colony. But, the universal adult suffrage, as some leaders and commentators feared, only served ‘to politicize and harden the cleavages in the society’ (ibid.: 77). 2

One candidate (Dr E. de Verteuil) of the Progressive Democratic Party withdrew from context in North Port-of-Spain. 3 In fact, only two of the parties—the Butler Party and TLP—survived beyond two elections! (Meighoo, 2003: 18). 4 Ryan refers to this as ‘apanjhatism’ (1996: viii). The Indo-Trinidadians supporting the PNM were seen as ‘nimakarams’ [namakharams; ingrates or traitors] (ibid.: xxxii).

5.1 Introduction of Universal Adult Suffrage

85

Albert Gomes, who had defeated Butler in the Port of Spain seat, said, ‘We have not yet reached the stage where political impulse is guided by cognate considerations. …Our position, as revealed by the election, is not a happy one’ (quoted in ibid.) Naipaul bemoaned that universal adult suffrage brought ‘the squalor of the politics’ and he famously declared, ‘Nationalism was impossible in Trinidad’ (1962: 72), a declaration that has haunted Trinidad and Tobago to date. Table 5.1 Results of general elections to the legislative council (1946, 1950, and 1956) Party

No. of candidates No. of seats won Percentage of valid Voter turnout (%) votes polled 52.9

General elections, 1 July 1946 United front

7

3

21.7

BECWHRPa

5

3

23.7

TUC and SP

5

2

16.1

TLPa

3

1

11.7

PDP

1

0

0.4

Independents

21

1

30.2

41

9

100.0

Ballots rejected Totalb

6.1

General elections, 18 September 1950

70.1

BHRPc

18

7

23.4

PPG

2

2

3.3 12.4

CSPc,d

13

2

TLP

12

2

7.7

TUC

6

0

4.5

Independents

91

6

46.7

141

18

100.0

Ballots rejected Totale

4.3

General elections, 24 September 1956

80.1

PNM

24

13

38.7

Butler Party

20

2

11.4 20.3

PDP

14

5

TLP–NDP

12

2

5.0

PPPG

9

0

5.2

CNLP

8

0

1.4

WIIP

1

0

0.2

CPDP

1

0

0.2

Independents

39

2

14.9

Ballots rejected

2.6 (continued)

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5 Elections and the Politicisation of Race and Ethnicity

Table 5.1 (continued) Party

No. of candidates No. of seats won Percentage of valid Voter turnout (%) votes polled

Total

128

100.0

Abbreviations BECWHRP The British Empire citizens’ and workers’ home rule party, BHRP Butler home rule party, CNLP Caribbean national labour party, CPDP Caribbean people’s democratic party, CSP Caribbean socialist party, PDP progressive democratic party, PNM people’s national movement, PPG political progress group, PPPG party of political progress groups, TLP Trinidad labour party, TLP–NDP Trinidad labour party–national democratic party, TUC trade union council, TUC and SP trade union council and socialist party, WIIP West Indian independence party Notes a Figures include votes secured by Timothy Roodal, who contested and won the St Patrick seat on both a BECWHRP and TLP ticket b Figures count Timothy Roodal’s candidacy and victory once only c Figures include votes secured by A.P.T. James, who contested and won the Tobago seat on both a Butler Party and CSP ticket d Two CSP candidates contested the seat of Port of Spain East e Figures count A.P.T. James’s candidacy and victory once only Source Adapted from Meighoo (2003: 314–317 [Appendix B, Tables 5, 7, and 10])

5.2 The Run Up to Independence The new Trinidad and Tobago (Constitution) Order-in-Council came into effect on 20 April 1950. The elective seats to the legislative council were doubled to 18 and the nominated seats were reduced to five, with the three ex-officio seats remaining unchanged. Instead of county boundaries delimiting a constituency, a more equitable division of population across the constituencies was suggested. The legislative council constituted after the 1946 general elections was dissolved on 30 August 1950 and general elections were held on 18 September 1950 to constitute the new legislative council (Meighoo, 2003: 22). In all, 141 candidates, 90 independents and 51 with some kind of party label, vied for the 18 seats (see Table 5.1) As Roodal in the 1946 elections, A. P. T. James5 contested the Tobago seat on both the Butler’s Party and the Caribbean Socialist Party (CSP) ticket. With 70.1%, the voter turnout was the highest yet seen. The Butler’s Party won seven seats (including James),6 the Political Progress Group (PPG) two, the TLP two, the CSP one (excluding James), and independents six (see Meighoo, 2003: 23; see also Ryan, 1972: 89–91).

5 Alphonso Philbert Theophilus “Fargo” James, a Tobagonian (c.1908–1962), was first elected to the legislative council from Tobago in 1946 and represented that constituency in the legislative council until 1961 when he was defeated by Arthur Napoleon Raymond Robinson (1926–2014), who later became the third prime minister of Trinidad & Tobago (1986–1991) and also the third President of Trinidad & Tobago (1997–2003). 6 Of these, four were won by Indians.

5.2 The Run Up to Independence

87

Candidates as individuals were yet again more important than the parties which they represented, and the parties and the politicians’ allegiances continued to split and recombine: The most important combinations were the People’s Democratic Party (PDP)7 —formed in 1953 under the leadership of Bhadase Maraj [1920–1971], bringing together all seven Indian MLCs (Maraj, Ajodasingh, four of Butler’s MLCs, and Simbhoonath Capildeo from the CSP)—and the Party of Political Progress Groups (POPPG), led by albert Gomes, emerging from his People’s Progressive Group. (Meighoo: 23)

As regards racialised politics, the 1950 general elections were a redux of the 1946 general elections on a larger scale, and reiterated ‘the fragmentation of Trinidad’s politics’ (Ryan, 1972: 86).8 Racialised politics came to be entrenched with the entry of Dr Eric Eustace Williams (1911–1981)9 on the political stage of Trinidad and Tobago in 1954 and the founding of the People’s National Movement (PNM) by him on 15 January 1956.10 The PNM was the outcome of Williams’ political socialisation in Trinidad and the sustained campaign of political education that he had embarked upon since his return. In founding the PNM, Williams wanted to change the prevailing political culture of independent candidates contesting elections, even when they were affiliated to a party. It goes to his credit that he introduced the concept of party discipline and programme and put the party before the candidate. On his part, he sought to portray himself as ‘a national, as opposed to sectional or racial, leader’ (Meighoo, 2003: 27). However, right from the beginning the PNM came to be perceived to be a ‘Negro’ (African) party, not only by the Indians, but also by the Africans themselves (see ibid.: 38). The campaign for and the outcome of the general elections to the legislative council held on 24 September 1956 must be understood in the prevailing environment of racialised politics.11 As it had been earlier, the parties were fragmented and the political affiliations were fluid: of the 16 candidates who had been elected in the 1950 elections, only six did so with the same party or as independents in 7

Though the circumstances leading to the formation of PDP are not clear, the party soon became ‘widely recognized as the political arm of the orthodox Hindu community, the vehicle of an Indian ‘nationalist’ movement …’ (Ryan, 1972: 138–139, see also 138–146). 8 In his second published novel, The Suffrage of Elvira, that first appeared in 1958, Naipaul provides a hilarious take on the electoral campaign in the backcountry Elvira during the second general elections in 1950 (see Naipaul, 2002b). 9 Popularly known as ‘the Doctor’, Williams was a leading intellectual of Trinidad. He was a recipient of the prestigious Island Scholarship in 1932 and obtained his PhD in history from Oxford University in 1938. The books authored by him include History of the People of Trinidad & Tobago (1942), Capitalism and Slavery (1944), and The Negro in the Caribbean (1945). He taught at Howard University (1939–1944) before returning to Trinidad. 10 The party’s mouthpiece PNM Weekly was launched on July 14, 1956 with Williams as its editor. The August 9 issue, with a circulation of 20,000, carried the PNM Manifesto (Meighoo, 2003: 36). 11 Most scholars writing on the subject have invariably pointed out that racialism, sometimes aggressive, had been heightened in the campaign of the 1956 general elections (see Bahadoorsingh, 1968; Malik, 1971: 93–94; Ryan, 1972: 128–148; Brassington, 1975: 59–60).

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1956. ‘Regardless of the party affiliations’, Meighoo writes, ‘the individual ambitions remained, with almost all the incumbents contesting again’ (ibid.: 40). In all, 129 candidates contested for 24 seats, 39 as independents and 89 with party affiliations (see Table 5.1).12 The PNM won 13 seats, the PDP five, and two each were won by the Butler Party, TLP–National Democratic Party, and independents; the other four parties drew a blank. The voter turnout (80.1%) was the highest up to that election. Meighoo describes the PNM’s victory in the 1956 elections as ‘precarious’ (ibid.: 27; see also Ryan, 1972: 163–169): the party obtained only 38.7% of the votes polled and in five constituencies its victory margin was less than 1,500 votes. Thirteen in a house of 31 members was not enough to claim a straight victory. But, after long-drawn negotiations with the Governor and consultations with the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Williams could cobble a majority (through nominations) and became the first Chief Minister of Trinidad and Tobago13 and the PNM became the first party-government in the country. The precarity of PNM’s victory prompted the opposition parties to organise themselves more nationally. One party that was formed in the ferment was the Democratic Labour Party (DLP), launched on 23 May 1957; the PDP, POPPG, and TLP declared their affiliation to the new formation. On 18 July 1957, the parties dissolved themselves to form the DLP of Trinidad and Tobago. This was welcomed by many leaders, including those of the PNM, as ‘a maturation of the political system’ (ibid.: 45). The alliance being opportunistic, rather than ideological, there was internal party squabbling. All the same, the DLP was proving to be a formidable opposition. In the three elections—West Indian Federal Parliament (WIFP), 1958; County Council, 1959; and General Elections, 1961—only the DLP and the PNM were the main contenders; other political parties and independents were reduced to ‘also contested’ (see Table 5.2). In fact, in the WIFP elections held on 25 March 1958, the DLP won six out of the ten seats to PNM’s four. In the face of this defeat, Williams launched into ‘an unrestrained attack against the backward, rural, Indian “wave of illiteracy” swamping the PNM’s urban strongholds; he called the Indians a “hostile and recalcitrant minority”, prostituting the name of India for selfish and reactionary ends’ (ibid.: 49). He also accused the DLP of ‘mere power-seeking and “keep[ing] the country down in the ditch in which they find themselves”’ (ibid.). He accused the whites, the Church and the ‘venal press’, too. The speech, which offended many,14 revealed Williams’ frustration as much as it betrayed his antipathy towards Trinidad Indians. Instead of 12

Williams rejected the overtures from POPPG for ‘an honourable coalition’ with PNM and declared that in the elections it will be ‘PNM against the Rest’ (Meighoo, 2003: 40). The PDP, led by Bhadase Sagan Maraj, who was also the president of the SDMS founded in 1952, has been described as the Hindu political party (ibid.: 39). 13 Under the new Constitution that had been passed in the Legislative Council on June 1, 1956. 14 William Alexander Clarke Bustamante, the labour leader, who, in 1962, became the first prime minister of Jamaica, branded Williams’ speech as vulgar and unbecoming. In the legislative council, the DLP member Lionel Seukeran introduced a motion of censure against Chief Minister Williams for his ‘derogatory attack on the Indian Community’ (quoted in Meighoo, 2003: 49).

5.2 The Run Up to Independence

89

Table 5.2 Results of elections (1958–1961) in which PNM and DLP were the main contenders Party

No. of candidates No. of seats won Percentage of valid votes Voter turnout polled (%)

West Indian Federal Parliament Election, 25 March 1958

72.3

PNM

10

4

47.4

DLP

10

6

47.4

Butler Party

1

0

4.9

Independents

2

0

0.2 1.8

Ballots rejected Total

23

10

100.0 55.8

County Council Elections, 16 February 1959 PNM

72

34

48.1 41.6

DLP

67

33

Butler Party

2

2

2.9

Independents

32

3

6.7

173

72

Ballots rejected Total

0.8 100.0

General Elections to Legislative Council, 4 December 1961 PNM

30

20

57.0

DLP

30

10

41.7

Butler Party

4

0

0.4

ANC

3

0

0.5

Independents

2

0

0.5

69

30

0.0

Ballots rejected Total

88.1

100.0

Note ANC African national congress, DLP democratic labour party Source Adapted from Meighoo (2003: 317–318 [Appendix B, Tables 11, 12, and 13])

retracting his diatribe, Williams repeated it. Thus, on the eve of independence, as an ethnic group, Trinidad Indians understood what to expect of Williams and the party that he led. However, by the run up to the 1961 general elections, the internal differences in the DLP started showing up, leading to the weakening of the party. Immediately after the victory in the WIFP elections in 1958, there was even an attempt to oust Bhadase Sagan Maraj from the party, as being ‘a rural Hindu’, he could be a hindrance to the DLP’s strategy to win the 1961 general elections. Maraj fell ill and became bedridden in 1959. Many within the party thought that Dr Rudranath Capildeo15 as the party 15

Rudranath Capildeo (1920–1970), was the younger brother of lawyer and politician Simbhoonath Capildeo (1914–1990) and maternal uncle of V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018). Like Williams, he was an Island Scholarship awardee and he obtained his PhD in mathematics from the University of London. He taught at the University College of London and Westfield College, London.

90

5 Elections and the Politicisation of Race and Ethnicity

leader, an intellectual equal to Williams, could attract more non-Indian votes. On 29 March 1960, he displaced Maraj, but this was opposed by the dissidents within the party. Holding on to his teaching position in London, Rudranath Capildeo became the absent leader of a fractured party (Meighoo, 2003: 55). Williams sarcastically noted, that in Trinidad and Tobago ‘Opposition there is, opposition galore—but it is opposition for so …’ and he derided the opposition as consisting of ‘these moral anarchists, these enemies of democracy …’ (quoted in Meighoo, ibid.: 54). From January 1961, Trinidad witnessed acute racial tensions; some were beginning to feel an imminent ‘racial bloodbath’ (see Ryan, 1996: 28). The DLP meetings were disturbed and broken up by the PNM supporters. The DLP complained that their meetings were not given protection by the African-dominated police force. The DLP was refused free air time on the state-owned radio station (see Malik, 1971: 112, 117– 118). In desperation, Rudranath Capildeo made his most intemperate announcement to his supporters: ‘You will be called to arms. Wherever the PNM holds a meeting, you will have to break it up’ (quoted in Meighoo, 2003: 56). Violence broke out and a limited state of emergency was declared in some counties. As shown in Table 5.2, the PNM won the elections hands down: it won 20 of the 30 seats and garnered 57% of the votes polled; the DLP got the remaining ten seats with 41.7% of the votes. Considering that the voter turnout (88.1%) was the highest ever, the DLP lost significant ground to the PNM; it ‘won only in those areas where the total Indian population exceeded 50%’ (Ryan, 1996: 31). Williams retained his Prime Ministership and Rudranath Capildeo became the Leader of the Opposition, a position he held till 1967. The electoral victory provided Williams the ground to prepare for independence.16 On 28 May 1962, a draft constitution was taken for the Independence Conference at Marlborough House, London. The DLP, SDMS, and Indian Association opposed it on various grounds.17 The Indian Association (founded by H. P. Singh in 1962) repeated its call for partition if proportional representation was not implemented. Williams dismissed the apprehensions raised by these organisations; he took Rudranath Capildeo into confidence and the new constitution was approved. Trinidad and Tobago became independent on 31 August 1962, after 165 years of British colonial rule. With a two-thirds majority in parliament, the PNM led by Williams launched the country into a new era.

16

Ryan has written five chapters (16–20) on the general elections of 1961 and the preparation for independence (1972: 238–336). 17 Incidentally, the ruling PNM did not consult the opposition DLP ‘because of haste and more than a touch of arrogance’ (Ryan 1996: 34).

5.3 The First Two Decades of Independence, 1961–1981

91

5.3 The First Two Decades of Independence, 1961–1981 The first two decades of independence was a trial by fire for Williams and the PNM. After the initial euphoria, the government faced a vigorous and popular opposition on various fronts.18 Frustrated by the developments, in 1973, Williams even contemplated retiring from politics, but dropped the idea. The PNM withstood ‘the continuous extra-parliamentary opposition’, ‘the new generation of opposition parties that emerged in 1976’, and the challenge posed by ‘a break-away faction of the party’ in 1981 (Meighoo, 2003: 63); it maintained its two-thirds majority right up to Williams’s death on 29 March 1981 (see Table 5.3), thanks to the fragmentary opposition throughout the period. The DLP and its leader Rudranath Capildeo functioned cluelessly and erratically; Rudranath Capildeo left for London and dismissed the entire executive of the party. Three MPs of the party (two Africans and an Indian Muslim) resigned from the party and formed the Liberal Party of Trinidad and Tobago. The DLP’s presence in parliament was reduced to seven, all Hindus, with Stephen Maharaj as its leader. Rudranath Capildeo’s intervention in July 1965 was disastrous for the party; he even applauded the PNM for the stability and progress it had brought to the country and accused some of the opposition leaders of hatching a ‘plot’ (Meighoo, 2003: 67). The DLP split again: Maraj formed the Workers and Farmers Party; Simbhoonath Capildeo (the elder brother of Rudranath Capildeo) joined the Liberal Party, and Lionel Seukeran declared himself an independent. ‘The two-party system did not survive the term’ (ibid.; see Table 5.3). In the 1966 general elections, besides the PNM and the DLP, five other parties and four independents contested. The outcome was more or less the same as in the 1961 elections. In 1967, Rudranath Capildeo’s request for extension of leave of absence from the House was turned down and his Chaguanas seat was declared vacant. In the by-election held in January 1968, Bhadase Sagan Maraj was elected as an independent. The DLP soon became politically irrelevant and its decline was complete by the 1976 general elections, in which it drew a blank in all the 35 seats it contested and its vote share had declined to 3.0%. Post-1966 elections, many associations—community and religious, cultural, youth, etc.—came into existence. Influenced by the radical ideas prevalent then, many of these groups joined together to oppose the PNM government. The resulting movement is known in Trinidad’s history as the ‘Black Power Revolution’ (Ryan, 1972: 365–372, 454–462; Oxaal 1982; Ryan and Stewart, 1995). There were series of marches led by the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC) to mobilise the people, often resulting in vandalism and destruction of property, and the death of a young demonstrator in police firing.19 On 21 April 1970, the government declared a ‘State of Emergency’ and many Black Power leaders were arrested. While the 18

Ryan (1972: 337–491) discusses the associated developments during the first decade, and Meighoo (2003: 62–96) extends this discussion into the second decade. 19 In an unexpected development, on April 13, 1970, the Deputy Prime Minister A. N. R. Robinson resigned from the cabinet and criticised the government’s handling of the workers’ agitation.

92

5 Elections and the Politicisation of Race and Ethnicity

Table 5.3 Results of general elections to the legislative council (1966, 1971, and 1976) Party

No. of candidates No. of seats won Percentage of valid Voter turnout (%) votes polled

General elections, 7 November 1966

65.8

PNM

36

24

52.4

DLP

36

12

34.0

Liberal Party

36

0

8.9

WFP

35

0

3.5

PDP

1

0

0.3

Butler Party

4

0

0.2

SIP

2

0

0.2

Independents

4

0

0.5

154

36

Ballots rejected Total

0.1 100.0

General elections, 24 May 1971

33.2

PNM

36

36a

DLP

21

0

12.6

ANC

7

0

2.4

Independents

2

0

Ballots rejected Total

84.1

0.8 0.1

66

36

100.0 55.8

General elections, 13 September 1976 PNM

36

24

53.6 26.9

ULF

26

10

DAC

36

2

8.1

Tapia House

29

0

3.8

DLP

35

0

3.0

SDLP

34

0

1.9

WINP

26

0

0.4

LAP

19

0

0.3

UFP

21

0

0.3

NT&TP

1

0

0.0

YPNP

1

0

0.0

Independents

5

0

0.5

Ballots rejected

1.2 (continued)

5.3 The First Two Decades of Independence, 1961–1981

93

Table 5.3 (continued) Party

No. of candidates No. of seats won Percentage of valid Voter turnout (%) votes polled

Total

269

36

100.0

Notes ANC African national congress, DAC democratic action congress, DLP democratic labour party, LAP liberation action party, NT &TP national Trinidad and Tobago party, PDP progressive democratic party, PNM people’s national movement, SDLP social democratic labour party, SIP Seukeran independent party, UFP united freedom party, ULF united labour front, WINP West Indian national party, WFP workers and farmers party, YPNP young people’s national party a = This includes 8 uncontested seats in which no votes were counted Source Adapted from Meighoo (2003: 319–323 [Appendix B, Tables 14, 16, 18, and 22])

violent skirmishes were soon brought under control, a section of the armed forces, led by Raffique Shah and Rex Lasalle who were in sympathy with the Black Power Revolution, mutinied at the Teteron barracks. Five people were killed in the mutiny which ended on 25 April, and on 19 November the ‘State of Emergency’ was lifted (Meighoo, 2003: 70–73). The Black Power Revolution, though it was started as a movement of the working and oppressed classes and intended to be broad based ethnically, the label ‘Black Power’ obviously sent a wrong signal to the Indians.20 The Indians could not identify with many of the slogans and the visual manifestations (e.g., the dashikis and hairdos) of Black Power as they were African (Bissessar & La Guerre, 2013: 57). Prime Minister Williams’ declarations that ‘I am for Black Power’ (23 March 1970) and ‘I identify myself fully with [Black Power’s] constructive aspect’ (3 May 1970), though intended to assuage the feelings of the sympathisers of the ‘Revolution’, only confirmed the racial/ethnic overtones of the signal and reinforced ethnicity of the Indians.21 The opposition DLP too underwent some changes. In July 1969, Vernon Jamadar replaced Rudranath Capildeo22 as the head of the party. Elton Richardson (a founding member of the PNM) and Krishna Bahadoorsingh joined the party as deputy political leaders. In December 1970, the DLP formed an alliance with the Action Committee On September 20, 1970, he resigned from the PNM and later formed the Action Committee for Democratic Citizens (ACDC). 20 According to Bissessar and La Guerre, ‘In some cases, Indians were puzzled that Blacks were targeting a Black government that had done so much for Blacks. Others, especially after the torching of Indian businesses, felt that, after the Blacks had dealt with the Whites, they would come for the Indians’ (2013: 57). 21 It must be mentioned that by 1971, a group of students at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad, had formed the Society for the Propagation of Indian Culture (SPIC) in response to the Society for the Propagation of African Nationalism (SPAN). The protagonists of SPIC observed, ‘Black Power is for Black people and that means Negroes and no others. The Indians cannot be properly part of that movement and in spite of how much one may try to manipulate the definition of the word “black”’ (Ryan & Stewart, 1995: 293). 22 Rudranath Capildeo died in London on 12 May 1970. He had wanted Bhadase Sagan Maraj to lead the DLP.

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for Democratic Citizens (ACDC), which had been founded by Robinson who had unexpectedly resigned as Deputy Prime Minister from Williams’ cabinet (on April 13, 1970) and from the PNM (on 20 September 1970), to contest the 1971 general elections. In a surprise move, demanding electoral reforms, just four days before the nomination day, Robinson declared that he would boycott the elections. The DLP, which had fancied overthrowing a distraught PNM in the elections, was upset with this and withdrew from the alliance. Excepting the DLP led by Bhadase Sagan Maraj, the African National Congress (ANC) led by John Broomes, and two independents contesting the PNM, all other parties were against contesting the elections and wanted to launch a ‘no-vote’ campaign. Thus, the 1971 general elections were farcical. The PNM won all the 36 seats (including the eight uncontested seats), obtaining a record 84.1% of the record 33.2% votes polled (see Table 5.3). The DLP, the ANC, and the two independents—who contested 21, seven, and two seats, respectively—drew a blank, together securing less than 16% of the votes polled.23 Williams formed ‘a government without an opposition’ and faced with, what Meighoo calls, ‘the nihilistic anarchy of political opposition’ (2003: 74), the PNM continued its assertion of constitutional order. The power that Williams had enjoyed uninterruptedly since 1956, his taming of radical trade unionism, a ‘revolution’ and a ‘mutiny’, and decimating the opposition had made him arrogant and almost dictatorial.24 Those like Karl Hudson-Philips, the Deputy Chairman of PNM, who had serious differences with his way of functioning resigned from their position and were even expelled from the party. Almost all his steadfast supporters25 were demoralised and left him. Williams himself announced his plan to retire on 31 December 1971, which was not to happen. With the opposition in disarray, Williams, in fact, led PNM to convincing victories in the 1976 and 1981 general elections, winning 24 and 26 of the 36 seats respectively, and securing 53.6% and 56.2% of the votes polled respectively (see Table 5.3). Only three opposition parties—the United Labour Front (ULF),26 Democratic Action Congress (DAC), and the Tapia House—survived to contest the general elections in 1981. Luckily for Williams, the ‘oil boom’, which raised the oil price over 22 times during 1970–1980, increased the government revenues 20-fold. The foreign currency 23

Surprisingly, Bhadase Sagan Maraj lost to ‘a virtually unknown Afro-Trinidadian in an area which was over 90 per cent Hindu’ (Ryan, 1996: 52). Maraj died on October 21, 1971, two months after the elections. 24 In his thanks-giving speech after the 1976 elections, Williams stated, ‘We are the only party, my dear friends. I keep telling you this, you know this as well as I. Let us say it once more. …PNM is the only party in the Caribbean which has uniformly controlled the capital city of the country’ (Trinidad Guardian, Port of Spain, September 26, 1976, p. 3). Political scientist Carl Parris describes Williams’ way of functioning as ‘personalisation of power in an elected government’ (1983 171). 25 Among these leaders, Meighoo lists ‘C. L. R. James, Winston Mahabir, Sir Learie Constantine, Patrick Solomon, A. N. R. Robinson, Karl Hudson-Philips, Elton Richardson, Ferdi Ferreira, Nicholas Simonette and other comrades in the party’ (2003: 96). 26 On March 28, 1976, the ULF was launched as a political party; a working-class party without a class ideology (see Ryan, 1996: 64–77). One ULF member who was to emerge later as a prominent leader was Basdeo Panday.

5.4 The Alliance Experiment, 1981–1991

95

reserves expanded by nearly 100 times and the GDP rose by over two-thirds. In the 1978 budget, Williams could boast: ‘The Trinidad and Tobago Government is a billionaire’ (quoted in Meighoo, 2003: 88). The government expenditure increased by almost 14 times. The material standard of living rose, people’s consumption increased, with some extravagance, too. But troubles started mounting for Williams. After Hudson-Philips had resigned, Hector McLean had crossed the floor to opposition benches, and Ferdi Ferreira was suspended from the party. On 19 April 1980, Hudson-Philips, along with likeminded leaders, formed the Organisation of National Reconstruction (ONR), which was launched as a political party on 30 November 1980.27 In the meantime, Robinson joined hands with Basdeo Panday’s ULF faction and Tapia House and they forged an alliance of opposition parties (DAC) to defeat the PNM eight to four in the Tobago House of Assembly elections held on 24 November 1980. The legitimacy of Williams and the PNM began to be questioned. Williams died on 29 March 1981 from a diabetic coma, just nine weeks after the PNM had celebrated its Silver Jubilee. Thanks to an anarchic opposition, he enjoyed 25 years of uninterrupted rule during which he tried to establish a stable political order, bring about socio-economic reform, establish a republican and liberaldemocratic constitution, and a generally peaceful and free socio-political environment. This is remarkable achievement considering the chaotic situation prevailing in the country when he entered the political stage. Not surprisingly, many an African, and Indian too, regards him as ‘the Father of the Nation’. But this does not mask his Black (African) supremacist attitude and bigotry, as some Indians loath to point out.

5.4 The Alliance Experiment, 1981–1991 Williams was a solo leader; he did not groom a successor, perhaps deliberately so. Of the three deputy leaders of the party, namely, Kamaluddin Mohammed, Errol Mahabir, and George Chambers, President Ellis Clarke, in consultation with party leaders, chose Chambers as Williams’ successor. On 30 March 1981, Chambers was sworn in as the Prime Minister and on 9 May 1981, he was elected as the political leader of the PNM. The choice of Chambers as Williams’ successor resulted in some controversy, though muted at that time but louder in all formats of the media during 1995–1996 in the interviews with and statements by Clarke, Mahabir, and Mohammed (see Ghany, 1996: 376–387; see also Ryan, 1989: 243–257). Bypassing Mohammed, a senior and Leader of the House, and appointing a low-profile Chambers was viewed by many an Indian as racially motivated to deny the prime ministership to an Indian. In 1999, Mohammed himself is reported to have said in an interview, ‘I should have been the

27

Among the prominent Indian leaders who were associated with ONR were Vernon Jamadar, Pariag Sookoo, and its Deputy Leader Surujrattan Rambachan, an out spoken Hindu cultural activist.

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Prime Minister after Williams died. Today this nation would not have been burdened with the racial situation as it is now’ (Trinidad Guardian, 1 September 1999, p. 5). Stepping into Williams’ shoes was challenging to Chambers. Walking in the shadow of Williams’ charisma and lacking the latter’s Machiavellian political skills, Chambers had to deal with an invigorated and better organised opposition. Moreover, he faced a downturn in the economy due to oil glut, which resulted in a steep fall in oil prices and, consequently, in the country’s revenue. On 24 September 1981, he dissolved the parliament and called for general elections for 9 November 1981. The ONR, which was seen as the main adversary of PNM in the elections, appealed to other parties to allow it to have a straight fight with the ruling PNM. Robinson (DAC), Lloyd Best (Tapia), and Panday (ULF) reached an agreement that they would not contest against each other and would collaborate with and support each other. Robinson did not want to contest the elections and the ‘alliance’ had no agreed leading candidate. ‘This uncertainty’, according to some political commentators, ‘raised anxieties about an Indian (Panday) becoming prime minister’ (Meighoo, 2003: 102). In all, 156 candidates contested the 36 seats, two as independents and the remaining 154 representing 11 parties (see Table 5.4). The PNM won 26 seats (all in Trinidad) with a vote-share of 56%, and the DAC held on to its two seats in Tobago with a vote share of mere 3.7%. The remaining eight seats were won by the ULF, securing 15.1% of the votes polled. It was most shocking that the pre-election favourites ONR drew a blank, though they secured more votes (22.1%) than the DAC–Tapia House–ULF ‘alliance’. Embarrassed by his party’s pathetic defeat, the ONR chief Hudson-Philips temporarily withdrew from active politics. The results also highlighted the infighting among the Indians. In the three constituencies where the PNM was victorious—San Fernando East (53%), Nariva (55%), and Princes Town (60%)—the Indians were the majority ethnic group. In these and other three constituencies, Satnarayan Maharaj, Secretary General of the SDMS, and son-in-law of the late Bhadase Sagan Maraj, supported the PNM on its platforms. Avowedly, Maharaj was not impressed by the ‘alliance’ and was appreciative of ‘the freedom the SDMS had enjoyed under PNM Governments despite the fact that the SDMS had opposed them openly for 25 years’ (ibid.: 103). Of course, it was common knowledge in Trinidad that there was religious rivalry between Maharaj and Surujrattan Rambachan of ONR. Although the 1981 election victory was a morale booster for Chambers, he found it difficult to handle the downturn in the economy due to the steep fall in oil prices internationally. That he lacked the tact and resourcefulness of Williams was evident. In his budget speech on 18 January 1982, summing up the economic difficulties that the country was facing, he declared in the vernacular that ‘the fete is over and the country must go back to work’ (quoted in ibid.: 104). But, having been accustomed to a decade of extravagance, the population was not willing to accept that the fete was over. Realising the political opportunity that the economic imbroglio was throwing up, the informal alliance of three opposition parties was formalised into the National Alliance of Trinidad and Tobago (NATT) in 1982. In his address to the NATT’s

5.4 The Alliance Experiment, 1981–1991

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Table 5.4 Results of general elections to the legislative council (1981, 1986, and 1991) Party

No. of candidates No. of seats won Percentage of Voter turnout (%) valid votes polled

General elections, 9 November 1981 PNM

56.4 36

26

56.2

ULF

12

8

15.1

DAC

8

2

3.7

ONR

34

0

22.1

NJAC

34

0

3.3

Tapia House

16

0

2.3

NFP

10

0

0.2

FHM

1

0

0.0

PRP

1

0

0.0

TLP

1

0

0.0

WIPCM

1

0

0.0

Independents

2

0

0.0

156

36

100.0

Ballots rejected Total

0.6

General elections, 15 December 1986

65.5

NAR

36

33

65.8

PNM

36

3

31.8

NJAC

36

0

1.5

PPM

14

0

0.1

Independents

2

0

0.0

Ballots rejected Total

0.7 124

36

100.0 65.8

General elections, 16 December 1991 PNM

36

21

44.8

UNC

35

13

28.9

NAR

36

2

24.2

NJAC

29

0

1.1

Independents

5

0

Ballots rejected

0.3 0.5 (continued)

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Table 5.4 (continued) Party

No. of candidates No. of seats won Percentage of Voter turnout (%) valid votes polled

Total

141

36

100.0

Note DAC democratic action congress, FHM fargo house movement, NAR national alliance for reconstruction, NFP national freedom party, NJAC national joint action committee, NT &TP national Trinidad & Tobago party, ONR organisation of national reconstruction, PNM people’s national movement, PPM people’s popular movement, PRP people’s republican party, TLP Trinidad labour party, ULF united labour front, UNC united national congress, WIPCM West Indian political congress movement Source Adapted from Meighoo (2003: 325–326 [Appendix B, Tables 25 and 28])

inaugural convention, the theoretician of the idea of ‘party of parties’ Lloyd Best observed, that the alliance had ‘almost all the trumps in the present game of power and politics in Trinidad and Tobago’ (quoted in ibid.: 108), akin to the PNM in 1961. In February 1983, the NATT entered into an ‘accommodation’ with ONR for not contesting against one another in the elections. The ‘accommodation’ experiment bore fruit in the local government elections held on 8 August 1983. Voter turnout, though low (32.0%), was higher than in 1980 (19.7%). The PNM faced its first defeat in the county council elections since 1959. The ‘accommodation’ won 66 seats (NATT 40 out of 47 and ONR 26 out of 65), with a combined vote share of 54.1%, and gained control of six of the seven county councils. The PNM could win only 54 of the 120 seats it contested and secure only 39.1% of the votes; it retained control of four municipal councils, but of only one county council. The PNM government was finding it difficult to cope with the failing economy in the face of the steep fall in oil prices. Added to this were the scandals that embarrassed the government. The opinion polls conducted in 1983 and 1985 showed that the people were dissatisfied with Chamber’s performance as prime minister and were losing confidence in his administration. More importantly, they revealed that Robinson would receive the highest number of votes from the coalition supporters, regardless of their race. After a meeting of the NATT and ONR leaders in Grenada on 30 August 1985, it was agreed that Robinson would be the leader of a new federal party. On 8 September 1985, the inaugural convention of this party, the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) was held, and the following day the party was launched. On 14 February 1986, the individual parties of the NAR were dissolved. In the general elections held on 15 December 1986, 124 candidates contested the 36 seats: two as independents and the remaining 122 as party representatives. The voter turnout was 65.5% (see Table 5.3). The NAR achieved a massive landslide victory, winning 33 of the 36 seats and securing a vote share of 65.8%. The PNM, the party which had governed the country uninterruptedly for 30 years, and which had won the largest victories just five years earlier in 1981, won a dismal three seats, securing a vote share of 31.8%, its lowest ever. Worse still, except

5.4 The Alliance Experiment, 1981–1991

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Patrick Augustus Mervyn Manning (1946–2016) in San Fernando East, all incumbent PNM leaders—including Chambers, Mohammed, and Mahabir—lost their seats. The margin of victories in the three remaining seats, including San Fernando East, was slim. Constituency-wise analysis of voting showed that, compared to the 1981 elections, the support base of the party had fallen in 34 constituencies. Impressed by NAR’s stupendous victory, Lloyd Best of the Tapia, who had been upset with NAR (formed in his absence) and its criticism of PNM’s performance, explained it as due to a changed ‘chemistry’. The Tapia mouthpiece, Trinidad and Tobago Review, which had earlier expressed its scepticism about NAR’s chances of victory, proclaimed that ‘history will record that the Second Republic was born in December 1986’ (quoted in ibid.: 119). The NAR was an alliance experiment that flattered to deceive; it was ‘a dream betrayed’ (Ryan, 1996: 163). Its intentions were good and its reform agenda was broad-based, but it could not manage the inevitable political difficulties that an alliance might expect to face. Apart from the disagreement that Prime Minister Robinson had with the outgoing President Clarke in 1987, the crisis reached a climax with the expulsion of Deputy Prime Minister Panday, first from the cabinet in February and from the party in October 1988.28 The internal differences among other members continued up to the end of the party’s term in office in 1991. In addition, given the hardships faced by the people, there were protests against the structural adjustment policies of the government. The worst crisis was what came to be called the ‘Muslimeen Insurrection’— the unsuccessful attempt at forceful overthrow of the government by a group of 114 armed insurgents belonging to the fringe radical ‘Black Muslim’ group, the Jamaat Al Muslimeen, led by Imam Yasin Abu Bakr. The insurgents stormed Parliament on 27 July 1990 and held it hostage for six days; they also captured the Trinidad and Tobago Television and Radio Trinidad (see Ryan, 1991; Deosaran, 1993; Ragoonath, 1998). The coup was supported neither by the army nor the population; the army firmly stood on the government’s side and people were shocked by the turn of events.29 The general elections were called for 16 December 1991. With the failure of the NAR government to convince the electorate to give it a second term, and the disarray and internal squabbling in Panday’s United National Congress (UNC), the PNM staged a convincing come back under the leadership of Patrick Manning. The PNM, which contested all the 36 seats, won 21, securing a vote share of 44.8%; the NAR, which also contested all the 36 seats, could retain only the two Tobago seats, though its vote share was 24.2%. The UNC led by Panday won 13 of the 35 seats it contested, 28

At the inaugural ceremony of the NAR government in Parliament on January 12, 1987, Panday, who was the deputy leader of the party had interrupted the proceedings because no copy of the Bhagvad Gita was available to swear upon (see Siewah & Arjoonsingh, 1998: Vol 1, 95). This was, no doubt, intended to drive home the point that Hindus had become part of the Government of Trinidad & Tobago for the first time since 1956 (see Meighoo, 2003: 121). 29 In all 30 people were killed and 150 people, including Prime Minister Robinson, were injured. There was widespread looting and damage to property. The Indians were in general hostile to Jamaat Al Muslimeen, and the Indian Muslims more so as Islam was hitherto assumed to be an ‘Indian’ religion.

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with a vote share of 28.9% (see Table 5.3). The discord between the NAR and the breakaway UNC thus benefitted the PNM. With NAR’s political failure, Robinson resigned from the leadership of the party.

5.5 Panday’s Pathway to Power, 1991–1995 The outcome of the 1991 general elections was noteworthy for two reasons. It was the first time since 1961 that a party came to power with less than two-thirds majority. And, more important, it was the first time since 1956 that PNM won with a vote share of less than 50%. Interesting as these two facts are psephologically, they marked the turning point in the political life of Trinidad and Tobago. Economically, the Manning government did not do badly, although the improvements in the macro-economic indicators did not immediately benefit the weaker sections of the society. But politically, unlike Williams, Manning was not skilful, and was prone to making political blunders. For instance, in a television broadcast on 7 May 1995, this 49-year-old prime minister declared that he was the ‘Father of the Nation’ and, as such, could speak ‘in a certain way’ (quoted in Meighoo, 2003: 178). In this broadcast, he announced that he had relieved the Minister of Foreign Affairs Ralph Maraj of his duties.30 In the bargain, Maraj gained public and collegial sympathy, while Manning betrayed his lack of political acumen and poor human relations skill. Panday and his UNC were watching Manning’s every move and had begun capitalising on his every blunder. On 14 June 1995, Panday moved a ‘no confidence’ motion against the government. Though he lost the motion by 19 to 13, Panday derived immense political mileage from the publicity got by the debate on the motion and the strategy that the PNM adopted in the House. On 9 August 1995, Ralph Maraj appeared on a UNC platform. Realising that it was growing in strength and sensing that it can stake its claim to power in the 1995 general elections, the UNC led by Panday started mobilising support in its favour and strategising the course of its action.31 It recognised the fact thrown up by the 1990 Census data that the Indo-Trinidadians constituted the single largest ethnic group (40.3%) in the country; 0.7% points more than the AfroTrinidadians (39.6%) and the party used it in its populist appeals. Panday had successfully eased out the controversial Hulsie Bhaggan from the party, weathered allegations and court cases of sexual harassment against him, and boosted his support-base by organising a series of public meetings to defend himself against the charges made. The year before the general elections, the Indo-Trinidadian community was busy preparing for the celebrations of the sesquicentenary of the Indian arrival in Trinidad. 30

Manning’s relations with the speaker of the House, Occah Seapaul (sister of Ralph Maraj) also soured, and he even got her placed under house arrest. 31 Panday’s induction of advocate Ramesh Lawrence Maraj into the UNC ranks restored the muchneeded discipline in the party.

5.5 Panday’s Pathway to Power, 1991–1995

101

There was on outpouring of ‘Indianness’ in the country. The discussion on the rich cultural heritage of the community was thick in the air and this was given a boost by the establishment, in 1993, of ‘FM 103’, a 24-h Indian-oriented radio station. Meighoo writes, In the first year, FM 103 immediately became the number one radio station in the country.32 The impact on local Indian culture was tremendous, bringing Indian culture into the mainstream of everyday life; increasing the total radio audience by 200,000; boosting the popularity of Indian films, local Indian music, and local Indian culture for a new generation of young people; and reviving it among the old. (2003: 180)

Following the success of FM 103, more stations dedicated full-time to Indian programming were established. There were also instances of ‘cultural contestations’ that reinforced the ethnic identity and ethnic group solidarity among Indo-Trinidadians (see Jayaram, 2003: 130–137; see Chap. 8). Among others, these included the row over the public holiday to mark the ‘Indian Arrival Day’; the refusal by Dharmacharya Krishna Persad of SDMS to accept the Trinity Cross, the nation’s highest civilian award, because it did not reflect the religious diversity of the country; and the controversy over the insistence by a convent school on the removal of the hijab (head-covering) by a Muslim student. In the prevailing atmosphere, these episodes were given a racial colouring. In a surprising move, on 6 October 1995, Prime Minister Manning called for general elections to be held on 6 November 1995 to seek a new mandate.33 The PNM had its share of internal party squabbles. And starting from day one of the announcement of elections, it was Panday’s show; he was at his oratory best, winning support with his wit and wisdom. In comparison, Manning, with his ‘slower and duller wit than Panday’s’ (Meighoo, 2003: 184), was defensive, reactive, and brash. It must go to the political skill of Panday that, the party gave tickets to a number of former NAR members and two former PNM MPs, and brought on to the UNC platform some leading NAR members. He tried to extend his base from central and south Trinidad to the capital city in the north. The major newspapers—Express and Trinidad Guardian—predicted a PNM victory, but the less prestigious ones—Bomb, Newsday, and Mirror—predicted a tie between the two major contenders, with two NAR seats to determine the outcome. In retrospect, as Ryan points out, the outcome of the 1995 general elections ‘constituted a veritable social revolution in that what emerged was not merely an alternation of élites or a changing of the guards, but a fundamental change in the ethnic composition of that ruling élite’ (1996: 269). For the first time in the history of Trinidad and Tobago, the outcome of the elections was a tie between the two major contenders—PNM and UNC—with each of them getting 17 seats, all in Trinidad, and the two Tobago seats going to NAR (see Table 32

The station became so popular that, Ryan mentions, ‘some families boasted that they never changed their dials to any other stations’ (1996: xxx). 33 This move was unprecedented in the political history of independent Trinidad & Tobago, as the Parliament was not due for dissolution until January 12, 1997 and the elections could have been held as late as April 12, 1997.

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Table 5.5 Results of general elections to the legislative council (1995) Party

No. of candidates

No. of seats won

Percentage of valid votes polled

General elections, 6 November 1995

63.3

PNM

36

17

48.8

UNC

34

17

45.8

NAR

19

2

4.8

NLP

17

0

0.3

MUP

5

0

0.4

NTM

2

0

0.0

The People’s voice

1

0

0.0

Ballots rejected Total

Voter turnout (%)

0.9 14

36

100.0

Note MUP movement for unity and progress, NAR national alliance for reconstruction, NLP national law party, NTM national transformation movement, PNM people’s national movement, UNC united national congress, WIPCM West Indian political congress movement Source Adapted from Meighoo (2003: 328 [Appendix B, Table 31])

5.5). The PNM (48.8%) had a higher vote share than the UNC (45.8%), but the UNC had got 89,326 more votes than in 1991 to the PNM’s 22,209.34 Since Tunapuna, where all three major parties (NAR, PNM, and UNC) contested, was the only seat won with less than 50% of votes cast, it would not be unfair to say, according to Meighoo, that ‘the UNC lost a majority in the 1995 general elections by 244 votes there’ (2003: 189), the margin of victory by the PNM candidate. The response of Manning and Panday to the outcome of the elections was a study in contrast. Manning told his supporters to ‘go peacefully to your homes’ (see Siewah & Arjoonsingh, 1998: Vol. 1, 321). Addressing his audience, Panday told, … I have always contended and always argue that because of … the highly divisive and fragmented nature of our society, no one single group can run Trinidad & Tobago successfully to the exclusion of other groups in the society [Applause] … I have argued for the need for a National Front Government. But there were groups in the society who did not want [it], groups who say ‘we shall fight alone and we shall struggle alone’ and apparently, they have lost alone35 [Laughter and applause]. …Only in unity everyone will have a chance. (Quoted in Meighoo, 2003: 188–189)

34

Ryan (1996: 557–64) provides a constituency-wise comparison of the voting pattern in 1991 and 1995 elections. Premdas and Ragoonath (1998) provide a comparative analysis of the 1995 and 1996 elections. 35 The reference is to Manning’s rejecting the proposals for ‘national unity’ and a ‘national front government’ and declaring that the PNM would ‘fight alone, win alone, lose alone’; Manning had boastfully asked the electorate, ‘If not the PNM, who? … It is either the PNM or chaos’ (quoted in Ryan 1996: 272, 280–281).

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103

After the elections, with no party getting a clear majority, Manning, who was still the substantive prime minister staked the claim for power on the ground that he was the leader of the party with the greatest number of votes. On 8 November 1995, Robinson entered into an agreement with Panday, his previous alliance partner, and extended the support of his party to the UNC.36 President Noor Hassanali, a Trinidadian of Indian descent, invited Panday to form the next government. On Thursday, 9 November 1995, between 4.10 and 4.12 p.m., Basdeo Panday was sworn in as Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago.37 One-hundred-fifty years after the first indentured Indian immigrants arrived in Trinidad, the grandson of an indentured cane-cutter became the prime minister (the first of Indian origin) of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Although the new Panday administration did not carry two-thirds majority, it was the republic’s first Indo-Trinidadian-led government. The Indo-Trinidadians greeted this with great jubilation. Thus, historically, the year 1995 could be regarded as marking the political arrival of the girmitiya diasporic community in Trinidad. Epilogue It is more than 25 years that Indo-Trinidadians celebrated the sesquicentenary of the arrival in Trinidad of the first batch of their ancestors as girmitiyas and the first descendant of a girmitiya becoming the prime minister of the country in which they had become established as an Indian diasporic community. In the normal course, the story that I had intended to narrate should have ended here. But this Epilogue is meant to provide an overview of the role of the Indo-Trinidadians in the political sphere in Trinidad and Tobago during the next 25 years.38 The UNC government under Panday released fresh energy into the polity. Meighoo finds that ‘no government introduced as much legislation into Parliament as the UNC administration of 1995–2000—302 bills into the Lower House and 311 in the Upper House, according to the Parliamentary Bill Books’ (2003: 192). The vision articulated by the party during the campaign of 1995 were sustained throughout the term: ‘greater emphasis on law and order in society, national unity through the affirmation of cultural plurality, and a results-focused approach to economic and social development’ (ibid.: 193). However, the government faced intense opposition from several quarters, including the President and the dissident UNC Members of Parliament. But Panday not only successfully completed his five years in office, but

36

A prominent calypsonian accused Robinson of ‘plunging the sword in his hands into the breast of the African man’ (quoted in Bissessar & La Guerre, 2013: 115). Just as the PNM is identified with the Afro-Trinidadian community, the UNC has its ‘centre of gravity in the Indo-Trinidadian community’ (Ryan, 1996: vii). While it cannot be proved conclusively, ‘the ethnic composition of polling divisions [in 1995 elections] clearly point to the conclusion that most Indo-Trinidadians voted for the UNC and most Afro-Trinidadians voted for the PNM’ (Ryan, 1996: 274). 37 ‘For Indo-Trinidadians’, Ryan points out, ‘the capture of political power was the jewel, the crowning achievement for which many had laboured and dreamt’ (1996: 272). 38 Meighoo (2003: 191–267) analyses these developments till 2001 and Bissessar and La Guerre (2013: 115–124, 147–61), till 2011.

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Table 5.6 Abstract of the results of general elections to the legislative council (2000, 2001, 2007, 2010, 2015, and 2020) General Election

No. of seats

Voter turnout (%)

No. of seats won/contested

PNM Percentage of valid votes polled

No. of seats won/contested

UNC Percentage of valid votes polled

2000 (11 December)

36

63.1

16/36

46.2

19/34

51.5

2001 (10 December)

36

66.4

18/36

46.3

18/36

49.7

2007 (5 November)

41

69.6

26/41

46.0

15/39

29.8

2010 (24 May)

41

69.8

12/41

39.7

21/26

43.7

2015 (7 September)

41

66.8

23/41

51.9

17/28

39.6

2020 (10 August)a

41

58.0

22/41

48.9

19/41

47.0

Note In the 2000 elections, the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) won one seat with a vote share of 1.2%. In the 2007 elections the UNC’s breakaway group, called the Congress of People (CoP), drew blank with a vote share of 22.7%. In 2010, the UNC’s coalition partners the CoP and the Tobago Organisation of the People (TOP) won six out of 13 and two out of two seats they contested respectively; their vote share was 14.2% and 2.1% respectively. In 2015, the UNC’s partners fared badly: the CoP won only one of the eight seats it contested with only 6.01% of the vote share and the TOP drew blank with a vote share of 0.2%. a Preliminary results Source (a) 2000 and 2001 elections: adapted from Meighoo (2003: 330–331 [Appendix B, Tables 35 and 37]), (b) 2007, 2010, and 2015 elections: cited from http://www.caribbeanelections.com/tt/ele ctions/tt_results (accessed November 23, 2018), and (c) 2020 elections: (accessed April 26, 2021)

also won an electoral victory on 11 December 2000: the UNC won 19 of the 34 seats it contested with an increased vote share of 51.5% (see Table 5.6).39 Within two years, internal dissension caused the UNC to call for new elections. The elections held on 10 December 2001, threw up interesting results (see Table 5.6). The UNC was able to maintain its popularity with the voters (buoyed, no doubt, by its Indo-Trinidadian base) and obtained 49.7% votes (1.8% points less than in 2000 elections) and won 18 of the 36 seats it contested (one less than in the 2000 elections). The PNM, with its Afro-Trinidadian base intact, obtained 46.3% votes (just 0.1% point more than in 2000 elections), but also won 18 of the 36 seats it contested (two more than in the 2000 elections). The tie, with each party getting 18 seats, was broken by President Robinson (earlier a partner in the 1995–2000 Panday

39

The PNM could win only 16 for the 36 seats it contested with a marginally declined vote share of 46.2% and NAR could win only one of the two seats (both in Tobago) that it contested with its lowest share of votes (1.2%).

5.5 Panday’s Pathway to Power, 1991–1995

105

government) ‘giving the elections to the PNM’ (Cudjoe 2010: 20).40 Thus, Panday became the Leader of the Opposition for the fourth time (from 24 December 2001 to 26 April 2006) and was replaced by Kamla Persad-Bissessar (from 26 April 2006 to 8 November 2007). For the general elections held on 5 November 2007, the number of seats had been increased to 41 (see Table 5.6). With 46.01% of vote share, the PNM won 26 seats of all the 41 seats it contested and formed the government. Although the UNC had split vertically,41 it won 15 of the 39 seats it contested, but with a considerably reduced vote share of 29.84%. The damage was done by the dissidents’ Congress of People (CoP) party, which was led by Winston Dookeran (a former PNM MP); CoP garnered as much as 22.72% of the votes, but drew blank in terms of seats. Panday again became the Leader of the Opposition for the fifth time (from 8 November 2007 to 25 February 2010) and was replaced by Persad-Bissessar for the second time (from 25 February 2010 to 25 May 2010). As in the case of the UNC earlier, the PNM was beset with problems. In his hubris, in 2010, Manning called a snap election, but his calculations backfired. In the general elections held on 24 May 2010, the PNM could win only 12 of the 41 seats it contested and its vote share declined to 39.70% (a decline of 6.31% points from 2007 elections) (see Table 5.6). On the other hand, the UNC won 21 of the 26 seats it contested, with an enhanced vote share of 43.72% (an increase of 13.91% points). Its coalition partners CoP and Tobago Organisation of the People won six out of 13 (with a vote share of 14.12%) and two out of two seats (with a vote share of 2.12%) they contested respectively. The coalition, called ‘People’s Partnership’, thus had a score of 29, a two-thirds majority in the House of 41 seats. On 26 May 2010, Persad-Bissessar took oath of office as Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago in a ceremony administered by President George Maxwell Richards. She thus became the first woman, and a woman of Indian origin, too, to assume charge of the premiership of Trinidad and Tobago.42 This historic moment

40

This was in spite for the fact that the UNC (49.7%) had a higher share of the votes polled than the PNM (46.3%). 41 In a series of articles published in the Trinidad Guardian newspaper from March 6, 2009 to January 16, 2010, Sankersingh (2010) examined some of the organisational and leadership issues besetting the UNC, and indirectly predicted the fall of Panday. 42 Kamla Persad-Bissessar, whom the Time magazine (September 16, 2010) listed as one of the top 13 female leaders around the world, successfully completed her first term in office as prime minister (from May 26, 2010 to September 9, 2015). In the general elections held on September 7, 2015, her coalition was defeated (see Table 5.6). Her party, UNC, could win only 17 of the 28 seats it contested with a vote share of 39.61%. Her coalition partners too fared badly: CoP won only one of the eight seats it contested and accounted for only 6.01% of the vote share and the Tobago Organisation of the People drew blank with a vote share of 0.24%. The PNM, led by Keith Rowley, won 23 of the 41 seats it contested with an increased vote share of 51.68%. The results of the general elections held on 10 August 2020 were a repeat of the previous one (see Table 5.6). The PNM won 22 seats and secured a vote share of 48.95% and Persad-Bissessar’s UNC won 19 seats with a vote share of 46.97%. In 2021, she was the Leader of the Opposition for the fourth time.

106

5 Elections and the Politicisation of Race and Ethnicity

is pithily captured by the title of Selwyn R. Cudjoe’s book, Indian Time Ah Come in Trinidad and Tobago (2010).43 In her address delivered at the Indian Arrival Day on 30 May 2010, just four days after assuming office as the prime minister, Persad-Bissessar said, I know many of you in this audience will take great pride that a woman of East Indian descent is today the Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago. But while I acknowledge the right for such a perspective to exist, may I humbly say that I would rather the nation feel the pride that one of the descendants of our collective experience of hardship and sacrifice today represents their realisation and longing for a better life and for freedom. Only then will we truly pay tribute to the tribulations of our ancestors and make it all worthwhile. (2010: 113)

References Bahadoorsingh, K. (1968). Trinidad electoral politics: The persistence of the race factor (Institute of Race Relations [IRR] Special Series 21). IRR. Bissessar, A. M., & La Guerre, J. G. (2013). Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana: Race and politics in two plural societies. Lexington Books. Blanshard, P. B. (1947). Democracy and empire in the Caribbean: A contemporary review. Macmillan. Brassington, F. E. (1975). The politics of opposition. West Indian Sun Publishing. Cudjoe, S. R. (2010). Indian time ah come in Trinidad and Tobago. Calaloux Publications. Deosaran, R. (1993). A society under siege: A study of political confusion and legal mysticism. The McAl Psychological Research Centre, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Ghany, H. (1996). Kamal: A life time in politics, religion and culture—A biography. Kamaluddin Mohammed. Jayaram, N. (2003). The politics of ‘cultural renaissance’ among Indo-Trinidadians. In B. Parekh, G. Singh, & S. Vertovec (Eds.), Culture and economy in the Indian diaspora (pp. 123–141). Routledge. La Guerre, J. G. (1972). The general elections of 1946 in Trinidad and Tobago. Social and Economic Studies, 21(2), 184–204. Malik, Y. K. (1971). East Indians in Trinidad: A study in minority politics. Oxford University Press for Institute of Race Relations, London. Meighoo, K. P. (2003). Politics in a ‘half-made society’: Trinidad and Tobago, 1925–2001. Ian Randle Publishers. Naipaul, V. S. (1962). The middle passage: The Caribbean revisited. André Deutsch. Naipaul, V. S. (2002b/1958). The suffrage of Elvira. In V. S. Naipaul, The nightwatchman’s occurrence book and other comic inventions (pp. 1–220). Picador, an Imprint of Pan Macmillan. Oxaal, I. (1982). Black intellectuals and the dilemmas of race and class in Trinidad. Schenkman. Parris, C. (1983). Personalisation of power in an elected government: Eric Williams and Trinidad and Tobago, 1973–1881. Journal of Inter-American Studies and World Affairs, 25(2), 171–191. 43

Cudjoe dedicates this book to ‘Kamla [Persad-Bissessar] and Sat[narayan Maharaj] and the East Indian struggle [for Justice]’ and this drew the criticism of some Afro-Trinidadians (see Cudjoe, http://www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog/?p=4659, November 23, 2010) (accessed April 26, 2021).

References

107

Persad-Bissessar, K. (2010). Indian Arrival Day speech. In S. R. Cudjoe, Indian time ah come in Trinidad and Tobago (pp. 112–116). Calaloux Publications. Premdas, R. R. & Ragoonath, B. (1998). Ethnicity, elections and democracy in Trinidad and Tobago: Analysing the 1995 and 1996 elections. Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 36(3), 30–53. Ragoonath, B. (1998). The failure of the Abu Bakr coup: The plural society, cultural traditions and political development in Trinidad. Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, 31(2), 33–53. Ryan, S. D. (1972). Race and nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago: A study of decolonization in a multiracial society. University of Toronto Press. Ryan, S. D. (1989). Revolution and reaction: Parties and politics in Trinidad and Tobago, 1970– 1981. Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Ryan, S. D. (1991). The Muslimeen grab for power: Race, religion and revolution in Trinidad and Tobago. Inprint Caribbean. Ryan, S. D. (1996). Pathways to power: Indians and the politics of national unity in Trinidad and Tobago. Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Ryan, S. D. & Stewart, T. (Ed.). (1995). The Black Power Revolution of 1970: A retrospective. Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Sankersingh, L. (2010). Politics in the Indo-Trinidadian constituencies (ed. Sandra Maharajh-Shah). Ashoka Publications. Siewah, S. & Arjoonsingh, S. (Ed.). (1998). Basdeo Panday: The making of a prime minister— Selected speeches (1966–1998) (in 2 volumes). Chakra Pub. House.

Chapter 6

Sex-Ratio Disparity and Marriage: Erasures and Reconstitutions

If life on the plantation did not facilitate the continuance of family life as it had been in India, the immigrants were not relieved of that prospect some day in the future. —Krishna Bahadoorsingh (1968: 6)

Family is the foundational social institution of a community. As a nuclear social unit, a family is established through the institution of marriage. Marriage, besides giving social legitimacy to children born to a couple, establishes or reinforces relationship among families. The network of complex relationships established by families through marriage and birth of progeny is called kinship, a system of reckoning relationships (consanguineal and affinal) and defining customary social obligations. Family provides primary socialisation to the young ones born into it, defining for them their relationship with the extended kin in terms of generation, age, and gender and the rules for tracing lineage and inheritance. Kinship fosters a sense of commonality and belongingness to a larger ethnic community. The amalgamation of marriage, family, and kinship is universal among all known communities, but their manifestation may vary, often significantly. The variations are discernible according to religion and caste as well as geographic and linguistic regions, as documented with reference to India (see Karve, 1968). The patterns and processes of marriage, family, and kinship have been found to be stable over time, enabling social anthropologists to identity typical ‘structures’ and ‘organisations’ of family and kinship. But as the institution of family, as also those of marriage and kinship, undergo change; they experience erasures and adaptations, disintegration and reconstitution, under certain extraordinary natural or socio-economic circumstances. The nature of indentured labour migration to the sugar colonies was characteristic of an extraordinary socio-economic circumstance that the Indian immigrants had to encounter and negotiate in the colonies. The migration of girmitiyas to Trinidad took place under conditions unfavourable to them. They were predominantly male and mostly unrelated single individuals drawn majorly from north India, with a minority from south India. They professed variants of Hinduism, Islam, and tribal religions. They belonged to different sects, caste groups, and tribal communities, and spoke different languages and dialects. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7_6

109

110

6 Sex-Ratio Disparity and Marriage: Erasures and Reconstitutions

An inadvertent but disastrous consequence of this motley migration was the disintegration of family and the associated institutions of marriage and kinship among the migrants at the destination. After initial efforts at social experimentation by the early migrants, the Indian settlers gradually, through trial and error, reconstituted the institutions of family, marriage, and kinship in Trinidad. The reconstituted version of these institutions, no doubt, drew some elements from their original versions in India. But there was no single version to revive and, consequently, the credit for the successful reconstitution of family and allied institutions among Indo-Trinidadians should go to the girmitiya diasporics themselves. Two separate chapters—the instant one focusing on marriage, and the next, on family and kinship—discuss the factors and forces that were responsible for the disintegration of family and allied institutions among girmitiyas in Trinidad. They then analyse the processes and the struggles through which the socio-cultural erasures were addressed and the foundational institutions reconstituted. Apart from the sociohistorical documents and studies, these chapters make use of socio-anthropological studies that have been carried out on family, marriage, and kinship among IndoTrinidadians and the insights drawn during my three-year sojourn in the island.

6.1 Erasures and Disintegration As mentioned in Chap. 1, during the colonial era, there were two systems of the export of Indian labour overseas. Under the kangany system of recruitment of labour for migration to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Malaya (now Malaysia) and the maistry system, to Burma (now Myanmar), ‘the kangany or maistry (himself an Indian migrant) recruited families of Tamil labourers from villages in the erstwhile Madras Presidency’ (Jayaram, 2011: 231; emphasis added; see Chap. 1, Fn 33). For Trinidad (and other colonies in the Caribbean), labourers were recruited individually by an agency. The recruits were drawn from different areas and from different villages within a given area (Laurence, 1994: 104–110; Vertovec, 1992: 232–243). The catchment areas differed in socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. The recruits were predominantly in the age group of 20–30 years. Most of them were unmarried individuals, largely men; in the later years of recruitment, some came as small family units. On arrival in Trinidad, they were dispersed among the various estates in the island. Essentially, an overwhelming majority of girmitiyas lived as individuals in the barracks on the estates. Their initial contact with fellow Indians were as strangers, often hailing from a different village or locality in India and speaking a different language or dialect. If at all, some of them would have met for the first time in the emigration depots in Calcutta or Madras or on the long ship journey to Trinidad from there. The enduring bonds that they formed during this journey, called jahaji-bhai/bahin (see Sect. 2.2.3), sustained them on the estate during their indenture or in the colony post indenture and became a quasi-kinship bond cutting across their original

6.1 Erasures and Disintegration

111

regional, religious, caste, and linguistic identities. For, in reality, they had no family per se; only memories, fond or bitter, of the families they had left behind in India. Those who entertained the myth of returning to India after completing their indenture were assuaged by the hope of re-joining their families. But, for most immigrants, this myth and hope remained just that. They had in course of time to find their life partners and establish their families in Trinidad where they were to settle as a community. This process was not easy though; it had many hurdles, the most daunting one was the imbalance in sex-ratio, that is, there were fewer women among them as compared to men. This was to have a lasting consequence for the formation of family and also gender relations among Indians in Trinidad.

6.1.1 Sex-Ratio Disparity and Its Consequences Work on the plantation was arduous and physically demanding. Hence, the colonial planters sought the most able-bodied workers. This resulted in the recruitment of emigrants who were in their 20s (see Table 3.1). These immigrants in Trinidad had very little of community knowledge or experience; there were very few among them who could guide or shoulder the responsibility of reconstituting social institutions like marriage and family in the land of their new settlement. Added to this was the planters’ preference for male labourers. Although they did not reckon women as plantation labourers, the planters agreed with the colonial officials that a substantial proportion of migrants should be women to ensure stable domestic relationships among the estate workers. The colonial government even set the ratio of sexes for indentured emigration.1 But the shipment of each sex varied from year to year and even ship to ship (see Table 6.1). During the first 26 years of indentured migration (1845–1871), women constituted only 27.95% of the emigrants.2 The highest percentage of women (37.78) was despatched in 1901 and the lowest (27.31) in 1904. In 28 of the 44 years between 1874 and 1917, the percentage of women recruited was less than 30; in 13 years, the percentage was between 30 and 35, and only in three years—1895, 1901, and 1915—did the percentage exceed 35. Overall, the average proportion of sexes among indentured emigrants to Trinidad during 1845–1917 was very low: 42.44 females for 100 males or 235.63 males for 100 females; that is, women constituted only 29.80% of the emigrants. Thus, there was an acute shortage of women among Indian immigrants to Trinidad (Table 6.2).3 1

Citing from various sources, Vertovec mentions that ‘between 1844 and 1860, government regulations required ratios of 50 women/100 men; in 1860, no ship was to be dispatched from India without a 50/50 ratio; from 1860 to 1863 the proportion was 25/100, rising to 331/3 per 100 in 1863–65; this increased to 50/100 once again in 1866; after 1870, the ratio of sexes was set at 40/100’ (1992: 62, En 10). 2 Even this figure is a bit inflated as, in the 1850s and 1860s, the mortality rate on board ship was higher among women than men (Laurence, 1994: 127). 3 With the natural increase of the settled population, the tendency of single men to return to India, and the eventual abandonment of indentured immigration, the percentage of women among

112

6 Sex-Ratio Disparity and Marriage: Erasures and Reconstitutions

Table 6.1 Females despatched from India to Trinidad, 1845–1917 Year(s)

No. of females per 100 males despatched

No. of Percentage Year No. of males per of females females per 100 despatched 100 males females despatched despatched

No. of Percentage males per of females 100 despatched females despatched

1845–71 38.79

257.80

27.95

1896 50.34

198.69

33.48

1874/75

219.25

31.32

1897 51.95

192.49

34.19

45.61

1875/76

41.94

238.44

29.55

1898 44.44

225.02

30.77

1876/77

46.42

215.42

31.70

1899 41.36

241.78

29.26

1877/78

42.52

235.18

29.83

1900 49.08

203.75

32.92

1878/79

40.28

248.26

28.71

1901 60.73

164.66

37.78

1879/80

41.25

242.42

29.20

1902 41.35

241.84

29.25

1880/81

42.57

234.91

29.86

1903 40.76

245.34

28.96

1881/82

40.04

249.75

28.59

1904 37.57*

266.17

27.31

1882/83

40.44

247.28

28.80

1905 42.02

237.98

29.59

1883/84

40.54

246.67

28.85

1906 39.22

254.97

28.17

1884/85

44.52

224.62

30.81

1907 40.34

247.89

28.74

1885

40.66

245.94

28.91

1908 40.04

249.75

28.59

1886

40.25

248.45

28.70

1909 39.92*

250.50

28.53

1887

42.18

237.08

29.67

1910 40.13

249.19

28.64

1888

42.22

236.85

29.69

1911 38.76

258.00

27.93

1889

41.36

241.78

29.26

1912 41.06

243.55

29.11

1890

45.80

218.34

31.41

1913 39.65*

252.21

28.39

1891

48.81

204.88

32.80

1914 45.05

221.98

31.06

1892

52.09

191.98

34.25

1915 58.57

170.74

36.94

1893

42.08

237.64

29.62

1916 49.22

203.17

32.98

1894

45.40

220.26

31.22

1917 42.02

237.98

29.59

1895

57.16

174.95

36.37

Note *In 1904, the deficit of female quota was carried forward to the following year and then made up. In 1909 and 1918, a small shortfall on the female quota was deemed to be made up by counting people who paid their own passages to the colony Source Computed from Laurence (1994: 536 [Appendix VI])

It was, no doubt, difficult to recruit the requisite number of women, especially single women, for emigration. To attract the indenture of women, the recruiters were incentivised; they were paid a higher rate of commission and even a bonus was paid where more than three women were provided with five men. But the recruiters found ‘the recruitment of women a risky and often unprofitable task’ (Arthur H. Hill quoted Indian settlers gradually increased, and became almost at par when the 1970 census was taken (see Table 6.2).

6.1 Erasures and Disintegration

113

Table 6.2 The proportion of women among Indians in Trinidad, 1891 through 1970 Year

No. of females per 1000 males No. of males per 1000 females Percentage of females

1891 637

1571

38.90

1901 709

1410

41.49

1911 739

1354

42.48

1921 810

1234

44.76

1931 881

1135

46.84

1946 938

1066

48.40

1960 973

1028

49.31

1970 998

1002

49.95

Source Computed from Harewood (1975: 102 [Table 4 H(i) and H(ii)])

in Vertovec, 1992: 13), because wrongful recruitment of a married woman invited penalty and even the cancellation of the licence to recruit. However, the fixing of a ‘statutory quota’ of women to be included among the emigrants resulted in unanticipated consequence in the form of abuse. Since married men would not bring their wives with them and the married women would not go without their husbands, the arkatias looked for women who had no one—‘no one to provide for them and no one to prevent them from going’ (Bahadur, 2013: 32). They were reported to have resorted to kidnapping of women and recruiting destitute widows and prostitutes and beggars, etc. (Comins, 1892: 73; Jenkins, 1871: 360– 362). As agent H. A. Firth warned the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners in March 1876, that in the circumstances then existing, he could make up the required proportion of women only by sending ‘many non-effective women and some objectionable characters’ (quoted in Laurence, 1994: 124).4 Such descriptions of single women resulted from the fact that, given the conservative nature of Indian society, it was unthinkable that single women migrated alone, or accompanied only by their children.5 In their 1913 investigation commissioned by the Government of India, James McNeill and Chimman Lal found that only ‘a small percentage’ of women recruited by the arkatias were ‘ordinary prostitutes’ and that the alleged ‘shamelessly immoral’ character of women migrants was highly exaggerated (1915b: 313). They observed that The women who come out consist as to one-third of married women who accompany their husbands, the remainder being mostly widows and women who have run away from their husbands or been put away by them. … They are women who have got into trouble and 4

It may not be out of place to mention here that some women were pregnant at the time of their recruitment and between 1870 and 1917 there were 732 births on board the ship journey to Trinidad (figure computed from Laurence, 1994: 532–535 [Appendix 5]). 5 In the early twentieth century, there developed a controversy between the recruiting agents and the colonial governments over the moral character of female Indian immigrants in Trinidad (see Laurence, 1994: 125–126).

114

6 Sex-Ratio Disparity and Marriage: Erasures and Reconstitutions

apparently emigrate to escape from the life of promiscuous prostitution which seems to be the alternative to immigration. (Ibid.)

The Colonial Office was aware of the adverse consequences of a largely single-sex migration. However, throughout the period of indentured emigration, there was no systematic attempt to recruit families, though the attitude to recruiting families was somewhat relaxed after 1910. Some women were persuaded by the recruiters to enter into a ‘depot marriage’, ‘registering as the wives of male emigrants, thus obtaining their husband’s permission to emigrate’ (Ramesar, 1994: 23). This often helped the recruiters to meet their quota of women. Data on the religious and caste background of 17,642 women who embarked from Calcutta for Trinidad during 1876–1892 and 1908–1917 are given in Table 6.3. It is revealed that a majority of them were Hindus (83.65%); Muslims constituted 16.5% and Christians, a negligible 0.10%. Of the 14,757 Hindu women, those from the ‘low castes’ (48.61%), constituted the single largest group, followed by those belonging to ‘agricultural castes’ (29.20%). Women from the Brahman and other ‘high castes’ and ‘artisan castes’ represented 14.98 and 7.20% respectively.6 Overall, women constituted 31.83% of the emigrants during the period under reference. The percentage of women emigrants was higher for Muslims (36.25) as compared to Hindus (31.09), which was almost the same as the average for all emigrants. There were only 60 Christians among the emigrants, and 18 (36.25%) of them were women. The percentage of women emigrants was more than the average for all Hindus (i.e., 31.09) only among those from the ‘lower castes’ (35.53). Since women who completed their indenture generally moved out of the estate, the proportion of women resident on the estate in any year was very low (see Table 6.4). Although the proportion of females to males was usually above the 40:100 prescribed by law after 1875, the percentage of women resident on the estate, including children as well as adults, never exceeded 35. Keith O. Laurence clarifies that while the situation steadily improved in British Guiana, in Trinidad ‘the social problems caused by the disproportion of the sexes on the estates were at best slightly alleviated by 1917’ (1994: 242). Obviously, there was no family in the true sense of the term among the girmitiyas in the first couple of decades of their arrival in Trinidad. Men outnumbered women, resulting in competition among men for finding marital partners among the limited number of women from India. Since the Indian men did not accept women of African origin as wives, this competition became stiff. Women ‘sought to maximize their bargaining power and shifted their allegiance to the male who presented the best offer with great facility’ (Moore, 1973: 395). This, combined with the fact that they were independent wage earners,7 gave women unusual freedom to choose their mates

6

These caste categories mentioned in colonial records, it must be remembered, are reified or objectified categories, constructed artificially and they do not make reference to more nuanced varna or jati categories (see Cohn, 1987). 7 Although on an average women earned only two-thirds of male wages, they were economically independent. Some of them even handled their husbands’ money (Laurence, 1994: 239).

31.05

50.00 3360

3

697

2660

1200

328

621

511

31.48

33.33

38.77

30.70

35.08

26.69

26.50

27.30

5622

8

686

4928

2626

348

1363

591

33.79

29.63

36.63

33.44

38.24

27.71

29.12

30.56

%

1887–1892 No.

3520

6

575

2939

1317

183

932

507

29.80

60.00

32.41

29.31

33.32

26.79

27.46

25.36

%

1908–1912 No.

1315

0

204

1111

538

32

400

141

33.00

0

37.16

32.37

37.97

27.59

30.08

24.78

%

1913–1917 No.

Total

17,642

18

2867

14,757

7174

1063

4309

2211

No.

31.83

34.62

36.25

31.09

35.54

27.76

28.22

27.04

%

Note Comparable data on the religion and caste of emigrants are available in the annual reports of migration from Calcutta for select years. The table presents the number of women embarking in the reference year(s) and the percentage they formed of the total number of indentured emigrants who embarked Source Computed from the Ramesar (1994: 19–20 [Table 1.2])

3825

Total

36.81

705

1

Muslims

29.99

3119

Total

31.55

32.96

172

1493

28.20

Artisan castes

993

Agricultural castes

25.55

Low castes

461

Brahmans, higher castes

%

1882–1886 No.

%

1876/1877–1881/1882

No.

Christians

Hindus

Religion/caste

Table 6.3 Religion and caste of women who embarked from Calcutta to Trinidad during 1876–1892 and 1908–1917

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Table 6.4 The proportion of women residents on the estates in Trinidad Year

No. of females per 100 males

No. of males per 100 females

Percentage of females

1875

50

200

33.33

1885

49

204

32.89

1900

53

189

34.64

1914

49

204

32.89

Source Computed from data in Laurence (1994: 242)

and even to change them; even if they were to depend on men, they ‘had their pick of which men to depend on’ (Bahadur, 2013: 92). In the early 1890s, Sarah E. Morton, wife of John Morton, the pioneer missionary of the Canadian Presbyterian Church in Trinidad, recorded instances of what she describes as ‘a new view of woman’s rights’ (1916: 343). She quotes a Brahman widow telling her: ‘… when the last [immigrant] ship came in I took a papa [man]. I will keep him as long as he treats me well. If he does not treat me well I shall send him off at once …’ (ibid.: 342). She also mentions the case of a woman who had left her husband because he had taken another wife; in the calmest possible way the woman said, ‘You know, it would not be pleasant for two of us in one house’. Asked her current whereabouts, she unhesitatingly mentioned the name of her newly ‘adopted husband’. And asked about her son, she cheerfully replied, ‘With his father’ (ibid.). According to Marianne D. Soares Ramesar, ‘there are some accounts of women who headed and raised families, single-handedly’ (1994: 55). Thus, even as immigrant women suffered multiple oppression—as indentured workers in a system of quasi-servitude, as persons belonging to a culture that was despised as barbaric and heathen, and as objects of the sexual depredations of the white overseer—they became more independent in Trinidad than would have been possible in India at that time.8 In 1893, Surgeon-Major Dennis Wood Deane Comins observed significant signs of independence in the immigrant woman’s attitude towards men: Females, who, on their arrival here, would veil their faces with their ornie [sic] at the approach of a man, not being their husband or one of the household, after some years’ residence in the colony, merely touch the ornie with the hand, and in many cases neglect to do so altogether. (1893: 30)

Thus, the inadvertent empowerment of Indian women in a faraway colony essentially eroded patriarchy, at least in the first few decades of indentured immigration. Indeed, as Peggy Ramesar Mohan notes, ‘The female energy released in the migration must have come as a shock’ to the community at large and particularly men (2007: 254). 8

It was common knowledge on the estate that the indentured women workers were largely in the power of the managers and overseers who put unfair pressure on them. ‘By the 1860s, the colonial governments had become apprehensive lest any connection between the estate overseers and the indentured women should precipitate trouble on any estate’ (Laurence, 1994: 262). However, Indian women remained the victims of the evil designs of the overseers until the end of the indentured immigration and this was the cause of violence against them by Indian men.

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This empowerment of women, however, came at a cost; women, both single and married, often became victims of violence from men. There were numerous single men on large estates, and outside their own barracks women were not safe. ‘There were quarrels over women, unstable unions and family relations. The jealousy of aggrieved men over alienated affections, led to cutlass attacks on errant partners, and an annual crop of wife murders …’ (Ramesar, 1994: 55).9 In other words, women became victims because they exercised their choice. ‘Assaults on unfaithful wives and mistresses’, Donald Wood writes, ‘became a staple crime’ among the Indians in Trinidad: during 1859–1863, there were 27 murders committed by Indians, and ‘in each case the victim was the wife or mistress of the murderer’ (1968: 154). Similarly, during 1872–1880, 21 of the 22 murders committed by Indians ‘involved wives or reputed wives’ and Indian men invariably complained about their infidelity (Laurence, 1994: 239).10 In the early 1880s, James Henry Collens noted, ‘The coolie husband is of a frantically jealous disposition, and any real or fancied unfaithfulness on the part of his spouse he visits with condign punishment’ (1888: 242). In the early 1890s, James H. Stark reported that ‘There is but one serious crime prevalent in the colony, and that is committed by the East Indian who with one sweep of his machete beheads his wife if she proves unfaithful to him’ (1897: 81). According to Collens, ‘three-fourths of the murders in this colony may be traced to this cause’ (1888: 242).11 Thus, within a few decades, Indians came to be stereotyped in Trinidad: Indian women as promiscuous and of loose morals and Indian men as possessive wife-murderers, the former as ‘unfaithful wives’ and the latter as ‘violent husbands’.12 As Gaiutra Bahadur clarifies with reference to British Guiana, in Trinidad too, ‘the violence against [Indian] women was greater than the murder statistics suggest. Often, the aim was to disfigure, not kill. Indeed, the cases that didn’t end in death outnumbered those that did’ (2013: 109). ‘Noses, those representatives of women’s honour’, she points out, ‘seemed to be a particular target’ (ibid.); disfiguring the face, as an immigration officer explained was an act of inflicting ‘the brand of infidelity’ (quoted in ibid.). That is, domestic violence against Indian women was far more pervasive than the empowerment of women resulting from sex-ratio imbalance. Uxoricide among the immigrant Indians in Trinidad was explained by some officials and journalists as not being unknown in India and as having to do with the low status assigned to women there.13 For instance, in the 1860s, newspapers like the Port 9

In 1885, Trinidad introduced the provision for transfer of an immigrant threatening a woman (see Laurence, 1994: 243). 10 Wife-murder was prevalent among Indians in British Guiana and other sugar colonies, too. Between 1859 and 1917, ‘more than 167 women were killed by intimate or would-be intimate partners in [British] Guiana’ (Bahadur, 2013: 108). 11 Gleaned from the official statistics, Look Lai reports that 63 (57.80%) out of 109 murders committed by Indians in Trinidad ‘were of wives by jealous husbands’ (1993: 145). 12 I have taken these expressions from Mohapatra (1995: 231), who provides an analysis of wifemurders in the British Caribbean colonies during 1860–1920. 13 This was, no doubt, factually incorrect. The rate at which ‘Indian men killed their romantic partners’ in British Guiana, for instance, was ‘142 times greater … than in India’s Northwestern Provinces and Oudh’ (Bahadur, 2013: 109).

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of Spain Gazette and Trinidad Sentinel frequently expressed the view that ‘Indians held their women in contempt and that “chopping”, or cutting and wounding, was their national way of resolving serious differences’ (Wood, 1968: 154). Others, including some missionaries and judges, attributed this to the racial and religious characteristics of Indians and even to the ‘low’ or ‘not reputable’ class to which the Indian women belonged. For instance, in 1873 and again in 1881, Henry Mitchell expressed the view that Indian ‘women who were murdered had usually violated traditional patterns of conduct’14 and that ‘the men were convinced that they were simply meting out just punishment’ (see Laurence, 1994: 240). Charles Kingsley (1819–1875), a friend and correspondent of Charles Darwin, who visited Trinidad in the early 1870s, wrote Wife-murder is but too common among these Hindoos, and they cannot be made to see that it is wrong. ‘I kill my own wife. Why not? I kill no other man’s wife’, was said by as pretty, gentle, graceful a lad of two-and-twenty as one need see … (1889: 192)

If ‘wife-murders’ in the sugar colonies was a morality play and its narratives focused on the ‘immoral’ woman and the ‘sexual jealousy’ of man, as Prabhu P. Mohapatra writes, ‘It was as if the script of the murders was written beforehand in India and the plantations were a mere stage where it was enacted, albeit, with a delay’ (1995: 239). However, some emigration agents and colonial officials rightly attributed the sexual chaos and the resulting violence against women among Indians in Trinidad, as elsewhere in the sugar colonies, to the small proportion of women among the emigrants (see Mangru, 1987: 217).15 Although this view eventually gained some influence, officials only ‘tried to manage, not solve, the problem’ (Bahadur, 2013: 120).16

6.1.2 Non-recognition of Hindu and Muslim Marriages The shortage of women among Indians meant that not every man could have a wife even if he wished to have one. Also, the regional, linguistic, religious, and caste heterogeneity among the fewer women available for marriage implied that endogamy as practised in India, was impracticable. That is, family as a social institution as prevalent in India then was deinstitutionalised in Trinidad. Compounding the problem 14

Thus, the Indian women were twice victimised: ‘First, they were physically mutilated; then their reputations were dismembered, by Europeans and Indian men alike’ (Bahadur, 2013: 118); the planters used this victimisation of women to counter any push for the recruitment of more women. 15 As Laurence clarifies, ‘In the villages, where the sex and age composition were better than on the estates, serious social conflict related to sex was hardly noticeable’ (1994: 243). 16 The sex-ratio imbalance was not a problem peculiar to Trinidad; it was characteristic of indentured emigration to all sugar colonies. For an account on the consequences of this imbalance in British Guiana, see Mangru (1987); Mohapatra (1995); in Fiji, see Lal (1985); in Jamaica, see Shepherd (1989; 1993: 50–52).

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was the non-recognition of the marriages conducted according to traditional Hindu and Muslim rites, dubbed ‘under the bamboo’ marriages (Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 101), a description that the Hindus resented.17 This had serious implications for the idea of family and the devolution of family property under the Trinidad laws. As elucidated by Kusha Haraksingh, The offspring of such marriages were in law illegitimate18 and did not succeed in intestacy to the family property.19 Even in indenture, some of the meagre savings of immigrant labourers had gone to the Crown on the ground that there were no heirs in the colony, and that it was virtually impossible, because of the transliteration of names, to trace relatives in India. Indeed, the naming system which Western law seemed to demand—a forename (sometimes unfortuitously [sic] described in official documents as a ‘Christian’ name) and a surname— sometimes created more complications. This state of affairs could hardly have convinced sons and daughters of the justness of the legal system. (1995: 8)

The Trinidad government, no doubt, toyed with the idea of providing for a simple registration procedure for marriages celebrated according to Indian rites.20 In the absence of a precedent for such registration in India, it was reckoned as being complicated and the consultations dragged on for years. The Government of India was for the registration and recognition of all marriages of Indian emigrants performed according to the personal law of the parties. However, it was of the view that ‘immigrants should also be free to marry under the general law of the colony if they so chose; and that the registration of marriages conducted according to personal law should not be necessary for validity, but merely a useful proof of it’ (Laurence, 1994: 245). However, some of the customs of the Indians was at variance with the local Trinidadian customs. Edward Wingfield of the Colonial Office pointed out that the general marriage laws of Trinidad imposed age limits and prohibited degrees of affinity and it did not recognise polygamous marriages. More importantly, contrary to the position of the Government of India, it was difficult to prove a marriage by means other than registration. Not only were the credentials of the men performing the Indian marriages suspect, but it was also thought that some Indian couples lived together without having gone through any form of religious ceremony. The administration 17

Existing marriages among the immigrants were customarily registered before the Protector of Immigrants on arrival. 18 In 1913, McNeill and Lal observed that ‘the compilers of vital statistics record their births as illegitimate’ (1915a: 34). 19 Speaking at a book release function at NCIC Nagar, Chaguanas on December 2019, Brinsley Samaroo, referred to his research on more than a hundred Hindu and Muslims widows and children, whose ‘inheritance was stolen’ during the colonial period because the law of the land did not recognise their marriages. 20 For instance, Ordinance No. 6 of 1881 introduced a provision for the marriage and divorce of Hindu and Muslim immigrants; for those who had become Christians among them, regular laws of the colony applied. This provision outlawed a marriage if the man was under 16 years of age or the woman, under 13. The immigrants who were married before the passage of the Ordinance had one year in which to make application to register their marriage. However, even by early 1887, not a single Indian marriage had been registered; by the end of 1888, only four marriages and one divorce were registered (Weller, 1968: 70–71).

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was apprehensive of the danger that unregistered Indian marriages would pose to a legal system ill-equipped to pronounce judgement on them (see ibid.: 246–247). It must be noted that the primary interest of the colonial administration in marital law was to combat uxoricide; it was not intended to recognise the Hindu and Muslim marriages as legitimate social institutions of the Indian settlers. It was a case of official absorption in ‘legal complexities’ overlooking ‘the essential social purpose of the law’ (ibid.: 248). ‘It is impossible to avoid the conclusion’, as Laurence writes, ‘that the lethargy displayed was related to the fact that the persons affected were merely indentured immigrants’ (ibid.: 248). Viewed in this background, The Trinidad Immigrant Marriage Ordinance No. 23 of 1891 was a positive move in that, in addition to the existing provisions for civil marriage, it provided for (a) a less complicated registration of marriages conducted according to Indian customs, (b) a simple machinery for legal proceedings against seducers and enticers, and (c) a cheap means for divorce on the sole ground of ‘misconduct’.21 But this was not attractive to Indians, as they did not see any valid reason for an additional bureaucratic process of registration of a marriage conducted as per religious rites and ceremony, and their religious rights had been guaranteed under the indenture laws.22 Also, the registration required that both parties to the marriage must subscribe to the same personal law; the contemplated endogamy was impractical considering the acute shortage of brides. Even when religion was not an issue, Hindus who had been constrained to marry outside their caste, were reluctant to register the marriage. In Dale Arlington Bisnauth’s opinion, this was probably due to the fact that such couples did not want themselves bound to a contract because if they wish to return to India, they should be free to annul their marriage or they may be compelled to do so (1977: 202–216). It is also possible that the Indian settlers did not completely understand the provisions of the marriage ordinance; many were illiterate and could not understand the provisions of the law even in its vernacular version. Even if a marriage conducted as per Hindu and Muslim rites was registered, it posed problems for the local courts if problems arose, as they found it difficult to identify or interpret the personal law of the contesting couple (see Laurence, 1994: 249–250). Observing that ‘this state of affairs is unsatisfactory from every point of view’, in their report McNeill and Lal recommended the recognition of a number of Hindu priests and Musalman kazis as marriage-registrars, bound to register marriages performed by them and issue certificates. One month’s notice of their intention to solemnize a marriage should be given to the Protector [of Immigrants] and some form of local public notification should be required. (1915a: 34) 21

The provisions of this Ordinance were restricted in their application to marriage performed subsequent to July 1881; there was no reference to or provisions relating to such marriages contracted before that date. 22 In 1913, McNeill and Lal observed that while non-Christian marriages were ‘celebrated by hundreds’ with all publicity, very few of them were ‘registered subsequently’ (1915a: 34). Even if the Hindu and Muslim marriages were not recognised as such in the eyes of the law, they were taken seriously within the Indian community as they enjoyed social legitimacy (Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 101–102).

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They further recommended that if the parties are required merely to notify the Immigration Department and not to obtain a ‘noobjection’ certificate therefrom, and if the marriage officer is made liable for the submission of formal documents the procedure will present fewer obstacles to illiterate persons. (Ibid.: 72)

McNeill and Lal were of the opinion that this ‘would meet all requirements’ and that the Indian community in Trinidad ‘would welcome the recognition of marriage registrars among non-Christian Indians’ (ibid.: 34). They cautioned that ‘the result of imposing needless obstacles in the way of contracting valid marriages is that people contract invalid marriages’ (ibid.: 72). However, the marital law remained unchanged and so were the marriages conducted according to the Hindu and Muslim religious rites. There was no sympathy from colonial officials, who viewed the failure to register non-Christian marriages as ‘a deliberate act of non-cooperation’ by the Indians, and some even suggested that it ‘should be made a penal offence’ (Laurence, 1994: 250). Although the accusation that all this was ‘an organised sabotage of the Indian social system … carried out in emigrant countries under the very nose of the law’ (Sundaram, 1933: 83) is an exaggeration,23 it can hardly be denied that the indenture system and the then existing colonial laws did not promote traditional, stable families among Indians. It was only with the growth of a settled population of Indians and the emergence of ethnic consciousness among them in the early decades of the twentieth century that sustained demands were made for the recognition of Hindu and Muslim marriages. The media too protested the injustice meted out to non-Christian Indians through the marital law and the disadvantageous position of the offspring of such marriages. The Christian missionaries advocated a marriage law for non-Christians as they were worried about the reputation of the colony against an extended statistical record of illegitimacy. The utmost reverence with which the Indians regarded their institution of marriage was also highlighted (see Jha, 1982: 119). The Muslims were the first to protest the colonial marriage law and demand the legalisation of marriages performed according to Islamic rites. Around 1905, Sayyad Abdul Aziz Meah of Princes Town, kazi (the first in Trinidad) and head of the Anjuman Tackveeyatul Islam and a leader of the East Indian National Association, took a delegation to the Governor of Trinidad on this issue. After protracted representations, negotiations, and debates, Muslim marriages were legalised as of 1936 when the Muslim Marriage Ordinance of 1935 went into effect.24 The ‘introverted Hindus’ (ibid.) were a tad late in making the demand for the legalisation of marriages conducted according to Hindu rites by Brahmans (pandits) 23

It must be clarified that those who owned and managed the estates did not generally separate couples or children from parents, as they had with slaves from Africa. However, occasionally, such complaints were made as in the case of a woman at the Perseverance Estate in Chaguanas, ‘when the man with whom she cohabited and to whom she had borne a child, was turned off the estate after the end of indenture, whereas she was required to remain on the estate although she was unable to work at that time, having to care for the seven-month infant’ (Weller, 1968: 73). 24 For a discussion on the background of the legalisation of non-Christian marriages in Trinidad & Tobago, see Jha (1982).

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and sadhus. Organisationally, the Hindus were a weak and divided house,25 and the Hindu leaders could not put up a united front as regards a Hindu marriage law; they differed among themselves on various drafts of the Hindu marriage bill. Moreover, the Hindu pandits were adamant against any change, including the minimum age for the marriage of girls.26 All this helped the government to easily evade the issue.27 The outbreak of World War II precluded any immediate action in the matter. It was only in 1945 that the government succeeded in clearing the deck for passing of the Hindu Marriage Ordinance, exactly 100 years after the arrival of the first Indians in Trinidad.28 With this Ordinance coming into force in 1946, the registration of a Hindu marriage became compulsory, but the officiating priest was responsible for registration; the minimum age of marriage was fixed; and there was nothing to prevent the marriage being first solemnised in the traditional manner. … one of the requirements of a valid Hindu marriage under this ordinance was that each of the parties must belong to and profess Hinduism and a marriage officer (a licensed Hindu priest) would solemnise the marriage in accordance with the provisions of the Hindu religions and the provisions of the ordinance. (Jha, 1982: 132)29

6.2 The Re-Institutionalisation of Marriage The shortage of women among girmitiyas resulted in forms of cohabitations regarded as aberrations according to customs then prevalent in India. These included ‘several men succeeding each other in a woman’s home’, ‘a woman passing from the home of one man to another’, and ‘some combination of three or more men and women living together, without marriage’ (Bahadur, 2013: 87). Some men turned to each other for satisfaction. The observation of Rev. Robert Duff, a Scottish minister in British Guiana, in 1866, that ‘illicit intercourse between the sexes’ is the colony’s ‘most prevalent vice—besetting sin’ (cited in ibid.) could have been made with reference to sugar colonies in general. However, notwithstanding the persistence of such cohabitations for many more decades, the girmitiyas gradually began to re-institutionalise marriage and family in 25

Apart from the Sanatani and Ramanandi sects, the two largest Hindu groups, there were Kabirpanthis and Seunarinis, who had their own mahant (religious head) who conducted marriages, and the Arya Samaj, had its own system of marriage. The division of the Muslim community into Sunnis, Shias, and Ahmadias did not adversely affect their attitude towards a proper Muslim marital law. 26 In a newspaper column, Seepersad Naipaul denounced this as ‘a matter of shameful regret’ (quoted in Jha, 1982: 125). 27 In 1935, T. M. Kelshall, a member of the committee on non-Christian marriage laws, pointed out that he had seen five deputations of Hindu priests, each with its own set of recommendations ‘which crossed each other out’ and that government could not be blamed for the stalemate (Jha, 1982: 129). 28 It may be noted that, in India, The Hindu Marriage Act was enacted only in May 1955. This Act enforced monogamy and gave equal rights of divorce to both men and women. The Hindu Succession Act, 1956 granted to women an absolute control over their property, howsoever acquired. 29 Patchett (1959) provides a comparative analysis of some aspects of law relating to marriage and divorce in some West Indian communities, including the ‘East Indians’ in Trinidad.

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123

Trinidad. The process of solemnising marriages and establishing households began on the estates itself, becoming a model for more elaborate ceremonies in the decades to come. Unlike a couple deciding on their own to cohabit together (‘shack-up’ in Trinidad lingo), the marriage as a socially legitimate form of establishing a union of man and woman was arranged. In the chapter titled ‘Kanya-Daan’, Mohan (2007: 171–181) reproduces a very old woman’s narration of an arranged marriage that took place in Esperanza estate,30 which was solemnised in a Presbyterian church and was later registered. In the narrative, the young girl Sunnariya accepts her father Mukoon Singh’s proposal for her marriage to Janaki-didi’s son Ramesar. Sunnariya tells Deeda, ‘Baba said it was time for me to get married, and if he has thought about it, I am happy with that’. According to Deeda, Ramesar was happy to get Sunnariya as a wife, mainly because of ‘the thought of having Mukoon Singh as a father-in-law’. Similarly, Sunnariya ‘knew that for her own peace of mind the person who mattered most was her mother-in-law’; Ramesar ‘was less important’. As Deeda concluded, ‘here we had two good little children who would never think anything wrong, getting married more to their in-laws than to each other!’ (in Mohan, 2007: 172, 174, 175). The sagaai (betrothal) was a simple ceremony. Sunnariya’s brothers Hari Singh and Houri Singh took the place of her father (who was then in prison). Janaki-didi arranged a Presbyterian catechist to say prayers at her home. Deeda found everything to be different: ‘different bhajans, a different book they were reading from’; but she was surprised that ‘it was so much like a Hindu puja’ (in ibid.: 175). Janaki-didi bought some mohurs (gold coins) for her son (a goldsmith) to melt so that ‘he could make twelve gold churiyaan, thin bracelets, for his bride’; she gave ‘her own channan-haar, her gold filigree necklace, which she had brought across the ocean from Faizabad [in India] and kept safely for her first daughter-in-law’. Deeda used the money that Mukoon Singh had left with her ‘to pay for Sunnariya’s dress and the feast after the ceremony’ (in ibid.: 177). The marriage ceremony took place in the little wooden Presbyterian Church in Dow village, and was officiated by a locally trained minister. The bride’s brothers did the kanya-daan, that is, gave the bride away. When the ceremony was concluded, the marriage register was signed by the parties concerned. The bride-groom then lifted the pagri (turban) off his head and handed it to the bride asking her to keep it for him and not to do anything to dishonour him. The bride bent and touched his feet31 (ibid.: 179). This was an instance of an arranged marriage, solemnised in the Presbyterian tradition. Though the marital prayers were from the Bible, the officiating priest was a minister and the marriage ritual was held in a church, and the marriage registered as was customary for Christian marriages in Trinidad then, the marriage ceremony was 30 The narrator is Deeda, a friend (jahaji-bahin) of Mohan’s great-great grandmother (Janaki-didi), who had come on the same boat from India and had stayed in the same room in the estate barracks. 31 Deeda adds that it was ‘the last time she or any of her children or grandchildren would touch anybody’s feet’ (Mohan, 2007: 179). I am not sure, if this has anything to do with conversion to Presbyterianism. Otherwise, in this, the Ramesar–Sunnariya family appears to be an exception, as the practice of touching the feet of elders continues among Trinidad Hindus to this day.

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in content and spirit Hindu. The marriage among Hindus and Muslims on the estates were solemnised either by the locally available self-appointed Brahman pandits and maulvis, respectively, or some respected elders. The role that the elders played in the community’s socio-cultural affairs is remarkable.32 As Indians started settling down in Trinidad and evolving as a distinct ethnic community there, the social norms and ritual practices governing marriage and family gradually came to be established. This was, no doubt, through trial and error, as also adaptations and adoptions to the local conditions. The knowledgeable among the early settlers as well as the perspicacity of genuine pandits and sadhus and maulvis and kazis who came after the abolition of indentured migration, played a significant role in the re-institutionalisation of Hindu and Muslim marriage and family in the colony. These religious persons were well-versed in Sanskrit and Urdu languages respectively and in the texts and lore of their religion. One of the norms that came to be institutionalised first was village exogamy,33 i.e., the prescribed practice of marrying outside the village, a practice widely prevalent in those parts of north India that the immigrants came from (Lowenthal, 1972: 158). Combined with this was the rule of patrilocality or virilocal residence, i.e., a girl, after marriage, moving to live with or near the kin of her husband. Even before the Indian immigrants settled down as a community in villages, they began practising what came to be known as plantation exogamy,34 a precursor to village exogamy. Village exogamy combined the consanguineal (biological) and affinal (marital) forms of kinship to produce a network of community relations over time. The practice of village exogamy is closely related to the system of arranged marriage. In 1957, Arthur and Juanita Niehoff found that the majority of Trinidad Indian marriages were ‘arranged by the parents, or other responsible elders … There is very little social intercourse between young people who are not married’ (1960: 101). Based on his anthropological fieldwork in rural Trinidad in 1959, Morris Freilich writes: When a girl attains marriageable age (14–16) the father asks the pundit 35 if he knows of a ‘nice boy for Rajde’. The pundit usually officiates at pujas in houses situated throughout the various communities within about a ten-mile radius of his own home. Within this area he has connections with Indian families and can be instrumental in providing spouses for his ‘clients’. (1960: 120)

32

Deeda’s role in the family matters in the estate in which she worked and later in the village communities in which she lived emphasises the role of women in the formation of the Indian community in Trinidad and in the re-institutionalisation of marriage and family there. Mohan directs our attention to ‘this unwritten history of the birth of a new community in Trinidad’ (ibid.: 204), which is generally glossed over in the history of the community written by male scholars. 33 Clarke terms this ‘settlement exogamy’ (1993: 129). 34 Mohan’s narrator Deeda alludes to plantation exogamy—the moonsie (Munshi) finding a girl to marry from the same caste (Kayat [Kayasth]; scribe by profession), but in another estate; and her own son Kaloo moving to Orange Valley, where he had found a job and a wife (see Mohan, 2007: 146, 194). 35 Variant spelling of ‘pandit’.

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125

In the early years of settlement through the 1950s, village-exogamous marriages, especially among the Hindus, were negotiated by an agvaa or marriage-matchmaker (Khan, 1995: 123; Klass, 1988: 122; Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 102; Vertovec, 1992: 143). Given the social pressure for getting a girl married, it was the girl’s parents, father in particular, who generally took the initiative for finding a suitable boy for their daughter.36 Since it was proscribed to take a boy from their own village, they paid a small sum to the agvaa for the services of locating a boy and negotiating the marriage. The agvaa’s services were often made use of by the parents of a boy, too. However, with the passing decades, there were important changes. Even as early as the late 1950s, anthropologists had noticed that ‘only a few marriages are arranged by [agvaas] nowadays’ (Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 102). Though agvaas have not altogether disappeared, matchmaking has ‘ceased to be a full-time occupation’ and it is not ‘a distinct and specially marked role’ (Khan, 1995: 123). The parents relied on their own efforts and on ‘the advice of friends’ to fix marriages (Klass, 1988: 122). Earlier, as compared to Hindus and Muslims, there was greater freedom among Christians as far as the choice of mate is concerned; but today marriages are made by ‘free choice’ of the boys and girls among all religious communities, though parents still play an important role in arranging the marriage with the consent of their daughter or son, as the case may be.37 It is also not unknown for a boy and girl to decide on the marriage on their own. In his re-study of Amity in 1972–1973, the village in which Morton Klass (1988) had conducted his fieldwork earlier in 1957, Joseph J. Nevadomsky observed the changing perception of parental duty towards a daughter. They were in a dilemma. On the one hand, they were eager to find a husband for their daughter, as they were worried ‘that the reputation of their daughter may get “spoiled” if she is “seen all about”’ (1980: 46). On the other hand, they were reluctant to hinder her progress, as education and employment enhanced her eligibility as a spouse and would secure her husband’s respect; also, if the marriage failed, she would not be an economic liability. Since ‘a young man’s reputation is not subject to the same restrictions’ (ibid.), the resurgence of patriarchal dual value standards was noticeable in the 1970s. Significantly, among the Indian settlers, the age of marriage remained low for a long time, largely because parents continued to have primary control over the institution. The legal age for marriage was slightly higher for Hindus (male 18, female 14) as compared to Muslims (male 16, female 12). In 1957, the Niehoffs observed that ‘considering both registered and unregistered marriages, the majority of the Indian females are married before the age of 19, and with well over a third being married before the age of 14’ (1960: 102). In 2017, the Parliament of Trinidad &

36

Nevadomsky (1980: 46) notes that it was regarded as parental duty towards daughter to find husband for her and to guarantee her virginity at marriage. In fact, a father’s own prestige depended on it. 37 In San Fernando, Clarke observed that a high proportion of Hindu marriages are still, ‘to a greater or lesser extent, arranged by parents, though usually with the children’s consent’ (1967: 183).

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Tobago outlawed ‘child marriage’ in the country, changing the legal age at marriage to 18 years (Mendes-Franco, 2017).38 The re-institutionalisation of marriage under conditions of shortage of brides overturned another tradition fundamental to Hindu marriage in north India: dowry gave way to bride price. The gifts that the Hindu bride received or the mahar that a Muslim bride received apparently benefitted them. But, if the parents received the bride price, the increased value of a girl was only notional and of no material use to her. As Bahadur wonders, ‘Was she [the bride] simply a commodity to be sold off …?’ (2013: 92). Interestingly, the Niehoffs found that ‘there are several times when the boy received money but the two main ones are the chekhai, the engagement, and the tilluk, the dowry [sic] proper’ (1960: 103). It must, however, be clarified that even where dowry has been reintroduced among Hindus in the wake of the resurgence of patriarchy, it lacks the negative implications associated with it in India. Furthermore, unlike in north Indian society where female infanticide and foeticide are practised even now, female infants in Trinidad came to be considered a valuable addition to a family and they were reared with great care (Weller, 1968: 71–72). Another implication of the sex-ratio imbalance and shortage of women was that widowhood among Indian women lacked the tragic aspect it often has in India. In the earlier decades of settlement, Hindu widows were denied the wedding rites again. However, a widow generally did not spend ‘the remainder of her life in mourning for her husband and in drudgery to his family’ (Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 107). She resorted to the ‘keeper’ relationship, i.e., she became a concubine or ‘kept’ woman living in a separate house if the man is legitimately married to another woman. Some such relationships proved quite stable, ‘particularly if the man has no legitimate wife’ (ibid.). Widowhood was not a problem among the Muslims, as a Muslim widow could get remarried. Today, even Hindu widows remarry, as widow remarriage is no more a taboo. Divorcees, too, get remarried.

6.3 Endogamy: Challenge and Response 6.3.1 Inter-caste and Intra-varna Marriages As is to be expected, because of the severe shortage of women, marital relationships regarded as taboo in India became necessary and practical in Trinidad, especially during the first few decades of immigration. As noted earlier (Sect. 6.1.1, Table 6.3), the shortage of women was not uniform across the different caste groups: among the 14,757 Hindu women who embarked from Calcutta for Trinidad during 1876–1892 and 1908–1917, women from the ‘low castes’ (48.61%) and ‘agricultural castes’ (29.20%) were better represented than those belonging to Brahman and other 38

The Miscellaneous Provisions (Marriage) Act, 2017 (Act No. 8 of 2017, passed in Parliament on June 2017 and assented to on June 22, 2017), http://www.ttparliament.org/legislations/a2017-08. pdf (accessed August 23, 2021).

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‘high castes’ (14.98%) and ‘artisan castes’ (7.20%). The male–female sex-ratio for these different castes were as follows: Brahmans and other ‘high castes’, 1000: 371; ‘agricultural castes’, 1000: 393; ‘artisan castes’, 1000: 384; and ‘low castes’, 1000: 551. In Trinidad, some Hindu caste groups were represented in numbers too small to allow them to persist as endogamous units. Added to this were ambiguities and contestations concerning the rank order of caste groups intermediate between Brahmans and Chamars in the traditional Hindu caste hierarchy. This resulted in the realignment of caste groups and the development of broader definitions of endogamy (Vertovec, 1992: 40). Scholars who have done fieldwork—Colin Clarke (1967, 1986) in an urban area (San Fernando during January–September 1964) and Barton Morley Schwartz (1964, 1967) in a rural area (Boodram in 1961 and 1965)—have suggested that, in over a century of settlement, a pan-Indian framework of varna had come to replace locally constituted caste as ‘an endogamous unit and criterion of status’ (Vertovec, 1992: 99). However, Hindu Trinidadians rarely mention varna in their discussion on caste; ‘they think in terms of high, medium, and low castes, and varna adequately expresses this rank order’ (Clarke, 1967: 174). In San Fernando, Clarke found that, of the 96 couples for whom he had data, 70 (72.92%) were ‘varna endogamous’ and 47 (48.96%) were ‘caste endogamous’. Furthermore, ‘varna exogamy occurs more than twice as frequently between adjacent varnas (18 examples) as between non-adjacent varnas (8 examples)’, indicating the hierarchical ordering of the varnas. More importantly, the polarisation of caste was remarkable: ‘No Maharaj [Brahman] has taken a Chamar bride, and no Chamar has received a non-chamar bride’ (1967: 185). Of the 26 cases of inter-varna unions, 17 were hypergamous (anuloma) and nine were hypogamous (pratiloma), i.e., there were ‘almost twice as many cases of women as of men marrying into varnas higher than their own’ (ibid.: 186). Furthermore, the caste range of hypergamous unions was greater than for hypogamous unions. The greater incidence of hypergamy among ‘varna exogamy’ is explained by the fact that, over a period, children in Trinidad have inherited the caste status of the parent with the higher caste (see Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 98).39 In his study of Boodram (pseudonym) village, Schwartz (1967: 126–129) found that of the 84 Hindu unions for which he had data on caste, 48 (57.14%) were ‘exogamous’ and the remaining 36 were ‘endogenous’ (42.86%). Classifying 70 of these unions under the four varnas,40 he found 37 (52.86%) to be ‘endogenous’ and the remaining 33 (47.14%) to be ‘exogamous’. Unlike in the urban context of San Fernando, where intra-varna unions are facilitated by the presence of a larger number of upper varna individuals, in Boodram, lower varna (Shudras) farmers accounted for more intra-varna unions.

39

Unlike in India, in Trinidad, new castes have not evolved from mixed marriages. This is due to impracticability of being excessively concerned with caste under unfavourable demographic circumstances. 40 Schwartz did not have sufficient data to classify the castes in the remaining 14 cases.

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It is interesting that even with sex-skewed immigration destroying the demographic basis of caste system in Trinidad, there were caste-endogamous, or more so varna-endogamous unions, even if it be at the extreme ends of the varna system as suggested by the findings of Clarke in San Fernando and Schwartz in Boodram. However, it must be mentioned that neither caste nor varna carries corporate identity and they lack the quality of a system, as it existed in rural India (see Sect. 9.2.5). Also, as Vertovec points out, ‘the ultimately individual or family-based nature of marriage decision raises doubts over whether such patterns constitute marital exclusivity comparable to its pre-migration nature’ (1992: 40). Thus, as Chandra Jayawardena explains, Strictly speaking, the use of the term ‘endogamy’ is misleading. If the term refers to a rule enforced by sanctions, then the preference for marrying individuals of the same caste status is not endogamy. [Overseas] caste is not a social group that collectively regulates the marriages of its members. (1971: 108)

In brief, intra-varna or intra-caste marriages as found in Trinidad are not instances of the normative observance of caste or varna endogamy as they existed and still exist in India. They are not a manifestation of the re-institutionalisation of the caste system; they are, at best, a reflection of the reckoning of social hierarchy. As Clarke had observed, intra-varna marriages will continue ‘as long as caste is valued as a pedigree and varna is in partial harmony with class’ (1967: 191). As it has turned out, inter-caste marriages, which appear to have increased during the last seven decades or so, have largely been intra-varna, too. All the same, inter-caste marriages have contributed considerably to whittling the importance of caste as a social institution in Trinidad (see Sect. 9.2.5). Since inter-caste marriages were, largely, of the anuloma (hypergamous) type,41 they provided an opportunity for women to ascend in the caste hierarchy; this mattered to the extent that caste still carried some ceremonial meaning and social status and the children born into such marriages were ascribed to the father’s caste. As Michael V. Angrosino found in the village of Palmyra (an Indian village, ‘neither very isolated, nor completely modernized’) near San Fernando, that ‘a man may marry “down” (e.g., to a person ranked relatively lower on the scale of ritual purity) more easily than may a woman’ (1972: 133); that is a woman may marry ‘up’ rather easily.42 But some women did marry ‘down’ and experienced downward mobility in caste status, which, of course, they may not have cared, as ‘women gravitated to men who could help them endure and even escape the rigors of the plantation regardless of caste’ (Bahadur, 2013: 92). 41

Angrosino conducted his anthropological fieldwork in the village of Palmyra (an Indian village, ‘neither very isolated, nor completely modernized’) near San Fernando (Angrosino, 1972: 3). 42 This suggests that the ideal of endogamy, and anuloma marriage as an alternative to this ideal still exists. Angrosino cites the example of the Jawab family in Palmyra, where ‘one of the sons was free to make a love-match “down” to a girl from an extremely creolised family; but the eldest daughter was eventually banished to study in Canada for daring to suggest a union with a boy from a family so far down that, as Mother Jawab said, “I wouldn’t keep my fowls in their house”’ (1972: 133–134).

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While on caste endogamy/exogamy, it may be noted that the idea of exogamous gotras43 prevalent in India even to this day, is almost forgotten in Trinidad. By the mid-twentieth century, only a few old men, mostly Brahmans, knew their gotra (see Clarke, 1967: 170; Klass, 1988: 99) and towards the end of that century, I came across only pandits having any knowledge about it. Although the idea of gotra is not invoked in Hindu marriage, Trinidad Hindus avoid marriage between even distant cousins44 ; they avoid all “bye-family”45 and “respect-family”46 in arranging matches, and free mixing of boys and girls of d¯udha-bh¯at/d¯udhaw¯at kins (brothers and sisters who suckled the same breast), jahaji bhais, etc., is discouraged (Jha, 1985: 3). Among Trinidad Muslims, however, ‘marriage of even first cousins is allowed although this does not happen very often’ (Ahsan, 1963: 181); many Hindus regard this form of marriage as incestuous.

6.3.2 Religious Endogamy There was a shortage of women among both Hindu and Muslim girmitiyas, though the shortage was marginally less among the latter. For instance, among the 17,642 women who embarked from Calcutta to Trinidad during 1876–1892 and 1908–1917, the percentage of women emigrants was higher for Muslims (36.25) as compared to Hindus (31.09), which was almost the same as the average for all emigrants (see Table 6.3). The male–female ratio was better among Muslims (1000:569) than among Hindus (1000:451). Inter-religious marriages must have been a practical necessity in the early decades of immigration. However, within a century of their arrival in Trinidad, religious endogamy had become the norm among Indians. In the early 1960s, Schwartz observed scattered incidents of inter-religious marriages in most parts of Trinidad, but these were, by far, ‘the exception rather than the rule’ (1967: 124). In Boodram, he found that of the 91 marriages recorded, 69 (75.82%) were endogamous within religious groups; the number increased to 74 (81.32%) if sectarian differences among Hindus are ignored. Reanalysing Schwartz’s Boodram data, we find that the tendency to marrying within their own religion was prominent among Catholic men (100%), Hindu women (65 out of 68 or 95.59%), and Hindu men (67 out of 77 or 87.01%) in that order. 43

Gotra (Sanskrit, ‘cattle shed’) is a lineage segment (patrilineal clan) within the caste that prohibits intermarriage by virtue of individuals’ descent from a common mythical ancestor. Its etymology indicates that the lineage segment must have acted as a joint family. 44 For instance, among Hindus in Amity, a boy ‘may not marry anyone he calls d¯ıd¯ı (sister) and who calls him bh¯eya/bhaiyya (brother)’ (Klass, 1988: 100). In Warrenville village, Cunupia, Caroni, Ahsan found that ‘marriage between relatives, even the most distant, is not permitted by the Hindus’ (1963: 181). 45 A ‘bye-family’ among Indo-Trinidadians is one with whom an individual has fictive kinship relationship. It usually includes immediate neighbours in the village. 46 A ‘respect-family’ is like ‘bye-family’, but it usually is ‘bye-family’ of relatives in another village that includes immediate neighbours in the village.

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The tendency to marry outside their religion was more marked among non-Hindu women (11 out of 18) and men (7 out of 12). None of the five Catholic men married exogamously. Seven of the 11 non-Hindu women marrying outside their religion were Presbyterians and they all married Hindu men; a sort of religious home-coming for them, as Presbyterians were originally mostly converts from Hinduism (see Sect. 10.1). The same could be said of the three Catholic women, who all married Hindu men. Two Muslim unions were endogamous, and three Muslim men and one Muslim woman married outside their religion; but Muslims are small in number in Boodram. In the early 1960s, too, in San Fernando, Clarke (1971) observed that unions contracted across religious lines were infrequent, though such marriages are usually legal. He found significant differences in ‘religious exogamy’ among various religious and racial groups: the percentage of ‘religious exogamy’ was the highest for Hindus (14.0) followed by Muslims (11.5) and Christians (8.0), and it was the lowest for douglas (the mixed ethnic group) (4.2) and Creoles (0.7). An interesting finding of Clarke was that Christian East Indians were more than twice as likely to marry Hindus as Muslims.47 This was not surprising because of the relationship between Hindus and Christians, a relationship forged through conversion. This confirms Schwartz’s observations in Boodram. In his study of Warrenville village, Cunupia, Caroni, Syed Reza Ahsan found that ‘marriage between Hindus and Muslim and East Indian Christians are frowned upon in the respective religious sphere, but it is not considered as bad as a marriage between East Indians and Africans’ (1963: 178–179). Notwithstanding some rural (Boodram)–urban (San Fernando) differences and religious differences in the pattern of endogamy/exogamy, it is clear that by the time Trinidad became independent, religious boundaries were becoming thicker and religious identities were crystallised among the Indians in Trinidad.

6.3.3 Racial Endogamy The acute shortage of women among Indian immigrants in Trinidad, thus, had made the ideal of caste and religious endogamy then prevalent in India too difficult, if not impractical, to be observed in distant Trinidad. Resisting inter-caste and even interreligious marriage by Indian men would have forced them to remain spouseless (see Jayaram, 2006: 151). Given the presence of a large number of women of African descent, one would be realistic in expecting the Indian men to have taken African women as wives. Surprisingly, this did not happen; in fact, they resisted it and, as a community, Indians in Trinidad, and elsewhere in the Caribbean, disapproved of inter-racial/-ethnic marriage.

47

Children of mixed marriages, Clarke found, were more likely ‘to adopt their mother’s religion if she is a Christian and less likely if she is Hindu or Muslim’ (1971: 215).

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In the late 1890s, i.e., after half a century into indenture, British Guiana’s Sheriff Henry Kirke observed, ‘it is the rarest thing in the world for an Indian to take up with a black woman’ (quoted in Bahadur, 2013: 88). He could have as well made this observation with reference to Trinidad. Ramesar (1994: 146) interprets census results to observe that persons with one Indian parent in 1911 was 1.47 per 100 Indians of unmixed descent, 1.87 in 1921, and 4.29 in 1946, which reveals insignificant process of racial mixing over one century. In Debe, in southern Trinidad, Clarke (1971: 212–213; 1993: 130–133) found racial endogamy to be the norm; intermarriage was conspicuously absent among Hindus in this village. He attributed this to the preponderance of Hindus in the village and their conservative values. But, in San Fernando town, with its plural communities and not-so-conservative values, too, he found racial intermarriage to be marginal; only one household in 19 was inter-racial. Indians generally disapproved of inter-racial marriage, especially to marriage with the Africans. I was told by Devendranath Maharaj that ‘the disapproval is relatively more in case of an East Indian woman marrying a Negro man as compared to an East Indian man marrying a Negro woman’ (personal interview, 5 August 1996); this was endorsed by many other informants, too. Among Indians, Hindus showed the strongest resistance to inter-racial marriage.48 For instance, even in an urban centre like San Fernando, Clarke (1971: 213) found inter-racial marriages to be particularly low for Hindus (3.1%) and for Muslims (1.8%). Such resistance was even more pronounced in a predominantly Hindu village like Debe. In spite of racial and ethnic antagonisms, mixed families were more acceptable to Creoles in the Caribbean sugar colonies (Lowenthal, 1972: 163). From his interview of 88 Indian leaders, Yogendra K. Malik found that both Hindu (93% of 39) and Christian (87% of 39) leaders showed ‘a marked resistance to marriage with Negroes’; the 10 Muslim leaders were divided in their opinion (1971: 18). However, irrespective of their religion, all the Indian leaders interviewed were more liberal in their attitude towards marriage with whites. This was true even for Hindus, who were ‘much more reluctant to go outside their own subcultural group for marriage’ (ibid.: 19). Viewed in the context of the practice of arranged (‘fixed-up’, in local parlance) marriage among Indian immigrants, especially among Hindus and Muslims, racial endogamy is probably due to parental influence over the choice of marriage partners (see Clarke, 1971: 213).49 Some colonial administrators and scholars have attributed the strongest resistance to inter-racial marriage among Indians, especially to marriage to Africans, to the link between race and varna system. Thus, the late nineteenth century observers in British Guiana, like the Wesleyan (British Methodist) missionary, H. V. P. Bronkhurst and Sheriff Kirke, ‘blamed caste and race prejudices,

48

In British Guiana, too, Hindus would accept a Muslim or Christian, but s/he must be an Indian (see Smith & Jayawardena, 1959: 356). 49 In contrast to Creoles, among Indians, in general, and the Hindus and Muslims, in particular, parents exercised greater control over children’s behaviour.

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concluding that Indian men viewed black women as Untouchables’ (Bahadur, 2013: 89). It is often hypothesised that racial endogamy among Indians stemmed from varna/caste exclusions as practised in India; ‘liaisons with Negroes [were] considered polluting’ and the threat, even if an empty one, of ‘parental disinheritance’ was common (Lowenthal, 1972: 163; see also Clarke, 1971: 216).50 Perhaps, in an alien and hostile society, the Indians felt the need to preserve their existence as a separate community. The Indians faced racial animosity and hostility from other communities, including the Africans. They reciprocated this animosity; they stereotyped Africans as ‘lascivious, ugly, and evil’ (Lowenthal, 1972: 163; see Sects. 3.2 and 4.1.2). This reinforced their ethnicity. But an alternative explanation is provided by historians like Audra Diptee (cited in Bahadur, 2013: 89), who argues that, given the sex-ratio parity among Africans, African women did not need to look for mates outside their own racial group. Perhaps, they spurned Indian men as they were ‘culturally inferior’ to Africans, who, as Walter Rodney points out, were internalising and aspiring to British notions of civilisation (Diptee and Rodney as cited in Bahadur, 2013: 89). Nevertheless, as Lowenthal observes, ‘… mixed families are more acceptable among Creoles than among Indians in Trinidad’ (1972: 163). It is true that, during their indenture, the planters controlled the movement of Indians, and an Indian could have very little contact with the Africans. But post indenture, there was no such externally imposed restrictions; the adherence to racial endogamy among Indians had to do with their insularity as an ethnic community and their attitude of resistance to marrying Africans. Although endogamy was the norm, a few Indians did marry Africans. The offspring of such mixed marriage is commonly called ‘douglas’ or ‘dooglas’.51 Etymologically, the word dougla or dogla, originated from the Indic word doogala or dogl¯a, which means ‘a person of impure breed, a hybrid, a mongrel …’ (Platts, 1884: 534). In Bihar and parts of northern India from which the majority of indentured immigrants came to Trinidad, the word is used to refer to the progeny of inter-varna marriage.52 Phenotypically, the douglas are seldom distinct from either Indians or Africans; ‘in one family, one brother may be, to all appearances, an Indian, while his sibling is superficially a Negro’, observes Angrosino (1972: 134). Yet ‘the Trinidadians in general profess to be able to identify a Doogla on the basis of various vague criteria (“You see them eyes? Is Doogla eyes!”)’ (ibid.).

50

Racial endogamy as a norm did not, however, prevent some Indian men having African women as mistresses. This, of course, was looked down upon. 51 In the French-speaking Martinique, they are called as chappè or èchappè (escaped) coolies, meaning a person who escaped from being a pure Indian. Again, in the French-speaking Guadeloupe, they are called as batta coolie or batta-zendeyn, batta being the corrupt form of ‘bastard’, though here it means mixed. 52 Secondarily, in India and in the Caribbean too, the word has acquired the derogatory and offensive connotation of ‘bastard’, an illegitimate daughter or son, usually of a prostitute.

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The douglas figure ‘prominently in the exogamous unions of all other groups’ in San Fernando (Clarke, 1971: 214); their children, obviously, remain douglas.53 In 1911, only 1514 persons, i.e., less than 0.5% of the population of Trinidad were born to mixed unions between Indians and Africans; of this ‘two-thirds had Indian fathers and black mothers’ (Bahadur, 2013: 89, citing Audra Diptee). The 1931 census recorded the presence of 2518 persons who had one Indian parent—1713 (68.03%) were born to Indian fathers only and 805 (31.97%) were born to Indian mothers only. Similarly, the 1946 census recorded the presence of 8406, ‘East Indian Creoles’, who are defined as ‘persons of mixed East Indian origin, on the whole people who had an East Indian father or an East Indian mother only’ (Kuczynski, 1953: 339). In neither census, the race or ethnicity of the other parent is mentioned. Importantly, prior to the 1946 census, persons born in Trinidad were classified as ‘East Indian’ if either of their parents was Indian. The 1946 census enumerated them as ‘Mixed’ along with mulattoes54 and other people of mixed racial ancestry (Harewood, 1975: 96). It was in the 2011 census that the ‘Mixed’ category of the population was disaggregated into ‘African/East Indian’ and ‘Mixed Other’, each constituting 7.83% and 15.69% of Trinidad’s population respectively (Central Statistical Office, 2012: 15). Although the term douglas is not used, this is the first time that they were accorded recognition as a distinct biracial minority group. There is no gainsaying that Indians marrying Africans have always been looked down upon by their larger ethnic community; they are ‘generally outcastes from Indian communities’ (Angrosino, 1972: 102, fn 5). The douglas have a marginal presence in the Indian consciousness even to this day (see Regis, 2011),55 although, nowadays, there is little overt hostility towards the douglas, ‘the degrading nickname remains’ (Angrosino, 1972: 134). In her column ‘Savera Magazine’ in the Sunday Guardian, Debra Wanser mentions the case of Marilyn Raphael, a dougla woman, Hindu by conviction, who wore a sari every day of her life. During her spiritual pilgrimage to India in 1987, Raphael was frequently mistaken for a ‘South Indian’. Raphael says, ‘I don’t have a problem in India, I have more of problem here in Trinidad and I find this rather strange’ (quoted in Wanser, 1996).

53

This, according to Harewood, explains the increase in the number of ‘Mixed’ group in Trinidad & Tobago’s population over the decades: the increase is both by the addition of children of (a) parents, one or both of whom are themselves mixed and (b) mixed marriages between parents of different ethnic group (1975: 98). 54 Mulatto is a person with one white and one black parent. 55 Interestingly, even a historian like Ramesar refrains from using the word dougla; she uses the more generic term ‘Indian Creoles’ to refer to persons with one Indian parent (1994: 146). The otherwise progressive Seepersad Naipaul, too, was critical of the ‘evil’ of intermarriage (cited in ibid.: 147).

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6.4 The Marriage Rites and Rituals On the estates, the marriage rites and rituals among the indentured immigrants were simple and were mostly based on the knowledge of the elders among them; the women played an important role in the process of marriage (see Sect. 6.2). But, as the immigrants started settling down in village communities, and with the coming of the priestly class from India, especially since the early twentieth century, the rites and rituals became more and more elaborate. By the time anthropologists conducted their fieldwork in Trinidad, the marriage practices in the Indian community there had settled down to a routine, practised less or more depending upon the economic circumstances of the family.

6.4.1 Marriage Among Hindus Among Hindus, patras (horoscopes) of the boy and the girl are matched by a pandit, though it is more a formality now. If the boy and the girl like each other and if their families are favourably inclined to the match, the pandits decipher the horoscopes concerned as compatible. As early as in the late 1950s, the Niehoffs were told about the tempering of the planetary correspondence in the horoscopes by many pandits. They cite a Hindi saying then current in Trinidad to illustrate this belief: ‘“Jo munna thiik hai, to gunna bhii thiik hai.” (When the temperaments are compatible, then the horoscopes are also compatible)’ (1960: 103).56 The gauna ceremony, related to the consummation of marriage, as practised in parts of northern India does not take place in Trinidad any longer. Associated with the custom of child marriage, this ceremony took place several years after the ritual union and marked the beginning of the conjugal life. Until this ceremony, the couple did not live together. In times past, this ceremony was also practised by some Muslims (ibid.: 103). Given the constraints imposed by the indentured system, Indians solemnised marriages on Sunday, the most convenient day for all, as it was a holiday. The practice of arranging a marriage on a day set by the pandit in accordance with the horoscope was given up. If at all, the pandits are asked which Sunday would be most propitious. The Niehoffs report that ‘all the marriages which took place while we were in Trinidad were on Sunday’ (ibid.: 103); my observations during the fieldwork confirmed this. The idea of the ideal ‘marriage period’, as prevalent in India, is no more observed; marriages take place all round the year.

56

This was confirmed by my informant Basdeo Gokoolsingh (Zoro): ‘patra (horoscope) reading is widely prevalent among the Indians. At one time, when arranged marriages were in vogue, it entirely determined mate selection. Nowadays, it is not all that strict, “a mere formality”; the pandit will adjust everything’. Patra is even now consulted for selecting ‘lagan’ (auspicious time for the marriage) (personal interview, October 4, 1996).

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The Hindus observed reconstituted versions of wedding rituals prevalent in Bihar and northern India. Among these wedding related rituals and ceremonies which anthropologists have documented (see Alladin, 1970: 20–23; Clarke & Clarke, 2010: 81–96; Klass, 1988: 121–127) and I have observed during my fieldwork, the following are important: Satyanarayana Katha57 : Generally, the recitation of the puranic text by a priest accompanied by a havan (or homa, oblation into sacred fire) is held as a pre-wedding ceremony. Such recitation is a common Hindu ritual both in India and in Trinidad, and is not restricted to the wedding. It is organised by the bride’s parents as a pooja or prayer service to invoke the blessing of Lord Vishnu, and relatives and friends on both the bride’s and groom’s side take part in it. A white jhandi (triangular flag atop a bamboo pole) is erected at the bride’s place. In some cases, the Katha is repeated at the bridegroom’s parents’ place to thank god for a successful wedding. Cheka: the official engagement that takes place at the bride’s house where rings and gifts are exchanged. Hardi (called Haldi Kutai in India): application on the bride’s body of a paste of ground turmeric made by married women on the groom’s side; women often sing some folksongs. Sindurdan (called Sindoor Daanam in India): application by the groom of vermillion (a bright red colour powder traditionally made with turmeric and alum or lime, but is commercially produced with synthetic ingredients) on the parting of the bride’s hair. In north India, this is a symbol of a married woman; after the marriage, she applies it herself every day. In Trinidad, this is not observed post marriage. Some Hindu women wear readymade bindi (from Sanskrit bindu, meaning a point, dot, or drop) on the centre of their forehead, but this is more as an adornment than as a religious symbol. However, application of vermillion (mostly commercially produced) by women is part of other Hindu rituals observed in Trinidad. Tilak (called Tilak Thaal): application by the bride’s brother of a coloured mark on the centre of the bridegroom’s forehead, usually accompanied by gifts, including cash. Kanyadaan (Sanskrit, ‘giving away the daughter’): the ritual in which the parents give away their daughter to the groom. Pheras (circumambulation): the ritual in which the bride and the groom go around the sacred fire hand-in-hand and take the marriage vows with the sacred fire as the witness. Vidaai (farewell): the bride’s brother escorts the couple to the decorated car and takes them home. This is an overwhelmingly emotional ceremony: on the one hand, there is the joy of new relationships established; on the other hand, there is the sweet sorrow of a girl leaving her natal home.

In all rituals and ceremonies, the officiating pandit(s) chant Sanskrit hymns, often translating them into English for the benefit of the couple and their significant others. These ceremonies conclude with the serving of prashad/prasad (consecrated food) and a feast whose sumptuousness depends on the economic position of the family. The celebration is accompanied by fireworks and tassa (drum) beating and musical 57

The narration of the Satyanarayana Katha (the story of Lord Vishnu) is an integral part of the Sanatana Dharma. The narration of this Katha, which is regarded as auspicious, comes from the Skanda Purana, one of the 18 puranas (Hindu and Jain encyclopaedic texts, covering a variety of topics, believed to have been composed between third and tenth centuries CE).

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entertainment performed by professional companies. All the same, overall, the Hindu wedding in Trinidad is a far less elaborate affair than it is in northern India, where it often lasts for three to four days. The effect of Hindi cinema on the wedding as a cultural event has been more palpable during the last five decades or so. For almost one hundred years, the Hindu wedding rituals were performed under the nuptial tent, called marao, built of bamboo and decorated with cloth and flowers. The bridal couple sat on a peerha (peetha, a low bench used as a pedestal for seating) and the priest performed the rituals on a bedi (vedi, altar), both on the ground. These led to the description of Hindu marriages, both in official records and journalistic writings, as ‘ground wedding’ or ‘bamboo wedding’. This was in the Sanatanist (orthodox Hindu) tradition. The Arya Samaj (reformed Hindu) sect introduced what came to be called ‘table wedding’, as the altar was placed on a table and the couple sat in chairs.58 A report in The Mirror, dated 11 May 1914, describes how the wedding tent was elaborately decorated with a chauk (square) in the centre with ‘manifold mystical signs on which the knot was signed; a larger tent (janw¯as¯a) accommodated the marriage party of 125 people with drummers, dancers, etc.; the presents included two cows and two calves besides Indian jewellery (one gold manoharee), one gold silbandee, two silver hasulees, two gold necklaces, one silver necklace, etc.’ (quoted in Jha, 1982: 135, En 31). The barat, the groom’s marriage procession, came in cars, buses, and lorries and a large number of people participated in the ceremony.

6.4.2 Marriage Among Muslims As compared to the Hindu weddings, Muslim weddings are simpler with fewer rituals and ceremonies. Most of the Indian Muslims in Trinidad belong to the Sunni sect. Their weddings are officiated by any community elder, but as a matter of practice it is done by an imam.59 In the Islamic tradition, the nikah ceremony legitimises the relationship between the bride and the groom; it takes places at the bride’s house, or more frequently now, at a venue. As with any marriage, the process starts with a man or a woman or one of their families proposing and ends with the acceptance of the proposal, called the qubool. A minimum of two male witnesses have to attest to the bride and the groom independently accepting the proposal by saying ‘qubool’ or ‘I do’ three times from their own free will and without any coercion from their family members or anyone else. Then the couple and the two male witnesses sign the nikhanama (marriage contract), making the marriage legal according to both religious and civil law. The wali (custodian), usually the father of the bride, ‘gives away’ his daughter, after receiving her consent. If the father is deceased or not in a position to be by the 58

Clarke and Clarke (2010: 169–171) provide a description of an Arya Samaj wedding in Chaguanas in 1962. 59 Imam (Arabic, imam) is a religious leader, one who leads Muslim worshippers in prayer.

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bride’s side, then another male relative takes his role. The otherwise apparently ‘civil contract’ that a Muslim marriage is, its religious nature is emphasised by the imam or officiant of the marriage reciting a chapter or a few verses from the Quran, the Muslim holy book, and giving a short sermon (khutbah) on the meaning of marriage and the rights and responsibility of the couple towards each other and their families. Sometimes, to mark the occasion, a separate Kitab session is held in which portions from the Quran are read and interpreted. This is more like the Satyanarayana Katha session among the Hindus. As in India, in Trinidad too, the groom gives the bride an obligatory gift, called the mahar. It is the privilege of the bride, and usually her family, to decide on the nature and quantum of mahar. Customarily, the mahar is symbolic of a man’s responsibility for providing for and taking care of his wife. As among Hindus, the groom arrives for the nikah in a barat. The wedding is followed by a feast.

6.4.3 Marriage Among Presbyterians Presbyterian Indians, as Christians generally, follow the Christian marriage rites and rituals. The marriage ceremony is held in the church and is solemnised by the minister. However, the Presbyterian marriages in Trinidad are combined with many Hindu customs, which have survived more than a century of the Indians’ conversion to Presbyterianism in Trinidad (see Jayaram, 2009).

6.4.4 Polygamy, Extra-Marital Relations, and Infidelity In Trinidad & Tobago, monogamy is the legal norm for all religious communities, including Muslims. This is unlike in India, where polygamous marriages are recognised for Muslims as they have a separate family law. There are differing views on polygamy among the leaders of the Muslim community; women across religions oppose it (see Gibbings, 1999). According to Section 55 (1) of the Offences Against the Person Act, 1925, ‘Any person who being married, marries any other person during the lifetime of the former husband or wife, whether the second marriage has taken place in Trinidad & Tobago or elsewhere, is liable to imprisonment for four years’ (MAGLA, 2016b: 19). Section 55 (2) provides for the usual provisos (ibid.). However, as in all societies, in Trinidad, too, married persons have extra-marital relationships with other unmarried or married persons. Such relationships are an important subject of gossip sessions, known locally as ‘liming’.60 The woman with whom a married person has such a relationship is described as ‘deputy’. Klass (1988: 60

‘Liming’ is a part of Trini culture; it refers to hanging around with friends sharing food, drink, conversation, and laughter. The origin of this term is not clear. It is supposed to have originated from ‘limey’, a slang term ‘applied to white American sailors from the naval base who hung around bawdy-house areas in groups’ (Allsopp, 1996: 348). A local dictionary lists it as ‘a 1940s word’

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113) refers to ‘keeper’ unions in which the wife has been married before, and the couple simply live together.61 It is reported that some people, do get married the second time in violation of the law (see Gibbings, 1999). But the wider society appears to ignore such infractions. Early reports about Indians reveal that fidelity was not one of the virtues of women. Daniel Hart (1806–1869), who was a resident of Trinidad from 1825, wrote ‘The wives [of Indians], although they have a regard for their families, and make fond mothers, are not very strict in their fidelity towards their husbands’ (1865: 101). Given the acute shortage of women among Indians, there must have been great demand for their sexual favours.62 In his travelogue The English in the West Indies, James Anthony Froude writes, the ‘women being few are tempted occasionally into infidelities, and would be tempted more often but that a lapse in virtue is so fearfully avenged’ (1888: 67). That is, as mentioned earlier (see Sect. 6.1.1), the jealousy of the husband, who ‘regards his wife as his property’ (ibid.), or the lover, who brooks no competition, which often resulted in violence. This, however, is past history; the situation has, no doubt, changed with the restoration of the sex-ratio balance in the Indian community. The re-institutionalisation of the Hindu and the Muslim marriages and their recognition, even if belated, laid the foundation for the reconstitution and development of family and kinship systems among Indo-Trinidadians. In the next chapter, we shall discuss the structure and functioning of family and kinship among Indo-Trinidadians, as also the nature of gender relations in the wider community.

References Ahsan, S. R. (1963). East Indian agricultural settlements in Trinidad: A study in cultural geography [Unpublished PhD thesis]. University of Florida. Alladin, M. P. (1970). A village in Trinidad. The Author. Allsopp, R. (Ed.). (1996). Dictionary of Caribbean English usage (with a French and Spanish supplement, edited by Jeannette Allsopp). Oxford University Press. Angrosino, M. V. (1972). Outside is death: Alcoholism, ideology and community organization among the East Indians of Trinidad [Unpublished PhD thesis]. University of North Carolina. Bahadoorsingh, K. (1968). Trinidad electoral politics: The persistence of the race factor (Institute of Race Relations [IRR] Special Series 21). IRR. Bahadur, G. (2013). Coolie woman: The odyssey of indenture. Hachette Book Publishing. Bisnauth, D. A. (1977). The East Indian immigrant society in British Guiana, 1891–1930 [Unpublished PhD thesis]. The University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica.

derived from the French ‘limbe’, meaning, ‘limbo, temporary rest’, or ‘hanging around’ (Mendes, 2012: 115). 61 This he attributes to the proscription of widow remarriage among Hindus (Klass, 1988: 113), which proscription no more exists in Trinidad. 62 This, according to Mangru, made ‘polyandry almost an acknowledged system’ in British Guiana: ‘Very often an Indian woman was found to have two husbands and to be unfaithful to both’ (1987: 227).

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Central Statistical Office. (2012). Trinidad and Tobago 2011 population and housing census— Demographic report. The Central Statistical Office, Ministry of Planning and Sustainable Development, Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Retrieved November 28, 2020, from https://cso.gov.tt/stat_publications/2011-population-and-housing-census-demographic-rep ort/ Clarke, C. G. (1967). Caste among Hindus in a town in Trinidad: San Fernando. In B. M. Schwartz (Ed.), Caste in overseas Indian communities (pp. 165–199). Chandler. Clarke, C. G. (1971). Residential segregation and intermarriage in San Fernando, Trinidad. Geographic Review, 81(2), 198–218. Clarke, C. G. (1986). East Indians in a West Indian town: San Fernando, Trinidad, 1930–1970 (London Research Series in Geography, 12). Allen & Unwin. Clarke, C. G. (1993). Spatial pattern and social interaction among Creoles and Indians in Trinidad and Tobago. In K. Yelvington (Ed.), Trinidad ethnicity (pp. 116–135). Macmillan. Clarke, C. G., & Clarke, G. (2010). Post-colonial Trinidad: An ethnographic journal. Palgrave Macmillan. Cohn, B. S. (1987). The census, social structure, and objectification in South Asia. In B. S. Bernard (Ed.), An anthropologist among the historians and other essays (pp. 224–254). Oxford University Press. Collens, J. H. (1888). A guide to Trinidad: A handbook for the use of tourists and visitors (2nd ed.). Elliot Stock. Comins, D. W. D. (1892). Note on the abolition of return passages to East Indian immigrants from the colonies of Trinidad and British Guiana. Bengal Secretariat Press. Comins, D. W. D. (1893). Note on emigration from India to Trinidad. Bengal Secretariat Press. Freilich, M. (1960). Cultural diversity among Trinidadian peasants [Ph.D. thesis in anthropology]. Columbia University. Froude, J. A. (1888). The English in the West Indies or the bow of Ulysses (new edition). Longmans, Green, and Co. Retrieved July 18, 2021, from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32728/32728-h/ 32728-h.htm Gibbings, W. (1999, April 21). Polygamy for better or worse. Inter Press Service (IPS) News Agency. Retrieved July 17, 2017, from http://www.ipsnews.net/1999/04/population-trinidad-and-tobagopolygamy-for-better-or-for-worse/ Haraksingh, K. (1995). Western law and Indians in Trinidad: Social engineering in the diaspora [Mimeo]. Paper presented at the conference on Challenge and Change: The Indian Diaspora in its Historical and Contemporary Contexts, organised by the Institute of Social and Economic Research (The University of the West Indies) and the National Council of Indian Culture, Trinidad. The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Harewood, J. (1975). The population of Trinidad and Tobago (CICRED Series, 1974—World Population Year). CICRED [Committee for International Cooperation for National Research in Demography]. Retrieved April 7, 2021, from http://www.cicred.org/Eng/Publications/pdf/cc50.pdf Hart, D. (1865). Historical and statistical view of the island of Trinidad, with chronological table of events from 1782. Judd and Glass. Jayaram, N. (2006). The metamorphosis of caste among Trinidad Hindus. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 40(2), 143–173. Jayaram, N. (2009). The Presbyterian Church of Trinidad: An Indian Christian community in diaspora. In A. V. Afonso (Ed.), Indian Christianity—Volume, VII Part 6 of history of science, philosophy and culture in Indian civilization (pp. 189–204). Centre for Studies in Civilizations for the Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture. Jayaram, N. (2011). Heterogeneous diaspora and asymmetrical orientations: India, Indians, and the Indian diaspora. In N. Jayaram (Ed.), Diversities in the Indian diaspora: Nature, implications, responses (pp. 227–247). Oxford University Press. Jayawardena, C. (1971). The disintegration of caste in Fiji Indian rural society. In L. R. Hiatt & C. Jayawardena (Eds.), Anthropology in Oceania (pp. 89–119). Angus and Robertson.

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Jenkins, E. (1871). The coolie: His rights and wrongs: Notes of a journey to British Guiana, with a review of the system and of the recent commission of inquiry. George Routledge and Sons. [Strahan and Co.]. Retrieved December 20, 2021, from https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/The_Coo lie_His_Rights_and_Wrongs_Notes_o/ncok7PyxQsAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover Jha, J. C. (1982). The background of the legislation of non-Christian marriage in Trinidad and Tobago. In East Indians in the Caribbean: Colonialism and the struggle for identity. Papers presented to a symposium on East Indians in the Caribbean, The University of the West Indies, June 1975 (pp. 117–139). Kraus International Publications. Jha, J. C. (1985). The Indian heritage in Trinidad. In J. G. La Guerre (Ed.), Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (2nd ed., pp. 1–18). Extra Mural Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Karve, I. (1968). Kinship organization in India (3rd ed.). Asia Publishing House. Khan, A. (1995). Purity, piety, and power: Culture and identity among Hindus and Muslims in Trinidad [Unpublished PhD thesis in Anthropology]. The City University of New York. Kingsley, C. (1889/1871). At last: A Christmas in the West Indies (new one-volume edition). Macmillan. Klass, M. (1988/1961). East Indians in Trinidad: A study of cultural persistence (reissued edition). Waveland Press. Kuczynski, R. R. (1953). Demographic survey of the British colonial empire, 1938–1953—Vol. 3: West Indian and American territories. Oxford University Press for the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Lal, B. V. (1985). Veil of dishonour: Sexual jealousy and suicide on Fiji plantations. The Journal of Pacific History, 20(3), 135–155. Laurence, K. O. (1994). A question of labour: Indentured immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana, 1875–1917. Ian Randle Publishers. Look Lai, W. (1993). Indentured labor, Caribbean sugar: Chinese and Indian migrants to the British West Indies, 1838–1918. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Lowenthal, D. (1972). West Indian societies (American Geographical Society Research Series— Number 26). Oxford University Press (published for the Institute of Race Relations, London in collaboration with the American Geographical Society, New York) Malik, Y. K. (1971). East Indians in Trinidad: A study in minority politics. Oxford University Press for Institute of Race Relations. Mangru, B. (1987). The sex ratio disparity and its consequences under the indenture in British Guiana. In D. Dabydeen & B. Samaroo (Eds.), India in the Caribbean (pp. 211–230). Hansib/University of Warwick. McNeill, J., & Lal, L. C. (1915a). East India (Indentured Labour): Report to the Government of India on the conditions of Indian immigrants in four British colonies and Surinam: Part I Trinidad and British Guiana. H. M. Stationery Office. Retrieved April 5, 2021, from https://babel.hathit rust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.319510010510680&view=1up&seq=25 McNeill, J., & Lal, L. C. (1915b). East India (Indentured Labour): Report to the Government of India on the conditions of Indian immigrants in four British colonies and Surinam: Part II— Surinam, Jamaica, Fiji, and General Remarks. H. M. Stationery Office. Retrieved April 5, 2021, from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiuc.2558656v2&view=1up&seq=5 Mendes, J. (2012/1985). Côté ci Côté là: Trinidad & Tobago dictionary (3rd/signature ed.). The Author. Mendes-Franco, J. (2017, December 6). Child marriage is no more in Trinidad and Tobago. Global Voices. Retrieved August 23, 2021, from https://globalvoices.org/2017/06/12/child-marriage-isno-more-in-trinidad-tobago/ Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs (MAGLA). (2016b). Offences against the person act, Laws of Trinidad and Tobago. MAGLA, Government of Trinidad and Tobago. Retrieved October 8, 2021, from https://rgd.legalaffairs.gov.ttlaws2Alphabetical_Listlawspdfs11.08.pdf Mohan, P. (2007). Jahajin. HarperCollins Publishers India (with The Indian Today Group).

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Mohapatra, P. P. (1995). ‘Restoring the family’: Wife murders and the making of a sexual contract for Indian immigrant labour in the British Caribbean colonies, 1860–1920. Studies in History, 11(2), 227–260. Moore, B. L. (1973). Social and cultural complexity in British Guiana, 1850–1891 [Unpublished PhD thesis]. The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Morton, S. E. (Ed.). (1916). John Morton of Trinidad: Pioneer missionary of the Presbyterian Church in Canada to the East Indians in the British West Indies (Journals, letters and papers). Westminster Company. Nevadomsky, J. J. (1980). Changes in Hindu institutions in an alien environment. The Eastern Anthropologist, 33(1), 39–53. Niehoff, A., & Niehoff, J. (1960). East Indians in the West Indies (Milwaukee Public Museum Publications in Anthropology No. 6). Milwaukee Public Museum. Patchett, K. (1959). Some aspects of marriage and divorce in the West Indies. The International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 8(4), 632–677. Retrieved July 17, 2021, from http://www.jstor. org/stable/755609 Platts, J. T. (1884). A dictionary of Urdu, classical Hindi, and English. W. H. Allen. Ramesar, M. D. S. (1994). Survivors of another crossing: A history of East Indians in Trinidad, 1880–1946. School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Regis, F. L. (2011). The douglas in Trinidad’s consciousness. History in Action, 2(1). Retrieved July 14, 2021 from https://uwispace.sta.uwi.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2139/11131/Article%201% 20-%20regis.pdf?sequence=1#:~:text=Etymologically%2C%20the%20word%20Dougla%20i s,migrated%20to%20Trinidad%2C%20dogla%20still Schwartz, B. M. (1964). Caste and endogamy in Trinidad. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 20(1), 58–66. Schwartz, B. M. (1967). The failure of caste in Trinidad. In B. M. Schwartz (Ed.), Caste in overseas Indian communities (pp. 117–147). Chandler. Shepherd, V. A. (1989). Indian women in Jamaica, 1845–1945. In F. Birbalsingh (Ed.), Indenture and exile: The Indo-Caribbean experience (pp. 100–107). TSAR in association with the Ontario Association for Studies in Indo-Caribbean Culture. Shepherd, V. A. (1993). Transients to settlers: The experience of Indians in Jamaica, 1845–1950. Centre for Research in Asian Migration, The University of Warwick and Peepal Tree Books. Smith, R. T., & Jayawardena, C. (1959). Marriage and the family amongst East Indians in British Guiana. Social and Economic Studies, 8(4), 321–376. Stark, J. H. (1897). Guidebook and history of Trinidad. James H. Stark and Sampson Low, Marston. Sundaram, L. (1933). Indians overseas: A study in economic-sociology. G. A. Natesan. Vertovec, S. (1992). Hindu Trinidad: Religion, ethnicity and socio-economic change. Macmillan. Wanser, D. (1996). A dougla’s identity. Sunday Guardian (Port of Spain), 11 February 1996, p. 3. Weller, J. A. (1968). The East Indian indenture in Trinidad. Institute of Caribbean Studies, University of Puerto Rico. Wood, D. (1968). Trinidad in transition: The years after slavery. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 7

Family, Kinship, and Gender Relations: Erasures and Reconstitutions

… too many features of Indian family persist, in ideology if not in practice, to be written off as functionally determined … —Steven Vertovec (1992: 105)

7.1 Family and Household As mentioned in the preceding chapter, the shortage of women among the girmitiyas in Trinidad and the non-recognition of marriages as per Hindu and Muslim religious rites seriously disrupted the foundational institution of family in the first few decades of indentured immigration. However, gradually, with the development of village settlements, the institution of Indian family came to be reconstituted in the colony. In the late 1950s, Arthur and Juanita Niehoff observed that it ‘stands apart as a distinct family type as compared to the comparable institutions of other ethnic groups of the island, and retains a remarkable degree of Indian-ness’ (1960: 101). As with all other social institutions of the girmitiyas, the family too had to weather migration and the winds of change in Trinidad. Even in India, the family has undergone change from the time of indentured immigration. Thus, as a purely ancestral system, the Indian family has survived in the diaspora more as an ideal than as a reality. It has, as all other social institutions and cultural forms, adapted itself to the economic and socio-cultural ecology in the settlement society, though some insistent aspects of Indianness of the family are due to ‘deliberate resuscitations of all but forgotten folkways’ (Lowenthal, 1972: 156). Indo-Trinidadians I spoke to consider the patrilineal extended family as the culturally ideal form, but point out that given the socio-economic conditions in Trinidad, it is impracticable. Girmitiyas who settled down in Trinidad post their indenture and became peasant farmers, no doubt, tried to secure limited control over their children and their families through landownership. This control, however, did not last long, especnadvertently, apart from its voyeurially in urban areas. In rural areas, too, where Indians became tenants and wage-earners, the nuclear household generally became © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7_7

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the established pattern. Even if a man continues to live with his parents after his marriage, the trend is to establish a separate home, be it close by to his parental home, after the birth of his first child. Research on family and household among Indo-Trinidadians yields conflicting conclusions, depending upon the persistence or change thesis that the anthropologist wants to advance. Niehoffs (1960) and Morton Klass (1988) are vague about the nature of household organisation in the Indian communities that they studied. Yogendra K. Malik (1971: 27–28), David Lowenthal (1972: 153), and Jagdish Chandra Jha (1985: 3–4) emphasise the survival of the joint household. And Leo Davids (1964), Barton Morley Schwartz (1965), and Joseph J. Nevadomsky (1980, 1983a, b, 1985) use quantitative data to highlight the prevalence of nuclear households. In his restudy of Amity in the early 1970s, the village originally studied by Klass in the late 1950s, Nevadomsky (1985) examined the types of households in relation to domestic cycles. Defining a ‘household’ as a commensal group enjoying commissary privileges (i.e., separate kitchen, separate household), he found that the majority (64.91%) of the 114 households he surveyed were nuclear. To this, if the subnuclear (15.79%) and supplemented nuclear (8.77%) households are added, the percentage of nuclear households would shoot up to 89.47. Only 10.53% of the households were of the extended type, either linear, collateral, or supplemented. If the household is defined as a residential rather than as a commensal unit, about 70% of the households were two-generation units, confirming the preponderance of nuclear households in the village. In the mid-1990s, this was the pattern that I observed during my field visits to villages in the central and southern parts of Trinidad. The decline of the extended family, and socio-cultural changes since independence, more generally, have had implications for the authority structure and decisionmaking process in the Indo-Trinidadian family. The spousal dominance of men over wives and parental dominance, especially of fathers, over sons has declined considerably. In this, Indo-Trinidadian women now resemble their Creole counterparts; they are employed outside the home, they keep their money and control their finances. Unlike in old times, there is consultation between husband and wife on matters of familial importance. Separation and divorce are more common and acceptable in the wider community than they were half a century ago. Children have greater freedom in the choice of their education and career, as also in marital partners. Even in rural homes, the decline in the reverence for paternal authority is perceptible. Although the extended household is declining as an institutional form among Indo-Trinidadians, the extended family sentiments are persistent and are strong. The survival of the parents is an important factor in determining the emotional bonds to an extended family. Nevadomsky observed that most Indo-Trinidadians ‘spend at least a part of their lives in some form of extended family unit and this [has] conditioned the way they talk about family life’ (ibid.: 1). One inadvertent consequence of this is the blurring of the distinction between ‘the ideology of family behaviour’ and that of ‘everyday experiences’ (ibid.). The determination of what constitutes an independent

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household in rural areas is difficult as agnatically linked households1 among IndoTrinidadians may share services and sometimes inhabit the same dwelling or live on the same land. Marriage is still an important rite of passage and community affair among IndoTrinidadians, and they tend to marry young as compared to Creoles. They tend to have marginally larger families than other communities,2 and look to their children to realise their aspirations for them. They rely on their extended families and kinship networks of the community. Thus, as Lowenthal observes, ‘while Creoles tend to act as individuals, East Indians [Indo-Trinidadians] operate as nuclear family units, with clusters of families often forming village factions’ (1972: 158).

7.2 Kinship The practice of village exogamous marriage and the durability of families established by such marriages have resulted in a wide network of culturally patterned kinship relationships among Indo-Trinidadians, irrespective of the religious faith they profess. These kinship relationships are of vital importance in the ethnic community. The allegiance among Indo-Trinidadians is first to the family, next to the wider circle of consanguineal and affinal kin, and then to those who are regarded as ‘respect’ kin (Klass, 1988: 92). For each kin, there is a terminology, and for each relationship, there is an appropriate behaviour. The kinship relationships, which are by now well established among Indo-Trinidadians, provides the elementary behavioural precepts endorsed and reinforced by the larger community. It must be borne in mind that the indentured immigrants were mostly unrelated single individuals drawn from various geographical regions, belonging to different religions, sects, caste groups, and tribal communities, and speaking different languages and dialects. As such, the kinship system the Indians evolved over a century of their settlement in Trinidad expectedly could not be a replica of any particular kinship system that exists in India. What is remarkable is that, drawing from their memory and the contingencies of their situation, they have evolved a new variant of the Indian kinship system. Theoretically speaking, as any individual in any society, every Indo-Trinidadian has ‘potentially seven different kinds of primary relatives, 33 of secondary relatives, 151 of tertiary relatives, and geometrically increasing number of distant relatives of various degrees’ (Murdock, 1965: 96). For all practical purposes, however, in quotidian life, only a small number of relatives matter to an Indo-Trinidadian. The distant and even most of the tertiary relatives of the early generation of Indians in Trinidad were hardly known to them, let alone being in any form of contact, as they 1

That is, households of relatives which are related through males or paternal kinsmen. While community-wise data is hard to come by, it is noticed that municipalities predominated by Indo-Trinidadians have a higher average household size and lower percentage of single-person households than those in which they are a minority (see Central Statistical Office, 2012: 33, 37).

2

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probably would have been in India. Even if they were known to exist, they did not matter in real life. For the subsequent generations, therefore, these tertiary and distant relatives hardly provided a point of reference for their kinship behaviour in a far-off island. Thus, those who mattered most were primary relatives, i.e., those who belonged to the same nuclear family as the ego: father, mother, brothers, and sisters in ego’s family of orientation, and ego’s husband or wife, sons, and daughters in ego’s family of procreation. These relatives are linked by bonds of blood or biological kinship, with the exception of husband and wife, who are linked by a marital bond.3 It is the eight characteristic relationships in the nuclear family—husband and wife, father and son, father and daughter, mother and son, mother and daughter, elder and younger brother, elder and younger sister, and brother and sister—that matter most to the Indo-Trinidadian. Ego’s secondary relatives (of 33 distinct kinds) and tertiary relatives (of 151 distinct kinds)4 have varying significance to her/his quotidian life or in the performance of lifecycle rituals or religious rites. Generally, patrilineal relatives (those through the male side) are more significant to the ego than her/his matrilineal relatives (those through the female side). This is because Indo-Trinidadians trace their descent through the male side. It is found that their significance weakens as the kinship distance increases, and often remains only notional. In any case, the resulting kinship system is a much-abridged version of most kinship systems found in India (see Karve, 1968). However, as in its counterparts in India, the Indo-Trinidadian patrilineal kinship system distinguishes between two types of relationship: (i) jural relationships, with one’s patrilineal, patrilocal extended family and (ii) affectionate relationships, with one’s matrilineal kin (see Freilich, 1960: 115). The patrilineal kin, generally living around a male person either in the same household or in a nearby household constitute his primary kinship group. The jural relationships resulting from this provide him with both the right to a share of the group’s capital and the obligation to accept his position in the group’s authority structure. These rights and obligations are not applicable to matrilineal kin; with whom a person shares an affectionate relationship and whom he obeys out of respect and love.

3

Relatives who are connected through blood or common ancestry are known as consanguineal relatives, and those who are connected through at least one marital link and no necessary biological relationship are known as affinal relatives. This distinction is irrespective of whether the relationship between two relatives is primary, secondary, tertiary, or distant (see Fn 4). 4 Secondary relatives are the primary relatives of ego’s primary relatives, most of whom will not be included among ego’s primary relatives; tertiary relatives are the primary relatives of ego’s secondary relatives, who are not her/his primary or secondary relatives. Relatives who are more remote than tertiary relatives are classified as distant relatives.

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7.2.1 Kinship Terminology Ego’s relatives are identified by kinship terms, and ego uses these terms either to designate a relative while speaking about him to a third person (terms of reference) or in speaking to a relative (terms of address). Terms of address are part of the linguistic behaviour characteristic of any interpersonal relationship. Sometimes, terms of address are the same as terms of reference. But terms of reference are more useful in understanding the kinship system: they are normally more complete and more specific in their application than terms of address; they are used in the following analysis. Appendices 7.1 and 7.2 provide the kinship terminology used by Hindu and Muslim Indo-Trinidadians to refer to and address their different kin. Evidently, the Indo-Trinidadian kinship terminology is largely drawn from the languages that the girmitiyas brought into Trinidad, namely, Bhojpuri, Hindi/Hindustani, and Urdu. Given the inevitable acculturation that the Indians experienced in multi-ethnic Trinidad, some Creole terms have also entered their kinship terminology. It is in kinship terminology that the vocabulary and usage of the ancestral languages have survived the most. Viewed from the community’s perspective, the internalisation and everyday usage of kinship terminology reinforces the identity and strengthens the emotional bond among Indo-Trinidadians as an ethnic community, as distinct from other communities in Trinidad & Tobago. In the evolution of the Indo-Trinidadian kinship system there has been, no doubt, a process of levelling over the generations in which the variants in the kinship terms used have been minimised; older informants of Klass (1988: 94), for instance, had given him greater amount of variation as compared to the younger informants. Nevertheless, the consistency shown by the younger generation is remarkable. Of course, there are notable differences in the terminology used by Hindus (and Hindu converts to Presbyterianism) and Muslims, those residing in rural areas and in urban centres, and the peasant/working class and the educated middle class. However, the kinship terminology is recognised, if not necessarily used, in the wider community. As compared to the Creoles and other ethnic communities speaking English, IndoTrinidadians use a large number of elementary kinship terms5 —e.g., a¯ j¯a, a¯ j¯ı, bet¯a, bet¯ı, bhauji, bh¯eya, chotki, d¯ıd¯ı, k¯ak¯a, k¯ak¯ı, m¯am¯u, m¯am¯ı, m¯os¯ı, n¯an¯a, n¯an¯ı, n¯at¯ı, n¯at¯ın, etc. They use fewer derivative terms, and resort to the use of descriptive terms should the reference demand clarity and this is often achieved by using the English kinship terminology. 5

Based on their linguistic structure, kinship terms are classified as elementary, derivative, and descriptive: an elementary term is an irreducible word (e.g., mai in Hindi, ammi in Urdu, mother in English) ‘which cannot be analysed into component lexical elements with kinship meanings’; a derivative term is ‘compounded from an elementary term and some other lexical element which does not have primarily a kinship meaning’ (e.g., b¯ark¯ad¯ad¯a in Hindi, dadajaan in Urdu, grandfather in English); and a descriptive term ‘combines two or more elementary terms to denote a specific relative’, especially if the reference to any other term is ambiguous (e.g., sister-in-law is ambiguous, as it could refer to brother’s wife or wife’s sister) (see Murdock, 1965: 98–99).

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The use of English kinship terminology is the extreme form of levelling that the Indo-Trinidadian kinship terminology has experienced over a century and a half. A salient characteristic of this levelling is the gradual switch-over to the use of classificatory kinship terms in place of denotative ones.6 The use of denotative terms referring to only one person has almost disappeared. For instance, the terms such as p¯a (Fa), m¯a or m¯a¯ı (Mo) which were earlier used only to refer to and address father and mother respectively, are now used to address father-in-law and mother-inlaw, though terms such as s¯as¯ur (HuFa, WiFa) and s¯as (HuMo, WiMo) are still in use.7 That is, in this case, the distinction between consanguineal and affinal ties are ignored. Denotative terms like bh¯eya (bhaiyya) and d¯ıd¯ı (b¯ah¯ın) are now used to refer to or address older male and female cousins. Same is true of many other terms. Bet¯a (So) and bet¯ı (Da) are used to refer/address son and daughter of any of ego’s sibling, cousin, and or of ego’s spouse’s sibling or cousin. N¯at¯ı (SoSo, DaSo) and n¯at¯ın (SoDa, DaDa) are used to refer to the son and daughter of anyone ego calls bet¯a or bet¯ı respectively; it is extended to any equivalent thereof.8 Sala (WiBr) and Sali (WiSi) are used to anyone equivalent to one’s wife’s brother or sister respectively; it is extended to refer to anyone the wife calls brother (e.g., WiMoBrSo) or sister (e.g., WiMoBrDa) respectively. Bhauji is a classificatory term used to refer to the wife of anyone ego calls bh¯eya (bhaiyya). Difference in age of the relative is also gradually being ignored; for instance, the distinction between father’s elder sister (b¯ark¯a ph¯ua¯ ) and younger sister (ph¯ua¯ ) has gradually disappeared and both are now referred to by the same term (ph¯ua¯ ). These are distinct illustrations of levelling in kinship terminology. All primary relatives are terminologically differentiated from each other, even if some of the terms used to refer to or address them are now extended to some secondary relatives. But it is in the designation of secondary, tertiary, and distant relatives that more classificatory terms are adopted. For example, the terms a¯ j¯a (FaFa) and a¯ j¯ı (FaMo) are used to refer to all males and females respectively on ego’s father’s side in the 2nd ascending generation (e.g., FaFaBr, FaMoBr, FaSiHu, etc. and FaSi, FaMoSi, FaMoBrWi, etc.). The same terms—¯aj¯a and a¯ j¯ı and n¯an¯a and n¯an¯ı are generally used for appropriate 2nd generation affinal kins.9 In the late 1950s, Klass reported one old man insisting that ‘they must “properly” be addressed by the term 6

‘A denotative term is one which applies only to relatives in a single kinship category as defined by generation, sex, and genealogical connection’ and ‘a classificatory term is one that applies to persons of two or more kinship categories, as these are defined by generation, sex, and genealogical connection’ (Murdock, 1965: 99). 7 For expanded forms of kinship notations, see Appendix 7.1. 8 It is important to note that Indo-Trinidadians use the same terms for both SoSo and DaSo (n¯ at¯ı) and SoSo and DaSo (n¯at¯ın). In Hindi-speaking north India a distinction is made between SoSo (p¯ot¯a) and DaSo (n¯at¯ı) and between SoDa (p¯ot¯ı) and DaDa (n¯aten). 9 Such extensions are noticed with reference to terms like k¯ ak¯a (FaYoBr) and k¯ak¯ı (FaYoBrWi) used also to refer to any male cousin of father junior in age to him and his wife. Similarly, the terms m¯am¯u (MoBr) and m¯au¯ s¯ı or m¯as¯ı (MoSi) is also used to refer or address any equivalent male and female relative respectively.

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Fa would use, preceded by the adjective a¯ j¯ıot (e.g., a¯ j¯ıot¯a m¯am¯u for FaMoBr, a¯ j¯ıot¯ı m¯os¯ı for FaMoSi, etc.)’ (1988: 97). Such nuances, which were already on the way out in the 1960s have disappeared now. Earlier, avoidance was practised in husband–wife relationship, whereby a man and woman refrained from calling their spouse by her/his name aloud. Husband and wife referred to and addressed each other using teknonymy, that is, by calling a person who has had a child ‘father/mother of so-an-so’ (Ramesh-fadda/Janki-madda or Janki-m¯e, etc.), i.e., combing the parental term with the child’s name, instead of using a kinship term or personal name. Generally, in addressing each other, they used attention-drawing sounds—wife calling her husband ‘O!/Oy!/Oye!’(‘oh!/aye’) or husband calling his wife ‘E!’ (‘Ei!’, ‘hey!’) or dolah¯ın [lit. bride] or by pet name. My older informants mentioned that in the grandparents’ generation they used expressions like ‘sunlo/sunli’ (lit. hear/heard) in addressing each other. However, these practices are changing. Although one could still come across such kinship usage occasionally in rural areas, it is on the wane. The present-day trend is to use the proper names or pet names of the spouse. With every passing generation, more classificatory terms have come to be used; very few definitive terms are used, especially in address. Another important development has been the substitution of ethnic kinship terms by English kinship terms—e.g., grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, father-in-law, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law; cousin etc.—which are all classificatory in nature. Presbyterians and other Christians use more English terms. In conversing with non-Indo-Trinidadians, even Hindus and Muslims use English or creolised English classificatory terminology10 more freely, though they use Indo-Trinidadian terminology among themselves. Addressing by proper name is becoming more standardised for any sibling or cousin junior in age to ego, also younger sister’s husband, and husband of any female cousin junior in age to ego. However, all primary relatives are terminologically differentiated. Thus, through resorting to the use of classificatory terms and English terms, the Indo-Trinidadians have successfully reduced the number of kinship terms, though retaining a distinct ethnic kinship terminology.11 Before this section is concluded a point is in order here. In a community that is newly evolved, in which family and kinship systems are in the earlier stages of development, what anthropologists call fictive kinship12 plays an important role. It involves people with whom one has established a strong emotional and working relationship, which is recognised as if it were kin-based. A reference to jahaji-bhai (ship-brother; brotherhood of the ship) and jahaji-bahin (ship-sister; sisterhood of 10

Examples of creolised English kinship terminology include fadda (father), mudda (mother), bredda (brother), etc. 11 The Hindi cinema and television serials, especially those focusing on the family, and the efforts to revive the Hindi language (see Sect. 11.1.7) have contributed to the revival of kinship terms. However, I have no information on whether or not this revival has been internalised by the community. 12 A fictive kinship is based on social arrangements instead of birth (consanguinity), marriage (affinity), or adoption. It involves a close emotional bond between two individuals and their families that it creates a relationship like family.

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the ship), the enduring bonds formed between two or more emigrants on the long ship journey to Trinidad has already been made (see Sect. 2.2.3). In his fieldwork in Palmyra village, near San Fernando, Michael V. Angrosino found that jahaji-bhais ‘fulfill all the obligations of brothers to each other, as well as the obligations of paternal uncles to each other’s children’ (1972: 194). This relationship is so strong that ‘a person might not even know that the man he calls ‘kaka’ (FaBr) is really a jahaji brother to his father, not a biological sibling’ (ibid.). Since a jahaji relationship is as good as a biological one, marriage between the individuals so related is not only discouraged (Jha, 1985: 3), but is considered ‘horrifying’ (Angrosino, 1972: 195) as it is tantamount to committing incest. The singular importance of the jahaji relationship in the life of Indo-Trinidadians as an ethnic community is testified by the fact that it matters even today, a century after the abandonment of indentured labour migration. Another fictive and quasi-kin relationship, especially among the upper-caste Hindus, is that between guru (godfather or spiritual guide or preceptor, called baba) and chela (disciple). In a ceremony called Gurmuk, a boy aged 10–18 years, takes a guru, who is usually the family pandit, and accepts Hinduism knowingly (Freilich, 1960: 108). As Angrosino observes, the guru–chela relationship is a more ‘formalised’ one, characterised by ‘distant respect’; ‘even if it lasts for many years, it is seldom an emotionally affective tie’ (1972: 195). The salience of this relationship was revealed to me when Vishnu, one of my interviewees, tonsured his head when his baba passed away, thereby equating his baba to the same level as that of his biological father.

7.2.2 Inheritance An important function of the kinship system, especially the principle of lineage, is to indicate the line of inheritance of movable and immovable assets held by an individual after her/his death. In the evolution of their kinship system, Indo-Trinidadians adopted the patrilineal system as is prevalent among most communities in India, especially in the areas from which their ancestors had originated predominantly. In the village communities they studied, Niehoffs (1960: 110) and Klass (1988: 134–136) recorded patrilineal inheritance of most goods and property. Considering the high value that girmitiyas settling down in Trinidad placed on the ownership of land, land and land-based property are still the most prized possessions of an Indo-Trinidadian. In the late 1950s, the Niehoffs found that, among all the religious communities among Indians, land was ‘normally inherited by the sons, with the oldest being favoured’13 (1960: 110). Male inheritance, however, was tempered by the treatment children give their parents: ‘a girl may be favoured if she has taken care of her parents in their old age while her brothers neglected them. A wife may

13

Primogeniture is, however, not the norm; in some cases, the youngest son may be favoured, as Klass found in Amity (1988: 135).

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inherit land from her husband if he has no brothers or if she did not get along well with them’ (ibid.). Not all families own landed property to bequeath, as Klass found in Amity in the late 1950s. But the poor families passed on their ‘rights’—‘the “right” to occupy the house and to rent the land on which it is situated, and the “right” to the riceland rented by the family—to their descendants’ (1988: 134). There is no set pattern in the distribution of shares among sons; the favourites get a greater share. Distribution of landed property or the ‘rights’ to rental holdings (which are generally small) among children has resulted in uneconomic fragmentation. But, the inheritance by one son often results in bitterness and even in disputes. Until the Muslim and Hindu marriages were recognised, in 1936 and 1946 respectively, inheritance of intestate property was a serious problem among Indians in Trinidad. Patrilineal inheritance is also found in certain ‘trades’ practised by IndoTrinidadians. The pandits (Brahmans), the jewellers (Sonars), and the barbers (N¯os) also pass on their trade to their sons, if they are interested in following it. Generally, caste is inherited patrilineally if the parental union is homogamous or hypergamous (anuloma); and matrilineally, if it is hypogamous (pratiloma). As a norm, Indo-Trinidadian girls cannot expect to inherit (Klass, 1988: 134).14 This was implicit in the practice of village exogamy and virilocal residence: on marriage, a girl moved to her husband’s place in another village. Also, the girl’s family would have incurred expenses for her marriage and the gifts that the family was obliged to give to her and her husband. If a man did not have male issues or has a favourite daughter, he would leave some share of the property to her. There have been cases in which, a family having only female issue(s) would take a son-in-law into their household and make him (rather than the daughter) the heir to property. A sonin-law living with his wife’s parents is called gh¯ardamda15 (lit. ‘house son-in-law’ or live-in son-in-law). In the patriarchal/virilocal community, this is not a welcome arrangement; the term gh¯ardamda is often used to mock or ridicule a person. Unlike in India, there are no separate laws of inheritance for different religious communities in Trinidad. Inheritance in Trinidad & Tobago is now governed by the Succession Act (Act 27 of 1981) as amended by The Distribution of Estates Act (Act 28 of 2000).16 In case an individual dies without leaving a valid will, his estates will be distributed according to the provisions of this law.

14

However, the share of property that a woman obtains at the time of her marriage in the form of jewellery, clothes, money, etc., is her own. However, the concept of Sthridhana associated with property in Hindu Law does not exist in Trinidad. 15 A spelling variant of gh¯ ardamad in Hindi/Hindustani and Urdu. 16 See Succession Act, 1981 (Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs, government of Trinidad & Tobago, www.legalaffairs.gov.tt) and The Distribution of Estates Act, 2000 (Parliament, Republic of Trinidad & Tobago, http://www.ttparliament.org/legislations/a2000-28.pdf) (both accessed August 21, 2021).

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7.3 Status of Woman and Gender Relations The serious imbalance in the sex-ratio among the girmitiyas, the de-constitution and erasures which their institutions of marriage and family experienced in the early decades of immigration, and the later re-constitution of marriage, family, and kinship systems with the emergence of a settled community, expectedly had implications for the status of women and gender relations among Indo-Trinidadians. Broadly, we can identify three phases in this process: (1) (2) (3)

De-constitution of patriarchy during the period of indentured immigration— 1845–1917, Reconstitution of patriarchy during the period of settlement as a community— from the late nineteenth century till independence (1962), and Challenges to patriarchy in contemporary times.

7.3.1 De-constitution of Patriarchy Certain facts associated with the nature of indentured immigration and the apathy of Indian men to Creole (African origin) women disrupted patriarchy among the girmitiyas. Men outnumbered women among the girmitiyas and, even as they were settling down in Trinidad, they did not take Creole women as wives, but instead competed among themselves for the limited pool of Indian women. As mentioned in the preceding chapter, this, combined with their being independent wage earners, gave them the opportunity to maximise their bargaining power and to choose their mates (see Sect. 6.1.1). Gradually, the immigrant women developed a sense of empowerment and this was reflected in their attitude towards men. That this was achieved at great odds and the experience of multiple oppressions—as indentured workers in a system of quasi-servitude, as persons belonging to a culture that was despised as barbaric and heathen, and as objects of sexual depredations of the white overseer (see Reddock, 1985, 1998b)—is remarkable indeed. This inadvertent empowerment of women in a far-away colony essentially eroded patriarchy, at least in the first few decades of indentured immigration. This empowerment of women, however, came at a cost; jealousy of husbands or lovers and their inability to control the sexuality of women often resulted in violence against women, both single and married. In other words, women became victims because they exercised their choice. There developed the stereotypes of Indian women as ‘unfaithful wives’ and Indian men as ‘violent husbands’ (see Sect. 6.1.1).

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7.3.2 Re-constitution of Patriarchy The de-constitution of patriarchy, significant as it was in the early decades of indentured immigration, was both short-lived and came at the cost of violence. But once Indian immigrants started settling down in Trinidad as an ethnic community, patriarchy was gradually reconstituted. Contributing to this reconstitution were such factors as the institutionalisation of patrilineal kinship system, village exogamy, and virilocal or patrilocal rule of post-marriage residence. Family yet again became the main arena for women’s identity; it is in the household that their work and social responsibilities were subsumed. As Nesha Haniff observes, ‘they became housewives, they became mothers, they became invisible, they became silent, they became again the carriers of Indian culture and tradition … It was a mark of success for a wife not to work’ (1999: 22–23). A dark aspect of this re-domestication of women was violence against them in the domestic sphere. In his fictionalised anthropological account of Gurudeva’s household in a rural setting, Seepersad Naipaul describes Gurudeva beating his wife, almost as a routine, ‘not from any conscious wickedness, but because the privilege and prerogative of beating her was his, by virtue of being her husband’; he thought ‘he was not doing anything shameful. He was only beating his wife’ (2001: 38). Krystal A. Sital (2018) recounts the long-held secrets of her mother and grandmother, now in America, about the abuse and violence they suffered and tolerated at home and what it took for them to survive and find strength in themselves. Even as late as the early 1990s, Indian men were defensive about the perpetration of domestic violence. Dr. Harri Maharaj, a prominent psychiatrist is quoted in a newspaper column as saying that ‘women were not behaving in the best interest of their families’ in seeking restraining orders and were therefore ‘provoking violent responses from men’ (quoted in Haniff, 1999: 25).17 However, even with the development of a fully blown patriarchy, the system was not as detrimental to the status of woman as the patriarchy that exists in those parts of rural India from which the ancestors of present-day Indo-Trinidadians hailed. In fact, in the period that Seepersad Naipaul is depicting (the first half of the twentieth century) there was already a realisation among rural Indian women that invoking Hindu epics to defend patriarchy was one-sided. Dhira, one of Gurudeva’s sisters-inlaw tells, Mira, another sister-in-law, in Hindi: ‘They want us all to be like Sita—that is, to try as far as possible to be like her; but on the other hand, they are far from being like Rama, … they do not even try’ (ibid.: 42). Anthropological studies conducted on the eve of independence revealed that an overwhelming majority of Indo-Trinidadian households were headed by men; in 1960, Morris Freilich (1960: 111) reported the percentage of such households to be as high as 94. He also found that, among the peasant households he studied, jural ties with patrilineal and virilocal/patrilocal family are more important to an individual than his affectionate ties with matrilineal kin, as they determined both his right to a 17

In 1997, Trinidad & Tobago enacted the Domestic Violence Act. To enlarge its scope and give it greater clarity, this Act was amended in July 2020.

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share of the patrilineal group’s capital and the obligation to accept his position in the group’s authority structure. This is also reflected in the Hindu kinship terminology: in the ego’s father’s generation, patrilineal kin are further differentiated chronologically with separate kinship terms for father’s elder brother (d¯ad¯a) and his wife (d¯ad¯ı) and younger brothers (k¯ak¯a) and their wives (k¯ak¯ı), whereas matrilineal kin are referred to by classificatory terms—all of mother’s brothers are (m¯am¯u) and sisters are (ph¯ua¯ ). As anthropologists have found and I have observed, children in Indo-Trinidadian families are socialised to treat the older generation kin, particularly patrilineal kin, with special respect. As a norm, seniority in age is respected: one’s father’s elder brother is accorded more respect than that given to her/his father, and the instructions of an older sibling is generally obeyed as if they came from an adult (see ibid.: 114). Among Indo-Trinidadians, as in patrilineal and virilocal/patrilocal India, marriage is more of a change in the life of a girl than that of a boy (see Klass, 1988: 127– 128). On marriage, she moves out of her natal family (family of orientation) and becomes a member of her husband’s family, invariably in a different village. In her husband’s family she shares the household chores with her mother-in-law and co-sisters. Her position in an extended household depends on her seniority among the daughters-in-law. If her husband has established a new household (her neolocal residence) and not too close to his extended household, then she has less of a quotidian responsibility for her in-law’s household; of course, she still shoulders the burden for her own household, where patriarchy reigns, though not with the same rigour. Since independence, with more and more women entering paid employment and living in nuclear households, there has been considerable improvement in their status. Until around independence, eating together did not include the womenfolk. Generally, a woman served the food to her husband and male members of the family and ate after they had finished (Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 110).18 Often the women ate in the kitchen. ‘It was odiously un-Hindu. The women must eat after the men had eaten’, writes Seepersad Naipaul (2001: 83) about the custom in his novel. This practice has, however, disappeared over the decades, but is still noticeable when food is served during the Hindu ritual performance, as I observed in Nestor village, Sangre Grande in April 1994. In earlier times, men generally had control of the household finances; this, too, has changed, especially in households where women are employed outside. It is in the inheritance of landed property that patriarchy is still noticeable. Land has been a highly valued asset among Indo-Trinidadians. In the late 1950s, the Niehoffs had observed that ‘the land inherited from the hardworking Indian-born parent is being conscientiously maintained by the oldest son or else by several sons with the older of them as nominal leader’ (1960: 41). Even now, land is normally inherited by the sons, with the oldest being favoured, and those who inherit it take the responsibility of being the head of household quite seriously. The proclivity for accumulation and thriftiness shown by their ancestors, however, is no more salient.

18

This practice is still prevalent in rural India and in some orthodox urban households, too.

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7.3.3 Challenges to Patriarchy Since independence, the forces of modernisation and the associated liberal sociocultural norms and values have impacted family life and gender relations among Indo-Trinidadians. The strongest influence on Indo-Trinidadians, and Trinidadians generally, has been that of north American society, with which they have more contact. Although family still remains a distinct and significant institution among Indo-Trinidadians as compared to other ethnic communities, patriarchy in its revived form, howsoever weak it may be compared to its counterpart in India, has come under severe challenge. As mentioned earlier, there has been a steady decrease in the number of extended family households and a corresponding increase in the number of nuclear family households. This means that the institutional locale of patriarchy has been weakened; women enjoy relatively better status in the nuclear households, where they participate more in the decision-making process affecting themselves and their children than when they were part of an extended family household. An important change among Indo-Trinidadians is the changing perception of parental duty towards daughters. From a time when parents were preoccupied with finding a suitable husband for one’s daughter and guaranteeing her virginity at marriage (a father’s own prestige depended on it) to educating her has been a remarkable change in the community. Most parents I spoke to stressed the importance of education for their daughters, as education enhances their employment prospects and thereby their chances of finding a better spouse and securing her husband’s respect. They cite cases where education has saved the girl and themselves, when the marriage has failed, as she is economically independent. Importantly, the rapid expansion in the provision of schooling both in urban and rural areas has been very largely due to the Indo-Trinidadian initiative. An important indicator of the improved status of Indo-Trinidadian women is that they now take greater initiative in finding their spouses; this is more so in urban areas and if they are educated.19 The old system of arranged marriage is more notional now. A boy and girl deciding to get married seek the consent of their parents which, in most cases, will be forth coming. Once consenting to the marriage, the parents take the initiative of arranging the marriage. The decline of the role of agvaa, the traditional matchmaker (see Sect. 6.2), is noteworthy in this context. Also important is the rise in the age at marriage for girls. In Nevadomsky’s sample, in the early 1970s, the average age for first marriage of women who were over 35 was only 14 and for those under 35, it was 17.5 (Nevadomsky, 1983b). The latest data on the age at marriage among Indo-Trinidadians is not available. But, in June 2017, Attorney General Faris Al Rawi disclosed in Parliament that, between 1996 and 2016, the Registrar General had recorded 3478 child marriages in the country, of which 1156 were civil child marriages (both Christian and non-Christian), 1796 were Hindu

19

Nevadomsky (1983b) found in his sample that while 17% of women over 35 had any choice in their husbands, 66% under 35 had.

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child marriages, and 526 were Muslim child marriages.20 In 2017, the Parliament of Trinidad & Tobago outlawed child marriage in the country, changing the legal age at marriage to 18 years (see Sect. 6.2). Significantly, among the organisations that spearheaded the movement for abolition of child marriage was The Hindu Women’s Organisation of Trinidad & Tobago.21 This was despite the resistance by religious orthodoxy—Hindu, Muslim, and even Christian—to any change in law that affects religious communities. An important indicator of the improvement in the status of Indo-Trinidadian women has been the decline in their fertility rate. From 1919–1923 up to 1946, there was a considerable increase in the fertility rate for women of Indian descent, nearly twice that of women of African descent for the age group 15–29; by 1970, the ratio had declined to 100/106 at age group 15–19 and to 100/131 at 25–29 (Harewood, 1975: 48, 172–173). Over the decades, Trinidad & Tobago has witnessed a steady decline in the fertility rate for the cohort of women aged 45–49 years22 —from 4.1 in 1990, to 3.1 in 2000, to 2.5 in 2011—and a steady increase in the proportion of women who remained childless—from 8.3 in 1990, to 10.0 in 2000, to 12.8 in 2011 (Central Statistical Office, 2012: 31). The intercensal decline in fertility rates for women, including Indo-Trinidadian, suggests that they have begun to exercise control over their fertility. This is a remarkable change from the patriarchal norm in which they had little or no control over their fertility. There is no gainsaying that the education of women has played an important role in the decline in the fertility rate of Indo-Trinidadian women (Harewood, 1975: 177). Also noticeable is the change in avoidance relationship between husband and wife. The earlier practice of using teknonymy or attention-drawing sounds in addressing each other is disappearing; even women use proper names or pet names today. All these changes are notwithstanding the attempts on the part of Indo-Trinidadians to revive some elements of their ancestral culture. It must, however, be said that analysis of gender issues in relation to Indo-Trinidadians does not permit facile generalisations. There is lot of understanding to be gained from the lived experience of women as Patricia Mohammed’s analysis of the narratives of two women emerging out of the girmitiya diaspora in Trinidad would suggest. These two women are Droapatie Naipaul23 and Dassie Parsan, who, though they are clearly products of their ethnicity and class and assigned gender role … show us in their life experiences that they defy our expectations of them as stereotypes of a specific ethnic group, class and gender; that none of these categories are static but in real life are constantly being negotiated and re-negotiated. (Mohammed, 1993: 233) 20

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/How-Hindu-Women-Fought-Child-Marriage-in-Trinidadand-Won-20171124-0021.html (accessed August 23, 2021). 21 The other organisations included Womantra (a linguistic blend of the words WOMAN and MANTRA; a feminist organisation) and Young Women’s Christian Association. 22 It is assumed that these women would have been born in the early mid-1960s and they would have completed their fertility cycle. 23 Wife of Seepersad Naipaul and mother of V. S. Naipaul and Shiva Naipaul, the triumvirate litterateurs.

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7.3.3.1

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The Pandita Controversy

The assertion of their rights by the Hindu women and their fight against patriarchy is also reflected in the controversy over a lady practising panditai (Hindu priestcraft).24 On 14 September 1993, on successfully completing a course of Hindu religious studies, Indrani Rampersad25 was conferred the title of ‘pandita’ (feminine form of pandit) at a Deekshaant Samaaroh (graduation ceremony) by the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha of Trinidad.26 She was the first female pandit in Arya Samaj in Trinidad and in the Vedic Hindu tradition.27 Since the title is traditionally reserved for male scholars, Rampersad’s appointment was greeted with both enthusiasm and controversy in the Hindu community, provoking a discussion on the role of women and their leadership roles in religion (see Perot, 1993). The Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS) openly objected to women being appointed as pandits, though they did not prevent Rampersad from practising as a pandita. According to its Secretary General, Satnarayan Maharaj, ‘women are simply not suited physically or psychologically for the role of pandits in the Hindu and other traditional religions of the world’ (Trinidad Guardian, 18 September 1993, p. 3). Pandit Sadanan Ramnarine, Vice-President of the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, the second largest organisation in Trinidad, dismissed Satnarayan Maharaj’s objection as he was himself ‘neither a pandit nor one versed in the Vedas, with the moral or intellectual authority to interpret the rights of women as they existed in Vedic times and as are contained in the Vedas’ (ibid.). Pandit Ramcharan Gosine (a government senator) supported the ordination of women as pandits because it is sanctioned by the Vedas and said that ‘women aspiring to be priests should be allowed to do so; this nation now needs more spirituality and there are none better than women to do the job’ (ibid.). 24

In Trinidad, and elsewhere in the Caribbean, the term ‘pandit’ is now used to refer to the performer of Hindu rites and rituals as also the learned authority on Hindu religious and spiritual matters. 25 Indrani Rampersad is an independent writer and women’s activist. She is the daughter of Ranjit Singh (a tailor by trade) and Latchmin (from a family of Hindu activists) and is married to Mahindranath Rampersad, an electrical engineer and businessman. She was educated at Benares Hindu University (B.A. Hon 1976) and University of Pune (M.A. 1998 and Ph.D. 2003), both in India. Her field of specialisation is communication studies and she worked as a teacher and journalist in Trinidad. In 2013, she received Trinidad & Tobago’s National Award (Gold) for her contribution to the development of women’s rights and issues in the sphere of religion and community (see Perot, 1993; Saith, 1993). 26 The Arya Pratinidhi Sabha of Trinidad Inc. is an organisation recognised by the Government of Trinidad & Tobago for conducting the affairs of Vedic religion and culture. The Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha of Trinidad & Tobago Inc. is the largest Puranic-Hindu organisation which is similarly recognised. 27 The first female pandit in Trinidad was Deokie Devi, who had single-handedly raised and educated eight children and became a pandita at the age of 24. In April 1995, the Hindu Prachar Kendra held a function in celebration of Devi’s 74th birthday and in recognition of 50 years of her dedicated service to Hinduism and its culture. Indrani Rampersad, speaking in her feature address at this function, spoke of the opposition that Devi faced as a woman in a field that had been the exclusive preserve of men at that time (see Trinidad Guardian, April 29, 1995, p. 13).

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7 Family, Kinship, and Gender …

According to Rampersad, the controversy resulting from her ordination as a pandita served ‘a positive purpose, for it led many women to asking “why not a woman?”’ (1999: 140). She argued that those opposing her as a pandita are reacting to the equality of women by invoking patriarchal values. She recognised that her acceptance as a ‘female pandit’ in the wider Hindu community is going to be difficult and that relationships between pandits and families evolve over a lifetime (see Perot, 1993). Critiquing patriarchy among Trinidad Hindus, Rampersad observes that their menfolk have ‘great difficulties in coping with their ambivalent feelings towards women’: on the one hand, they worship female deities and accord the highest place of honour in traditional homes, and on the other, they subject their women to several man-made laws circumscribing their role to the domestic sphere and denying them access to societal power (1999: 142). She is also critical of women who fight for gender and race equality in society, but ‘who never seriously consider the question of their own equality in religious and spiritual maters’ (ibid.: 142). She recognises the tremendous odds stacked against women who want to fight against patriarchy. While she would welcome the support of others in this fight, the lack of it, she argues, ‘should not deter us’ (ibid.: 143). Thus, Rampersad’s efforts to secure equality with men in religious matters is noteworthy (see Mehta, 2004: 79).

7.3.3.2

Matikor: Cultural Space Against Patriarchy

Traditionally, Indian women in Trinidad had carved out culturally determined spaces for reclaiming their status as also to subvert patriarchal norms. Matikor has been one such space for the Hindu women. It is a woman-centred and woman-dominated ceremony of female sexuality and sexual ribaldry on the eve of a Hindu wedding ceremony (see Baksh-Soodeen, 1999: 194–196; Kanhai, 1999: xi). During this ceremony, the bride-to-be is initiated into female eroticism, and teenage girls get their sexual education, as they are drawn into the dancing circle by the older and middleaged women (Baksh-Soodeen, 1999: 195). In this ceremony, ‘rural women repossess their bodies through sexual parody, openly satirizing the sanctity of patriarchal codes of social and sexual conduct for women’ (Mehta, 2004: 97). Men are, as a norm, excluded from this ceremony; the tassa drummers, who are male, beat the drums standing at a distance and do not actually view the proceedings. This ceremony has its origins in the oral culture which the women indentured immigrants brought to the Caribbean, ‘etched in their minds and bodies’ (Kanhai, 1999: xi). It provided women with an exclusive social space for the articulation and celebration which is denied to them in the routine of everyday life. It also provided them an opportunity to protest and resist, even if only symbolically, the degradation and depersonalisation imposed upon them by patriarchy. As Rosanne Kanhai observes, ‘as a grassroots Hindu festival, communal religious rituals were embedded in matikor activities, thus bringing together the sacred and the profane, the carnal and the spiritual, the political and the social’ (ibid.: xi). Though in India this ceremony

7.3 Status of Woman and Gender Relations

159

is associated with lower caste communities in the rural north, in Trinidad it became customary in all Hindu weddings. The fact that matikor has survived in the twenty-first century is suggestive of its endurance and transformative capacity. Though predominantly a Hindu ceremony rooted in the rural community, it is not uncommon for Muslim and Christian women and women from urban areas to participate in it. As Indian women enter the mainstream society, Kanhai points out, this ceremony acts as ‘a reminder of the spiritual strength found in community and tradition’ (ibid.: xii). For anthropologists and sociologists, it provides ‘a lens through which the identity of Indo-Caribbean women can be explored’, as suggested by Kanhai (ibid.: xii; see also Mehta, 2004: 97–98). With the advancement of technology, especially the spread of mobile-phone videography, matikor has lost its ‘women only’ forte and is now open to male gaze, too.28 Inadvertently, apart from its voyeuristic interest, the ceremony being dragged into the public gaze tells the Indo-Trinidadian men what their womenfolk think of them and their patriarchal norms. One fall out of matikor going public is its dramatic visibility in the Indo-Trinidadian fusion musical/dance form called chutney soca.

7.3.3.3

Chutney as a Protest Against Patriarchy

One sphere in which patriarchy has been challenged more openly is in the performance art form known in Trinidad, and elsewhere in the Caribbean, as chutney, an Indo-Trinidadian flavoured calypso (see Ingram, 1997). Chutney is a distinct IndoTrinidadian fusion genre which blends Bhojpuri folk music with Caribbean calypso and soca29 music. Satnarine Balkaransingh (2016: 174–180) traces its humble beginnings to early immigration times when Dom and other lower caste girmitiyas from Bihar provided entertainment with ‘chatak music and chatak nautch; spicy song and dance’ during ritual occasions and festive occasions of the immigrants. As a genre of Indo-Trinidadian music, it entered the proscenium stage in the late 1960s and was given the brand name ‘Chutney’ in the 1970s. In Hindi and many Indian languages, the word chutney refers to a spicey or savoury condiment or sauce made of fruits/vegetables with tamarind/vinegar and spices. Its capacity to titillate the taste buds is implied in its metaphorical usage to refer to the capacity of the musical genre to titillate eroticism. Its metamorphosis over the decades in the second half of the twentieth century was characterised by the introduction of different musical contents (including lines from Hindu devotional songs [bhajans] and Hindi film songs) and words from many languages and dialects that the girmitiyas had brought with them—Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Hindi, Urdu—and the local Trini words, too. The element of dance was introduced into its performance 28

During my fieldwork, I have had an opportunity to watch a video recording of this ceremony, and I can testify to its, albeit transient, liberating experience for women. 29 Soca is an acronym formed from Soul of Calypso. The term owes its origin to Garfield Blackman (Ras Shorty I) who created it as a musical form by mixing the dholak (a two-headed hand drum, a folk percussion instrument widely used in north India) and spiritual lyrics into a calypso beat. The original tempo of 85 bpm (beats per minute) is now 160 bpm (see Mendes, 2012: 173).

160

7 Family, Kinship, and Gender …

in the public sphere; winein’ (wining), as this spicy dance accompaniment is called, involves the rotation of the waist and hips in a sexually suggestive manner. This blend of music and dance is now well-known as Chutney Soca and has soared in popularity since the late 1980s (see Constance, 1991; Manuel, 2000). It has since spread to other girmitiya diasporic societies in the Caribbean (Guyana, Jamaica, and Surinam) and elsewhere (Fiji, Mauritius, and South Africa) and among the twice-removed Indo-Caribbean diasporics in Canada, The Netherlands, UK, and USA. This genre of music, song, and dance, which Indo-Trinidadian women are now using to reclaim their socio-cultural space makes a political statement against patriarchy as also caste and class domination (see Reddock, 1998a), has its origins in matikor. Songs and dance originally composed and performed by women in a cloistered ceremony are now in the public arena of competitions and festivals for an audience composed of males and females of all religions and races, not only for viewing but also for participation. In the public chutney fetes, as Balkaransingh notes, and I can confirm, ‘the women “outshine” and outperform the males in their “enjoyment” of the dance. They move to the accompaniment of the music in a sort of frenetic, hypnotic trance’ (2016: 176). According to Brinda Mehta, pelvic gyrations (winein’)30 in chutney performance imitate the contractions of the lower pelvis during labour and symbolize the ultimate orgasmic expression of the body as it breaks free from itself and releases new life. The final outburst of life highlights the uncontrollable and uncontrolled power of the female body to negotiate its own terms of sexual agency through autonomous action. (2004: 98)

The performance of chutney in public by Indo-Trinidadian women is interpreted as their effort ‘to defy normative codes of Hindu patriarchal morality and its prescriptions for women’s private and domesticated sexuality that should be relegated to the confines of the bedroom’ (ibid.: 98); i.e., their disregard for patriarchy and its dictates. In this popular ‘village-type theatrical event the “vulgar becomes natural and the obscene, joyous. Female libido with all its raw sexuality, banality and bacchanalia is publicly displayed in these liberating moments …’ (Balkaransingh, 2016: 176– 177). Rawwida Baksh-Soodeen views chutney as ‘a very positive development’, it ‘speaks to the concepts of cultural creativity and renewal’ and ‘it points to the growing emancipation of Indian women’ in Trinidad (1999: 197–198). The emancipation of Indo-Trinidadian women is, no doubt, linked to the development of education among them and their economic independence resulting from the inroads they have made in the work sphere. The Indo-Trinidadians, both men and women, I spoke to are divided over this: while some see this as an inevitable social change which the community is experiencing, others decry it as a vulgar display of sexuality in public, which is culturally improper.31 One of my Indo-Trinidadian students at The University of the 30

Baksh-Soodeen clarifies that the dancing of Hindu women in matikor ceremony ‘is distinctly Indian, with its own movements and rhythms’ though it might ‘actually invoke similar feelings and responses’ as the dancing of women at Carnival and fetes which have African origin (1999: 195–196). 31 For a critique of chutney as a musical form, see Patasar (1995: 82–85).

7.3 Status of Woman and Gender Relations

161

West Indies, an orthodox Hindu, fervently tried to dissuade me from attending a chutney programme as it may offend my Hindu sensibility. There have even been calls for police control over the dancing of Indo-Trinidadian women at the chutney competitions and festivals. Notwithstanding opposition from religious orthodoxy and patriarchal conservatives, chutney stands out as a uniquely popular original Indo-Trinidadian music genre. The analysis of the challenges to patriarchy in Trinidad, which has implications for Indo-Trinidadian women, would be incomplete if we do not mention the role of various women’s movements in the country. Noteworthy here are such organisations as the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at The University of the West Indies at its St Augustine campus in Trinidad; The Coterie of Social Workers headquartered in Port of Spain; Womantra; and The Hindu Women’s Organisation of Trinidad & Tobago. The Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action, an umbrella organisation for progressive feminist groups in the Caribbean, based in Castries, St Lucia. Also, important to mention in this context is the significant role of scholars, writers, and artistes like Ramabai Espinet, Rosanne Kanhai, Patricia Mohammed, Drupatee Ramgoonai, Indrani Rampersad, and Rhoda Reddock in raising the consciousness of women in their fight against patriarchy. Indo-Trinidadian women have been challenging the stereotypes about themselves and have even risen high in several realms, including to the office of the prime minister of Trinidad & Tobago (see Chap. 5: Epilogue). In this chapter, I have explained the reconstitution and re-institutionalisation of family among Indo-Trinidadians and its contribution to their development as a distinctive girmitiya diasporic community. The kinship network that they have established has unified them under the larger umbrella of an ethnic community, though with different religious identities. While the elements for this re-constitution are, no doubt, drawn from their socio-cultural memories of the ancestral land, what has come to be developed in distant Trinidad is distinct from any system existing in India today; it is both simplified and contextualised to their existence as a girmitiya diaspora. One inadvertent consequence of the reconstitution and re-institutionalisation of family and kinship among Indo-Trinidadians is the resurgence of patriarchy, which during the early decades of the indentured era was more or less dissolved because of the sex-ratio imbalance, which resulted in an acute shortage of women; they became prized, they acquired freedom of choice in marital and sexual matters, and their status improved. The process of setting this imbalance right through a higher fertility rate among Indian women during the first half of the twentieth century was considerably responsible for this32 ; their identity shifted from themselves as individuals to their role in the family. But, even so, patriarchy, as it was resurrected among Indo-Trinidadians was nowhere near its harsher counterpart in rural north India. Furthermore, over the 32

In Trinidad, between 1921 and 1945, the natural increase of Indians (per 1000 population) was 16.57, while for the rest of the population it was 8.45. Between 1936 and 1940, these numbers increased to 23.37 and 12.60 respectively. The trend continued during 1941–1945, with the respective numbers being 29.66 and 16.59 (see Haniff, 1999: 220).

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last 50 years or so, Indo-Trinidadian women have been contesting this patriarchy, and they have been amply successful.

References Angrosino, M. V. (1972). Outside is death: Alcoholism, ideology and community organization among the East Indians of Trinidad [Unpublished PhD thesis]. University of North Carolina. Baksh-Soodeen, R. (1999). Power, gender and chutney. In R. Kanhai (Ed.), Matikor: The politics of identity for Indo-Caribbean women (pp. 194–198). School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Balkaransingh, S. (2016). The shaping of a culture: Rituals and festivals in Trinidad compared with selected counterparts in India, 1990–2014. Hansib Publications. Central Statistical Office. (2012). Trinidad and Tobago 2011 population and housing census— Demographic report. The Central Statistical Office, Ministry of Planning and Sustainable Development, Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Retrieved November 28, 2020, from https://cso.gov.tt/stat_publications/2011-population-and-housing-census-demographic-rep ort/ Constance, Z. O. (1991). Tassa, chutney and soca: The East Indian contribution to the calypso. The Author. Davids, L. (1964). The East Indian family overseas. Social and Economic Studies, 13(3), 383–396. Freilich, M. (1960). Cultural diversity among Trinidadian peasants [Ph.D. thesis in anthropology]. Columbia University. Haniff, N. (1999). My grandmother worked in the field: Stereotypes regarding East Indian women in the Caribbean—Honourable mention. In R. Kanhai (Ed.), Matikor: The politics of identity for Indo-Caribbean women (pp. 18–31). School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Harewood, J. (1975). The population of Trinidad and Tobago (CICRED Series, 1974—World Population Year). CICRED [Committee for International Cooperation for National Research in Demography]. Retrieved April 7, 2021, from http://www.cicred.org/Eng/Publications/pdf/cc50.pdf Ingram, A. K. (1997). What is chutney music? An exploratory essay. Paper presented at Seminar in North Indian Musics, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. Retrieved September 22, 2021, from https://aingram.web.wesleyan.edu/chutney.html Jha, J. C. (1985). The Indian heritage in Trinidad. In J. G. La Guerre (Ed.), Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (2nd ed., pp. 1–18). Extra Mural Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Kanhai, R. (1999). Introduction. In R. Kanhai (Ed.), Matikor: The politics of identity for IndoCaribbean women (pp. xi–xv). School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Karve, I. (1968). Kinship organization in India (3rd ed.). Asia Publishing House. Klass, M. (1988/1961). East Indians in Trinidad: A study of cultural persistence (reissued ed.). Waveland Press. Lowenthal, D. (1972). West Indian societies (American Geographical Society Research Series— Number 26). Oxford University Press (published for the Institute of Race Relations, London in collaboration with the American Geographical Society, New York). Malik, Y. K. (1971). East Indians in Trinidad: A study in minority politics. Oxford University Press for Institute of Race Relations. Manuel, P. (2000). East Indian Music in the West Indies: Tan singing, chutney and the making of Indo-Caribbean culture. Temple University Press.

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Mehta, B. (2004). Diasporic (dis)locations: Indo-Caribbean women writers negotiate the Kala Pani. The University of the West Indies Press, Kingston, Jamaica. Mendes, J. (2012/1985). Côté ci Côté là: Trinidad & Tobago dictionary (3rd/signature ed.). The Author. Mohammed, P. (1993). Structures of experience: Gender, ethnicity and class in the lives of two East Indian women. In K. Yelvington (Ed.), Trinidad ethnicity (pp. 208–234). Macmillan. Murdock, G. P. (1965 [1949]). Social structure. The Free Press. Naipaul, S. (Seepersad). (2001/1976). The adventures of Gurudeva (with a Foreword by V. S. Naipual; Indian ed.). Buffalo Books. Nevadomsky, J. J. (1980). Abandoning the retentionist hypothesis: Family changes among the East Indians in rural Trinidad. International Journal of Sociology of the Family, 10(2), 181–197. Nevadomsky, J. J. (1983a/1980). Changes over time and space in the East Indian family in rural Trinidad. In G. Kurian & R. P. Srivastava (Eds.), Overseas Indians: A study in adaptation (pp. 180– 214). Vikas Publishing House. Nevadomsky, J. J. (1983b). Changing patterns of marriage, family and kinship among the East Indians in rural Trinidad. Anthropos, 78(1/2), 107–148. Nevadomsky, J. J. (1985). Developmental sequences of domestic groups in an East Indian community in rural Trinidad. Ethnology, 24(1), 1–11. Niehoff, A., & Niehoff, J. (1960). East Indians in the West Indies (Milwaukee Public Museum Publications in Anthropology No. 6). Milwaukee Public Museum. Patasar, M. (1995). Modern trends in Indo-Trinidad music. In B. Samaroo, et al. (Eds.), In celebration of 150 years of the Indian contribution to Trinidad and Tobago (Vol. II. The Sesquicentenary Review, 50 Years Later, 1945–1995) (pp. 75–85). D. Quentrall-Thomas. Perot, H. R. (1993, October 10). The making of a pandita. Sunday Guardian (Port of Spain, Trinidad), p. 17. Rampersad, I. (1999). Becoming a pandita. In R. Kanhai (Ed.), Matikor: The politics of identity for Indo-Caribbean women (pp. 140–143). School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Reddock, R. (1985). Freedom denied: Indian women and indentureship in Trinidad & Tobago, 1845–1917. Economic and Political Weekly, 20(43), WS79–WS87. Reddock, R. (1998a). Contestations over national culture in Trinidad and Tobago: Considerations of ethnicity, class and gender. In C. Barrow (Ed.), Caribbean portraits: Essays on gender ideologies and identities (pp. 414–435). Ian Randle Publishers. Reddock, R. (1998b). The indentureship experience: Women in Trinidad and Tobago, 1845–1917. In S. Jain & R. Reddock (Eds.), Women plantation workers: International experiences (pp. 29–48). Routledge. Saith, R. (Compiled). (1993). Why not a woman? Paria. Schwartz, B. M. (1965). Patterns of East Indian family organization in Trinidad. Caribbean Studies, 5(1), 23–36. Sital, K. A. (2018). Secrets we kept: Three women of Trinidad. W. W. Norton. Vertovec, S. (1992). Hindu Trinidad: Religion, ethnicity and socio-economic change. Macmillan.

Chapter 8

Religion, Ethnic Protest, and Cultural Contestation

Desperate people subject to poverty, marginalization, or physical threats turn to their religious traditions in search of an alternative political order that satisfies their need for welfare, recognition, and security. In this context, religious communities operate primarily as refuges of solidarity, sources of cultural reaffirmation, and safe havens. —Andreas Hasenclever and Volker Rittberger (2003: 111) … religion surfaces in different shapes and forms prior, during, and in the aftermath of protests. —Yasemin Akbaba (2019)

Religion as a belief system, whether it is organised or not, is a universal socio-cultural phenomenon. To the individuals, ideally, it explains the meaning of their everyday experiences, guides them in their routine affairs, and gives certainty to their uncertain future, including the afterlife. To the community, it gives an identity, fostering a sense of belonging among its adherents and unifying them. As such, religion is ‘an essential and permanent aspect of humanity’ (Durkheim, 1965: 13). Historically, there have been many religions in the world and many countries are characterised by a plurality of religions, all answering, ‘though in different ways, to the given conditions of human existence’ (ibid.: 15). Sociology of religion has by now well established the socio-cultural significance of religion for human beings, and the communities they live in, the world over. One aspect of religion that deserves special attention is its role as an ethnic marker in multi-religious societies, especially in those societies where religious heterogeneity is the result of the introduction of people belonging to different races and religious persuasions and in a situation where one religion has been dominant and is associated with the ruling class and its beliefs, values, and practices. The inevitable consequence of this appears to be the use by the immigrant populations of their religious ideas and practices to articulate ethnic protest and to contest cultural domination. In this chapter, an attempt has been made to delineate this with reference to the Indians in Trinidad in the early decades of their immigration to the island colony and as a numerically dominant ethnic community as Indo-Trinidadians in more contemporary times.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7_8

165

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8 Religion, Ethnic Protest, and Cultural Contestation

8.1 Encounter with Christianity India, the ancestral land of the Indo-Trinidadians, has been home to many religions and their sects and denominations. The vast majority of the people in the region from which the indentured migrants were recruited professed some form of Hinduism (85%), followed by the major minority who practised Sunni Islam (13%) (see Crooke, 1925, 1971). The religious background of indentured immigrants more or less reflected this distribution: of the 95,821 indentured migrants who embarked from Calcutta to Trinidad between 1874/1875 and 1917, the vast majority (85.92%) were Hindus; while 14% were Muslims, Christians constituted a measly 0.08% (see Table 8.1).1 When the girmitiyas arrived in Trinidad, Christianity was the dominant religion of the colony. It was the religion of the ruling class, the colonial masters. The Christian Church was ‘a privileged enclave’, as Christianity was ‘the religion of the state … even when it was not a state religion’ (Neehall, 1993: 7). Christianity was also the religion of the numerically dominant emancipated African slaves (Creoles), whose own tribal religions had been completely de-constituted. As followers of Christianity, both the colonial masters and the emancipated slaves were conceited; they thought Christianity was superior to Hinduism and Islam, both in its theology and in its values. A letter to the editor in a British Guiana newspaper summarised the disposition of Christians towards the religions of the girmitiyas in the Caribbean: We have been, and still are enduring, the ugly, the immoral, and the uncivilized sight among the coolies. […] … it is the duty of the Government to show to the world that the heathen immigrants are not brought here merely as the festering wens of a morbid civilization; but that they are advancing as Christians in thought, habits, and actions. (Quoted in Comins, 1893: 10)

Efforts were, no doubt, made to proselytise the Indian immigrants to Christianity from the earliest times, but not with much success.2 For reasons to be discussed in the next chapter, the one denomination that succeeded to some extent in this regard was the Presbyterian Church of Trinidad & Tobago under the leadership of Rev. John Morton of Nova Scotia, Canada. In the 1890s, Governor Sir William Robinson observed that The Hindus seem to be highly indifferent in matters of religion, and from sheer habit probably, steadily adhere to their pagan tenets and practices. Only an imperceptible minority have become converts, and I say with regret that little reliance can be placed on these converts. (Quoted in Look Lai, 1993: 259)

1

The religious composition of the indentured emigrants from Calcutta to British Guiana during 1874/75–1917 was more or less the same: Hindus, 84.73%; Muslims, 15.17%, and Christians, 0.10% (Laurence, 1994: 111). 2 1n the 1860s, A Wesleyan-Methodist missionary did some work among Indian immigrants in Savanna Grande. But, since he spoke only Tamil and not Hindi, ‘his efforts were restricted to Madras Indians’ (Moore, 1995: 191). Moore gives a brief account of the weak efforts of other Christian denominations in converting Indian immigrants into their fold (ibid.: 189–206).

0.06

100

8

23,902

19

3707

84.41

100

0.08

15.51 24,594

25

2619

21,950

No.

1890–1899

100

0.10

10.65

89.25

%

22,717

9

3205

19,503

No.

1990–1909

100

0.04

14.11

85.85

%

10,870

10

1727

9133

No.

1910–1917

100

0.10

15.88

84.02

%

Note Data on the religion of emigrants are available in the annual reports of migration from Calcutta only from the year 1874/75 Source Computed from Laurence (1994: 111)

Total

13,738

2160

Christians

84.22

15.72

11,570

Hindus

Muslims

20,176

No.

%

No.

%

1880/81–1889

1874/75–1879/80

Religion

Table 8.1 Religion of Indians who embarked from Calcutta to Trinidad during 1874/1875–1910/1917

95,821

71

13,418

82,332

No.

Total

100

0.08

14.00

85.92

%

8.1 Encounter with Christianity 167

168

8 Religion, Ethnic Protest, and Cultural Contestation

Table 8.2 Distribution of Indians by religion in Trinidad, 1891–1946 Year

No. of Indians

Religion Hindu

Muslim

Others

1891

70,218

78.6

12.3

9.1

1901

86,383

79.8

12.1

8.1

1911

110,911

76.7

13.5

9.8

1921

121,420

72.7

14.6

12.7

1931

138,667

67.9

15.3

16.8

1946

195,747

64.5

16.7

18.8

Note Only percentage distribution is shown Source Computed from various censuses

Thus, over the successive census years from 1891 to 1946, i.e., a century after their arrival in Trinidad, and several decades of missionary effort, over 81% of the Indian immigrants adhered to their religions (see Table 8.2).3 That about 19% of them had switched their religion was mainly due to the sustained work of the Presbyterian Church among the Indian immigrants. The lack of such sustained work among Indian immigrants in British Guiana explains the relatively higher percentage (91%) of adherents to their original religion in that colony. Given their ethnocentrism, for a long time, the Christians in Trinidad neither understood nor appreciated the religions of the immigrant Indians, whom they treated as ‘heathens and morally degraded’ (Brereton, 1985: 29). The fact that the Hindus stuck to their religious beliefs was ‘astonishing’ to the British observers. For instance, Daniel Hart who visited an Indian village in the early 1860s writes, In the centre of the village was a Hindoo temple, made up rudely out of boards with a verandah running round it. The doors were locked. An old man who had charge told us we could not enter; a crowd, suspicious and sullen, gathered about us as we tried to prevail upon him; so we had to content ourselves with the outside, which was gaudily and not unskilfully painted in Indian fashion. There were gods and goddesses in various attitudes; Vishnu fighting with the monkey god, Vishnu with cutlass and shield, the monkey with his tail round one tree while he brandished two others, one in each hand, as clubs. I suppose that we smiled, for our curiosity was resented, and we found it prudent to withdraw. (1865: 66–67)

Similarly, John Henry Collens, who was then the superintendent of the Boys’ Model and Normal School in Port of Spain, observed in the 1880s, that one may often in the evening, work being done, see and hear a group of coolies crouching down in a semicircle, chanting whole stanzas of the epic poems, Ramayan, etc. … the wily Babagee [babaji, Hindu spiritual teacher] who reads to his ignorant countrymen accounts from the

3

In the Caribbean colonies, where the Indians were a small minority, they were generally Christianised—Catholic, in the French Antilles; Protestant, in Jamaica—unlike in British Guiana and Trinidad where the great majority remained Hindus and Muslims (Lowenthal, 1972: 150).

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Ramayan, or ‘Book of the Exploits of Ram’, expects to get, and is tolerably sure of receiving, a large offertory for his pains’. (1888: 233)4

The inability of the colonial regime in Trinidad, as elsewhere in the Caribbean, to understand and appreciate the religion of the Indian immigrants combined with its ethnocentrism and superiority complex led it to marginalise and delegitimise their socio-cultural practices which had deep roots in their religions. Thus, as mentioned in Sect. 6.1, the marriages conducted according to the traditional Hindu and Muslim rites were not recognised for almost a century after the arrival of Indians in Trinidad. This led to untoward social consequences for the legitimacy of the children born to couples contracting such marriages and also to the inheritance of property by them. It was only after a prolonged demand and protest that Muslim marriages were legalised in 1936, followed by Hindu marriages, in 1946. Similarly, the Hindu practice of cremating their dead was also banned.5 Traditionally, the Hindus in India, performed 16 samskaras (lifecycle rites), with antyesti samskara being the last rites. The last rites were performed by the children and/or the near relatives of the deceased with the belief that it ensured felicity for the soul in the afterlife. While for various reasons,6 the Hindu immigrants in Trinidad could not perform all the 16 samskaras, they understandably retained the antyesti samskara.7 Customarily, most Hindu communities in India cremate their dead on a ritual pyre. However, since cremation was outlawed in Trinidad, much to their discontent, Hindus in Trinidad were forced to bury their dead.8 By the late 1930s, the Hindus had begun demanding the right to cremate their dead. In 1938, permission for cremation was ‘granted to certain cases where special application has been made’ (quoted in Kistow, 2004: 252). That the Hindus in Trinidad had been ‘powerless to secure from the authorities the right to dispose of their dead in accordance with the practice in their native land and the injunctions of their religion’ was noted in an article that appeared in The Hindu, a daily published from Madras (now Chennai) in 1939 (requoted by Kistow, 2004: 252). 4

For similar other descriptions of Hindu worship and Hindu temples by Presbyterian Rev. John Morton, Roman Catholics Fr Armand Massé, and English author Charles Kingsley, betraying their religious prejudices, see Ramesar (1994: 101–102). 5 Since the Muslims followed the Christian practice of burying their dead, which was accepted as normal and legal, they were not affected. 6 The absence of experts or pandits, the unavailability of ritual materials and ingredients, etc., were some of these reasons. It is important to note that, initially, the rites were directed by old ladies based on what they knew. 7 Kistow (2004) provides a detailed account of the Hindu funerary beliefs and rituals and their metamorphosis in Trinidad. The absence of pandits, the absence of ‘holy’ rivers, the unavailability of ritual materials and ingredients, etc., meant that the Hindu Trinidadians had to innovate and adapt themselves to the situation. It is important to note that, initially, in the absence of experts, the funerary rites, as all other rites, were directed by old ladies based on what they knew. Thus, the antyesti samskara as it is practised by Trinidad Hindus today is not just an abridged version of what is prescribed in the ancient Hindu texts (see Jha, 1976: 51), but is ‘uniquely Trinidadian’ (Kistow, 2004: 253). 8 Clarke and Clarke (2010: 110) provide a brief description of Hindu funeral ceremony.

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In response to the agitation by the Hindus, the colonial government began considering the establishment of crematoria. The Hindus insisted on the ‘pyre system’ for cremation, as that alone would fulfil their religious requirement. Those opposed to it regarded it as a fire hazard and a menace to the health of the community. It was only in 1953 that cremation was made legal in Trinidad (see Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs, 2016a). Today, the Hindus have the option to either cremate their dead by the ritual pyre system or by using crematoria provided by funeral homes (ibid.: 255). On a designated day, they immerse the ashes in a waterbody (lake, streams, river, sea, etc.) regarded as holy to mark the moment of the dead person’s fusion with nature or the universe or definitive liberation from the ‘prison’ of the body. It must be recorded here, that vide the instruction Piam et Constantem of 5 July 1963, the Roman Catholic Church permitted cremation of Catholics and this was incorporated into the Code of Canon Law (1983) and the Code of Canons of Oriental Churches (1990). It was held that ‘cremation, in and of itself, objectively negates neither the Christian doctrine of the soul’s immortality nor that of the resurrection of the body’. However, it required that ‘the ashes of the faithful must be laid to rest in a sacred place’ (e.g., a cemetery, a church, etc.), and not scattered in ‘the air, on land, at sea or in some other way, nor may they be preserved in mementos, pieces of jewelry or other objects’.9 Other Christian denominations followed suit.

8.2 Religion as Protest The adherence to their religious beliefs and practices among the immigrant Indians in a society that not only looked down upon them but was also socio-culturally antagonistic to them was indeed a form of resistance. As Rev. Roy Neehall notes, in the minds of Indian immigrants, religion is associated with ‘a unique culture or tradition, with customs and a way of life rather than with mere spirituality’ (1993: 7). Not surprisingly, some leaders of the Indian community, saw ‘the spiritual monopoly of Christian schools over the education of Hindu and Muslim children … as a threat to the survival of their culture and religion’ (ibid.: 8). Rev. Neehall rightly interprets the advent of Hindu and Muslims schools not only as a service to the respective communities, but also as ‘an attempt to provide alternative educational facilities: it was also an act of protestor resistance’ (ibid.: 8). Right from the time of their arrival in Trinidad and through their life on the estates, the Indians, especially Hindus, practised many rites and rituals of their religion. This was, no doubt, a private affair confined to their home or the neighbourhood. But with their settlement as a community post indenture, these practices gradually became a public celebration. The colonial authorities, anticipating the protest potential of any public gathering of the Indian immigrants, imposed restrictions on public celebrations 9

https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_201 60815_ad-resurgendum-cum-christo_en.html#_ftnref16 (accessed October 12, 2021).

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of religious events, and even banned some of them. Two such public celebrations of immigrant Indians prominent in the nineteenth century—the firepass ceremony and Hosay—deserve some elaboration here.10 The former was celebrated by timeexpired Indians, while the latter was celebrated by estate-resident Indians (Tikasingh, 1976).

8.2.1 Firepass Ceremony The ‘firepass’ (‘passing through the fire’) ceremony,11 was an annual rite brought into Trinidad by the Madrasis, the immigrants who came from Madras. This ceremony came to be seen as ‘an integral aspect of Madrassi identity in colonial Trinidad’ (McNeal, 2013a: 285).12 To confirm its Madrasi roots, Keith E. McNeal puts forward incontrovertible evidence: in the late nineteenth century, missionary Father Cothonay described it as the ‘greatest festival of the pagan coolies from Madras’13 ; colonial law described it as ‘the Madrasse Festival’, and a report in the Port of Spain Gazette (12 August 1890) calls it ‘Thimi Therunal’ (Tamil, t¯ı = fire; tirun¯a.l = holy day, religious festival) (see ibid.: 286, 288–289).14 In this ceremony, individuals who were believed to be possessed by shakti15 (cosmic energy associated with the Divine Mother goddess) walked over hot cinders between two shrines. Conducted within the matrix of shakti devotionalism, this ceremony was rich in religious content. As in South India, in Trinidad, too, it was a ‘cult of affliction’; its practitioners took vows to particular deities that they would pass through the fire if their illness was cured or their problem solved (ibid.). Based on oral and historical sources, McNeal (ibid.: 286) provides a detailed analysis of the firepass ritual and ceremony. He finds variations and ‘structural flexibility’ in its observation over time and in different parts of Trinidad. He, however, identifies five recurring aspects of the ceremony’s ritual structure. They are (i) a period of abstention (fasting) from meat and sexual activity, (ii) prohibition of women from crossing through the firepit, (iii) erection of a tall wooden pole (called tavasson

10

These two festivals were more popular than festivals like Divali and Phagwa, which have become prominent today. 11 Also called ‘passing through the fire’, ‘fire-passing’, or ‘firewalking’ ceremony. 12 In the colonial period, the newspapers referred to the firepass ceremony as ‘Madras Coolie Festival’ (New Era, 18 August 1884), ‘St James Tamil Fire Pass Festival’ (Port of Spain Gazette, 4 December 1919), etc. (quoted in McNeal 2013a: 286). 13 Ramesar (1994: 111) reproduces Father Cothonay’s detailed description of the ceremony that he witnessed in 1893 and Father Massé’s prosaic description in 1879. 14 Vertovec’s informants (in the mid-1980s), who had witnessed the ceremony decades ago, testified to ‘a largely South Indian ritual style and the use of Tamil or Telugu utterances’ (1992: 130, En 26). 15 Sometimes personified as the Creatrix and is described as Adi Shakthi or Adi Para Shakthi, that is, primordial inconceivable energy. In South India, the goddess is popularly worshipped as Amma, the Divine Mother.

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maran)16 from on top of which a pious man recites prayers and throws down various types of prasad (food offerings to the deity), later to be consumed by firewalkers and observers below, (iv) a purificatory sea or river bath by the firewalkers, and (v) beating of tappu,17 a specific type of drum. In addition, he mentions two variable elements of the ritual action, namely, ecstatic trance manifestation and animal sacrifice. Collens, who witnessed one such ceremony in the 1880s, gives a vivid description: The oldest priests, with their most fervent disciples, all nearly naked, pass repeatedly to and fro over smouldering ashes, shouting and gesticulating vehemently meanwhile. This they do quite publicly, even preferring spectators to privacy. All the same, they bitterly resent anything approaching to ridicule or interference; and, being worked up at such times to an almost incredible pitch of frenzied excitement, a collision would be fraught with the most unpleasant consequences. (1888: 235)

The ceremony is generally in honour of some South Indian deity. The feast which follows is partaken by all those who attend. Collens mentions the name of one deity, Madrivele, who was believed to have ‘the marvellous faculty of entering houses through the smallest crevice’ and he used to display ‘an inordinate fondness for fowls and rum, and he would help himself freely to these at all times’ (ibid.). Hence, in the ceremony in honour of Madrivele, ‘the eating of chickens and the drinking of copious libations of rum play an important part’ (ibid.). McNeal records that the firepass was performed from as early as 1867 at Cedar Grove, Naparima, and since 1868 at Peru Village, Mucurapo (now St James), and at El Dorado, Tacarigua, Chaguanas, Curepe, Waterloo, and Boissiere Village among other locations. He notes that ‘the last full-scale performance of old-style Madrassi firepass took place in the early 1950s at what is now the El Dorado Shiva Mandir’ (ibid.: 286). The persisting significance of the firepass ceremony lies in the fact that it has influenced and some of its aspects have been ‘appropriated by and reframed within contemporary forms of ecstatic Kali worship and related forms of Shakti Puja practiced in postcolonial Trinidad’18 (McNeal, 2013a: 285; see McNeal, 2013b). 16

Tamil, thavasu maram (literally thavasu tree), a pole with steps and a small platform on top, in South Indian temples, from which a priest recites prayers and makes offering to the deity. For visuals of its present-day manifestation in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, see https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=SOfiwswLuBo and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2q_EpiTYvA (accessed October 7, 2021). 17 Regarded as a symbol of Tamil culture, Thappu or Parai is one of the oldest drums, the mother of all skin instruments, used in South India and elsewhere in the Indian subcontinent. In temples, it is used to invoke the deities. It is a circular wooden frame, closed on one side and open on the other, enclosing cow skin membrane. It is held between the drummer’s shoulder and arm, and beaten using two wooden sticks—one long, thin flat bamboo stick, called sundu kuchi, and a thick stick (of any variety of wood), called adi kuchi. 18 McNeal mentions variations in firewalking ritual in south Tunapuna, Debe, Moruga, and Diamond Village, highlighting ‘the structural flexibility’ of this ritual performance (2013a: 287–288). See also ‘Firewalking Ceremony—El Dorado, Trinidad’, http://newglobalindian.com/ngi-wow/3611 (accessed October 7, 2021). During my field visits in 1994–1996, I did not come across any old-style firepass ceremony. Let alone the Kolkatiyya-origin informants, who were in a majority, even my few Madrassi-origin informants, including a student, did not allude to the adaptations of firewalking ritual in Kali worship.

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It must be pointed out that Shakti worship is pan-Indian, and ceremonies similar to ‘fire-passing’ have been recorded in Bihar and Chota Nagpur, particularly among tribal communities (see O’Malley, 1935), and even among Shia Muslims in Lucknow and Banaras (Varanasi) during Muharram (see Korom, 2003: 66).19 However, in Trinidad, this rite is not observed by Hindus who emigrated from north India (the Kalkatiyas), let alone Muslims; the Hindus repudiated it as being an aberration of an observance by the Madrasis.20 What peeved the colonial authorities most was that this ceremony was held in an open space right in front of the Anglican chapel dedicated to St Agnes in St James, Port of Spain21 : ‘… the obscenity displayed, the vile language and uproar, remind one of pandemonium’, noted Collens (ibid.).22 The press described the ceremony as ‘degrading practices’, ‘vile customs’, and ‘scandalous performances’ carried on by ‘gangs of semi-barbarians’ (quoted in Brereton, 1985: 29). By the 1880s, the firepass ceremony had become so popular that the colonial government, frightened by it, introduced an ordinance in 1882 (Legislative Ordinance No. 9) to curb it and Hosay (Jha, 1985: 5). The Ordinance required the organisers of these performances to obtain permission to organise processions or use such paraphernalia as torches. Breaking the provisions of this Ordinance invited imprisonment or fine.23

8.2.2 Hosay (Muharram) Unlike, the firepass ceremony, which was celebrated by the time-expired Indians, who mostly stayed outside the estates, the Hosay was celebrated by estate-resident Indians. Known more popularly as Muharram in India (and Taziyeh in Iran), this Shia Muslim festival was brought into Trinidad and taken to other sugar colonies by the North Indian Muslims. Muharram (al-muharram) is the first month of the Islamic calendar. Each year, during the first ten days of this month, Shia Muslims throughout the world commemorate the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, the 19

Korom observes that, during Muharram, in numerous neighbourhoods in Banaras (Varanasi) and Lucknow and elsewhere in India, ‘… a fire pit (al¯av¯a) is dug in which fires are lit every night. Each evening stick and sword dances are performed around the fire, and some people who have taken vows walk across the glowing embers barefoot or throw the coals into the air with the hands’ (2003: 66; see also 59). 20 McNeal cites a ‘decidedly critical and condescending’ report in the Port of Spain Gazette (August 12, 1890, p. 5), which mentions isolated instances of even Christians taking vows and participating ‘in this heathen and diabolical festival’, going through ‘all the formalities like any Hindoo …’ (2013a: 288). 21 The church, then located on Western Main Road, St James, was shifted to the new premises on Clarence Street, St James, in 1929. 22 Collens recalls that the rite is ‘similar to that mentioned and condemned in the Old Testament’ (1888: 235). 23 It is ironical that around this time ‘the Normandie Hotel in Port of Saint Ann’s, Port of Spain, began offering secular firewalking entertainment geared for tourists’ (Frances Henry, in personal communication to McNeal in March 2000) (McNeal, 2013a: 286).

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imam Husayn (or Husein)24 ; hence the name Hosay for its observance.25 In India, the ritual commemoration culminates on the tenth day (¯ash¯ur¯a) with the participants embarking on ‘a symbolic pilgrimage by carrying their taziyahs in a huge procession to graveyards representing the plains of Karbala where Husayn was murdered’, and in some parts of India, the taziyahs are ‘immersed in rivers, oceans, or sacred tanks of water following the Hindu custom of deity immersion (visarjan) after a religious festival’ (Korom, 2003: 5). As pointed out by Frank J. Korom, ‘being an annual rite of communal passage bridging each year to the next’, Muharram is ‘a process of symbolic community death and rebirth, a ritual of renewal par excellence’ (ibid.: 2). Traditionally, this day of mourning is observed by Shia Muslims only, and in India, as in Iran, it is marked by great emotional fervour, involving self-flagellation, etc. Collens (1888: 236–237) gives a first-hand account of how Hosay, as Muharram came to be called in Trinidad, was celebrated there in the 1880s. Each estate had its taziyha, made by the indentured labourers. Taziyha is a house of cardboard ornamented with tinsel and coloured paper, modelled to represent the tomb of Hosein, and, placing these in carts or on the heads of men, march about with them beating tom-toms and shouting ‘Hosein’ … Having paraded for some time, with dancing, cries of ‘Hosein, Hassan’, etc., they at length repair to the sea, if practicable – if not, to the nearest body of water – and, throwing their taziyas into it, the ceremony is ended. (Ibid.: 237)26

The immersion of taziyahs in a water body regarded as sacred is an aspect of ‘cultural accommodation’ to Hindu customs (Korom, 2003: 5) which is traceable to India. With very few Shias left in Trinidad, the observance of Hosay lacked its original drastic form of mourning, and it came to be observed by Muslim sects other than the Shia. From early on, even non-Muslims came to take part in it. Arthur and Juanita Niehoff refer to the two Hosay ceremonies that Daniel J. Crowley observed in the early 1950s in which ‘both Hindus and Negroes took part in the festivities’, including in the construction of the taziyah, ‘the symbolic wood and paper tomb of Husein, which is the central focus of the Hosse rites’ (1960: 143). That is, what was 24

Husein was killed on the tenth day of Muharram in 680 CE on the plains of Karbala (in presentday Iraq) when he was thought to be leading a group against the Ummayyad caliphate of Baghdad, the second of the four major caliphates established after the death of Prophet Muhammad. His death was interpreted by his followers as self-sacrifice and his grave shortly became a place of pilgrimage (von Grunebaum, 1951: 86). 25 Korom (2003) provides an excellent analysis of the Muharram rituals in Trinidad and situates them within the global development of the Shia popular piety in Iran and India. On the celebration of Hosay by Indo-Jamaicans, who called it ‘Hossay’, see Shepherd (1993: 171–174), and by Indo-Guyanese, who called it ‘Tadja’h’, see Mangru (1993). 26 Ramesar (1994: 105) summarises similar descriptions of Hosay by Catholic Father Massé in 1879 and Lady Brassey in 1883. Rev. Grant gives a description of the Hosay in the early 1920s: he adds that the taziyahs varied in size; ‘sometimes they are borne by one man; a larger may be carried by four; it is not unusual to see them placed on carts and wagons drawn by two, four or six mules’; on one occasion, he counted 83 taziyahs passing his door (1923: 68–69).

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essentially a Shia Muslim festival in India, had metamorphosed into a syncretised multi-religious and multi-racial ‘celebration’. For the Hindus, as in north India, the building of taziyah was the fulfilment of a vow or in anticipation of a wish to be fulfilled. The protagonist Gurudeva of Seepersad Naipaul’s novella, The Adventures of Gurudeva, tells his father that he has taken a vow that ‘he would build hoseys [taziyahs] in memory of Hassan and Hussein for five consecutive years’ and his father understands this as due to Gurudeva’s wish to ‘become the father of a manchild’ (Seepersad Naipaul, 2001: 59). Writing about the pre-1950s rural Trinidad, Seepersad Naipaul, with his uniquely anthropological imagination, notes how Hassan and Husein, the central figures of Hosay, a purely and ‘intrinsically Mohammedan affair’, had come to be included ‘in the vast, everaccommodating Hindu pantheon, and occupied fairly prominent niches in the infinite Valhalla of the gods; who could grant boons, even as Shiva or Kali or Hanuman could grant boons’ (ibid.: 60). The attraction for those, the majority of participants in Hosay, who did not believe in its intrinsic religiosity, lay in its observance as ‘a festival, a passion play with a semi-religious as well as a semi-carnival tang about it’ (ibid.: 60). A key aspect of the secularisation of Hosay is the considerable amount of alcohol drinking during the festivities. In the two Hosay ceremonies that the Niehoffs attended in the late 1950s, they found considerable drinking by ‘the musicians and the stick fighters’ (Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 143). In fact, they, like Crowley, found that some rum shops supported taziyahs and both the ceremonies that they observed in the lagoon ‘were being sponsored by owners of rumshops’ (ibid.: 143). Islam proscribes the use of alcohol as najis (impure) and, therefore, haram (forbidden). Although I know of some Muslims who consumed alcohol (both in India and in Trinidad), its free use in a religious ceremony is something unique to Trinidad Hosay, which is not found in India, let alone in Iran. If the drinking and gaiety associated with the secularisation of Hosay celebration attracted participation by people belonging to non-Muslim religions and non-Indian ethnic groups, it was vehemently criticised by the orthodox Muslims, especially Sunni Muslims, as being an ‘un-Islamic festival’ and even ‘a disgrace to Islam’ (letters to newspaper editors quoted by Niehoff & Niehoff, ibid.: 143). The Niehoffs quote a visiting Muslim missionary from the United States of America, a guest of the Anjuman Sunaat Association, who was ‘disappointed to see several persons with bottles, drinking, jumping, and actually amusing themselves at the beat of the drums during the procession of the local Hosein festival, although it is a sacred and solemn occasion for Muslims throughout the world’ (quoted in ibid: 143–144). It must, however, be mentioned that the critical attitude towards Hosay in Trinidad is as old as its early observance in the estates.27 Satnarine Balkaransingh re-quotes the following comments of ‘an “Englishman” with an acerbic, vitriolic pen’, who had observed a public Hosay procession in San Fernando: 27

The earliest observance of Hosay in Trinidad is reported to have begun in the 1850s, and the first estate to build a taziyah is said to be Philippine Estate near Couva. From the beginning, Hosay processions came to be described as ‘boisterous parades’ (see Wood, 1968: 152).

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I saw their heathen temple carried on men’s shoulders, heard their yelling, witnessed their dancing, gestures and other things connected to their pagan ceremonies; but here I could not refrain from shedding a sympathetic tear over the moral degradation of this benighted race of beings. (2016: 254–255)

Reporting on the situation in the 1880s Collens writes that Sunnis, the major Muslim denomination in Trinidad, who did not observe Hosay, ‘had petitioned the Government to put down the Taziya procession, on the ground that it was an insult to their religion, having on several occasions led to riot and murder, and that at the best it was but a foolish ceremony’ (1888: 237). The government did not accede to the petition of the Sunnis, evidently because it did not care for their religious sentiments. However, the colonial authorities did recognise that the festival, besides being ‘a legitimate expression of religious fervour’, was also often a channel for ‘the release of much pent-up frustration among the celebrants …’ (Look Lai, 1993: 145). The Hindus joining an avowedly Muslim celebration was indeed an expression of Indian ethnic solidarity, a vehicle for communicating ethnic social and political interests, and an occasion for resisting colonial oppression and persistent brutality of plantation life.28 More importantly, as Donald Wood explains, the Hosay procession as an animated march ‘has a more exciting effect on a crowd than a function that takes place in one spot’ (1968: 152). Therefore, the government placed certain restrictions upon the celebration of Hosay. Understandably, the indentured immigrants considered the new regulations as an infringement of their privileges (Collens, 1888: 237).29 Their attempt to defy an official proclamation placing restrictions on public procession and celebration in San Fernando on 30 October 1884 resulted in a violent clash between the celebrants and the police killing at least 16 celebrants and injuring over a hundred. The fracas described as ‘the Hosay riots’, and the deaths and injuries described as ‘the Muharram massacre’, remains one of the most traumatic episodes in the making of the girmitiya diaspora in Trinidad (see Sect. 4.1.1; see also Laurence, 1994: 254–257). Notwithstanding the continued adverse reaction of the orthodox Muslim organisations to the celebration of Hosay, it has survived in Trinidad as a ‘creolised’ Muslim religious fete to this day (Mansingh & Mansingh, 1995).30 It has two dimensions: (1) as a fulfilment of a vow taken by Hindus and people of some other faiths, too, it is a semi-religious ritual, and (2) as a boisterous and cheerful multi-religious and multi-race festival, it is an ethnic Indian equivalent of the carnival.31 Balkaransingh (2016: 251–292), who provides a detailed comparative analysis of the present-day celebration of Muharram in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, India, and in St James and 28

Similar observations have been made by Mangru (1993) with reference to British Guiana, and Shepherd (1993: 171) with reference to Jamaica. 29 Sookoo of the Philippine Estate (see Fn 27 above) petitioned the Governor on 22 September 1884 protesting ‘the harshness of the regulations restricting the movement of this annual procession’ (Jha, 1985: 4). 30 Secularised Hosay has survived in Guiana and Jamaica, too (see Mangru, 1993; Shepherd, 1993). 31 My own observation of Trinidad Hosay confirms Wood’s claim that, like Carnival, it is a liminal ‘therapeutic’ event for the predominantly lower-classes: ‘Their turbulence gave a chance of expressing resentments curbed for the rest of the year’ (1968: 152).

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Photograph 8.1 Hosay procession in Trinidad, 28 January 1948. Source https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/File:Indian_Muslims_taking_out_a_procession,_Trinidad,_1948.jpg UK National Archive Catalogue Reference: INF 10/352/1 (copyright free) (Accessed January 31, 2022)

Cedros in Trinidad, concludes: ‘The continuing survival of the Hosay is a study in cultural persistence, in the indomitable courage and unbroken spirit of a people fighting against tremendous odds for the right to maintain religious and cultural self-expression’ (ibid.: 287), (Photographs 8.1).

8.2.3 Temple in the Sea Firepass ceremony and Trinidad Hosay are two examples of the use of religion as ethnic protest and resistance. Both these are collective expressions of religious fervour and ethnic sentiments. However, religion as an instrument of protest can originate from an individual, which then can become a rallying point for community mobilisation and ethnic protest. The case of the ‘Temple in the Sea’, or ‘Siewdass Sadhu Temple in the Sea’, as The National Trust of Trinidad & Tobago calls it,32 is a case in point. This Hindu temple at Waterloo in Carapichaima is a testament of one man’s love for his religion and his abiding spirit, perseverance, and zeal in a hostile religious environment. The man under reference is Siewdass [Shivdas] Sadhu, who was born in Benares (Varanasi) in 1901 and brought to Trinidad by his indentured parents, Boodram and 32

https://nationaltrust.tt/location/siewdass-sadhu-temple-in-the-sea/ (accessed October 14, 2021).

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Bissoondayia Siewdass, by S. S. Mutah on 4 September 1907.33 His parents were assigned to an estate in Barrancore (now Brickfield), a seaside village. After the end of their indenture his parents returned with their sons to India, but Siewdass returned with his two brothers to Trinidad in 1920, and lived and worked in the sugar estate in Brickfield in Waterloo. On a trip to India in 1942, the steam liner he was sailing in was caught in rough weather and he was scared for his life. His pandit in India told him that Lord Krishna had saved his life and that he should build a temple to honour him. Accordingly, after he returned to Trinidad, in 1947, Siewdass built a temple on a piece of unused swamp land in MacMillan Park, owned by the British sugar company The Tate and Lyle. People from surrounding villages visited the temple, one of the very few those days, to worship and participate in Hindu rituals. He also gained the reputation of being a holy man in the village, and was given the title Sadhu,34 as many people sought his advice, guidance, and solace. In 1952, Siewdass got a rude shock as he was directed by the sugar company to demolish the temple as it was built on private land. Siewdass refused to comply with this direction, claiming that Lord Krishna had commanded him to build it. He was arrested on the charge of refusing to carry out a court order, fined 100 Trinidad pounds and imprisoned for 14 days. The sugar company demolished the temple. Siewdass was undeterred. ‘They do not want me to build my temple on land, so now I will build it in the ocean, in no man’s land’, he told his friend Chunnelal on his return from prison (quoted in Bruce, 2020; emphasis added). With passion, dedication, and tenacity he began singlehandedly reclaiming land from the sea in Waterloo in central Trinidad: using old drums by filling them up with concrete and tying them together with steel rope, and carrying stone by stone, he laid the foundation for an off-shore artificial island by using his bicycle, and unloading buckets full of dirt into the Gulf (see Clarke & Clarke, 2010: 131). Taming the waves of the Caribbean Sea, he erected an octagonal shaped temple. This temple in the sea became the talk of the town and attracted visitors from far and wide. It became a place of special worship for Hindus, especially during the month of Kartik (October/November) and other auspicious occasions. After Siewdass’s death in 1970, the temple structure deteriorated because of erosion through high tides and a general lack of maintenance. Realising the historical importance of the temple, in 1994, a committee under the Chairmanship of Randolph Rampersad, a third-generation Trinidadian of indentured ancestry, undertook the reconstruction of the temple. Funds also came from private overseas contributions and the government’s Unemployment Relief Programme. The temple as it now stands is about 90 m further in the sea than the original temple and a 200-m pedestrian causeway has been added. According to Rampersad, ‘the temple stands on a concrete base inside the water, and in case of an unusual tide, the whole temple, 33

In outlining the biography of Siewdass and the history of the temple that he built, I have drawn on short write-ups by Maharaj (1996), Bruce (2020), and Sahu (2020). 34 ‘Sadhu’ literally means a good person. The term is usually used to refer to a saint or mendicant. In Trinidad, a sadhu very often looks after a kutia or shivala (temple) (see Jha, 1982: 134 En 19).

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Photograph 8.2 Temple in the Sea: Siewdass Sadhu Temple in the Sea, Waterloo, Trinidad, 2008. Source Photograph taken by the author

along with its base, can move to prevent any damage to the upper part of the structure’ (cited in Sahu, 2020). Displayed in the temple are the murtis (idols) and images of Durga, Ganesh, Hanuman, and other Hindu deities (Photographs 8.2). The reconstructed temple was consecrated on 10 December 1995, coinciding with the celebrations to mark the sesquicentenary of the Indian arrival in Trinidad. Siewdass’s remaining family members and surviving associates, both Hindu and Muslim, were present. The Government of Trinidad & Tobago has since added the temple as a ‘national treasure’ (The National Trust of Trinidad & Tobago, 2016). It is a now a major tourist attraction in Trinidad. After Siewdass’s death, his friend, the late Ibrahim Khan, better known as Sheik in the village, referring to the destruction that the temple was experiencing due to sea erosion, had lamented that ‘A man make an honourable jail for that temple. You mean to say we can’t keep it up’ (as told to Maharaj, 1996). Sheik’s wish has come true, the temple now stands as ‘an extraordinary monument to the human spirit’ (ibid.) in a land which was socio-culturally hostile to it. As a testimony to this, a statue of Siewdass Sadhu stands at the entrance to the temple.35

8.3 Religious Idiom in Cultural Contestations in Recent Times By the time of independence in 1962, Indian immigrants in Trinidad, who had by now become a hyphenated community of Indo-Trinidadians, had through appeals and 35

For a short video clip on the temple can be seen at ‘Temple In The Sea, Waterloo, Trinidad’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_lWRSNdGY4 (accessed October 14, 2021).

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protests, attained substantial religious and cultural rights: the marriages performed according to Hindu and Muslim rites had been legally recognised; the Hindus could legitimately cremate their dead on a pyre, if they chose to do so; Hindu mandirs and Muslim mosques had been established as places of public worship; Hindu and Muslim schools had been started to provide alternative educational facilities; the Hindu Diwali and the Muslim Eid-ul-Fitr festivals had become national holidays. All this was in marked contrast to the early decades of religious marginalisation of the indentured immigrants. As Rev. Neehall observes, within the Christian community, ‘the old spirit of triumphalism’ virtually came to an end; there was ‘more openness and dialogue with those of the other faiths and a greater willingness to cooperate in social and economic projects’ (1993: 8). About the Hindu assertiveness, he writes, I learned an important lesson from a Hindu friend who played volleyball with me in the village of Penal in south Trinidad many years ago. He threatened that if he ever heard me use the common expression ‘non-Christian’ to describe him, he would start calling me a ‘non-Hindu’. (ibid.: 8)

However, the centuries of presumed superiority of Christian theology and Christian socio-cultural values could not be expected to change within the span of a few decades. Although no such claims were made by the ruling dispensation dominated by leaders belonging to various Christian denominations, its presence in the polity was palpable to the Hindus and Muslims. Since ethnicity had already been politicised in Trinidad (see Chap. 4), they remained apprehensive about being ‘creolised’ as a result of economic development and westernisation. They perceived that the domination in politics by Afro-Trinidadians would marginalise their religion and culture. Hence, Indo-Trinidadians have engaged in cultural contestations to challenge the Afro-Trinidadian hegemony. In what follows, I will discuss two cases of such contestation: the Trinity Cross episode, concerning Hindus mainly; and the hijab case, related to Muslims particularly.36

8.3.1 The Trinity Cross Episode In 1969, the Government of Trinidad & Tobago instituted national awards for its citizens and non-nationals in recognition of their positive contribution to the twin island Republic. Conferred annually, the highest of these awards was ‘The Trinity Cross’.37 This civilian honour was established through Letters of Patent issued by Queen Elizabeth II (gazetted on 6 September 1960), replacing the British honours 36

For a detailed analysis of ‘cultural renaissance’ among Indo-Trinidadians (see Jayaram, 2003). The other three being The Chaconia Medal, The Humming Bird Medal, and The Public Servants’ Medal of Merit awarded in three classes, namely, Gold, Silver, and Bronze. The Medal for the Development of Women, in Gold, Silver, and Bronze, was added in 2008. The Trinity Cross was awarded in Gold only. For more details see http://www.news.gov.tt/content/national-awards#.YW4_ xxpByUk (accessed October 18, 2021). 37

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system; it became a symbol of the country’s independent status. Between 1969 and 2005, 68 Trinity Cross Medals were awarded38 and eight of these were to IndoTrinidadians39 ; Dr Rudranath Capildeo was in the first batch of five awardees in 1969. The words ‘Trinity’ and ‘Cross’ in the title and the use of ‘Cross’ for the insignia were overtly Christian in nature, and was obviously discriminatory against nonChristians in a multi-religious country.40 As early as 1972, Dr Wahid Ali, a devout Muslim, the then President of the Senate and the President of the newly founded Inter-Religious Organisation of Trinidad & Tobago, had raised the issue of the appropriateness of this symbolism in the highest national award in the country with some prominent religious leaders (see Ali, 1992). Archbishop Anthony Pantin of the Roman Catholic Church agreed with Ali that both ‘Trinity’ and ‘Cross’ were Roman Catholic dogmas. However, ‘since “Trinity” is but the English translation of “Trinidad” and since a cross is found among all types of decorations without any particular inference’, he felt that ‘the highest national award of our country can be interpreted in a way that has no connection with any specific religion’ (quoted in ibid.: 52). Ironically, in 1977, Ali, who was still the President of the Senate, was selected for the award of the Trinity Cross. His initial impulse, obviously, was to decline it. He was, however, advised by Haji Muhammad Yusuf Francis, his ‘local Ustad [teacher]’, and persuaded by the then Prime Minister Eric Williams to accept it upon the promise that the entire matter of national awards would be reviewed. However, since the promise made by Williams remained ‘unknown’ and ‘unheeded’ and some Hindus, too, had begun to protest ‘against the name “Trinity Cross”’, Ali felt the question of his retaining the ‘Trinity Cross’ merited serious reconsideration (ibid.: 50). RaviJi of the Hindu Prachar Kendra (HPK), wondered whether the designation ‘Trinity Cross’ for the highest national award infringed the constitution guarantee of ‘right to freedom of conscience and religious belief and observance’ (Sunday Guardian, 14 August 1994). On 1 September 1994, the Trinidad Guardian editorially reiterated the issue ‘whether the Order of the Trinity with its powerful Christian connotations is appropriate in a multicultural society where every creed holds an equal place’. The Christian and Afro-Trinidadian reaction to the debate was on expected lines (see Jayaram, 2003: 134). Often the comments were cynical, ironic, and sarcastic; they trivialised the issue. But, overall, the tone was defensive, arguing against changing the name of the award. The orthodox among them felt that ‘the cross is a symbol of sacrifice and suffering, and is no affront to other religions unless their 38

See https://otp.tt/trinidad-and-tobago/national-awards-database/ (accessed October 18, 2021). The Trinity Cross was not awarded in 1975, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1990, 1992, 2001, 2004, 2006, and 2007. 39 These were Rudranath Capildeo (1969), Isaac Hyatali (1974), Wahid Ali (1977), Mitra G. Sinanan (1979), Tajmool Hosein (1982), Noor M. Hassanali (1987), Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (1989), and Satnarine Sharma (2003). 40 It may be noted here that the highest national award in multi-religious countries is all-inclusive in its symbolism: it is called the ‘Order of Excellence of Guyana’ in Guyana and the ‘Order of the National Hero’ in Jamaica.

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warped thinking makes it so’. Some noted that cross is not a symbol of Christianity or a solely Christian symbol, and that ‘the Trinity Cross should not be associated with the Christian crucifix’. The more anxious ones felt that ‘the parochial demands such as for changing the designation of the country’s highest award would destroy the nation’ (ibid.). Just as the nation was busy debating the issue, came the news on 30 August 1995 that Pandit Krishna Maharaj, Dharmacharya (spiritual head) of the Hindu community, and one of the three awardees of the ‘Trinity Cross’41 on the occasion of the country’s 33rd Independence Day had declined to accept the award. Pandit Maharaj clarified that ‘he did not want his action to be seen as a rejection of the award, but as an opportunity for those in authority to create a national award that recognises the plurality of religious beliefs in this country’ (Trinidad Guardian, 31 August 1995). The tragedy, Ravi-Ji of HPK noted, is not in Pandit Maharaj’s refusal, ‘but in the embarrassing position he has been placed, on such a sensitive issue’. ‘The great tragedy’, he went on to argue, is that ‘the hegemony has been so entrenched that none of the Governments who have had the responsibility to design the affairs of the nation has had the will or vision to treat with such issues reflecting the plural society of Trinidad & Tobago’. Accordingly, ‘it is a great day when Pandit Krishna [Maharaj] like Bishma Pitamaha, the grand sire of Hindu history, has arisen to address the conscience of the nation in wide-ranging national issues, through the issue of the Trinity Cross offered to him’ (Trinidad Guardian, 31 August 1995). The following day devotees of the Hindu faith made a special pilgrimage to Pandit Maharaj’s home to honour him for not accepting the award (Jayaram, 2003: 135). The support of Indo-Trinidadian Muslims followed. Endorsing Pandit Maharaj’s stance, Kamaluddin Mohammed (a former minister in the People’s National Movement [PNM] government) observed that because of what it represents, the symbol of the Trinity Cross was unacceptable to Muslims as it would be to Hindus. Nizam Mohammed opined that the Trinity Cross ‘continues to be an anachronism of true nationhood and an objectionable vestige of colonialism that ought not to be perpetuated any longer’ (Trinidad Guardian, 1 September 1995). Later, Baptists and Orishas too supported the demand for changing the designation of the award (Jayaram, 2003: 135). In 1995, the sesquicentenary year of the Indian arrival in Trinidad, for the first time in the history of Trinidad & Tobago an Indo-Trinidadian, Basdeo Panday became the prime minister of the country (see Sect. 5.5). In February 1997, the Panday administration asked the National Awards Committee, chaired by Chief Justice Michael de la Bastide, to examine the awards system. The Committee acknowledged that ‘the highest award had attracted negative criticism, especially as the word “Cross” was perceived by many to be a Christian symbol’ (cited in Privy Council, 2009: point 4). It further noted that ‘the word “Trinity” too might be regarded as a Christian

41

Fr Gerard Arthur Pantin and artiste Patricia Alison Bishop were the other two awardees.

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reference’ (ibid.).42 Accordingly, the Committee recommended that the name ‘The Trinity Cross’ be replaced by the more inclusive title, ‘The Order of Trinidad & Tobago’.43 However, changing the name of the award was not a simple matter, as it required constitutional amendment. The United National Congress-National Alliance for Reconstruction coalition led by Panday did not have the requisite majority in Parliament to carry through such an amendment (Jayaram, 2003: 135). Thus, notwithstanding the demand for a change in the nomenclature of the award and the due recommendation in its favour by the National Awards Committee, the award continued to be conferred as the Trinity Cross, and so did the political blame game on the issue. The Express editorially agreed with the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS) that the Trinity Cross is divisive and that the issue should not have been permitted to drag on for so long (The Express, 28 April 2003). On 16 November 2004, The SDMS, along with Inshan Ishmael (President of the Islamic Relief Centre), filed a constitutional motion in the San Fernando High Court, seeking, among other things, a declaration that the Trinity Cross was discriminatory against them and other non-Christians. The applicants argued that the continued existence of the award was in breach of their fundamental rights as guaranteed by the constitution. In May 2006, Justice Peter Jamdar (who, incidentally, was an ordained Presbyterian Minister), ruled that the Trinity Cross is strictly a Christian symbol, and as a result, it discriminates in a multi-religious society. Although he found it to be discriminatory, he expressed his inability to strike it down, as it was protected by the 1976 Constitution and it was for Parliament to effect the change. The State did not challenge Justice Jamdar’s findings that the award of the Trinity Cross infringed sections 4 (b), (d), and (h) of the Constitution. However, the appellants, not being satisfied with the judgement, took the matter to the Privy Council, seeking a declaration that the Trinity Cross was illegal. On 28 April 2009, the Privy Council in London finally ruled that ‘the decoration is unconstitutional because it discriminates against non-Christians … [it] breached the right to equality and the right to freedom of conscience and belief’ (cited in Brown, 2009). The law lords, however, stated that it would be unfair to make their order retroactive, so the recipients were not to be stripped of their honours. However, after Justice Jamdar’s ruling, Prime Minister Patrick Manning informed the Parliament on 2 June 2006, that a seven-member committee, led by Professor Bridget Brereton of The University of the West Indies, St Augustine campus has been constituted to review all aspects of the nation’s highest award and also to examine such other national symbols and observances which may be considered discriminatory. This led to the creation of the new highest national award, the ‘Order of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago’, with a redesigned decoration and the replacement of the cross

42

As the Privy Council pointed out, this ‘objection if taken to its logical conclusion would mean that the country’s name would also have to be changed’ (2009: point 4). 43 Ironical as it may appear in retrospect, Chief Justice de la Bastide was awarded the Trinity Cross in 1996 (Jayaram, 2003: 135).

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with an 18-carat yellow gold medal.44 Also, the name ‘The Order of the Trinity’ was replaced by ‘The Distinguished Society of Trinidad & Tobago’, with future holders of the award to use the initials ‘ORTT’ after their names. The first set of three of this award was presented in 2008 and, in all 27 persons have been conferred this award between 2008 and 2019,45 of which eight, including Pandit Krishan Maharaj (posthumous) who had declined the Trinity Cross in, 1995, were Indo-Trinidadians.46

8.3.2 The Hijab Case The protest against the Trinity Cross was primarily led by Hindus, and Muslims joined it as the name and insignia of the award was Christian in form and substance. But the hijab case primarily involved Muslims, though some Hindus supported it, as it was a challenge to the violation of the fundamental right to freedom of conscience and belief. There were two other notable differences. The Hindus in Trinidad are almost exclusively Indo-Trinidadians, but the Muslims in Trinidad included both the Indo-Trinidadians and the Afro-Trinidadians, though in very small numbers. Also, while the Trinity Cross episode was confined to Trinidad & Tobago,47 the hijab case had its resonance in many countries where Muslims were a notable minority (see Mahabir, 2004; Taylor, 1994). However, the instant controversy originated with an Indo-Trinidadian Muslim school girl, and it, therefore, had ramifications not only for the assertion of religious right, but also the articulation of Indo-Trinidadian ethnicity. At the centre of this controversy was the humble headscarf (hijab), traditionally worn by Muslims in several parts of the world, including the Indian subcontinent from where the ancestors of the present-day Indo-Trinidadian Muslims came.48 On 5 September 1994, when secondary schools reopened for the new academic year, 11-year-old Sumayyah Mohammed, an Indo-Trinidadian Muslim girl, was barred from attending classes by Principal Luci Moraine of the Holy Name Convent 44

See http://www.news.gov.tt/content/national-awards#.YW-tYRpByUk (accessed October 18, 2021). 45 See https://otp.tt/trinidad-and-tobago/national-awards-database/ (accessed October 18, 2021). The Order of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago was not awarded in 2014 and 2016. 46 These were Kamaluddin Mohammed (2010), Pandit Krishna Maharaj (posthumous, 2010), Wahid Ali (posthumous, 2010), Zalayhar Hassanali (2011), Helen Bhagwansingh (2011), Ramesh Deosaran (2013), Winston Chandarbhan Dookeran (2015), and Lenny Saith (2017). 47 Declining state awards and honours as a form of protest against discrimination, etc., is, however, universal. 48 In India, traditionally, women of different religious persuasions have covered their head, with a ghunghat/odhni/orhni/orna/ornie/pacheri (veil or headscarf), dupatta/chunri/chunni (a long, multipurpose scarf that is an essential part of South Asian women’s suits), or pallu (the loose end of a sari worn over one’s shoulder or head). The early generations of Indian women in Trinidad, irrespective of their religion, used odhni (see Sect. 6.1.1). Even today, Indo-Trinidadian Hindu women cover their heads with pallu or a scarf during religious rituals and Presbyterian women cover their heads with a scarf during prayer meetings.

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(HNC), a Roman Catholic denominational school.49 The reason: Sumayyah was wearing the hijab, which allegedly violated the prescribed school uniform. Students and parents who did not agree with the school regulations were given the option of taking a transfer to another school. Sumayyah’s parents argued that on passing the Common Entrance Examination (now called Secondary School Entrance Examination), Sumayyah had got admission in HNC, the school of her choice, and that wearing of the hijab was a part of her religious requirement and that she had the constitutional right to practise her religion without hindrance. The HNC contended that it was a Roman Catholic denomination school which enjoyed certain rights under the Concordat,50 including the making of rules for the administration of the school. Among these rules is a school uniform designed to suit all students of every creed and race. Hence, Sumayyah was barred from the school not because of her religion, but because she did not conform to the regulation of the school. When the efforts to settle the issue through mediation failed, Sumayyah took the matter to court where Justice Melville Baird ruled that the decision of the school was in contravention of the country’s Education Act which guarantees an education for all without regard to sex, creed, or religious conviction. On 29 September 1994, on behalf of Sumayyah, the Hijab-at-Schools Committee (HASC)51 took the matter to the High Court of Justice requesting ‘a constitutional ruling as well as judicial review of the school’s prohibition of the hijab’ (Mahabir, 2004: 440). Delivering the judgement on 17 January 1995, Justice Margot Warner held that no violation of constitutional rights was found ‘in the absence of bad faith or hostile intention’ on the part of the school authorities, but quashed their decision as the school regulations had been applied ‘inflexibly’ and without taking into account ‘the psychological effect on the applicant of refusing to allow her to conform to the hijab’.52 Justice Warner also held that there was no evidence to support the HNC’s plea ‘that conforming to the hijab would be conducive to indiscipline or would erode the sense of tradition or loyalty to the school, nor that it would accentuate distinctions between students from affluent homes and less affluent ones’ (Child Rights International Network, 1995; Gibbings, 1999; Jayaram, 2003: 136). 49

The details of the controversy presented here follows Jayaram (2003: 135–137). For a more detailed study of the hijab case, see Mahabir (2004), whose article is based on extensive interviews that she conducted during 1996–2000 with different stakeholders in Trinidad. 50 The Concordat of 1960 is an agreement signed between the Vatican and Trinidad & Tobago governing public education in the country. Under the Concordat, the religious bodies in the country enter into an agreement with the state that gives them the right to determine their own curricula and general administration in denominational schools. Besides, these schools, which receive government assistance, have the right to select 20% of the intake of new students, regardless of their performance in the entrance examination (see MoE, 1960). For a critique of the Concordat, see Mendes-Franco (2019). 51 HASC is a minority Muslim group constituted by the United Islamic Organisation and the Muslim Coordinating Council in 1993 (see Mahabir, 2004: 440). 52 That is, neither side was awarded the sweeping ruling it wanted: ‘The Islamists failed to win a system-wide precedent and the Holy Name Convent failed to win the right to prohibit the wearing of the hijab in the classroom’ (Mahabir, 2004: 449).

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Accordingly, Sumayyah was permitted to attend HNC in her modified uniform, which consisted of ‘a long skirt, long sleeves to the wrist and the headgear’ and the HNC got ‘the right of appeal against the order without any stay, but had to bear threequarters of the legal cost of Sumayyah’. Justice of Appeal Lloyed Gopeesingh ordered a stay of judgement, but allowed Suymayyah to continue in school. Sumayyah’s return to school on 18 January 1995 was ‘a media event and was viewed by Muslims as a victory of sorts against the system’ (Jayaram, 2003: 136). The five-year legal battle over the right of a Muslim student to wear her traditional religious garb (hijab) at a state-funded Catholic-run school came to an end in February 1999 with the school withdrawing its judicial appeal on the matter (Gibbings, 1999). As important as the legal issues raised by ‘the hijab case’ is the sociological significance of the public debate that ensued. The Muslim posture was on expected lines. The Caribbean Islamic Development Organisation expressed ‘grave concern about the discrimination against female students of the Muslim faith because of their hijab’ (Jayaram, 2003: 136). Kamal Hosein, secretary general of the Anjuman Sunnatul Jamaat Association (ASJA), the largest Islamic organisation in the country, said he was happy that HNC had a change of heart on the matter. Aphtaab Mohammed, Sumayyah’s father, described it as ‘a fight for all Muslim girls who have to undergo this type of ordeal’ and he argued for ‘a national policy on the acceptance of religious wear at schools’ (Gibbings, 1999). Interestingly, some Hindus too were critical of HNC’s action. Indrani Rampersad of the Hindu Women’s Organisation viewed the school’s action as ‘a retrograde step’ and an instance of ‘bigotry’. Ravi-Ji of HPK opined that in a multicultural society like Trinidad every heritage should be allowed to flower. Furthermore, schools should face ‘the creative challenge in integrating the need of the different sensitivities and heritages as part of the school uniform’. Karmananda-Ji, President of the Divine Life Society, emphasised the importance of schools allowing for the cultural and religious rights of children. Rev. Everson Sieunarine of the Presbyterian Church said that in Presbyterian schools many Muslim girls wore hijab (quoted in Jayaram, 2003: 136). The case for HNC rested on the importance of uniform in maintaining discipline and avoiding divisive tendencies among the students. Thus, the Anglican, Baptist, Hindu (SDMS), and Presbyterian school management boards joined their Catholic counterpart in issuing a joint statement prohibiting Muslim girls assigned to their state-supported schools from wearing hijab to class which declared that they felt ‘very strongly that there should be no exceptions to the rule of uniform. In fact, the very term “uniform” indicates that we are unwilling to allow any deviation from this’ (Taylor, 1994); after all, ‘even without hijab, the uniform is modest enough’ (Jayaram, 2003: 136). It was suggested that Muslims who wanted their religious dress code could choose a Muslim school or a government school which permits it. As Archbishop Pantin observed, when the parents select the schools, they automatically accept all its rules. In this context, it was recalled that the Principal of an ASJA-run school was hounded out of her position because of her ‘questionable’ religious allegiances. In that instance, the Muslim school was acting within the rights guaranteed by the Concordat! (Jayaram, 2003: 136–137). It was also feared that conceding the demand

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for wearing hijab would have a ‘domino effect’; it was even termed outrageous, ‘a form of coercion to change rules to suit the coercer’s religion’ (Editorial in Trinidad Guardian, 19 January 1995). Thus, the hijab demand came to be seen as the opening salvo in a campaign to impose Islamic symbols on ‘national’ institutions. The requirement of hijab for Muslim women was seen as a manifestation of Islamic fundamentalism; the larger agenda of self-seeking Islamists being fostering ‘a distinct Islamic identity to the national social context’ (Mahabir, 2004: 438). Since the Muslimeen Insurrection of 27 July 1990 was still fresh in people’s memories (see Ryan, 1991), the hijab came to acquire a very sinister and terrifying significance as ‘a flag of militant Islam’ (cited in Mahabir, 2004: 447). As if in confirmation of this apprehension, Muslim leaders were urged by a locally based Pakistani missionary (Imam Mustaq Ahmad Sulaimani) to unite and fight the hijab issue (Jayaram, 2003: 137). Thus, those defending the hijab were easily dubbed ‘militant’ and a ‘message’ was read and interpreted in their action. The uniform was never a religious matter in 150 years of (Indian) Muslim presence in Trinidad, and it was for the first time since the founding of the Convent by Dominican nuns in 1902 that a uniform-exemption request/demand was raised. It was pointed out that the daughters of a Muslim leader and a former minister in the PNM government Kamaluddin Mohammed had never worn the hijab, and the daughters of the ASJA President Dr Mansoor Ibrahim had only recently begun wearing it. Furthermore, the wearing of hijab was not a requirement for students or teachers at the ASJA-run schools (Mahabir, 2004: 439, 445). People understandably began wondering why school uniform is an issue now? Thus, the hijab came to be feared as ‘a “Trojan Veil” which conceals hidden agendas’ (Ryan, 1994: 9). Muslims, especially of Indian origin, realised the ominous implications of this. The rejection by the ASJA in October 1994 of a resolution which sought to encourage Muslim students attending Muslim schools to wear the hijab as part of their uniform, is thus understandable (Jayaram, 2003: 137). Hijab has since remained a controversial religious symbol in Trinidad. In 2017, Aisha Sabur, a single mother, who happened to be Muslim, was allegedly denied a job at the state-owned enterprise The National Maintenance Training and Security Company Limited because she was wearing a hijab. Trinidad Guardian’s columnist Kevin Baldeosingh wrote an article about the irrationality of Aisha’s preference for hijab over the job which she much-needed. This did not go well with Umar Abdulah,53 the firebrand leader of Waajihatul Islaamiyyah (Islamic Front), who demanded the dismissal of Baldeosingh and the newspaper complied with this demand (see Thomas, 2017). Similarly, in 2017, Sharon Roop, a Muslim Special Reserve Police (SRP), successfully challenged the Trinidad & Tobago Police Service policy banning female officers from wearing hijab while on duty and was awarded TT $185,000 in compensation for five instances where Sharon claimed the application of the policy caused her 53

A controversial Muslim hardliner in Trinidad & Tobago; he had written a newsletter supporting Osama bin Laden 13 years ago and is still actively monitored by Trinidad special intelligence (Thomas, 2017).

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emotional distress, pain, and anguish. Sharon was recruited as a SRP in 2014 and began wearing the hijab in 2017 (Stabroek News, 2019; Trinidad Express, 2018).54 Yet again, on 22 May 2018, on-the-job trainee, Nafisah Nakhid who was assigned to the Lakshmi Girls’ Hindu College, St Augustine, run by SDMS, was barred from entering the school on the ground that hijab was not allowed in its compound. Since she had ‘never experienced such discrimination before’, she felt hurt and humiliated, ‘especially during Ramadan’ (quoted in Doodnath, 2018). The Waajihatul Islaamiyyah condemned the incident as an instance of Islamophobia and a deliberate act done out of disregard of a Muslim, and by extension Muslims (Ghouralal, 2018). Nafisah was reassigned to a different school. Thus, the hijab cases, Sumayyah’s to start with, and followed by that of Aisha, Sharon, and Nafisah, though they were framed as a religious matter, were essentially a political contest that has been played out in court (Mahabir, 2004: 435). The four cases involved the utilisation of law and the legal machinery to bring about socio-cultural change. Though Muslims, including the Indo-Trinidadian ones, could claim a sort of victory for their religion, the fact that it has polarised the society is inescapable. There is polarisation between Muslims and others, and Indo-Trinidadian Muslims have been drawn into this polarisation. It must, however, be clarified that, as always, most Indo-Trinidadian Muslims throw their lot with other Indo-Trinidadians, rather than Afro-Trinidadian Muslims. In Trinidad & Tobago, as in many countries with a notable Muslim presence, hijab, has remained ‘a political contest over group identity rather than a demand for individual rights’ (Mahabir, 2004: 436). The legal cases involving hijab are instances of what could be called, ‘the cultural mobilization of law’: ‘the attempt by religious minorities and subordinate communities to enhance their political power by resorting to lawsuits’ (ibid.: 438; see also Black, 1973). This chapter has highlighted the role of religion, its symbols and rituals, in advancing the ethnic identity of a community in a multi-religious polity like Trinidad. It has shown how during the initial stages of their immigration, Indians in the colony successfully used religious festivals and ceremonies for expressing ethnic protest against a predominantly Christian political dispensation. Even after they established themselves as a formidable diasporic community, Indo-Trinidadians have used religious symbols to contest the cultural domination of Christian symbolism in a secular republic. By being a medium of ethnic protest and cultural contestation, religion has significantly shaped the making of Indo-Trinidadians as a prominent girmitiya diasporic community. In the next two chapters, we shall discuss the metamorphosis of the religious beliefs and practices that Hindus and Muslims brought with them from India into Trinidad and the experience of some of them on their conversion to Christianity.

54

Sharon Roop V. The Attorney General of Trinidad & Tobago, in the High Court of Justice, Port of Spain, Claim No. CV2017-03276, dated November 9, 2018.

References

189

References Akbaba, Y. (2019). Protest and religion: An overview. In Oxford research encyclopedias: Politics. Published online by Oxford University Press. Retrieved October 23, 2021, from https://doi.org/ 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-989 Ali, W. (1992). The Trinity Cross issue: An inappropriate national award. In W. Ali (Ed.), Building bridges in society: Selected speeches of Dr Wahid Ali (pp. 48–54). Wali Enterprises. Balkaransingh, S. (2016). The shaping of a culture: Rituals and festivals in Trinidad compared with selected counterparts in India, 1990–2014. Hansib Publications. Black, D. J. (1973). The mobilization of law. The Journal of Legal Studies, 2(1), 125–149. Retrieved December 24, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/724029 Brereton, B. (1985). The experience of indentureship: 1845–1917. In J. G. La Guerre (Ed.), Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (2nd ed., pp. 21–30). Extra Mural Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Brown, D. (2009, May 8). Queen’s Trinity Cross honour deemed unlawful by Privy Council. The Times. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://wwrn.org/articles/30890/ Bruce, T. (2020, June 6). Sewdass Sadhu, the man who built the temple in the sea. Trinidad & Tobago Guardian. Retrieved October 14, 2021, from https://www.guardian.co.tt/article/sewdasssadhu-the-man-who-built-the-temple-in-the-sea-6.2.1129526.60ba2c4ac5 Child Rights International Network [CRIN]. (1995, January 17). Sumayyah Mohammed V. Moraine and Another. In The High Court of Trinidad and Tobago, Port of Spain, 1995, 49 WIR 37; (action 3000A of 1994). Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://archive.crin.org/en/library/legal-dat abase/sumayyah-mohammed-v-moraine-and-another.html Clarke, C. G., & Clarke, G. (2010). Post-colonial Trinidad: An ethnographic journal. Palgrave Macmillan. Collens, J. H. (1888). A guide to Trinidad: A handbook for the use of tourists and visitors (2nd ed.). Elliot Stock. Comins, D. W. D. (1893). Note on emigration from India to British Guiana. Bengal Secretariat Press. Crooke, W. (1925). Religion and folklore of northern India (prepared for the press by E. E. Enthoven). S. Chand and Co. Crooke, W. (1971/1897). The north-west provinces of India: Their history, ethnology, and administration. Indological Book House. Doodnath, A. (2018, May 22). Muslim woman allegedly barred from Hindu school over hijab. LoopTT. Retrieved October 20, 2021, from https://tt.loopnews.com/content/muslim-woman-all egedly-barred-hindu-school-over-hijab Durkheim, E. (1965/1915). The elementary forms of the religious life (J. W. Swain, Trans.). The Free Press. Ghouralal, D. (2018, May 23). Hindu college slammed for Islamophobia. LoopTT. Retrieved October 20, 2021, from https://tt.loopnews.com/content/hindu-college-slammed-islamophobia Gibbings, W. (1999, February 23). Religion—Trinidad and Tobago: School dress battle ends. Inter Press Service (IPS). Retrieved October 22, 2021, from http://www.ipsnews.net/1999/02/religiontrinidad-and-tobago-school-dress-battle-ends/ Grant, K. J. (1923). My missionary memories. The Imperial Publishing. Hart, D. (1865). Historical and statistical view of the island of Trinidad, with chronological table of events from 1782. Judd and Glass. Hasenclever, A., & Rittberger, V. (2003). Does religion make a difference? Theoretical approaches to the impact of faith on political conflict. In F. Petito & P. Hatzopoulos (Eds.), Religion in international relations: The return from exile (pp. 107–145). Palgrave Macmillan. Jayaram, N. (2003). The politics of ‘cultural renaissance’ among Indo-Trinidadians. In B. Parekh, G. Singh, & S. Vertovec (Eds.), Culture and economy in the Indian diaspora (pp. 123–141). Routledge.

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Jha, J. C. (1976). The Hindu sacraments (rites de passage) in Trinidad and Tobago. Caribbean Quarterly, 22(1), 40–52. Jha, J. C. (1982). The background of the legislation of non-Christian marriage in Trinidad and Tobago. In East Indians in the Caribbean: Colonialism and the struggle for identity. Papers presented to a Symposium on East Indians in the Caribbean, The University of the West Indies, June 1975 (pp. 117–139). Kraus International Publications. Jha, J. C. (1985). The Indian heritage in Trinidad. In J. G. La Guerre (Ed.), Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (2nd ed., pp. 1–18). Extra Mural Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Kistow, G. (2004). Hindu funerary beliefs and rituals. In B. Samaroo & A. M. Bissessar (Eds.), The construction of an Indo-Caribbean diaspora (pp. 239–264). School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Korom, F. J. (2003). Hosay Trinidad: Muh.arram performances in an Indo-Caribbean diaspora. University of Pennsylvania Press. Laurence, K. O. (1994). A question of labour: Indentured immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana, 1875–1917. Ian Randle Publishers. Look Lai, W. (1993). Indentured labor, Caribbean sugar: Chinese and Indian migrants to the British West Indies, 1838–1918. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Lowenthal, D. (1972). West Indian societies (American Geographical Society Research Series— Number 26). Oxford University Press (published for the Institute of Race Relations, London in collaboration with the American Geographical Society, New York). Mahabir, C. (2004). Adjudicating pluralism: The hijab, law and social change in post-colonial Trinidad. Social and Legal Studies, 13(4), 435–452. Maharaj, N. (1996). Trinidad’s temple in the sea. Caribbean Beat Magazine, Issue 18 (March/April 1996). Retrieved October 14, 2021, from https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-18/temple-sea0#ixzz79FApUGn8 Mangru, B. (1993). Tadjah in British Guiana. In F. Birbalsingh (Ed.), Indenture and exile: The Indo-Caribbean experience (pp. 13–26). TSAR in association with the Ontario Association for Studies in Indo-Caribbean Culture. Mansingh, A., & Manshingh, L. (1995). Hosay and its crelolization. Caribbean Quarterly, 41(1), 25–39. McNeal, K. E. (2013a). Firepass ceremony: Trinidad. In P. Taylor & F. I. Case (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Caribbean religions (Vol. 1, pp. 285–289). University of Illinois Press. McNeal, K. E. (2013b). Shakti Puja (Kali Puja, Kali Ma Puja, Kali Mai Puja)—Trinidad. In P. Taylor & F. I. Case (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Caribbean religions (Vol. 2, pp. 953–960). University of Illinois Press. Mendes-Franco, J. (2019, July 6). Is a ‘Concordat’ stymieing education progress in Trinidad & Tobago? Global Voices. Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://globalvoices.org/2019/07/06/ is-a-concordat-stymieing-education-progress-in-trinidad-tobago/ Ministry of Education (MoE). (1960). The Concordat of 1960: Assurances for the preservation and character of denominational schools. MoE, Government of Trinidad and Tobago. Retrieved October 22, 2021, from https://www.moe.gov.tt/the-concordat-of-1960-2/ Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs (MAGLA). (2016a). Cremation Act, 16 of 1953 (as amended by 17 of 1970, 22 of 1976, and 4 of 1986), Laws of Trinidad and Tobago. MAGLA, Government of Trinidad and Tobago. Retrieved October 8, 2021, from https://rgd.legalaffairs. gov.tt/laws2/Alphabetical_List/lawspdfs/30.51.pdf Moore, D. (1995). Origins and development of racial ideology in Trinidad: The black view of the East Indian. Chakra Pub. House. Naipaul, S. (Seepersad). (2001/1976). The adventures of Gurudeva [with a Foreword by V. S. Naipual; Indian edition]. Buffalo Books. Neehall, R. (1993). The creation of Caribbean history. In F. Birbalsingh (Ed.), Indenture and exile: The Indo-Caribbean experience (pp. 1–12). TSAR in association with the Ontario Association for Studies in Indo-Caribbean Culture.

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Niehoff, A., & Niehoff, J. (1960). East Indians in the West Indies (Milwaukee Public Museum Publications in Anthropology No. 6). Milwaukee Public Museum. O’Malley, L. S. S. (1935). Popular Hinduism: The religion of the masses. Cambridge University Press. Privy Council. (2009, April 28). Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha of Trinidad and Tobago Inc. and Others V. the Attorney General (Trinidad and Tobago). Retrieved October 19, 2021, from https:// www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5b2897d02c94e06b9e19ba84 Ramesar, M. D. S. (1994). Survivors of another crossing: A history of East Indians in Trinidad, 1880–1946. School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Ryan, S. D. (1991). The Muslimeen grab for power: Race, religion and revolution in Trinidad and Tobago. Inprint Caribbean. Ryan, S. D. (1994, September 25). Fear of the Trojan veil. Sunday Express (Port of Spain), p. 9. Sahu, A. K. (2020, November 28). The Caribbean’s sea temple. The Hindu. Retrieved October 14, 2021, from https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/the-caribbeans-sea-temple/articl e33201715.ece Shepherd, V. A. (1993). Transients to settlers: The experience of Indians in Jamaica, 1845–1950. Centre for Research in Asian Migration, The University of Warwick and Peepal Tree Books. Stabroek News, Georgetown, Guyana. (2019, November 27). Trinidad: Muslim cop awarded TT$185,000 in compensation after hijab ban. Retrieved October 23, 2021, from https://www.stabroeknews.com/2019/11/27/news/regional/trinidad/trinidad-muslim-copawarded-tt185000-in-compensation-after-hijab-ban/ Taylor, P. (1994). Hijab battles around the world. Islamic Horizons Magazine, November–December edition. Retrieved October 21, 2021, from http://www.themodernreligion.com/women/hijabworld.htm The National Trust of Trinidad and Tobago. (2016, January 7). Siewdass Sadhu ‘Temple in The Sea’. Ministry of Planning and Development, Government of Trinidad and Tobago. Retrieved October 14, 2021, from https://nationaltrust.tt/location/siewdass-sadhu-temple-in-the-sea/ Thomas, F. (2017, June 7). Trinidadian Muslim woman sets the record straight after men hijack a conversation on the hijab. Global Voices. Retrieved October 23, 2021, from https://globalvoices.org/2017/06/07/trinidadian-muslim-woman-sets-the-record-str aight-after-men-hijack-a-conversation-on-the-hijab/ Tikasingh, G. (1976). The establishment of the Indians in Trinidad, 1870–1900 [Unpublished PhD thesis]. The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Trinidad Express. (2018, November 9). Female cops win the right to wear hijab on duty. Retrieved October 20, 2021, from https://trinidadexpress.com/news/local/female-cops-win-the-right-towear-hijab-on-duty/article_e8acccde-e454-11e8-99a6-97beec48f071.html Vertovec, S. (1992). Hindu Trinidad: Religion, ethnicity and socio-economic change. Macmillan. von Grunebaum, G. E. (1951). Muhammadan festivals. Henry Schuman. Wood, D. (1968). Trinidad in transition: The years after slavery. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 9

Religion and Society I: Trinidad Hinduism

A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden— beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. —David Émile Durkheim (1965: 62)

David Émile Durkheim’s classical sociological formulations on religion highlight the significance of a religion in bestowing identity among its adherents and unifying them as a community (1965). Durkheim, however, recognised that in its individual manifestation, religion offers considerable complexity, permitting little or no generalisation without qualification. Of the many sources of this complexity, one that is of interest to us in understanding the girmitiya diaspora is the transference of religious beliefs and practices of indentured Indians to the lands of their migration and settlement. Here, they encountered Christianity, the religion of the ruling class, the plantocracy, and the emancipated slaves, and their religion metamorphosed over time through their adoption and adaptation of the elements of the dominant religion. Some of the immigrants were converted to Christianity, but the Christianity as they came to practise was indelibly influenced by their original religion. This and the next chapter examine the metamorphosis of religion among IndoTrinidadians. Since a vast body of literature on the religion and religious experience of Indo-Trinidadians is available, and the space that is available to me is limited, I do not wish to engage in yet another explorative exercise. Rather, my objective in these chapters is limited to delineating the factors that have shaped religion among the Indo-Trinidadians. While some elements of their religion, especially of Hinduism and Islam, can be traced to their ancestral roots, the way they are articulated and expressed today are unique to their experience as an ethnic diaspora.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7_9

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9.1 Indians in a Multi-religious Polity Trinidad and Tobago is a multi-religious polity, a culmination of the ‘pacification’1 of the indigenous Amerindian people (Arawak and Carib) by the Spanish colonial conquistadors and the introduction of people from Europe, Africa, India, and elsewhere over 450 years of Spanish and later British colonial rule over the twin islands. The Spanish conquistadors, the French plantocracy, and the Catholic missionaries introduced Roman Catholicism; the British colonial rulers and Protestant missionaries introduced the Anglican and Methodist denominations of Christianity; the American missionaries introduced Baptist, Moravian, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, and other Protestant denominations; and the Canadian missionaries introduced the Presbyterian denomination of Protestantism. The emancipated AfroTrinidadians revived Orisha religious tradition prevalent in West Africa, particularly among the Yoruba of Nigeria. The indentured immigrants from India brought with them Hinduism and Islam. During the colonial era, Christianity, being the religion of the ruling class, was the dominant religion in Trinidad. The colonial rulers and, encouraged by them, the missionaries from Europe and America, no doubt, attempted to proselytise the island’s non-Christian population into Christianity. They were hugely successful in converting the people of African descent, but not much successful in converting the people of Indian descent.2 In post-independent times, too, Christianity in its various denominations, being the numerically dominant religion, has a pervasive presence in the country. Given its long political hegemony and numerical dominance, Christianity has had significant influence on the practice, if not the belief system, of Hindus as well as that of Muslims. This point is to be kept in mind in understanding the religions of Indo-Trinidadians today. According to the 2011 population census (see Table 9.1), Christians constitute the majority (53.42%) of the population, with 31.83 percent of them being Protestants of various denominations and 21.60%, the single largest group, being Roman Catholics. Hindus (18.15%) constitute the single largest minority, whose strength in numbers is next only to Roman Catholics. The single largest Protestant denomination is Pentecostal/Evangelical/Full Gospel forming 12.03% of the total population and 37.80% of all Protestants. The other Protestant denominations include Baptists, Anglicans, Seventh Day Adventists, Presbyterians/Congregationalists, and Methodists in the order of their numerical strength, together forming 19.79% of the total population and 62.20% of all Protestants. Muslims form 4.97% of the population. Followers of ‘other’ religious traditions such as Jehovah’s Witness, Moravian, Orisha, etc., 1

‘Pacification’ is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as ‘the act of forcibly suppressing or eliminating a population considered to be hostile’; it is a euphemism for cultural decimation and physical annihilation of the indigenous population by the colonial rulers (see https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/pacification [accessed November 1, 2021]). 2 If the Africans were considered as ‘clay which could easily be moulded into a Christian and Western shape, the Hindus (and Muslims) of India were more like a stone that could only worked painfully and with much toil’ (Wood, 1968: 110).

9.1 Indians in a Multi-religious Polity

195

Table 9.1 Religious composition of Trinidad & Tobago’s population, 2011 Religion/Denomination

Number

Percentage

Number

Percentage

Protestant Christians Anglican

74,994

5.67

Baptist

90,953

6.88

Methodist

8648

0.65

Pentecostal/Evangelical/Full Gospel

159,033

12.03

Presbyterian/Congregational

32,972

2.49

Seventh Day Adventist

54,156

4.10

Total

420,756

31.82

Roman Catholic

285,671

21.60

Hinduism

240,100

18.15

Islam

65,705

4.97

Others

134,675

10.18

None/Not Stated

175,640

13.28

Total

1,322,547

100.00

Source Computed from Central Statistical Office (2012: 17 [Table 1.7])

together form 10.18%. Significantly, 13.28% of the population either stated that they do not belong to any religion (2.18%) or did not disclose their religious affiliation (11.10%); together they outnumbered religions and denominations, excepting Roman Catholics and Hindus! After 1931, Trinidadian census reports do not give cross cross-tabulations of religion by ethnic origin. Based on preliminary census tabulations for 1970, Jack Harewood (1975: 110) provides a cross-classification of religion and ethnic origin of Trinidad and Tobago’s population. Analysing this and comparing it with the 1931 data3 reveals interesting findings. The vast majority of Indo-Trinidadians were either Hindus or Muslims (76.53%), while the Afro-Trinidadians (79.96%), Mixed ethnic groups (90.44%), and those belonging to Other ethnic groups were either Roman Catholic or Anglicans (see Table 9.2). While Hindus were the single largest group among Indo-Trinidadians (61.24%); Roman Catholics were the single largest group among Afro-Trinidadians (44.90%), Mixed ethnic groups (77.74%), and Others (61.99%). Analysing the data slightly differently, we find that the Roman Catholics were the most ethnically heterogenous religious community, though 53.98% of them were Afro-Trinidadians. But the vast majority of Anglicans (82.96%) and those belonging to Other religious/denominational affiliations (75.64%)—Baptists, Pentecostalists, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc.—were Afro-Trinidadians. An 3

According to the 1931 census, all of the Hindus and all but 500 of the Muslims were Indians, and they formed 69% and 15% respectively of the Indian population. The remainder 17% were Christians belonging to various denominations: Presbyterian (7%), Roman Catholic (6%), and Anglican (3%). A majority (72%) of the Presbyterians were Indians (Harewood, 1975: 107 and 110).

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9 Religion and Society I: Trinidad Hinduism

Table 9.2 Religious/denominational composition of ethnic groups in Trinidad & Tobago’s population, 1970 Ethnic group

African

Religious/denominational affiliation Roman Catholic

Anglican

Presbyterian

44.90

35.06

0.30

Hinduism

Islam

Others

Total

0.10

0.08

19.56

100

Indian

8.92

1.66

9.33

61.24

15.29

3.56

100

Mixed

77.64

12.80

1.85

0.54

0.51

6.66

100

Others

61.99

21.57

3.32

0.90

0.63

11.59

100

Total

35.63

18.10

4.23

24.71

6.26

11.07

100

Source Computed from Harewood (1975: 110 [Table 4P]) Note Only percentage distribution is shown

overwhelming majority of Hindus (99.42%), Muslims (98.03%), and Presbyterians (88.52%) were Indo-Trinidadians (see Table 9.3). In other words, while there are Catholics, Anglicans, and those belonging to ‘Other’ religions or denominations (14.14%) among Indo-Trinidadians, by and large, they are Hindus, Muslims, or Presbyterians (85.86%). Hence, this chapter focusing on religion among contemporary Indo-Trinidadians deals with Hinduism, and the next chapter, with Presbyterianism and Islam as practised by them, and the inevitable syncretic traditions that have evolved in Trinidad due to inter-religious interactions in which Indo-Trinidadians appear prominently. Table 9.3 Ethnic group representation of Trinidad & Tobago’s population in different religions/denominations, 1970 Religion/denomination

Ethnic group African

Indian

Roman Catholic

53.98

10.04

31.29

4.69

100

Anglican

82.96

3.67

10.16

3.21

100

3.08

88.52

6.28

2.12

100

Presbyterian

Mixed

Others

Total

Hinduism

0.17

99.42

0.31

0.10

100

Islam

0.52

98.03

1.18

0.27

100

Others

75.64

12.93

8.62

2.81

100

Total

42.83

40.12

14.36

2.69

100

Source Computed from Harewood (1975: 110 [Table 4P]) Note: Only percentage distribution is shown

9.2 Trinidad Hinduism

197

Table 9.4 Religious distribution of Indo-Trinidadians by their residence, 1960 Religion

Total population

Rural

Urban

Hindus

63.1

41.9

68.3

Muslims

16.5

21.8

15.2

All other Total

20.4

36.3

16.5

100.00

100.00

100.00

Source Computed from Harewood (1975: 111 [Table 4Q]) Note Only percentage distribution is shown

9.2 Trinidad Hinduism4 According to the 2011 census, there were 240,100 Hindus in Trinidad & Tobago, forming 18.5% of the country’s total population.5 They were the single largest religious ‘minority’ community, whose strength in numbers was next only to Roman Catholics (21.60%). According to the World Christian Database—2010, Trinidad & Tobago ranked sixth among countries with the highest percentage of Hindus; only India, Nepal, Mauritius, Guyana, and Fiji have a higher percentage of Hindus in their population (The Association of Religion Data Archives, 2010). More importantly, 61.24% of all Indo-Trinidadians in 1970 were Hindus. The socio-cultural significance of Hinduism in Trinidad is, however, more than what these numbers would suggest. Hinduism has been the principal means for expressing ethnic solidarity and disseminating ‘Indian’ culture. As David Lowenthal observes, ‘even among Christian Indians (Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Catholics),6 Hinduism has come to stand for “Indian” …. a Christian Indian is assumed to be a “Hindu” in culture, and in this sense a member of the Indian community’ (1972: 151); i.e., ‘generally, Indianness is equated with Hinduism’ (Prorok, 1988: 177). In the early decades of their immigration, Hindus retained their religious beliefs and practised their religious rites as they were known to them. During this period, Hinduism was a domestic religion and the locus was primarily the estates or plantations in which the immigrants served their indenture. Its practise bore the imprint of the region from which the immigrants hailed, as also the caste group to which they belonged. Post indenture, as the Indians started settling down as village communities, the practice of Hinduism (Table 9.4) assumed a ‘public’ orientation.7 4

For more detailed analyses of metamorphosis of Hinduism in Trinidad, and in the girmitiya diaspora in the Caribbean more generally, see Jha (1989), Vertovec (1989, 1990, 1992, 1994), van der Veer and Vertovec (1991), Singh (2012b), and Rampersad (2013). 5 The percentage of Hindus in Trinidad & Tobago has remained more or less constant since the earliest population enumeration: 1891, 25.27%; 1901, 25.16%; 1911, 25.51%; 1921, 24.13%; 1931, 22.74%; 1946, 22.64%; 1960, 23.90%; and 1970, 24.71% (Harewood 1975: 109). They formed 22.6% in 2001 census. 6 They are often called ‘Christian Hindus’ (Rampersad, 2002: 12), 7 Significantly, a majority of Hindus are rural based. Harewood’s analysis of primary census data for 1960 reveals that, while 63.1% of the Indo-Trinidadians were Hindus, Hindus formed 68.3% of all rural dwelling among them (see Table 9.4).

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Historian Kelvin Singh highlights the ‘extremely important’ role pandits played in giving the Hindus ‘psychological protection in a society basically hostile to them racially, culturally, economically’.8 The pandit, who was the focus of the Hindu social and cultural resistance, fostered among Hindus ‘a special pride in the antiquity of their religious and philosophical literature’. Given Hinduism’s pantheistic outlook, some pandits even facilely incorporated Christ as an avatar (incarnation) of the supreme divinity and gave him his due place in the Hindu pantheon (1985: 41). More importantly, as Anthony de Verteuil notes, it was the pandits who ‘gradually and imperceptibly’ helped the formation of ‘a politicized opinion among the Hindu community in Trinidad’ (1989: 138).9

9.2.1 Religious Organisation as an Ethnic Forum By the early 1890s, several panths,10 —like Ramanund,11 Kabeer,12 Owghur,13 and Seunarine14 Panths—had been revived. In his ‘Memorandum’ submitted to SurgeonMajor Dennis Wood Deane Comins, Philip Ramikissun, a clerk in the Irrigation Office in Trinidad, records that the ‘Ramnund Phunt’ was introduced into the colony by a Brahman named Kundoudass and the ‘Kabeer Phunt’, by a Chamar. The caste background of Sunphoolram alias Sunphooldass, who introduced ‘Owghur Phunt’, is not known. The ‘Sewnarain Phunt’ was introduced by a Lohar named Toolaram. The members of these panths met at a temple (Cuttia/Kutia/Kutiya) on every full moon. Ramkissun went on to add that the members of the Ramanund and Kabeer Panths were ‘always very clean, as well as their houses and wares’; they ate ‘no fish nor meat of any kind’ and drank ‘no liquor whatever’; both were against caste system. By 8

The maulvi played this role for the Muslims. Capildeo Maharaj, the ‘Pundit of Chaguanas’, is a case in point. The contribution of the Capildeo family, especially that of his son Simbhoonath Capildeo, to Hindu nationalism in Trinidad is remarkable (see Figueira, 2003). 10 Spelt in some colonial records/reports as phunt and panth (from Sanskrit patha, way or path), it is a spiritual path, faith; it is like a sect in the founded religions. 11 Ramanandi Sampradaya, after Ramananda (c. 1400–c. 1470), fifth in succession in the lineage of the philosopher-mystic Ramanuja. Sampradaya (Sanskrit) means a tradition or spiritual lineage (parampara) or a school of religious teachings. 12 In India, spelt as Kabir. Kabir (1440–1518), a mystic and a poet, was a chela (disciple) of Ramananda. 13 In India, spelt as Aghor or Aughar. 14 Also spelt as Seunarine, Seunariani, Sieunarini, and Siewnaraini; in India, as Siva/Shiv Narayana, was the founder of the panth named after him in the first half of the eighteenth century. The Seunarine Dharma Sabha of Trinidad & Tobago was incorporated in 1944. Clarke (see Clarke & Clarke, 2010: 160–161; 180) provides a description of a Seunarine puja at Lothian Estate that he observed in 1962. 9

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Photograph 9.1 A Hindu kutiya, Trinidad, 1996. Source Photograph taken by the author

contrast the members of the Owghur and Sewnarain Panths ate and drank ‘everything they like, and no ceremony is gone into without having rum’ (reproduced in Comins, 1893: 39). Rev. John Morton dismissed these panths as ‘a great nuisance’, and was particularly critical of Sewnarains and Owghurs, who ‘eat all kinds of filth, and use rum in their religious services’ (cited in Comins, 1893: 39) (Photograph 9.1). In the early twentieth century, the Hindu missionaries who came from India introduced the Indian settlers to the religious reform movements that India had witnessed in the preceding century. The most important of these movements was Arya Samaj.15 Pandits Dinanath Tiwary, Hariprasad Sharma, and Jaimini Mehta, all disciples of Bhai Paramanand (the first Arya Samaj missionary to visit Trinidad in 1910), introduced the Vedic mission to Trinidad during 1914–1928. Organising themselves as Arya Samaj Association, the Arya Samajists invited the mission’s theologians from India—Pandits Ayodhya Persad (in 1929), Satya Charan Shastri (in 1935), and Bhaskaranand (in 1936) (see Samaroo, 1987: 52–53). In 1943, the Arya Samaj Association was incorporated as the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha of Trinidad & Tobago.16 Although the Arya Samaj brand of Hinduism, imitating as it did the organisational form of Christianity, was appealing to educated people, especially its simplicity and missionary activities, it did not attract the following of the larger community 15

Arya Samaj (Sanskrit ‘Society of Nobles’) is a Hindu reform movement founded in 1875 by Swami Dayananda Sarasvati (1824–1883). Its objective was to re-establish the Vedas, the earliest Hindu scriptures, as infallible revealed truth. It upholds the doctrines of karma (consequence of past deeds) and samsara (rebirth), endorses the importance of samskaras (individual sacraments), and the efficacy of Vedic oblations to the fire. It rejects later accretions to the Vedas, opposes idol-worship, animal sacrifice, caste system, pilgrimage, and temple offerings. As a social reform movement, it supports female education, inter-caste marriage, and relief work. In its religious outlook, it is dogmatic, exhibiting intolerance towards Christianity and Islam; it was the first Hindu organisation to introduce proselytisation in Hinduism. Politically, it was the earliest to give the call for Swaraj, ‘India for Indians’, in 1876. 16 For a detailed study of Arya Samaj movement in Trinidad, see Forbes (1984, 1985, 1987).

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of Hindus. Also, internal bickering among leaders resulted in some of its leaders being forced out of the Sabha and a protracted court battle. A small unofficial rival organisation, called the Vedic Mission of Trinidad & Tobago was formed in 1968 with a membership of just over 200 persons, including children. According to Richard H. Forbes, the number of Samajists, including women and children, had declined from around 4000 in 1949 to less than 800 in 1983 (1984: 11–12). It was San¯atana Dharma17 which came to be preached and practised widely as the official Hinduism across Trinidad; it sought to address the spiritual and sociocultural needs of its adherents, the san¯atan¯ıs. Although the Sanatan Dharma Association of Couva was founded as early as 1881, it was the presence of the Arya Samaj missionaries that galvanised the exponents of San¯atana Dharma to organise themselves (Samaroo, 1987: 53). In 1930, the Trinidad San¯atan¯ıs invited Pandit N. K. Banerji to help them organise their religious tradition, and with his efforts the Sanatan Dharma Association of Couva, led by Michael Sarran Teelucksingh, was registered in May 1932. Teelucksingh’s leadership, however, was challenged, as he was an Anglican, and he was replaced by Pundit Ramjattan (ibid.: 127) (see Sect. 4.2.2). Around this time, a rival San¯atan¯ıst body, the Sanatan Dharma Board of Control of Tunapuna was organised under the leadership of Pundits Sahadeo Tiwary, C. H. Budhu, and Jairam Gosine; it was registered as a Friendly and Benevolent Society on 21 January 1932 and incorporated in June 1932 (Jha, 1982: 127). From early on, this Board was in contact with the Sanatan Dharma Pratinidhi Sabha of the Punjab, of which it became an affiliate in 1937. The Board sent its emissary, Dr Parshuram Sharma, to bring about unity among the San¯atan¯ısts and also to advocate the legalisation of marriages conducted under Hindu rites and the cremation of the dead by the pyre system (Samaroo, 1987: 54). However, it was only in 1952, under the leadership of Bhadase Sagan Maraj (1919–1971),18 that the two San¯atan¯ıst organisations were united under the umbrella of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS) (Ramesar, 1994: 148; Maharaj, 2004: 123). The SDMS is the largest, traditionalist, and politically conscious vibrant organisation of Hindus in Trinidad today. The vibrancy and openness of Hinduism as it is practised in Trinidad is revealed by the number of Hindu religious and spiritual traditions that the country is home to. Apart from SDMS, there is a smaller breakaway San¯atan¯ı group called SWAHA19 International. Other notable Hindu spiritual groups in Trinidad are the Bharat 17

San¯atana Dharma refers to the ‘eternal’ truth and teachings of Hinduism, conceived of as transcendental and unchanging and as indivisible and non-sectarian. 18 In the obituary, paying tributes to Maraj, Augustus Ramrekarsingh, wrote ‘More than any other single individual, Bhadase made the Indians proud of their heritage in a society which was Christian and Afro-Saxon, hence hostile to them’ (Trinidad Express, October 21, 1971). After his death in 1971, his son-in-law Satnarayan Mahraj (1931–2019) succeeded as the leader of SDMS, and under his leadership the organisation achieved the status as the most prominent Hindu organisation in the Caribbean. After his death in 2019, his son Vijay Maharaj succeeded as the leader of SDMS. For a biography of Bhadase Sagan Maraj, see Maharaj et al. (2001), and of Satnarayan Maharaj, see Mahabir (2014), and a collection of his speeches, see Mahabir (2016). 19 SWAHA, is the acronym for the Society Working for the Advancement of Hindu Aspirations. Incorporated in 1993, this organisation is based on the Advaita Vedanata philosophy propounded by Adi Shanakaracharya in eighth century CE.

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Photograph 9.2 Sri Dattatreya Yoga Centre (estd. 1986), Carapichaima, Trinidad, 2008. Note The temple, built according to the Dravidian style of architecture of South India, was inaugurated in 2003. Source Photograph taken by the author

Sevashram Sangha, Brahma Kumaris Raja Yoga Meditation Centre,20 Chinmaya Mission,21 Divine Life Society,22 Ganapathi Sachchidananda movement (Sri Dattatreya Yoga Centre), Radha Madhav Society (Jagadguru Kripalu Parishat), Sri Sathya Sai Baba Organisation,23 International Society for Krishna Consciousness,24 etc. In addition, several local cults and practices exist. Generally, the followers are eclectic in their choice of the spiritual group, but it is invariably in addition to the mainstream San¯atana Dharma, not as an alternative (Photograph 9.2). Thus, over a century and a half since its introduction along with their arrival and settlement in Trinidad, the beliefs and practices of Hinduism have evolved from their localised forms to wider and more universalistic definitions cutting across several divisions. Hinduism in Trinidad, as elsewhere in the Caribbean, as Lowenthal observes, ‘is a simpler and more homogenous creed than in India’ (1972: 152). It can justifiably be called as Trinidad Hinduism. While smaller sects have not entirely disappeared and newer spiritual groups have been introduced, the San¯atana Dharma has fostered among all Hindus a consciousness of being a distinct ethnic community in multi-ethnic Trinidad as elsewhere in the Caribbean (see Jayawardena, 1968: 444; Samaroo, 2004). 20

The Trinidad branch was established by Sister Hemlata during her visit to Trinidad in 1975. Initiated in Trinidad by Chinmayananda in the 1960s but formally established in 1997 by his discipline Brahmachari Prem Chaitanya, with its focus on Vedanta. 22 The Trinidad branch was established by Shriacharya Karmanandaji in 1993. 23 Rejuvenated in Trinidad in 1983 (see Klass, 1991). 24 The Trinidad branch was established in 1968. 21

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9.2.2 Christianity and Hinduism A key socio-religious factor in the development of a simpler, more homogenous, and overarching Hinduism in Trinidad, and in Guyana and Suriname, is the competition it had from the different denominations of Christianity and their efforts to proselytise Hindus into their fold. Not surprisingly, in its structure and function, the metamorphosed form of Hinduism in these countries has a striking resemblance to Christianity. During the last century, Hinduism has achieved a comparable theological scope and organisational dispensation to that of Christianity, while retaining its uniqueness in its beliefs and rituals (see Lowenthal, 1972: 152). Although Hindu leadership justifiably emphasises the symbolic distinctiveness of Hinduism, the influence of Christianity is clearly visible in the temple architecture and arrangements25 ; the pew-like seating arrangements inside the Paschim Kaashi Hindu Mandir in St James is a typical illustration of this. The importance of Sunday as a ‘holy’ day, when Hindu devotees make their weekly visit to a temple, is an adoption of a Christian institutional form. Like their Christian counterparts, the Brahman priests dispense standard rituals at community temples and hold ‘services’ (satsangs) at weekends. They respond to call by their followers in officiating at domestic ceremonies, visit the sick in hospitals, and advise them in their personal matters, much like the Christian priests and ministers do for their parishioners. Until Diwali gained prominence as a Hindu community festival in the 1970s, Christmas was observed as a social event by the Hindus (see Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 157)26 ; the purchase of household items and the exchange of gifts during Diwali are, in fact, Christmascentred activities; ‘it is customary to get new curtains’ for Christmas (see ibid.; see also Miller, 1994: 95–97). Since the mid-1880s, Good Friday and All Saints’ Day have been observed by some Hindus as auspicious days. In the late 1950s, during their fieldwork in Penal, Debe, and San Fernando, the Niehoffs observed that a day or two before All Saints’ Day, in preparation for paying homage to their dead, Indians cleaned the cemeteries and graves, and built ‘mounds over the graves of their family members and cover these mounds with lipé [lepay]’, i.e., plaster of mud-clay and cow dung; and, on the previous day, the family members ‘light candles and dia [deya, earthen oil lamps] … over the graves’ (1960: 156; see also Tikasingh, 1976: 234–236). Half a century later, Sherry-Ann Singh (2012b: 62) reported on this Hindu observance of a Catholic tradition. Some Hindus get their cars blessed by Benedictine monks at the Mount Saint Benedict, also known as The Abbey of Our Lady of Exile, a monastery (established in 1912) in the north-western town of St Augustine. The location of the Abbey, at 25

For her doctoral thesis, Prorock (1988) had done an extensive study of 186 Hindu temples in Trinidad in 1984–1985. 26 In the novel Fire Flies, Shiva Naipaul writes, ‘the Khojas, although fervent Hindus’, had looked on Christianity ‘with a more indulgent eye’ and ‘traditionally observed without discomfort many of the events on the Christian calendar’: ‘During Lent … the children were forbidden to sing calypsos … and … Easter was celebrated with Easter Eggs’ (2012a: 15).

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245 m above the mean sea level, in the northern range, invokes ‘some feeling of sacredness’ among Hindu Indo-Trinidadians: ‘these hills are located in about the same relationship to the rest of Trinidad as the Himalayas are to India’ (Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 156). Although Hindus willingly adopted many a Christian precept and practice, they were generally averse to conversion to Christianity. In fact, as Rev. Roy Neehall points out, ‘the spiritual monopoly of Christian schools over the education of Hindu and Muslim children’ was seen by the Indian community leaders as ‘a threat to the survival of their culture and religion’ (1993: 8). It was to resist the conversion to Christianity that Hindu and Muslim schools were established by their respective religious organisations and leadership. From 1950 onwards, there was a massive thrust from the Hindu and Muslim organisations to build schools funded partly by the state and partly by donations raised from their respective communities. The initiative of these organisations in the field of education, which were inspired by their Christian counterparts, ‘has ensured the survival and continuation of their religious and cultural beliefs and traditions’ in Trinidad (Mohammed, 1995: 95).

9.2.3 The Ramayana and Ramleela An integral part of Trinidad Hinduism is the Ramayana (Ramayn, as it is popularly pronounced in Trinidad),27 the epic comprising 24,000 slokas (verses) in seven cantos, narrating the story of Rama, the hero-Hindu divinity, the seventh of the ten incarnations of Vishnu, the Hindu god of protection. Its authorship is attributed to the sage Valmiki and dated to around 500–100 BCE. Embodying the teachings of ancient Hindu sages, as a literary work of ancient India, it has greatly influenced art and culture in the Indian subcontinent and South East Asia generally, versions of it appearing in Buddhism, too. The story of Rama has been constantly retold in poetic and dramatic forms, both in Sanskrit, in which it was originally composed, and in most regional languages of India. It is a staple in temple wall-paintings, dance-drama traditions, shadow-puppet theatres, and television shows.28 In northern India, the annual Ramleela (R¯am-l¯ıl¯a, Rama’s play), the pageant-play based on the life and times of Rama, is performed at the autumn festival of Navaratri (nine nights) in the Hindu month of Ashwin (September–October) climaxing in Dussehra (Dasara), the tenth and final day on which the giant grotesque effigies of Ravana are burnt to celebrate the eventual triumph of light (good) over darkness (evil). Continuously told and re-told, composed and re-composed, over more than two millennia, there are hundreds of versions of the Ramayana (see Ramanujan, 1999). 27

For a more detailed socio-historical perspective on the Ramayana in Trinidad, see Singh (2005, 2012a), and Balkaransingh (2016: 59–90). 28 The Hindi-language epic television series, Ramayana (created and directed by Ramanad Sagar), aired during 1987–1988, is one of the most viewed mythological television shows in the world.

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The version of this text brought into Trinidad by the indentured immigrants was ´ ı R¯amacaritam¯anasa29 ) by Goswami Tulsidas (1532–1632), a Ramcharitmanas (Sr¯ Ramanandi Vaishnava Hindu saint and poet, renowned for his devotion to the deity Rama, composed around 1574 (see Tulsidas nd; Bahadur, 1976; Lutgendorf, 1991). Ramcharitmanas is an interpretation in pre-modern Hindi of the original Sanskrit Ramayana by Valmiki; a version that is more amenable to singing and dramatised performances and, as such, is more accessible to and understandable by laypersons. Almost from the time of their arrival in Trinidad, the Ramcharitmanas has been the unchallenged and the most prominent ‘scriptural’ source for the Hindus, an ‘encyclopaedia’ (Haraksingh, 2006: 283) providing them both a theological framework and a socio-cultural and emotional anchor in an environment which was alien and hostile to them. By the 1950s, the text was being referred to as ‘the Pancham Veda or “Fifth Veda”’ (Singh 2012a: 27). By the 1970s, it began eclipsing Bhagavad Purana,30 the primary text for the performance of yagnas,31 and the Bhagavad Gita,32 the primary text for the observance of satsangs33 (see Vertovec, 1992: 164–166). The place accorded to Ramcharitmanas vis-à-vis Bhagavad Purana and Bhagavad Gita among the Hindu Indo-Trinidadians (as Hindus in the girmitiya diaspora, more generally) is remarkable indeed. It marks the uniqueness of Trinidad Hinduism as compared to Hinduism as practised in India. The special religious appeal of the Ramayana to the girmitiya diasporic Hindus and its secular appeal even to those who converted to Christianity is explained by the fact that it is essentially a text that revolves around the theme of the exile of Rama and his eventual return to Ayodhya after spending 14 years in the wilderness.34 Both in its narration and dramatised performance, the exile theme provided immense solace and emotional support to the immigrants. After all, the immigrants, who had thought of their indentured migration as a fixed term of exile, ‘identified with the trials and tribulations of Rama in the text, while upholding his dignity and endurance as an ideal worthy of emulation in their own situation (Singh, 2012a: 26). The hope of returning to their Motherland that many of the immigrants had entertained, especially prior to their settlement in the colony, provided another point of identification with the 29

Literally, the Manasa Lake brimming over with the exploits of Sri Rama. Bh¯agavata Pur¯an.a is one of the 18 Mahapuranas (great puranas) promoting bhakti (devotion) to Krishna, the eighth of the ten incarnations of Vishnu, the Hindu god of protection. 31 Yajna is a Hindu ritual in the Vedic tradition performed in front of a sacred fire, with the recitation of mantras (sacred chants). For a detailed analysis of the performance of yagnas in Trinidad, see Vertovec (1992: 164–174). 32 Bhagavad Gita (Shrimad Bhagavad Gita), popularly known as Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the epic Mahabharata (chapter 23–40 of book 6, called Bhishma Parva), rendered as a dialogue between the Pandava prince Arjuna and his charioteer and mentor Lord Krishna during the Dharma Yuddha (righteous war) between Kauravas and Pandavas. 33 The Hindi word satsang is derived from Sanskrit (sat = true + sangha = community/group), which refers to a religious meeting where people read holy texts, think deeply about or talk about religious matters, etc. In popular parlance it means spiritual discourse. 34 A Presbyterian colleague whom I had accompanied to watch the Ramleela episode on Rama’s banishment was so moved that he was in tears. The audience, which I was told had many Christians of different denominations, was in a state of gloom. 30

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text. Thus, ‘for these displaced Hindus’, as Gaiutra Bahadur puts it, the Ramayan is lifeblood’ (2013: 106). The special appeal of the Ramcharitmanas to Hindu Trinidadians is explained by its location in the Bhakti (devotional) tradition of Hinduism with which the indentured immigrants, both who narrated it and who listened to it, were familiar; the tradition was widely prevalent in the areas from which they hailed. Not only was the Ramayana ‘the more approachable’ of the two Hindu epics (Naipaul, 2004b: 8), the text of the Ramcharitmanas, written in Hindi, was easily understood by even the illiterate among them. Its sloka (verse) form was easy to commit to memory. From early on, episodes from the Ramayana were narrated and slokas from the Ramcharitmanas were recited by the girmitiyas in the plantation barracks in the evenings and during festival occasions.35 The lead was taken by the knowledgeable among them. Gradually, with the development of Indian settlements, the venue shifted to kutiyas (small temples), and the dissemination of the Ramayana became more structured. Additionally, a long-standing tradition, traceable to the early postindenture period, has been the weekly or fortnightly satsangs, hosted by families on a rotational basis, at which discourses on the Ramayana are held and slokas are recited as bhajan (devotional singing) (see Vertovec, 1992: 115–116). From the 1930s, the Ramayana gradually came to be promoted more publicly. With the establishment of Hindu schools by the SDMS and other Hindu organisations, the Ramayana came to be included into the formal education system.36 Quizzes, chanting, and essay-writing completions on the Ramayana came to be organised. By the 1970s, several Indian, and particularly Hindu, cultural organisations began disseminating the Ramayana throughout the country. The run up to the sesquicentenary celebrations in the early 1990s gave impetus to revitalisation trends: the organisation of Ramayana Yatras (processions), the Ramayana chanting marathons and conferences, and the Ramayana Utsav (festival) are illustrations of this (Singh, 2012a: 29 and 31). In 1995, Divali Nagar37 had as its exposition theme ‘This Ramayana Country’. Besides depicting the various facets of the Ramayana, 35

In the 1880s, John Henry Collens, observed that one may ‘often in the evening, work being done, see and hear a group of coolies crouching down in a semicircle, chanting whole stanzas of the epic poems, Ramayan etc.’ (1888: 233; see Sect. 8.1). Similarly, the Presbyterian missionary, Rev Kenneth James Grant recorded that the slokas from the Ramayana were ‘often heard in song, accompanied by cymbals and drums, when the day’s work is over’ (1923: 71). 36 During my sojourn in Trinidad (1994–1996), I often heard the ‘Dharma Shiksha’ (Hindu religious instruction) programme sponsored by SDMS and broadcast every school day at 11 A.M. on the local FM 103 radio station. Besides religious instruction, the programme contained Hindu bhajans and mythological stories and elementary Hindi lessons. 37 Divali Nagar (lit. City of Divali) is an annual exposition of Indo-Trinidadian culture, with special focus on the Hindu culture, associated with the Diwali (Deepavali, festival of lights) the most important Indo-Trinidadian festival. The exposition site is located in the borough of Chaguanas, a predominantly Indo-Trinidadian area. The event was started in a car park in late 1986, and was given a permanent site on the John Peters Road Extension off the Uriah Butler Highway a couple of years later. It is the venue of the annual Indian Arrival Day festivities, cultural events, educational seminars, and religious festivities. The site is also used for charitable events, wedding receptions, and trade exhibition for selling religious and cultural merchandise from India. The idea of this site was conceived by Hans Hanoomansingh, the then President of the National Council of Indian

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a Manas Mandir (Ramcharitmanas temple) was erected (Trinidad Guardian, May 30, 1995). In the same year, the Hindu Prachar Kendra introduced the annual Mantra Vimochan (Mantra of the Year) event. In 1997, the birth anniversary of Tulsidas was celebrated at the Ganga Dashara and a 108-night Gyan Tirath (Ramayana reading marathon) was held; the bedi (ritual altar) was shaped as a map of Trinidad (Singh, 2012a: 31). It is pertinent to observe here that the Ramayana has become an integral part of the Hindu lifecycle—birth, marriage, death—rituals, which are observed with great religious fervour. Slokas from the Ramayana are recited on the chhati (sixth day) and barahi (twelfth day), depicting the birth and childhood of Rama and his brothers. In the wedding ceremony, besides the recitations of slokas from the Ramcharitmanas, the priests give discourse on the ideal marital relationship by invoking the divine role model of Rama and Sita.38 Slokas from the Ramcharitmanas are recited (now frequently by playing of the pre-recorded versions) both during the wake and during the funeral procession. The nightly satsangs during the mourning period are ‘an immense source of comfort and solace for the bereaved family’ (ibid.: 31). The Ramayan satsangs (sometimes accompanied by yagnas) are also held to fulfil a vow on realisation of some desired outcome: a rich harvest, academic achievement of a child, recovery from an illness, completion of a travel abroad, etc. People refer to the Ramayana as a guide in interpersonal relations and community life. Singh draws attention to the role of the Ramayana as ‘a primary sanctioning element in religious and social matters’; it functioned like the Bible among Christians and the Koran among Muslims with respect to the taking of oaths’ (ibid.: 33). It is used in occasions such as taking an oath, and in dispute resolutions in village panchayats in earlier times and in family matters to this day.39 Significantly, Bhagavad Gita hardly performed such a sanctioning role among the Trinidad Hindus (ibid.: 33), though the first Hindu Minister and later the first Indo-Trinidadian prime minister took oath on this scripture. During my sojourn in Trinidad, I frequently came across invocation to the Ramayana and its characters in politics; a political opponent was facilely dubbed as ‘Ravan’ or the opposition, as rakshas (malignant demons). As Singh observes, ‘the Ramayana tradition in Trinidad will undoubtedly continue to act both as mirror and metaphor of the Hindu experience in Trinidad’ (ibid.: 40). My conversations with Hindu Trinidadians suggest that on an average they seem to know more about the Ramayana than their Indian counterparts! V. S. Naipaul’s remark that ‘I didn’t have to be taught it’; ‘the story … was like something I had always known’ (2004b: 8), would be true of most Hindu Trinidadians. Most of them have heard the story from its oral exegesis in various religious fora and recited slokas from the Ramcharitmanas in satsangs or in family ritual occasions. Some Culture, and its fruition is the outcome of dedicated individuals, led by Rampersad Parasram (the first chairman of Diwali Nagar) and Deokinanan Sharma, etc. 38 Feminist scholars have drawn attention to the role of the Ramayana and Ramleela in ‘the transference of symbols and constructions of Indian masculinity and femininity’ (Mohammed, 1999: 70; see also Bahadur, 2013: 108). 39 Such oaths were also taken on a lota (brass tumbler) of water (symbolically representing the Ganga, the holy river for the Hindus).

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Photograph 9.3 Entrance to the venue of Ramleela, Dow Village, California, Trinidad, 2014. Note Dow Village has the distinction of hosting Ramleela since 1880. The murals of the compound of the Ramleela complex show some scenes from the Ramayana. Source Photograph taken by the author

of them have learnt it formally as part of religious education. However, there is no gainsaying that the most important source of knowledge about the Ramayana for the Hindu Trinidadians has been the annual theatrical representation, the Ramleela. According to Satnarine Balkaransingh (2016: 70), the earliest documented evidence of the Ramleela in Trinidad goes back to 1880; it was held in Dow Village, California in Central Trinidad (Photograph 9.3). By the mid-1930s, as an annual ‘festival’, it had become entrenched as part of the Hindu religious calendar and Indian culture.40 Naipaul recalls the Ramleela as ‘the first public things’ that he had been taken to as a child: It was done in an open field in the middle of sugarcane, on the edge of our small country town. The male performers were barebacked and some carried long bows; they walked in a slow, stylised, rhythmic way, on their toes, and with high, quivering steps; when they made an exist … they walked down a ramp that had been dug in the earth. The pageant ended with the burning of the big black effigy of the demon king of Lanka. This burning was one of the things people had come for; and the effigy, roughly made with tar paper on a bamboo frame, had been standing in the open field all the time, as a promise of the conflagration. (2004b: 7)

The annual Ramleela event, now widely celebrated in Trinidad, has undergone substantial change since Naipaul’s childhood days. Its organisation is an eventmanagement exercise; it is technologically sophisticated in its production, and 40

On October 21, 1934, The Sunday Guardian reported elaborately on the conclusion of Ramleela festival held at Waterloo Estate Savannah; it also reported on this festival at Dow Village in California, Tacarigua Savannah, and the Cedar Hill Estate Savannah—describing the scene at the festival as ‘reminiscent of an Oriental Pageant’ (quoted in Mohammed, 1999: 96).

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theatrically nuanced in its performance.41 Balakaransingh’s comparative study of the Ramleela in Felicity Village in Trinidad and in Sahabganj, Ayodhya/Faizabad in India, highlights not only the continuities and changes in its performance, but also the metamorphosis that it has undergone over a century and a half in the girmitiya diaspora; it can justifiably claim to be Trinidad Ramleela. The credit for this should go to the Hindu girmitiyas for introducing and retaining the performance of Ramleela during their settlement in an alien land and to their descendants for transforming it into an integral part of the Indo-Trinidadian religiouscultural element. As an annual socio-cultural event in Trinidad, the Ramleela today is second only to the Carnival.42

9.2.4 Festivals, Pujas, and Samskaras Trinidad-Hindus observe many Hindu-calendrical festivals, the two most important being Diwali and Phagwa (Holi), besides the Navaratri, of which Ramleela is an integral part. Diwali,43 which follows a couple of weeks after Navratri, is perhaps the most important Hindu holy day’ (Vertovec, 1992: 176; see also Jha, 1976a).44 Trinidad Diwali is unique in its celebration.45 What was once observed at homes and neighbourhoods, and later at temples and by religious groups, is now embraced by organisations which hold huge Diwali celebrations. The annual celebrations at Divali Nagar, organised by the National Council of Indian Culture, attracts thousands of people from all over the country. Besides the Lakshmi puja and the massive communal decorative displays of deyas46 (earthen oil lamps), the Diwali programmes in Trinidad include musical and dance performances, and pageants depicting religious stories. 41

For a detailed analysis of the Ramleela see Gooptar (2015) and Balkaransingh (2016: 59–90). In fact, in times gone by, the Trinidad Creoles described the Ramleela as ‘Coolie Carnival’ (Lowenthal, 1972: 153). 43 Diwali/Divali is the Hindi and English term derived from Sanskrit d¯ıp¯ avali (d¯ıpa = lamp + a¯ vali = a row or series), meaning a row or series of lamps. This festival of lights that symbolises the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance, is a major festival in India, celebrated by Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, and some Buddhists, too. The duration of this festival ranges from three to five days, starting with the new moon day (Amavasya) in the Hindu lunisolar month of Kartika (between mid-October and mid-November). While it is widely associated with Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, there are variations in its religious significance in different regions of India and for different castes. As part of the Ramayana tradition, in north India, it marks the day on which Rama returned to Ayodhya with his wife Sita and brother Lakshmana after defeating Ravana in Lanka and completing 14 years of exile. 44 Since 1977, Diwali is a public holiday in Trinidad & Tobago. 45 For a comparative analysis of Diwali in Trinidad and the Chitrakoot region (falling in between the state boundaries of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh) in India, see Balkaransingh (2016: 91–119). 46 Deya is a small earthen oil lamp lit with a cotton wick. In Trinidad, traditionally, coconut oil has been used to keep the deyas burning; readymade wax and wick deyas are now available. The deyas are placed on outward bent thick bamboo strips whose ends are fastened to the ground in savannahs and other open spaces or in the driveways of homes. One would also come across bamboos bent 42

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Phagwa, known in India as Holi, is perhaps the gayest of Hindu festivals, celebrated with songs, music, and dance in India and elsewhere in the Indian diaspora. It is simultaneously the festival of spring, celebrating the end of winter and the beginning of the harvest season; the festival of love, celebrating the eternal and divine love of Radha and Krishna; and the festival of colours, a purification rite to promote good health, spraying or throwing of vibrant coloured powders mixed with water (called abeer).47 Though the festival has a solemn religious significance, its secular cheerful atmosphere makes it a multi-ethnic social festival; as in Diwali, many non-Hindus and Afro-Trinidadians join in its celebration. Like Diwali, Phagwa was brought into Trinidad by the indentured immigrants. It is celebrated in the Hindu month of Phalgun, which coincides with February–March of the Gregorian calendar, and marks the onset of spring in India. Vertovec provides a description of the festival, whose preparation commences 40 days before hand, on Basant Panchami and ends with the symbolic burning of the witch Holika (Holika dahan), asura king Hiranyakashipu’s sister, in the Puranic tale of Prahalad (1992: 210–211; see also Jha, 1973). During this period, local community groups gather to sing chowtals (devotional songs specific to this time of the year); the culmination of the celebration (starting on the evening of Purnima [full-moon day]) is marked with gusto and gay abandon—a free-for-all festival of colours, where people smear/drench each other with abeer. Since its introduction, Holi in Trinidad has metamorphosed into Phagwa as an integral element of Trinidad Hinduism.48 Midway through this 40-day Phagwa preparation occurs Maha Shivaratri, a night (r¯atri) dedicated to worshipping Shiva.49 In Trinidad, Hindus who observe this ritual keep vrat (vow) for varying periods, from 3 to 21 consecutive days prior to Shivaratri; some even maintain a 24-h fast. They participate in kirtans (singing devotional hymns) and satsangs, special pujas are held for the Shivalingam (an abstract or aniconic representation of Shiva). Unlike Diwali or Phagwa, Shivaratri is not a joyous public celebration, but a solemn domestic or temple-based observance. Besides these important religious festivals, Trinidad Hindus practise many domestic or neighbourhood-/community-based rituals and worship forms. Some of them feel a special affinity to a personal deity, ishtdevata. In many Hindu homes, the tulsi (Ocimum tenuiflorum; Holy Basil) plant (referred to as a tree in Trinidad), regarded as a manifestation of the goddess Lakshmi, the principal consort of the god Vishnu, is worshipped daily, together with sun. Members of the household pour jal (holy/consecrated water) from a lota (a brass or copper tumbler), while reciting an appropriate mantra (a sacred chant) (see Clarke & Clarke, 2010: 142–143). in different shapes, including the sacred Hindu sign ‘Ohm’. Families and neighbours, including Christians and Muslims participate in lighting the deyas. The creative art of bending the bamboos and the communal activity of lighting the deyas is a spectacular sight to watch. 47 Like Diwali, Phagwa/Holi signifies the triumph of good over the evil: the victory of Vishnu, in his fourth avatara, as Narasimha (half-man-half-lion) slaying demon-king Hiranyakashipu. 48 For a comparative analysis of Phagwa in Trinidad and Holi in Brindavan, Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, India, see Balkaransingh (2016: 219–249). 49 For a comparative analysis of Shivaratri in Trinidad and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, India, see Balkaransingh (2016: 193–217).

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Among the socio-religious institutions in Trinidad Hinduism in the mid-1980s, Vertovec (1992: 164) identified the yagnas (‘single most important’), pujas (‘the most common’), and satsangs (‘the most intimate’)—all outcomes of the Hindu religious revitalisation in post-independence Trinidad. He examines the modifications, means of organisation, courses of action, and social ramifications of these institutions (see ibid.: 164–183; see also Vertovec, 1991; Khan, 1995: 322–385).50 Although, he does not provide a comparative analysis of these with their counterparts in India, my own observations during fieldwork confirm that, while they borrow elements from the Hindu traditions in India, the way they practise it is unique to Trinidad Hindus.51 Travelling through the countryside, I was often struck by the sight of innumerable flags fluttering in the vicinity of houses and temple premises. Hailing from South India, it was indeed a new sight for me: prayer flags of different colours and in diverse shapes and sizes, hoisted on bamboo flag-poles of varying heights.52 Called jhandi53 it is a tiny sacred pat¯ak¯a (pennant/ensign/banner),54 with or without a crest or an image of a deity, hoisted on a short bamboo flag-pole (15–30 cm) and placed on a bedi (altar) during puja, or in the veranda of the house. Longer jhandis (2 m or more) with larger pat¯ak¯as are planted in places of worship or ritually sanctified areas and in festive areas. It is common to see jhandis flying in the compounds of mandirs and almost every Hindu household. Balkaransingh estimates that, at any given time, there are ‘more than one million jhandis dotting Trinidad’s landscape’ (2016: 302). The tradition of the jhandi was introduced into Trinidad by the early girmitiyas. In the early 1870s, Charles Kingsley mentions jhandi in his bigoted description of ‘the coolie temples’—‘curious places to those who have never been face to face with real heathendom’: ‘Their mark is, generally, a long bamboo with a pennon atop, outside a low dark hut, with a broad flat veranda, or rather shed, outside the door’ (1889: 300). By the time Vertovec (1992: 200) did his fieldwork in the early 1980s, jhandi, earlier found predominantly at temples or shrines, had become an integral part of every puja performed at Hindu homes. Over the decades, with the proliferation of puja types, the colour code of jhandis has metamorphosed; the colour of the jhandi to be offered is now very much defined in terms of the deity (deva or devi) or the

50

Clarke and Clarke (2010: 50–52, 58–60) provide a description of the pujas they attended at Hermitage and Timital villages during their fieldwork in south Trinidad in 1962. 51 There is a discernible commercial exploitation of Hinduism. For example, around festival times, like Diwali or Maha Shivaratri, one comes across newspaper advertisements like ‘Pure Vegetarian Ghee for Shiva Ratri: A Quality Product Ideal for all Religious Occasions as well as Daily Use’. The brand names are typically Hindu: Sri Krishna, Rama and Sita Ghee, etc. 52 Travelling in eastern Uttar Pradesh and eastern Bihar after I returned to India, I realised the religious significance of these flags, which are non-existent in most other parts of India. 53 Jhandi is the feminine form of the masculine jhanda; it is a miniature jhanda; in Trinidad, the longer jhanda is also called jhandi; the term is used for both singular and plural forms. For a detailed analysis of jhandi as a Hindu religious symbol, see Balkaransingh (2016: 293–329; see also Vertvec, 1992: 200–202). The ritual erection of jhandi is also found in most other girmitiya diaspora communities. 54 Also used in its feminine form, ‘pennon’.

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graha (planet) propitiated (see Balkaransingh, 2016: 309–310, 312–, 321–322; see also Vertovec, 1992: 196, En 23) (Photograph 9.4). The innumerable jhandis dotting Trinidad’s landscape mark its religious aesthetics. Those unfamiliar with Hinduism, often mistake jhandis with the prayer flags found in the homes and shrines of the Spiritual Baptists and the followers of the Shango (Orisha) faith, which are different from jhandis by their distinctly large size and the rectangular shape of the pennants. This confusion has often let to misinterpretation of jhandis with sinister black magic (see Vertovec, 1992: 226, En 5). It is important, therefore, to emphasise that jhandi, as a religious symbol has immense significance for Trinidad Hindus, both in their individual consciousness as adherents of that faith and in their collective consciousness as an ethnic-religious community; in Durkheimian language, it is a ‘collective representation’ par excellence (Durkheim, 1974: 1–34). In the domestic sphere, Trinidad Hindus have revived some of the 16 samskaras (lifecycle rites) traditionally observed by their forefathers in India (see Klass, 1988: 117–121 ff; Jha, 1976b). In the later-1950s, Morton Klass found that few in Amity had even heard of ‘the sor¯a sansk¯ar [solah samskara; 16 rites]’ (1988: 118). Apart from marriage (see Sect. 6.4) and death (see Sect. 8.1), ceremonies associated with the birth of a child is an important lifecycle rite that is performed. As Morris Freilich found in the late 1950s, among Indian households, in general, the birth of a child, especially if it is the first one for a couple, is a joyful event: ‘The mother has produced a grandchild for her husband’s parents and has thus cemented her position in a strange household’ (1960: 106). As in most South Asian communities, among IndoTrinidadians, too, the birth of a baby boy is most joyful; after all, it is through the male child that patrilineage is continued. Special rituals are observed on the sixth day (chathi), when the mother and baby are bathed and ‘purified’, and on the twelfth day (barahi), when the birth celebration is held and the child is given a name. In all

Photograph 9.4 Jhandi fixed near the sacred pipal (ashvattha) tree, Trinidad, 2008. Source Photograph taken by the author

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three important lifecycle rituals of Trinidad Hindus there is a discernible Christian influence. While Trinidad Hinduism is now considerably standardised and institutionalised and is overarching in its scope and influence on its adherents, some Hindus, in addition, have retained their beliefs and rituals not approved by their mainstream religion. These peripheral beliefs and rituals are associated with lower-caste, nonBrahmanical traditions (see Vertovec, 1992: 214), and persist even to this day. Many Hindus I spoke to during my fieldwork dismissed these as undesirable cults, because they involve animal sacrifice and the use of alcohol as well as spirit possession and invocation to devils. The ‘hog-puja’, involving animal sacrifice (usually, pig) and offering of alcohol (usually, rum) to the goddess Parmeshwari, believed to be a manifestation of Kali, is a typical illustration of such a ritual, which is associated with Chamar (one of the lowermost castes). The participants consume the pork (and alcohol) as prasad (consecrated food) and whatever is left unconsumed is buried. My informant from Cunupia village clarified that this puja, which is shrouded in secrecy, is conducted by a knowledgeable Chamar (called mahant) with the assistance of a few caste fellows (see Jayaram, 2006: 160).55 There are other such pujas, which the mainstream Hindus, irrespective of their organisational affiliation, decry.56 The existence of such beliefs and practices and their identification with a particular caste group, often raise the question of caste among Trinidad Hindus, to which I will now turn.

9.2.5 Caste Among Trinidad Hindus57 In the sociological scholarship on India, the intrinsic relationship between caste58 and Hinduism has been treated as axiomatic (see Srinivas, 1962: 150; Dumont, 1970; Jayaram, 1996). Caste has survived in India for more than three millennia and has shown extraordinary resilience as a social institution. As a part of their socio-cultural baggage, it was taken by the Hindu girmitiyas to the colonies of their destination, including Trinidad. That caste as then known in India would disappear among Hindus in Trinidad was anticipated by colonial administrators and missionaries in the late

55

Only those willing to partake of the prasad are allowed to witness this ritual. Being a vegetarian, obviously, I was not permitted to observe this puja. I thank Dhanayshar Mahabir for providing me an account of this puja. 56 For a detailed description of the Parameshwari worship and similar other worship associated with erstwhile lower-caste Hindus, see Vertovec (1992: 214–216, 228–29 En 23). 57 For a detailed analysis of the metamorphosis of caste among Trinidad Hindus, see Jayaram (2006). 58 The English word ‘caste’, derived from Portuguese casta (lineage or breed) and Latin castus (chaste), is widely though mistakenly used to refer to hierarchical hereditary social groups in India. It is a coinage of British colonial administrators and ethnographers which conflates varna (panIndian abstract hierarchical classification of communities) and jati (local empirical endogamous groups), the two terms traditionally used in the Indian subcontinent.

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nineteenth century itself. For instance, the Protector of Immigrants in Trinidad was confident that. were immigration from India to cease now, fifty years from this would find but little trace of caste in the colony, or what might remain so changed that the ‘Brahmins’ of India would not be able to recognise it. [Caste would] be a thing of the past, except perhaps among a few ‘Brahmins’ or ‘Chuttrees’ [Kshatriyas], who might still cling to it. (Quoted by Comins, 1893: 38).

Social anthropologists studying caste among Hindus in Trinidad after a century of their arrival there reported variously on the phenomenon: Barton Morley Schwartz categorically reported ‘the failure of caste’ (1967: 117); Arthur Niehoff found caste to be ‘functionally a matter of little concern in Hindu community’ (1967: 162); Colin G. Clarke observed that while ‘the caste system has broken down … some social, marital, and religious implications of caste persist’ (1967: 195; see also 1986: 89– 97); Lowenthal noted that caste has ‘dissolved as a functional form but survived as an aspect of prejudice, a matter of style, an ingredient of personality’ (1972: 150); and Joseph J. Nevadomsky opined that only as ‘a residual aspect of prestige’ can caste be approached (1980: 41). Hence, ‘we have to give caste a much more limited place in our analysis of the ways in which [Caribbean] Hindu discourses and practices are socially organised’, concluded van der Veer and Vertovec (1991: 155). But, as I have argued elsewhere (see Jayaram, 2006), such categorical conclusions are too simplistic as they forego an opportunity to examine the metamorphosis that caste as a unique social institution has undergone in the girmitiya diaspora. Reliable data on the caste background of indentured immigrants to Trinidad are hard to come by. The artificial caste categories created by colonial officials for administrative purposes hardly reflect the complex socio-cultural reality of varna/jati. Even these categories were not consistently used, as indentured migrants invoked regional, linguistic, and occupational identities for declaring their caste at the time of recruitment. Notwithstanding the methodological inadequacies of caste data, it is clear that the Hindu girmitiyas to Trinidad were drawn from a wide range of castes. Data compiled by the Protector of Emigrants in Calcutta reveal that the 78,772 Hindu emigrants to Trinidad could be broadly categorised as follows: ‘Brahman castes’ (16.8%), ‘Artisan castes’ (7.6%), ‘Agricultural castes’ (35.1%), and ‘Low castes’ (40.5%) (see Vertovec, 1992: 96; Laurence, 1994: 110–114; Ramesar, 1994: 19–29).59 The same factors which de-constituted the institutions of marriage, family, and kinship contributed significantly to the attenuation of caste. The immigrants were recruited as individuals and they hailed from different areas with different configurations of castes and subcastes. Additionally, there was also ‘caste-passing’ by some of the immigrants, both from lower and upper castes, for various reasons (see Jayaram, 2006: 148). More importantly, irrespective of their caste, all indentured labourers were treated as ‘coolies’; neither in the ship that brought them to Trinidad nor on the 59

The data on the caste background of recruits from Madras is even more scanty (see Wood, 1968: 142–143).

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estates they were assigned to work could they practise caste.60 The sex-ratio imbalance considerably weakened the basis of caste endogamy. They were also targeted for conversion by the Presbyterian missionaries, and the Hindu reform movements like Arya Samaj de-emphasised caste. However, the institution and ideology of caste did not disappear. To be sure, under the changed socio-economic conditions and in the absence of ideological endorsement of the caste system by the emerging Trinidad Hinduism, the traditional notions of superiority and inferiority of castes were no more tenable and the intra- and intercaste relationships were modified considerably. In the post-indenture Hindu community, caste identities became simplified: ‘a generalised varna model substituted the localised jati model of village India’ (Jayaram, 2006: 158). Sub-caste identification, even among Brahmans, almost vanished; the polarisation between Brahmans (the uppermost caste)61 and Chamars (one of the lowermost castes) became entrenched, and the ranking of intermediary caste groups could not be accomplished. In the late 1950s, Klass noticed that pig-rearing and pork-eating had become the criteria for the determination of caste respectability: ‘a poor but pious Brahman would inevitably rank higher than a pig-raising, wealthy Camar [Chamar]’ (1988: 241). This was reiterated for me during my visits to villages during 1994–1996, and it still holds good. These caste identities continue to bear important status values, and ‘the stereotypes associated with them—pure and arrogant Brahman and the lax and dirty Chamar—have remained’ (Jayaram, 2006: 158; see also Angrosino, 1972: 57; Vertovec, 1992: 36). I also gathered that Brahmans try to keep Sanskritic names as in India and avoid anglicised or colloquial forms,62 while members of other castes have retained the anglicised names as entered in the colonial records when their ancestors arrived in Trinidad. The Brahman’s position at the top end of the caste pole is explained by the virtual monopoly that a section of them, the pandits, came to establish over priestcraft, and the economic and political prowess they achieved as a caste group. The pandit is a central authority figure outside a Hindu family, performing a plurality of functions— astrologer, teacher, healer, marriage broker, arbitrator, counsellor, and even money lender (see Vertovec, 1992: 43; see also Klass, 1991: 61).63 Selwyn Ryan has drawn 60

Even if the Hindus wanted to practise caste, no estate could maintain a functional distribution of caste skills (see Naipaul, 1968: 29–30). 61 The Brahmans are one caste group which has been most successfully reconstituted (Jayaram, 2006: 169). 62 ‘Maharaj’ is a typically Brahman surname. According to my informant Devendranath Maharaj, ‘those with surname “Maraj” were earlier looked down upon by the “Maharajs”. However, the arrival of Shri Kewal Maraj from India gave some respect and assurance of status to “Marajs”’ (personal interview, August 5, 1996). According to Maltie Maharaj, though both are Brahman surnames, ‘“Maraj” is derogatory; it sounds cheap; it does not sound like a proper Indian name’. Whenever her surname is misspelt, she asks ‘it to be corrected’ (personal interview, August 12, 1996). 63 My informant Maltie Maharaj reported that ‘pandits are consulted with regard to intra-family relations (e.g., extra-marital relationship; conflict over property; or other personal problems); prolonged sickness; dreams, especially with mythological contents (appearance of a deota, demon, etc.), especially the scary ones and those which occur repeatedly; loss of a moveable property (e.g., car), etc.’ (personal interview, August 12, 1996).

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attention to the fact that ‘pundits were among the principal opinion leaders within the Hindu community’ and they have ‘always been the source to which politicians turned for help in their political careers’ (1972: 141). Scholars have also commented on the role of the Brahmans in laying ‘the foundations of Hindu ethnic solidarity’ (Prorok, 1988: 78; see also Bisnauth, 1989: 152–153).64 At the bottom end of the caste pole are the Chamars, a caste group which had occupied an utterly degraded position in rural north India. In Trinidad, for long, any activity considered polluting, like cleaning the carcass of a dead animal or midwifery was done by the Chamars. The hog-puja is associated with them (see Sect. 9.2.4). Their social position is so embedded in the Trinidad Hindu psyche that even proselytization does not free a Chamar from ignominy and derision (see Jayaram, 2006: 160). Patricia Mohammed observes, ‘a chamar Presbyterian may have achieved higher status among the members of his or her church group, or his educational status may have increased his, or her, respectability among the wider village population. S/he remained, none the less, a Chamar … in the eyes of the Hindu community’ (1993: 229). During my interaction with Indo-Trinidadians, I frequently came across the word ‘Chamar’ being used as a general derogatory term; it is used as an epithet to insult and abuse a despised person. The term has entered the vocabulary of AfroTrinidadians, too. Of course, used as a term of abuse, ‘Chamar’ has no reference to the caste of the person abused; it figuratively refers to the debased status of an individual and implies ‘a remnant of an undesirable practice’ (Khan, 1995: 62). It is true that caste among Trinidad Hindus is not comparable to its counterpart as it existed in India in the past or exists in the present; it has metamorphosed into a different avatar in the girmitiya diaspora. But there is no gainsaying that the idea of hierarchy integral to the generalised varna model ‘is deeply ingrained among Trinidad Hindus and caste codes continue to flavour their life’ (Jayaram, 2006: 161). Although occupation has been largely dissociated from caste, in areas where it has cultural moorings or ritual significance, as in the case of the pandit, the Nau/Nai (barber), and the Chamarin (female of Chamar descent), the bearing of caste is still discernible (ibid.: 162). The breakdown of jati endogamy and its replacement of approximate varna endogamy was discussed in an earlier chapter (see Sect. 6.3.1; for more details, see also Jayaram, 2006: 162–165). The most striking aspect in the metamorphosis of caste among Trinidad Hindus is the near disappearance of the complex rules governing commensality and food pollution characteristic of caste system in rural India (see Jayaram, 2006: 167–168). I gathered from my informants that ‘a vegetarian considers herself/himself superior to a non-vegetarian; and a non-vegetarian who eschews beef and pork considers 64 The reverence for Brahmans among the girmitiyas in British Guiana is well summarised by the following folksong reproduced by Vatuk (1964: 229–230): I bow to that Brahman, Who reads me the katha. Who teaches me the puja, sandhya, and havan. […]. Hail to the Brahman who built the temple here, Who saved us from the exploitation of the missions.

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herself/himself superior to one who consumes them’ (ibid.: 167). In 1985, Klass found that Indo-Trinidadians perceived vegetarianism as ‘an inevitable, perhaps necessary, first step for one seeking spiritual enlightenment or improvement’ (1991: 62); non-vegetarian food is eschewed by all Sanatanist Hindus during festivals, ritual observances, and pujas.65 This is understandable in the light of the revitalisation of Trinidad Hinduism since the 1980s and the vigorous efforts by Trinidad Hindus at maintaining their identity (see Vertovec, 1994). A curious aspect of the metamorphosis of caste in Trinidad is the colour prejudice in the caste-like attitudes and behaviour of Indo-Trinidadians towards AfroTrinidadians (Jayaram, 2006: 165–167). This association of varna with the colour of the skin and prejudice against ‘Negroid races’ so marked among Hindus in India (see Harrison, 1960: 125; Spratt, 1966: 174–175) persisted in Trinidad not only among Hindus, but even among Muslims (see Clarke, 1967: 175). From early on, the indentured immigrants incorporated the emancipated African descendants in Trinidad into their traditional worldview at the lowest caste level (Look Lai, 1993: 255). The Afro-Trinidadians were treated as so ‘hopelessly polluted outcastes’ (Jayaram, 2006: 165)66 that marriage relations with them remain proscribed (see Sect. 6.3.3). In several villages that I visited I could not come across a single instance of inter-racial marriage. Incidentally, such colour prejudice is also found among the descendants of migrants from north India (the Kalkatiyas) towards those from south India (the Madrasis).67 The Madrasis continue to bear the stigma of their initial castigation and are treated as a lower caste, ‘lower than Chamar’ (Clarke, 1967: 175).68 There have, no doubt, been some marriages between the Kalkatiyas and the Madrasis, but such marriages are frowned upon.69 One of Clarke’s Madrasi informants recalled how his mother-in-law, who was a Christian like himself, had scornfully rejected 65

It must be clarified that, traditionally, Trinidad Brahmans have not been strict vegetarians. One informant described Brahmans as being only ‘socially [i.e., in the eyes of the outsiders] vegetarian’, eating meat at home (Jayaram, 2006: 168). But the orthodox among them, especially the pandits, observe restrictions on their food habits. 66 I was told by an informant in Navet that until a few decades ago, ‘Blacks were given water in a separate tumbler; plates and cups were kept separately for Black workers’. That this racial seclusion applied only to the Creoles (Afro-Trinidadians), not the light-skinned, much less the white, confirms the reinforcement of the traditional varna (colour-based) hierarchy on racial distinctions. 67 This colour prejudice is carried over from India, where the light-skinned north Indians are contemptuous of the dark-skinned south Indians (see Harrison, 1960: 125–126). 68 An interesting episode was narrated to me by my informant, Angelina Luctchman, a nurse in Sangre Grande. In a ward she was attending, a ‘Kalkatiya patient wanted the Madrasi patient in the next bed moved to another bed. Both, past 65 years of age, were cursing each other. Eventually, the Kalakatiya patient was moved to a different ward’ (personal interview, August 14, 1996). 69 Clarke mentions that some Madrasis claim that they are divided into two groups: ‘the MoonSammies [Muniswamys], who are Brahmins, and the Mootoos [Muthus], who are Sudra’; but neither of his two Madrasi interviewees mentioned this division (1967: 175). Of course, such distinctions did not matter to the Kalkatiyas.

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him, albeit temporarily, charging that ‘Madrassi and Nigger is de same ting’ (1967: 175). I came across enclaves, such as Ben Lomond village in the south and El Dorado, Pasea village, and Madras Road village in the north, which are predominantly inhabited by Madrasis. The now outlawed firepass ceremony (see Sect. 8.2.1) and Kali Mai puja are typically associated with Madrasi-descended Indians (see Vertovec, 1992: 218). Thus, of all the social institutions that the girmitiyas introduced into Trinidad, caste suffered the greatest attenuation. The caste system as was known during the period of indentured immigration has almost disappeared and it has not changed in the direction that it has in India since then.70 However, in its metamorphosed form, the ideology of caste is still integral to Trinidad Hinduism; its norms and values still brief the quotidian life of Trinidad Hindus: while the functional significance of caste has long since ceased to exist, it has ‘survived as an aspect of prejudice, a matter of style, an ingredient of personality’ (Lowenthal, 1972: 150).71 That is, what we see among Trinidad Hindus is ‘a transformation of caste as a structural principle to caste as a socio-cultural idiom’ (Jayaram, 2006: 169). Hinduism, in its various forms and traditions, was the dominant religion that the indentured immigrants introduced into Trinidad. This chapter has analysed the metamorphosis that Hinduism has undergone there in its encounter with Christianity, the dominant religion of the ruling class and the plantocracy, over a century and a half, to emerge as a distinct religion that should be legitimately designated as Trinidad Hinduism. The pride that Trinidad Hindus have in their Hinduism is remarkable; they are (as many Caribbean Hindus), as Lowenthal has it, ‘more self-consciously “Hindus” than are others overseas or even, perhaps, India’ (1972: 152). Understood from a civilisational perspective, not just as a religion in the restricted European sense of the term, Trinidad Hinduism is a unique achievement of the IndoTrinidadians as a girmitiya diaspora. On the one hand, it marks a departure from the ancestral forms in India and, on the other hand, it converges with Creole culture as shaped by Christianity. At the national level, it has evolved as a generally unitary religion—‘a standardized and institutionalized orthodoxy’ (Vertovec, 1994: 123); it asserts its symbolic distinctiveness while adopting Christian institutional forms and practices. At the local community level, remnants of pantheism and local cults and practices persist. Steven Vertovec (1994) captures this contrasting development in Hinduism in Trinidad, as in Guyana and Suriname, as ‘official’ and ‘popular’ forms of Hinduism. Although girmitiya Hindus largely resisted conversion to Christianity, some were proselytised. Among the Christian denominations that was most successful in evangelising was the Presbyterian Church of Trinidad & Tobago under the leadership of Rev. John Morton of Nova Scotia, Canada. Among the girmitiyas who resisted 70

No wonder Peggy Mohan found ‘a big disconnect between what [she] had seen as caste in Trinidad and what the students [she] knew from India perceived’ (2007: 234). 71 Even after a century of the Indian presence in Trinidad, Naipaul, born into a Brahman family, confesses that caste ‘was capable on occasion of influencing my attitude to others …. The thought still occurs whenever we meet and that initial sniffing for distance is now involuntary’ (1968: 33).

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conversion to Christianity most were the Muslims, irrespective of their sectarian affiliations. Resistance to conversion notwithstanding, the influence of Christianity among the religious life of the girmitiyas, especially among the Hindus, resulted in some syncretic traditions. In the next chapter, we shall discuss (a) the metamorphosis of the Presbyterian church as girmitiyas became its adherents, (b) the developments within Islam as it came to be reconstituted, and (c) the syncretic traditions involving girmitiyas in Trinidad.

References Angrosino, M. V. (1972). Outside is death: Alcoholism, ideology and community organization among the East Indians of Trinidad. Unpublished PhD Thesis. University of North Carolina. Bahadur, G. (2013). Coolie woman: The odyssey of indenture. Hachette Book Publishing. Bahadur, K. P. (1976). Ramcharitmanas: A study in perspective. Ess Ess Publications. Balkaransingh, S. (2016). The shaping of a culture: Rituals and festivals in Trinidad compared with selected counterparts in India, 1990–2014. Hansib Publications. Bisnauth, D. A. (1989). A history of religions in the Caribbean. Kingston Publishers. Central Statistical Office. (2012). Trinidad and Tobago 2011 Population and housing census – Demographic report. Port of Spain, Trinidad: The Central Statistical Office, Ministry of Planning and Sustainable Development, Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Available at https://cso.gov.tt/stat_publications/2011-population-and-housing-census-demographicreport/. Accessed November 28, 2020. Clarke, C. G. (1967). Caste among Hindus in a Town in Trinidad: San Fernando. In B. M. Schwartz (Ed.), Caste in overseas Indian communities (pp. 165–199). Chandler. Clarke, C. G. (1986). East Indians in a West Indian town: San Fernando, Trinidad, 1930–1970 (London Research Series in Geography, 12). Allen and Unwin. Clarke, C. G. & Clarke, G. (2010). Post-colonial Trinidad: An ethnographic journal. Palgrave Macmillan. Collens, J. H. (1888). A guide to Trinidad: A handbook for the use of tourists and visitors (2nd ed.). Elliot Stock. Comins, D. W. D. (1893). Note on emigration from India to Trinidad. Bengal Secretariat Press. de Verteuil, A. (1989). Eight East Indian immigrants. Paria Publishing. Dumont, L. (1970). Homo hierarchichus: The caste system and its implications. Vikas Publications. Durkheim, E. (1965/1915). The elementary forms of the religious life (trans: Swain, J. W.). The Free Press. Durkheim, E. (1974/1898). Individual and collective representations (trans: Pocock, D. F.). In E. Durkheim. Sociology and philosophy (pp. 1–34). The Free Press. Figueira, D. (2003). Simbhoonath Capildeo: Lion of the legislative council, Father of Hindu nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago. iUniverse Inc. Forbes, R. H. (1984). Arya Samaj in Trinidad: An historical study of Hindu organizational process in acculturative conditions. Ph.D. thesis. University of Miami. Forbes, R. H. (1985). Hindu organizational function and disfunction in an alien society. The Vedanta Society of Trinidad and Tobago. Forbes, R. H. (1987). Hindu organizational process in acculturative conditions: Significance of the Arya Samaj experience in Trinidad. In I. J. Bahdur Singh (Ed.), Indians in the Caribbean (pp. 193–216). Sterling Publishers. Freilich, M. (1960). Cultural diversity among Trinidadian peasants. Ph.D. thesis in Anthropology. Columbia University.

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Gooptar, P. (2015). The Ramleela of Sangre Grande: A rural town in northeast Trinidad (Celebrating 25 years of the Sangre Grande Ramleela Committee, 1990–2015). Sangre Grande Ramleela Committee. Grant, K. J. (1923). My missionary memories. The Imperial Publishing. Haraksingh, K. (2006). Trinidad and Tobago. In B. V. Lal et al. (Ed.), The encyclopedia of the Indian diaspora (278–286). Singapore: Editions Didier Millet in association with National University of Singapore. Harewood, J. (1975). The population of Trinidad and Tobago (CICRED Series, 1974 – World Population Year). Paris: CICRED [Committee for International Cooperation for National Research in Demography). Available at http://www.cicred.org/Eng/Publications/pdf/c-c50.pdf. Accessed April 7, 2021. Harrison, S. S. (1960). India: The most dangerous decades. Oxford University Press. Jayaram, N. (1996). Caste and Hinduism: Changing protean relationship. In M. N. Srinivas (Ed.), Caste: Its twentieth century avatar (pp. 69–86). Penguin Books India. Jayaram, N. (2006). The metamorphosis of caste among Trinidad Hindus. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 40(2), 143–173. Jayawardena, C. (1968). Migration and social change: A survey of Indian communities overseas. Geographical Review, 58(3), 426–449. Jha, J. C. (1973). The Hindu festival of Phagwa (Holi) in Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies (Mimeo). University of the West Indies Library, St Augustine, Trinidad. Jha, J. C. (1976a). The Hindu festival of Divali in the Caribbean. Caribbean Quarterly, 22(1), 53–61. Jha, J. C. (1976b). The Hindu sacraments (rites de passage) in Trinidad and Tobago. Caribbean Quarterly, 22(1), 40–52. Jha, J. C. (1982). The background of the legislation of non-Christian marriage in Trinidad and Tobago. In East Indians in the Caribbean: Colonialism and the struggle for identity (Papers presented to a Symposium on East Indians in the Caribbean, The University of the West Indies, June 1975) (pp. 117–139). Kraus International Publications. Jha, J. C. (1989). Hinduism in Trinidad. In F. Birbalsingh (Ed.), Indenture and exile: The IndoCaribbean experience (pp. 225–233). TSAR in association with the Ontario Association for Studies in Indo-Caribbean Culture. Khan, A. (1995). Purity, piety, and power: Culture and identity among Hindus and Muslims in Trinidad. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis in Anthropology. The City University of New York. Kingsley, C. (1889/1871). At last: A Christmas in the West Indies (new one-volume edition). Macmillan. Klass, M. (1988/1961). East Indians in Trinidad: A Study of cultural persistence [reissued edition]. Waveland Press. Klass, M. (1991). Singing with Sai Baba: The politics of revitalization in Trinidad. Westview Press. Laurence, K. O. (1994). A question of labour: Indentured immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana, 1875–1917. Ian Randle Publishers. Look Lai, W. (1993). Indentured labor, Caribbean sugar: Chinese and Indian migrants to the British West Indies, 1838–1918. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Lowenthal, D. (1972). West Indian societies (American Geographical Society Research Series – Number 26). Oxford University Press (published for the Institute of Race Relations, London in collaboration with the American Geographical Society, New York). Lutgendorf, P. (1991). The life of a text: Performing the R¯amcaritm¯anas of Tulsidas. University of California. Mahabir, K. (2014). Sat Maharaj: Hindu civil rights leader of Trinidad and Tobago (An Authorized Biography). Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha. Mahabir, K. (Ed.). (2016). The Hindu view of Trinidad and Tobago: Articles by Sat Maharaj (A Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha Publication). Indo-Caribbean Publications. Maharaj, D., Ramlakhan, R. & Maharaj, B. S. (2001). Bhadase Sagan Maraj: Hostile and recalcitrant. Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha.

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Maharaj, S. (2004). Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha in context: A note. In B. Samaroo & A. M. Bissessar (Eds.), The construction of an Indo-Caribbean diaspora (pp. 114–129). School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Miller, D. (1994). Modernity: An ethnographic approach – Dualism and mass consumption in Trinidad. Berg Publishers. Mohammed, C. (1995). Indian education in Trinidad, 1845–1994. In B. Samaroo et al. (Ed.), In celebration of 150 years of the Indian contribution to Trinidad and Tobago (Vol. II. The Sesquicentenary Review, 50 Years Later, 1945–1995) (pp. 88–97). D. Quentrall-Thomas. Mohammed, P. (1993). Structures of experience: Gender, ethnicity and class in the lives of two East Indian women. In K. Yelvington (Ed.), Trinidad ethnicity (pp. 208–234). Macmillan Mohammed, P. (1999). From myth to symbolism: The construction of Indian femininity and masculinity in post-indentured Trinidad. In R. Kanhai (Ed.), Matikor: The politics of identity for Indo-Caribbean women (pp. 62–99). School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Mohan, P. (2007). Jahajin. HarperCollins Publishers India (with The Indian Today Group). Naipaul, S. (Shiva). (2012a/1973). Fireflies. Penguin Books. Naipaul, V. S. (1968/1964). An area of darkness. Penguin Books India. Naipaul, V. S. (2004b/1982). Prologue: Reading and writing, a personal account. In V. S. Naipaul, Literary occasions: Essays (pp. 3–31). Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan. Neehall, R. (1993). The creation of Caribbean history. In F. Birbalsingh (Ed.), Indenture and exile: The Indo-Caribbean experience (pp. 1–12). TSAR in association with the Ontario Association for Studies in Indo-Caribbean Culture Nevadomsky, J. J. (1980). Abandoning the retentionist hypothesis: Family changes among the East Indians in rural Trinidad. International Journal of Sociology of the Family, 10(2), 181–197. Niehoff, A. (1967). The function of caste among the Indians of the Oropuche Lagoon, Trinidad. In B. M. Schwartz (Ed.), Caste in overseas Indian communities (pp. 149–163). Chandler. Niehoff, A. & Niehoff, J. (1960). East Indians in the West Indies (Milwaukee Public Museum Publications in Anthropology No.6). Milwaukee Public Museum. Prorok, C. V. (1988). Hindu temples in Trinidad: A cultural geography of religious structures and ethnic identity. Unpublished PhD thesis in Geography. Louisiana State University. Ramanujan, A. K. (1999). Three hundred R¯am¯ayan.as: Five examples and three thoughts on translation. In V. Dharwadker (Ed.), The collected essays of A. K. Ramanujan (pp. 131–160). Oxford University Press. Ramesar, M. D. S. (1994). Survivors of another crossing: A history of East Indians in Trinidad, 1880–1946. School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Rampersad, I. (2013). Hinduism in the Caribbean. In P. P. Kumar (Ed.), Contemporary Hinduism (pp. 57–66). Routledge. Rampersad, K. (2002). Finding a place: IndoTrinidadian literature. Ian Randle Publishers. Ryan, S. D. (1972). Race and nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago: A study of decolonization in a multiracial society. University of Toronto Press. Samaroo, B. (1987). The Indian connection: The influence of Indian thought and ideas on East Indians in the Caribbean. In D. Dabydeen & B. Samaroo (Eds.), India in the Caribbean (pp. 43– 59). Hansib/University of Warwick. Samaroo, B. (2004). Reconstructing the identity: Hindu organization in Trinidad during their first century. In B. Samaroo & A. M. Bissessar (Eds.), The construction of an Indo-Caribbean diaspora (pp. 44–73). School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad Schwartz, B. M. (1967). The failure of caste in Trinidad. In B. M. Schwartz (Ed.), Caste in overseas Indian communities (pp. 117–147). Chandler. Singh, K. (1985). Indians and the larger society. In J. G. La Guerre (Ed.), Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (2nd ed., pp. 33–60). Extra Mural Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad

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Singh, S.-A. (2005). The Ramayana tradition and socio religious change in Trinidad, 1917–1990. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis. The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad Singh, S.-A. (2012a). The Ramayana in Trinidad: A socio-historical perspective. In R. L. Hangloo (Ed.), Indian diaspora in the Caribbean: History, culture and identity (pp. 25–41). Primus Books. Singh, S.-A. (2012b). Trinidad Hinduism, 1917–1945: Religious transformation and identity construction. In R. L. Hangloo (Ed.), Indian diaspora in the Caribbean: History, culture and identity (pp. 55–69). Primus Books. Spratt, P. (1966). Hindu culture and personality: A psychoanalytic study. Manaktalas. Srinivas, M. N. (1962). Caste in modern India and other essays. Asia Publishing House. The Association of Religion Data Archives. (2010). Most Hindu nations. https://www.thearda.com/ QL2010/QuickList_44.asp. Accessed November 6, 2021. Tikasingh, G. (1976). The establishment of the Indians in Trinidad, 1870–1900. Unpublished PhD thesis. The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. ´ ı R¯amacaritam¯anasa (The M¯anasa lake brimming over with the exploits of Tulsidas, G. (nd). Sr¯ ´ ı R¯ama) (With Hindi Text and English Translation; a Romanised Edition). Gorakhpur, Uttar Sr¯ Pradesh: Gita Press. Available at https://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/Sri-Ram-Cha rita-Manas-the-Ramayana-of-Goswami-Tulasidas.pdf. Accessed November 27, 2021. van der Veer, P., & Vertovec, S. (1991). Brahmanism abroad: On Caribbean Hinduism as an ethnic religion. Ethnology, 30(2), 149–166. Vatuk, V. P. (1964). Protest songs of East Indians in British Guiana. The Journal of American Folklore, 77(305), 220–235. Vertovec, S. (1989). Hinduism in diaspora: The transformation of tradition in Trinidad. In G. D. Sontheimer & H. Kulke (Eds.), Hinduism reconsidered (pp. 157–186). Manohar Publications. Vertovec, S. (1990). Religion and ethnic ideology: The Hindu youth movement in Trinidad. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 13(2), 225–249. Vertovec, S. (1991). Inventing religious tradition: Yagnas and Hindu renewal in Trinidad. In A. Geertz & J. S. Jensen (Eds.), Religion, tradition and renewal (pp. 77–95). Universitetsforlag. Vertovec, S. (1992). Hindu Trinidad: Religion, ethnicity and socio-economic change. Macmillan. Vertovec, S. (1994). ‘Official’ and ‘popular’ Hinduism in diaspora: Historical and contemporary trends in Surinam, Trinidad and Guyana. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 28(1), 123–147. [Reprinted in D. Dabydeen & B. Samaroo (Eds.), Across the dark waters: Ethnicity and Indian identity in the Caribbean (pp. 108–130). Macmillan Education, 1996.] Wood, D. (1968). Trinidad in transition: The years after slavery. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 10

Religion and Society II: Presbyterianism, Islam, and Syncretic Practices

… when we peer closely at certain important dimensions of Indian life [in Trinidad] we observe … all the change in the direction of ‘Westernisation’ or ‘Creolization’ that has taken place in social relations has of course had its impact on ‘religion’—but there has been no turning away from Hinduism or Islam to Christianity, nor even significant decrease in public or private observance of ‘Indian’ religions. —Morton Klass (1991: 95)

Of the 95,821 Indians who embarked from Calcutta to Trinidad during 1874/75– 1917, besides 82,332 (85.92%) Hindus, there were 13,418 (14.00%) Muslims and 71 (0.08%) Christians. Encouraged by the ruling dispensation and the plantocracy, both of whom were Christians, the missionaries of various denominations attempted to proselytise the Hindu and Muslim immigrants (the later settlers in the colony) to Christianity. This was resisted by both these religious communities, Muslims more so than Hindus. Of the various denominations that attempted such conversion, the Presbyterian Church of Trinidad & Tobago1 was perhaps the most successful. This Church in Trinidad is a uniquely and almost exclusively Indian Church. As the first and probably the most important external cultural influence on the girmitiyas, its role in the making of Indo-Trinidadians as a diaspora community is significant. This chapter explains the Indianisation, nay Hinduisation, of Presbyterianism in Trinidad. It examines the distinctive features of the reconstitution of Islam by Indo-Trinidadian Muslims. Finally, it highlights some syncretic traditions that have developed due to the interaction between Trinidad Hinduism and Christianity, on the one hand, and Islam on the other.

1

Presbyterianism belongs to the family of Protestant Churches established during the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Its theological tenets, administrative structure, and church polity rest on Calvinism, which embodies the theological teachings of the French reformer, John Calvin (1509– 1564). Presbyterians derive their name from the Greek word presbuteros, meaning ‘elder’. Occurring in the Greek translation of the Old Testament and in the New Testament, this word refers to the elderly and mature members of the community who are held in high esteem for their long experience of community life and commitment to the faith. Presbyterianism is ‘The form of church government by presbyters, that is, by ministers and elders without the oversight of bishops’ (The Reader’s Digest 1970: 1374). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7_10

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10.1 Presbyterianism: An Indian Church in Trinidad2 According to the 2011 census, there were 32,972 Presbyterians in Trinidad & Tobago, forming 2.49% of the country’s total population. In numerical terms, they were the fifth of six protestant denominations, accounting for 7.84% of all Protestants in the country (see Table 9.1). What is significant about this small minority of a religious denomination is that an overwhelming majority of its adherents are of Indian descent. Analysing the ethnic group composition of preliminary census tabulations for 19703 (see Harewood 1975: 110), we find that 88.52% of the Presbyterians were Indians, with another 6.28% of them being of ‘Mixed’ origin, in which Indian parentage can be assumed (see Table 9.3). In terms of the religious composition of ethnic groups, we find that Presbyterians accounted for 9.33% of all Indians; they formed only 5.17% of ‘Other’ and ‘Mixed’ ethnic groups, and an insignificant 0.30% of Africans (see Table 9.2). Most of the Presbyterians live in the main island of Trinidad. Since the adherents of the Presbyterian Church in Trinidad are almost exclusively Indo-Trinidadians, it is often referred to by others, both non-Presbyterian Indo-Trinidadians and people of other ethnic stock in the country, as the ‘East Indian church’, and the members of this Church are dubbed as ‘till yesterday Hindus’ (Jayaram, 2009: 190). This identity between the Church (Presbyterianism) and the community of converts to it (Indo-Trinidadians) is mainly due to Christianity being offered to them in a way more acceptable to them. That is, conversion to Presbyterianism did not explicitly violate their ethnic identity; Presbyterianism was, in fact, remarkably sensitive to the ethnic identity of the Indian converts.4

10.1.1 The Origins ‘The Canadian Mission to the East Indians’ was established by Rev. John Morton (1839–1912) of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia (Canada) on January 3, 1868 in Iere Village, Princes Town. After three years, the Mission moved to San Fernando, where 2

In writing this section, I have drawn from my earlier publication on the subject (see Jayaram 2009). I am especially thankful to Professor Brinsley Samaroo for guiding me through the literature on the subject, offering me invaluable insights on the community, and introducing several key Presbyterian informants. I have richly benefitted from his writings on the Presbyterian Church in Trinidad (see Samaroo 1975, 1982, 1996a) and his edited volume Pioneer Presbyterians (see Samaroo 1996b). For a history of the Presbyterian Church in Trinidad, from 1868 to 1968, see Hamid (1980; see also Prorok 1986). For a revisionist perspective on its role there, see Teelucksingh (2020). 3 After 1931, Trinidadian census reports do not give cross cross-tabulations of religion by ethnic origin. 4 This is in marked contrast to the racial divide in the Presbyterian Church in Guyana: the IndoGuyanese Presbyterians belong to the Guyana Presbyterian Church, tied to the methods and mores of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, and the Afro-Guyanese Presbyterians belong to the Presbytery of Guyana, connected with and modelled after the Church of Scotland (see Dunn 1989: 220 and 223).

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Photograph 10.1 Krist Mandali Presbyterian Church (estd. 1886), Monkey Town, Barrackpore, Trinidad. Source https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Presbyterian_Church,_Barrackpore_ area,_Trinidad_and_Tobago.JPG (copyright free) (Accessed January 31, 2022)

the colony’s major settlement of girmitiyas was located. In 1870, Rev. Morton was joined by Rev. Kenneth James Grant (1839–1932), a government consultant on Indian affairs.5 Other Canadian missionaries who worked among the Trinidad girmitiyas include Rev. J. A. Scrimgeour, Rev. Walls, Rev. W. Macrae, Rev. A. W. Thompson, Dr J. C. MacDonald, Ms Annie Blackadder, and Ms Adella Archibald (see Samaroo, 1996b) (Photograph 10.1). These missionaries betrayed a pronounced racial bias in favour of the girmitiyas, whom they considered superior to the emancipated African slaves. Dennison Moore (1995: 189–293) squarely blames the Presbyterian Mission for the development of racial ideology among Indians in Trinidad. Sarah Etter Morton, Rev. Morton’s wife and a missionary, described the Indians as ‘small in figure, but graceful. Their features are much like those of Europeans, for they belong to the same race’ (Morton, 1916: 50). They are ‘Anglo-Saxons toasted in the Indian sun’ (Rev. Morton), ‘people of our own Aryan race’ (Rev. Grant), and ‘a quite superior race and are worthy of our best’ (Rev. R. P. MacKay); ‘well-formed heads and thoughtful faces’ (Rev. F. J. Coffin)—were some of the racial praises heaped on Indian immigrants by the missionaries (quoted in Moore, 1995: 239). Rev. Morton even observed that ‘one is often astonished at their intellectual dexterity and prowess’ (Morton, 1916: 121). Such a praise for Indians, many a time, was in comparison with those of African descent. Rev. Alexander Falconer held that ‘in many respects he (the East Indian) is a perfect contrast to the coarse negro …’, who is naturally ‘an indolent sort of man … who would not work except when he could not help doing so’ (quoted in Moore, 1995: 240). Sarah Morton declared, ‘It was a happy day for us when we got rid of the last [African] one’ (quoted in ibid.). Rev. J. A. Scrimgeour anticipated the day when 5

Both these pioneers have written memoirs of their sojourn in Trinidad and missionary work among the girmitiyas there (see Morton, 1916; Grant, 1923).

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‘the brother from Asia’ would displace the African ‘in every walk of life’ (quoted in ibid.: 242). Although the Presbyterian missionaries praised Indians, they loathed Hinduism and Islam. Thus, to Rev Morton, Hindus were worshippers of ‘false gods’ and the character of their ‘deotas’ was a ‘vulnerable point’, ‘while the character of Christ’ was the missionaries’ ‘strong point’ (Morton, 1916: 232).6 Muslims were regarded as followers of the ‘False Prophet’ and the teaching of Islam as the ‘teachings of the False Prophet’ (quoted in Moore, 1995: 291). Like the European colonisers, they arrogated to themselves the responsibility of civilising the ‘uncivilised’ heathens—‘the white man’s burden’, as it came to be known. While the Hindus respected Christianity and were tolerant of the Christian missionaries per se, they were resentful of the latter’s aggressiveness and denigration of non-Christian religions. Muslims, however, offered the most vigorous resistance to missionary activities; in the early twentieth century, only 2% of the converts to Presbyterianism were Muslims (Rev. W. I Macrae cited in Moore, 1995: 290 fn. 304). Obviously, the Presbyterians were overjoyed when Niamath Khan, a Muslim mullah, joined their fold and was christened as Paul Niamath in 1901. In the first few years, the progress in the evangelical campaign was slow. But it gained pace with the transfer of pastors who had experience of preaching in India. After a century of its existence, in 1968, the Canadian Presbyterian Mission gave way to a local Church with a native clergy—with a Synod, two Presbyteries, over 100 congregations, a theological college, five secondary schools and 73 primary schools, a vocational institute, and a home for the aged. By 1980, the Presbyterian Church of Trinidad became a completely indigenous ministry. Every pastoral region is now tended by a local minister. The Church is now serviced by local Indo-Trinidadians, who constitute its presiding elders, deaconesses, and ministers.

10.1.2 Evangelism Through Education From the very beginning, emphasising education as the vehicle for the material, spiritual, moral, and intellectual upliftment of the Indian immigrants, the Presbyterian Mission effectively combined education with evangelism (see Morton, 1916: 265– 268; Ramesar, 1994: 106–110; Moore, 1995: 254 ff). The first primary school was established by the Mission on 23 March 1868 in Iere Village, in the southern part of the island.7 By the time the indentured labour system was abolished in 1917, the Mission had established 70 schools, and 90% of the Indian children who received 6

Even so, Hindu religious philosophy and symbolism seem to have permeated Trinidad Presbyterianism. It is significant that, when the premier Susamachar Church was being built in the 1870s, ‘a sacred pipal [Latin, Ficus religiosa; Sanskrit, ashvattha] tree brought from India was planted next to the church’ (Samaroo 1987: 49). This tree, also known as peepul tree or bodhi tree, has religious significance for Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains. 7 In its early years, it used to be called the ‘Coolie School’; it later came to be called ‘Grant School’, after Rev. Grant, a pioneer Presbyterian missionary (see Mohan 2007: 138).

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a primary school education did so in Presbyterian Mission schools. Nadine I. V. Manraj records that ‘Until the early 1950s primary education for the East Indians was a virtual monopoly of the Presbyterian church’ (1996: 14). Besides primary schools, the Mission established a preacher training college in 1892, a teacher training school in 1894, a secondary school for boys in 1900, and a secondary school for girls in 1912, all in the southern town of San Fernando. For the adults who could not afford to lose a day’s wage, experimental night classes were conducted. As Walton Look Lai notes, ‘The training of native teachers, preachers, and catechists … produced a vigorous middle layer of Christian Indians, who carried on the work of the mission with dedication and sacrifice’ (1993: 261). By 1921, there were 223 male teachers and 61 female teachers from among the girmitiyas, and most of them were products of the Presbyterian missionary effort. Thus, as Rev. Morton claimed, the Presbyterian Mission in Trinidad was ‘an educational mission from the outset’ (Morton, 1916: 7). The Presbyterian Mission schools differed from other denominational schools in that they catered primarily to Indian students, and the instruction in these schools was provided using published materials in English and Hindi. More important, education in these schools beyond the primary level meant conversion to Presbyterianism (Look Lai, 1993: 261). Not surprisingly, the Mission is today best remembered for its work in the sphere of education. The educational route to evangelism enticed Hindus, especially those belonging to the lower-caste groups, as conversion offered them practical advantages by opening avenues for government jobs which were hardly available to non-Christians until the 1930s. It freed them from the disabilities of the caste system and opened avenues for upward occupational mobility via employment in the emerging modern sector, including the cherished professions of medicine and law. It also enhanced the scope for raising their social status through the westernising influence of English education. Thus, ‘even the most aggressive Hindus or Moslems do not deny [Presbyterian Mission’s] contribution to the Indians in education’ (Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 79). While education and evangelism were combined by the Mission, Christianity was offered to Indians in a way more acceptable to them, i.e., not explicitly violating their cultural identity. The fact that the Presbyterian Mission in Trinidad became an almost exclusively Indian Church facilitated its acceptance by the Indians. The employment of locally ordained Indian evangelists, ministers, catechists in the Mission’s work contributed to the expansion and consolidation of the Church.8 However, the decision of the Presbyterian Mission to treat ‘coolie’ elders as equals in the congregation severed its association with the Scottish Church; they remain separate to this day. Another significant step taken by the Presbyterian Mission was to train the Indian women for leadership roles in the Mission. ‘Bible women’, the foot soldiers of the Presbyterian Church, visited Indian women in plantation barracks or villages offering 8

Charles Clarence Sooden (1849–1926), baptised by Rev. W. Dixon, became the first Indian Presbyterian catechist, and Babu Lal Behari Dey (1850–1915), baptised by Rev. Grant, was ordained on October 4, 1882 as the first Indian Minister. Three more ministers were ordained in 1896: Paul Bukhan, Andrew Guyadeen, and David Ujgarsingh, and many more were ordained later (see Samaroo 1996a).

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them material and spiritual assistance.9 The Naparima Girls’ High School, opened in 1912, laid the foundation of girls’ education among converts to Presbyterianism, and sowed the seeds of women’s education among the Indians in general. Though Mary Naimool was the first woman of Indian origin to be ordained (in 1968), she remained more a teacher than a preacher. In 1989, Joy Abdul became the first Indo-Trinidadian woman to be fully trained for the ministry at St Andrew’s Theological College.

10.1.3 Preaching Christianity Through the Hindi Medium Perhaps the most notable feature of the Presbyterian missionary activities in Trinidad was the Mission’s conscious effort to use the Hindi language. Early on, Rev. Morton found the ‘Hindi dialect’ to be the native language best suited for his work. By the end of 1870, he notes in his diary: ‘I have now familiarised myself with the Hindi and use it or the Urdu, according as the person to whom I speak may be a Hindu or a Mussalman’; in December 1871, he was granted a government license ‘to practice as a sworn Interpreter of the English and Hindustani languages in the colony’ (Morton, 1916: 66 and 67). In the early days of the Mission, its members had to learn Hindi so that they could communicate with the newly arriving immigrants from India. In the ‘Susamachar Church’10 in San Fernando, the first regular church of the Canadian Presbyterian Mission, religious service was given in Hindi. In 1872, assisted by Andrew Guyadeen, Rev. Morton began translating and preparing hymns; a little book containing 30 hymns was printed (in Halifax, Canada) in ‘the Hindustani language, employing Roman character’ (ibid.: 111). At the first Hindi press he started in Tunapuna, in 1903, he printed thousands of copies of Prarthana Mala (The Garland of Prayers), the Hindi hymn book, which came to be used in all Hindi services not only in Trinidad, but in faraway Jamaica, too. Also brought out from this press were copies of ‘a simple catechism’ adapted to ‘the Hindi using the Nagar character’ (ibid.: 425). In March 1905, with the assistance of Rev. Babu Lal Bihari, Rev. Morton began printing four pages of Hindi in those copies of The Trinidad Presbyterian which circulated among the Indians. He also brought out the ‘International Sabbath School 9

In all, about 30 ‘Bible women’, described by Frank D. Mohan as ‘Heroines of the Faith’ (Trinidad Guardian, June 10, 1995, p. 12), served as evangelistic workers, and among these the most famous were Fanny Subaran, Sara Lalla, Deborah Talaram, Claudia Premdas, Alicia Ramnauth, and Rosa Roghunanan Boodoo. In 1942, the Archibald Institute began training young women for full-time religious education work, and with this, the number of ‘Bible women’ declined steadily: in 1976, there were only three and, in 1980, there was none (Hamid 1980: 225). 10 Interestingly, many Presbyterian churches in Trinidad carry Hindi names (local English translations in parentheses) as Susamachar (the good tidings), Aramalaya (the abode of the rest), Dharam ka Suraj (the splendour of truth), Jagat ka Prakash (the light of the world), Akashbani (the voice of heaven), and Bhor ka Tara (the morning star), etc. Furthermore, unlike converts to other denominations or sects, the Indian converts to Presbyterianism continued to carry their Hindu/Muslim family/only names with their newly acquired Christian first names. Sometimes the spellings of Hindu/Muslims names were altered to sound more westernised.

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Lessons’ in Hindi with a simple commentary in English. This publication went a long way in systematising the teaching of Hindi in the Sunday school, allying it closely to the religious instruction in the day schools (see ibid.: 432). In 1908, Jamieson wrote the Manual of Forms in Hindi, a bhajan book for Presbyterian churches in the Caribbean. Thus, under the stewardship of Rev. Morton, the Presbyterian Mission played a pioneering role in introducing and propagating ‘Standard Hindi’ in Trinidad. However, despite the Mission continuing to use Hindi in its religious services,11 by the mid-twentieth century, Hindi experienced attrition and the Mission gave up emphasis on Hindi. In the late 1950s, in their fieldwork the Niehoffs found that ‘except for the very old, they [the Presbyterians] show very little interest in maintaining Hindi as a spoken language and it is very rarely heard in Christian homes’ (1960: 151). Significantly, right from the beginning, the Presbyterian Mission adopted Standard Hindi, and not Trinidad Bhojpuri, as its language of religious propagation. Whether the Mission too had a poor image of Trinidad Bhojpuri (‘the language of the heathens’) vis-à-vis Standard Hindi (‘the language of the civilised’) is difficult to say. From the viewpoint of the larger community of Indians, however, the identification of Standard Hindi with the Presbyterian Mission was perhaps what subdued its chances of developing as a second language in the country. The use of Standard Hindi by the Mission was suspected by many a Hindu and Muslim alike as a stratagem for their conversion to Christianity. In Seepersad Naipaul’ perceptive novella, The Adventures of Gurudeva and Other Stories, depicting the life of Indians in rural Trinidad in the 1940s, Sohun (the Presbyterian school teacher) tells Gurudeva (the Hindu protagonist): ‘In school you never were keen on Hindi. Your father felt that teaching you Hindi was only a ruse on my part to teach you the Bible. He preferred his sons to grow up as ignorant Hindus rather than as intelligent Christians’ (2001: 130).

10.1.4 The Church in Crisis In retrospect, Rev. Morton was a visionary. In spite of the initial difficulties, he steadfastly carried out his missionary work among the girmitiyas, offering Christianity to them in a way which was culturally acceptable to them as an ethnic group. Presbyterianism, unlike other Christian denominations in Trinidad, did not vitiate their ethnic identity determined by their ancestral roots in India.12 Interestingly, ‘in some pastoral charges the session (meeting of minister and elders) was termed “panchayat” 11

English was the medium of instruction in mission schools; Hindi was used only to explain the English. 12 In her narrative in Jahajin, the protagonist Deeda recounts how, in the early years of her indenture, she was surprised that while everything was different: ‘different bhajans, a different book they were reading from’, ‘it was so much like a Hindu puja’ (Mohan 2007: 175; see also Sect. 6.2).

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(or “panch”)’ (Samaroo, 1982: 96). In his study of San Fernando, the town with a large concentration of Presbyterian Indians, Colin Clarke found that Converts of earlier generations not only maintained ties with their non-Christian families of origin, but retained many of the customs, tastes, attitudes and values of the Hindu community into which they had been socialised as children.13 They tended to favour sex segregation and social distancing between men and women, and many of the latter still wore the oronhi (veil). In addition, they persisted in eating Hindu-preferred foods, and a minority also avoided pork and beef (1986: 102).

Some of the girmitiyas, no doubt, converted to Presbyterianism for instrumental rather than theological or spiritual reasons (Neehall, 1993).14 It was a convenient and efficient channel to rise socio-economically via education and modern sector occupations/professions and identify with the westernised folk.15 For instance, the Niehoffs knew personally one Hindu who had his small child baptised and given a Christian name, as well as having him initiated into Hinduism, because he felt the child would have a better chance of getting into a Canadian Mission school and might also receive some benefit later in life when he was looking for a job (1960:150).

Similarly, in Amity village in central Trinidad, where the Presbyterian Indians formed a very small minority, Klass noticed that most villagers took for granted that the Presbyterians in the village were ‘insincere Christians’ (1988: 142).16 In fact, Rev. Idris Hamid, an Indo-Trinidadian Presbyterian pastor, was critical of the fact that the Indians had ‘exploited’ the missionary educational system, by accepting baptism for mere socio-economic upliftment (1980: 93). The rate of conversion slackened after the demise of Rev. Morton in 1912. This was partly due to the reconstitution and entrenchment of Hinduism and Islam in the post-indenture period, a point highlighted by Sarah Morton (1916: 456). This could perhaps also be due to the abolition of indentured labour migration, as the Presbyterian Mission had a symbiotic relationship with the planters: ‘the planters needed the missionaries for propaganda reasons and [the missionaries] needed the planters’ support to conduct missionary work’ (Moore, 1995: 238). This also explains the unequivocal support the missionaries had extended to the indenture system.17 13

Mohan recounts, how her Nana (her FaMoFa, in fact), a Sonar (goldsmith) by caste, in spite of converting to Presbyterianism, ‘never shifted his sights far away from the Hindu fold’; he, in fact, continued with his family caste-trade (2007: 144). 14 The deception involved was a topic even in the fictional works. For instance, in The Chipchip Gatherers, Shiva Naipaul describes the motives behind the conversion to Presbyterianism and changing the name from Ashok Ramsaran to Egbert Ramsaran ‘were severely practical’; ‘religious enlightenment had not determined the change’ (2012a: 11). 15 It is noteworthy that of the 223 Indo-Trinidadians identified as prominent in 1945—the centenary year of the arrival of the girmitiyas—139 had been educated in the Presbyterian mission schools or colleges (see Kirpalani et al. 1945: ‘Who’s Who’, 131–169). 16 Klass clarifies that these villagers, however, did ‘not look down on them for that’; they, in fact, had ‘a measure of respect for their success both in deception and in advancing themselves’ (1988: 140). 17 Moore reproduces the ‘lengthy, glowing account of the virtues’ that Rev. Morton wrote in The Presbyterian Witness, dated April 26, 1873 (1995: 220–223).

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Taking a cue from the Presbyterian Mission’s thrust on education and appreciating the importance of education for the socio-economic development of their religious communities, the Hindu and Muslim leaders began establishing their own educational institutions. This helped them preserve their religious heritage and discouraged conversion to Christianity. For the Presbyterians, for whom conversion had no intrinsic religious significance, this was particularly fortunate. With educational qualifications from the missionary system, they could find employment in the Hindu and Muslim schools. Looking for qualified teachers, these schools, especially during the 1950s, readily appointed Presbyterian Indians. In Amity Village, Klass found that when the Sanathan Dharma Mahasabha (SDMS), established a Hindu school, a number of Christian C. M. [Canadian Mission] teachers announced their reconversion to Hinduism and joined the staff of the Hindu school. One of them had been a Christian since the age of fourteen, when he had become a student-teacher. He remained a Christian for the more than ten years that he taught in the C. M. school; but today he is one of the leaders of a Hindu revival movement among the young people of Amity (1988: 141).

This teacher informed Klass that ‘he had been a thoroughly insincere Christian throughout his C. M. experience, and that the fact was known to his family. Coming as he did from a poor home, he had believed that “conversion” was the only road out of the canefields for him, and his family concurred’ (ibid.). The turn of events was such that those who had converted to Presbyterianism more for instrumental reasons than spiritual ones, and among whom the cultural moorings were the strongest, developed a ‘schizophrenic personality’ (Manraj, 1996: 24), remaining Presbyterian for secular considerations but falling back on Hinduism/Islam for cultural needs; they existed in ‘a strange state of contradiction’ (Mohan, 2007: 144). By the 1940s itself some Presbyterian Indians had begun dropping their Christian/English first names and adopting Hindu ones: ‘Agnes Ramcharan was now Amala Ramcharan’ (Samaroo, 1982: 107). Thus, as compared with Indian converts to other Christian denominations/sects, the Presbyterian Indians remained the closest to Hinduism, and earned the epithet ‘till-yesterday Hindus’. These developments, no doubt, ‘aroused fears in the minds of Presbyterian leaders’ (Samaroo, 1982: 99), and the Church was worried about the ‘spiritual crisis’ confronting it. Its membership has been steadily decreasing: from 4.23% (of the total population of Trinidad & Tobago) in 1970 to 3.4% in 1990 and to 2.49% in 2011. According to Manraj (1996: 36), part of this crisis relates to the administrative enervation in the Church. Part of this has definitely to do with the community’s response to the biracial political dynamics since independence in 1962. As Ralph P. Premdas and Harold Sitahal (1991: 347) observe, after four decades of racialised politics, ‘Presbyterians found solace and security not with their Christian Creole and Mixed-Race confessional compatriots but with other Indians’. Consequently, in any given economic class category, social and cultural distinctions of consequence between Presbyterians, on the one hand, and the Hindus and Muslims (of Indian origin) on the other, have been erased.18 In fact, ‘the Presbyterian has 18

In the Premdas and Sitahal survey,

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been re-Hinduised’ and seeks ‘roots within their ancient Indian culture’ (ibid.). As Brenda Gopeesingh, tracing her journey from Presbyterianism to Hinduism, declares that ‘there could be no return to Presbyterianism for me…. Hinduism has become a way of connecting to my heritage, my community and my spirituality’ (1999: 154).

10.2 Islam and Indio-Trinidadian Muslims19 According to the 2011 census, there were 65,705 Muslims in Trinidad & Tobago, forming 4.97% of the country’s total population. As a minority, their representation grew from 3.95% in 1891 to 6.26% in 1970,20 and declined over the next four decades. Ethnically, most of these Muslims are of Indian descent. Analysing the ethnic group composition of preliminary census tabulations for 1970 (see Harewood, 1975: 110), we find that 98.03% of the Muslims were Indians, with another 1.18% of them being of ‘Mixed’ origin, in which Indian parentage can be assumed (see Table 9.3). Muslims of African descent constituted only 0.52%. In terms of the religious composition of ethnic groups, we find that Muslims accounted for 15.29% of all Indians; they formed only 1.14% of ‘Other’ and ‘Mixed’ ethnic groups, and an insignificant 0.08% of Africans (see Table 9.2). Most of the Indo-Trinidadian Muslims live in the main island of Trinidad. It is important to note that Hindus and Muslims respectively formed 85.92% and 14% of all Indians who embarked from Calcutta to Trinidad during 1874/1875– 1917, and Others formed only a minuscule 0.08% (see Table 8.1). At the time of Asked with whom he prefers to share his friendship, the typical Indian Presbyterian, given a choice of a Hindu or Moslem or a Creole Christian, chose the Indian Hindu or Moslem. The preference is even more emphatically pro-Indian when the choice of marriage partners arises. The pattern extends to recreational and other social activities. (1991: 348). 19

I am thankful to Dr Nasser Mustapha for guiding me through the literature on Islam and Muslims in Trinidad, offering me invaluable insights on the community, and introducing several key Muslim informants. I have richly benefitted from his writings on Islam and Muslims in Trinidad and the Caribbean, generally (see Mustapha 2004, 2012, 2019). I have also benefitted from reading the following dissertations of master’s students at The University of the West Indies: Challenges of Islam in Trinidad, by Rasheed Ali (1969); An examination of Muslim organizations in present day Trinidad, by Amina Baksh (1973); The Muslim experience in Trinidad, by Farouk Khan (1985); Social welfare institutions among Muslims in Trinidad, Hatim Mohammed (1986); A historical development of Muslim organizations in Trinidad, by Fatima Ali (1991); and Leadership in the Trinidad Muslim community, by Wazifa Ali (1994). Robert Jack Smith’s doctoral study focused on the retention of ethnic identity among Indian Muslims in Trinidad under acculturative conditions (see Smith 1963). For a comparative study of culture and identity among Hindus and Muslims in Trinidad, see Aisha Khan (1995). For a more recent articulation of Islam and Muslims in Trinidad, see Rafeeq (2009) and, on the acculturation and identity of Trinidad Muslims, see Kassim (2016). 20 Their percentage in the total population of Trinidad & Tobago over the various census years during this period is as follows: 1891, 3.95%; 1901, 3.83%; 1911, 4.48; 1921, 4.84%; 1931, 5.09%; 1946, 5.84%; 1960, 6.01%; and 1970, 6.26% (Harewood 1975: 109).

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the first census in 1891, the percentage of Hindus had come down to 78.6 and of Muslims, to 12.3; that of the Others had increased to 9.1 (see Table 8.2). While the percentage of Hindus had steeply declined to 61.4% by 1970, that of the Muslims had marginally increased to 15.29%, and that of the Others had increased to 23.47% (see Table 9.3). The Others under reference mostly belonged to various Christian denominations, particularly Presbyterianism. The changing religious composition of the Indo-Trinidadian population makes it clear that Islam has shown ‘a greater inner strength’ and that Muslims offered the stiffest resistance to conversion to Christianity21 (Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 136; see also Grant, 1923: 65–66). This is understandable considering the fact that Islam itself is a proselytising religion; though being small in number and diverse in Islamic traditions, Muslims did not actively attempt to proselytise others into their faith in Trinidad. Although Islam was initially brought into Trinidad by the African slaves, its presence more or less disappeared by the time the indentured immigrants were introduced into the colony (see Samaroo 1996c: 203–206).22 For all practical purposes, Islam in Trinidad as it exists today could be said to have been introduced by the girmitiyas.23 From early on, the Muslim girmitiyas attempted to reconstruct aspects of their faith as they knew it, often without any scriptural basis. They formed a local community of the faithful to offer the ritual prayer (juma) on Fridays. Rev. Grant describes one such prayer meeting that he witnessed as follows: A company of twelve or fifteen men, who have met together for prayer. They stood in a line, all dressed alike in tight-fitting white garments and nicely adjusted turbans. At a given signal all hands were raised, and the first prayer was offered with the palms upward and the thumbs of each hand touching the tip of the corresponding ear. The second was uttered with the hands across the breast and with bowed head; a third prayer was spoken with hands on their knees; a fourth by all on their knees, and the fifth and last was offered on their knees and with foreheads touching the ground. The scene was most impressive, and could be witnessed every Friday wherever there was a Mohammedan group. (1923: 67)

It must also be noted that, like the Hindu pandits, the maulvis, as learned teachers of Islam, provided psychological security to Muslims in a society that was hostile to them (see Chap. 9, Fn 8). Gradually, mosques (masjids) came to be established in different parts of the country, so that the community members could offer the namaz24 and also observe 21

During my sojourn in Trinidad, I was now and then visited by remarkably patient and profoundly persuasive Christian evangelicals. While it was useful for me as a sociologist to discuss with them various aspects of religion and society, I could not entertain their visits always. A local friend suggested that, if I identified myself as a Muslim at the outset, these evangelicals would not bother me! That is, for the evangelicals, Muslims are a hard nut to crack. 22 A. H. Quick (1990) argues that Muslims arrived in the Caribbean even before Columbus! 23 The manifest of the very first ship that brought Indians to Trinidad mentions such Muslim names as ‘Causmolle Khan, Furreed, Emambocus, Faize Buxo, Madar Buxo, Allar, Omrudee, Muhourn, Bahadur and Faizen’ (Samaroo 1996c: 207). 24 Namaz (from Persian nam¯ az; akin to Sanskrit namas; literally, obeisance) refers to the ritual prayers prescribed by Islam to be observed five times a day. Unlike in India, Muslims do not offer namaz in fields, streets, or public places away from their home or mosque.

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Photograph 10.2 Masjid, Avocat Village, Trinidad, c. 2017. Source https://commons.wikimedia. org/wiki/File:Masjid_-Avocat_Village,_Trinidad_and_Tobago.jpgxxx (courtesy Kalamazadkhan copyright free) (Accessed January 31, 2022)

Islamic customs. Marianne Soares Ramesar (1994: 143) cites a report in East Indian Weekly (June 2, 1928) of a special prayer on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, celebrated in honour of the willingness of Ibrahim (the Patriarch Abraham in Old Testament) to sacrifice his son Ismail (Ishmael) as an act of obedience to God’s command. Following this, the adherents celebrated the feast by sacrificing an animal (sheep, goat, etc.) in their homes. The newspapers made a particular note of the women being allowed to join in prayers in the main building of the Haji Gokool Meah Memorial Masjid in St James as ‘one step further in the emancipation of women … among this very conservative people’ (quoted in ibid.) (Photograph 10.2).25

10.2.1 Two Early Muslim Leaders Historians record the careers of two early Muslim leaders who played a significant role in the reconstitution of Islam among Indo-Trinidadians (see Samaroo, 1987: 48–52).26 Yacoob Ali of Princes Town, a former girmitiya, went to India in 1888 and 25

Imam Hydal of the Ahmadiya sect clarified to me that ‘it was his mother (Mrs Afroze Hydal) who was the first woman to enter a mosque in Trinidad. It was a revolutionary step, which was criticised at first, but it set a tradition. Sunnis and other sects, who were strict about this and secluded women from the mosque, gradually changed to become liberal’. He also pointed out that Dr Aneesa Ahmad (an Ahmadiya, based in England) was ‘the first woman to read a kitab [Koran] and give a sermon in 1995. This was also vehemently criticised by traditional [orthodox] Muslim sects’ (personal interview, August 16, 1996). 26 For a longer list of names of those ‘who kept the dim light of Islam glowing in those gloomy days’ of colonialism, see Mohammed Rafeeq (2009).

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returned to Trinidad in 1898 as a Hafiz27 after completing his Islamic theological studies there.28 Another illustrious figure was Sayyad Abdul Aziz Meah (1862– 1927), who after his indentureship had settled down at Iere Village in southern Trinidad, where Rev. Morton had started his evangelical activities. Aziz Meah, a learned scholar in Islamic theology, took the lead in establishing the Islamic Guardian Association, and by 1907 was appointed the first kazi.29 He led many delegations to the colonial authorities, including the one in 1904 demanding the recognition of Muslim marriages, which, however, was realised only in 1936 (see Sect. 6.1.2). More importantly, he played a crucial role in uniting most of the colony’s Muslims in Tackveeyatul Islamic Association (TIA; Society for the Strength of Islam), which was incorporated by Ordinance 39 of 1931. He is rightly described by Mohammed Rafeeq (2009) as ‘the father of Islamic stabilization in Trinidad’. If Aziz Meah provided leadership to the Muslims in south Trinidad, Haji Ruknudeen Sahib (1865–1963) did that in the north. Ruknudeen Sahib had come to Trinidad in 1893 and settled in Tunapuna after completing his indenture. He was learned in Arabic, Urdu, and Hindi and had performed the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. He was not only instrumental in establishing many a jamaat (congregation of the faithful or district organisations), but also in starting small schools in villages. In 1927, he succeeded Aziz Meah as the kazi. Brinsley Samaroo (1987: 50) mentions the visit of Moulvie Haji Sufi Shah Mohamed Hassan Hanafi Quadri in 1914, whose rigidity was opposed by the local Muslims, including Ruknudeen Sahib, and was forced to leave the colony in 1918.

10.2.2 The Sectarian Schisms30 Although, at the time of its introduction in the colony Hinduism was quite varied in its beliefs and practices, over the decades, it metamorphosed into a distinct unitary religion, Trinidad Hinduism (see Chap. 9). The Sanatanist tradition became the anchor incorporating most other smaller traditions under its umbrella; the leadership provided by the SDMS ensured that small unorthodox traditions remained on the margins. From early on, despite their relatively small numbers, the Muslims have been divided by sectarian factionalism, mainly on traditional versus reformist lines.31 Most of the Muslim girmitiyas who came to Trinidad were Sunnis, and only a small number of them were Shias. The world over, Sunni is the larger and more 27

Hafiz (Persian, from Arabic h¯afiz, guardian, from h¯afiza, to guard, to know by heart) is one who has committed the Holy Koran (also Quran/QurↃa¯ n, Arabic: ‘Recitation’), the sacred book of Islam, in its original Arabic to his memory. 28 In his memoir, Rev. Grant makes a particular mention of Yacoob Ali (1923: 67–68). 29 Kazi (quazi) is a Muslim judge who interprets and administers the religious law of Islam. 30 For a detailed analysis of the various sects and traditions of Islam in Trinidad, see Mustapha (2019: 830–834). 31 According to Lowenthal (1972: 151), such factionalism is characteristic of Muslims of Indian origin throughout the Caribbean.

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orthodox branch of Islam than Shia; the former with its base in Arabia and the latter, in Persia (present day Iran). Sunni and Shia sects differ in their understanding of the Sunna (the body of laws based on the words and acts of Prophet Mohammed), the conception of leadership, and their acceptance of the first three caliphs (Muslim rulers). The Shia are more emotional in the observance of religious practices, particularly Muharram, which, introduced by them into Trinidad, has metamorphosed as Hosay (see Sect. 8.2.2). Presently, the ‘traditionalist Sunnis’ constitute the single largest group in Trinidad, ‘accounting for more than 50% of the Muslim community’ (Mustapha, 2019: 830). Theologically, they are Hanafis, conforming to the Islamic school of law propounded by Imam Abu Hanifa, and ‘they adopt the Ahle Sunnah wal Jammah approach as advocated by Ahmad Riza Khan of Barelwi in nineteenth-century India’ (ibid.: 830). Accordingly, they subscribe to Indian Islamic cultural practices such as niyaz or fatiha (prayer over food), moulood sharif (readings from the Koran and singing of qasidas32 or Urdu songs), and tazeem (song in praise of the Prophet Mohammed). They also celebrate Milad-un-Nabi, the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday, and miraj, his ascension to heaven. These Sunnis are wary of Muslim groups that do not observe or support these practices, which were endorsed as bid’ah hasanah (‘good innovations’) by visiting religious scholars like Maulana Ansari and Maulana Siddiqui in the 1950s (ibid.: 830–831). An interesting feature of the Islamic practices by Indo-Trinidadian Muslims is the use of Urdu,33 which was an integral part of the Muslim legacy. Influenced by the fundamentalist Arabic streak, some Muslims in Trinidad dissociate themselves from the traditional practices and the use of Urdu language, due to their Indian cultural origins, as un-Islamic. They hold Arabic to be the only holy medium of Islam (Mustapha, 2012: 45). The younger generation of Muslims are swayed by this. However, Indo-Trinidadian Muslims have striven to retain and perpetuate their Indian Islamic legacy. Controversies over the religious rituals and the use of the Urdu language had, no doubt, created deep rifts in the community. Presently, Muslims adhering to different Islamic orientations are showing increased acceptance of each other’s differences (ibid.: 832). The small number of Shias who came as girmitiyas have since become amalgamated into the wider Muslim community. There is no official Shia organisation in Trinidad. The Shia religious festival of Muharram has been ‘creolised’ and has, largely, lost its pious religious orientation; ‘the orthodox Muslim groups have distanced themselves from its observance’ (ibid.: 832). Even the small orthodox Shia community that resurfaced, mainly among Afro-Trinidadians, in the 1980s, after the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 and the visit of Shia missionaries from Iran, has denounced the way in which Hosay is celebrated. The orthodox Sunni Muslims, 32

Qasida (originally from Arabic, qas, ¯ıda/qas, ¯ıdah, meaning ‘intention’) is a laudatory or elegiac poem. 33 Urdu is an Indic language that is closely related to Hindi, but written in the Persian script; it has many loanwords from both Arabic and Persian. It is widely used in the Indian subcontinent, and is the official language of Pakistan.

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however, condemn the Shia veneration of saints, and pilgrimage to their tombs and shrines. Perhaps the most radical turn in the schism among Muslims took place after the introduction of Ahmadi doctrines in the 1920s. At the invitation of the local Muslims, Moulir Fazal Karim Khan Durrani, an Ahmadiya missionary from Punjab visited Trinidad. During his two-year sojourn in the colony, Durrani initiated the Ahmadiya movement, which was influenced by both western liberalism and theosophy and the Hindu reform movements; he preached Islam based on the principles of a universal religion of humanity. In the undivided Punjab, the Ahmadiyas had opposed the concept of jihad (sacred war against non-Muslims), stressed fraternal relations among all people, and offered Western liberal education among Indian Muslims. But the most controversial pronouncement of Durrani, which antagonised him to Sunni Muslims, was that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadiyan (1839–1908), after whom the movement was named—Ahmadiya or Qadiyani—was a prophet after Mohammed,34 whom the Sunni Muslims regard as the last of the prophets (Samaroo, 1987: 50). Although Durrani, facing bitter opposition, eventually returned to India, he had arranged for the religious education of Ameer Ali (1898–1973) from Siparia in southern Trinidad at the Anjuman Ishaat-I-Islam in Lahore in 1923. After his religious training and pilgrimage to Mecca, Maulvi Ali returned to Trinidad in 1930; he was warmly received by TIA and was shortly thereafter appointed Mufti, an expert in Islamic jurisprudence who is empowered to give rulings. His somewhat liberal approach to Islam, like encouraging the free participation of women in religious activities and criticising some traditional practices, created concern among the traditionalist Muslims, ‘who under the leadership of Haji Ruknudeen, felt strongly that Ahmadi teachings were now infiltrating the TIA’ (Mustapha, 2019: 834). Mufti Ali denied that he was an Ahmadiya; he described himself a ghair mukallid (Ghair-Muqallid), non-conformist and non-denominational Muslim. In 1932, the opposition to Mufti Ali’s statements and practices resulted in Haji Ruknudeen and other senior members of the TIA quitting the organisation.35 To counter the developments, the major Sunni organisation, Anjuman Sunaatul Jamaat Association (ASJA), which was incorporated by Ordinance 24 of 1935, brought in Maulvi Nazeer Ahmad Simab (1890–1942) of Lahore. Maulvi Simab introduced Wahhabism, a ‘fundamentalist’ in contrast to the ‘traditionalist’ Hanafi Sunni tradition (see Mustapha, 2019: 835). Because his theology did not find favour with the local Muslims, Maulvi Simab returned to Lahore in 1939. In the same year, he was again invited to Trinidad and this time he founded yet another Muslim organisation, the Tabligh-ul-Islam (Organisation for Preaching Islam). Maulvi Simab introduced sermons with English translation in Trinidad, both at Friday juma and Eid prayers. 34

In 1889, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad had claimed to be masih (messiah) and mahdi (the guided one), and later also to be an incarnation of Krishna and Jesus. He, although regarded Muhammad as the true and great prophet whom he followed, called himself a minor prophet. In Trinidad, Ahmadiyas endorse this, but the Qadiyanis believe that he was a prophet (see Mustapha 2019: 834). 35 Despite his differences with Haji Ruknudeen, Mufti Ali worked with him in support of the legalisation of Muslim marriages, which fructified in 1936.

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He also worked for the education of its Muslim community.36 After his death in 1942, this organisation merged with the TIA. Within a few years, the merger led to schism within TIA and, in 1947, Mufti Ali and a group of his followers left TIA and formed the Trinidad Muslim League (TML), which was incorporated in 1950. A few Indo-Trinidadians follow Sufism, introduced into Trinidad by Maulvi Haji Sufi Shah Mohammed Hassan Hanfi Qadri (Peer Hassan) who visited the colony in 1914. He practised a system called ‘Peeree Mureedee’ in which the ‘muridis’ (devoted disciples) were bound to the ‘peer/pir’ (spiritual guide) through a written declaration called ‘shagara’ (Rafeeq, 2009). Sufism is a widely prevalent mystical tradition in the Indian subcontinent that emphasises the inner-spiritual development of an individual. Towards this, its adherents, called Sufis,37 ‘follow an ascetic life of simplicity, purification, denial, and detachment from the material world’ (Mustapha, 2019: 833). Orthodox Muslims rejected Sufism; Wahhabi Muslims considered it as heretical, and even as a blasphemous deviation from iman (faith). Hence, at a public meeting in the mosque at Tunapuna (now Tunapuna ASJA Mosque), the fatwa-ekufr was passed on Peer Hassan, declaring him to be a heretic, and he left Trinidad for India in 1918. However, Sufism still finds some support from the ‘traditionalist’ Hanafi Muslims, the Tabligh movement, and the Muslim youth ‘who are yearning for spirituality amidst the materlism and secularism prevailing’ (ibid.: 833). Disenchantment with the traditional leadership and its Indian cultural moorings and in the light of the threat of Westernisation for the religious identity of Muslims there have been attempts at reviving Islam as a living religion. Young Muslims taking pride in their Muslim identity, their preference for Arabic over Urdu, and Muslim women wearing the hijab (veil) are reflections of this. All this has, no doubt, led to confusion among Muslims, who for the sake of ethnic identity have generally thrown their lot with Hindus and Presbyterians as Indo-Trinidadians. While on sectarianism in Islam in Trinidad, mention must be made of Jamaat Al Muslimeen, an Afro-Muslim organisation and a Wahhabi institution, referred to as ‘Black Muslims’ in the media. In July 1990, its leader Imam Yasin Abu Bakr led an unsuccessful attempt to forcefully overthrow the government; it is a dark episode known in the history of Trinidad as the ‘Muslimeen Insurrection’ (see Sect. 5.4). The Muslims of Indian descent dissociated themselves from the insurrection and were, in fact, hostile to Jamaat Al Muslimeen, more so as Islam was hitherto assumed to be an ‘Indian’ religion.38 In the aftermath of the Insurrection, many of the Jamaat’s members resigned to form the Islamic Resource Society, which has since established amiable relations both with the state and the wider Muslim community.39 36

Maulvi Simab founded the first Muslim primary school (TIA Islamia School in San Juan) on 2 March 1942; thanks to the efforts of Mufti Ali, this school became the first non-Christian school in Trinidad to receive state aid in 1949 (Mustapha 2019: 836). 37 Sufis are locally known as the Halqa, meaning a (spiritual) fraternity (Mustapha 2004: 134). 38 Indo-Trinidadian Muslims and Afro-Trinidadian Muslims ‘do not tend to mix, still less intermarry’ (Cottee 2016). 39 Mustapha notes that ‘Afro-Trinidadian Muslims frequently worship at most of the Indiandominated mosques, but there are at least four urban mosques that are predominantly AfroTrinidadian in their congregation’ (2019: 828).

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All the same, the Muslimeen Insurrection marked a turning point in the history of Islam in Trinidad, bringing to international attention not only Trinidad Muslims but also the trends in the radicalisation of their religion. As Harold Trinkunas of the Brookings Institution remarked to The Miami Herald that Trinidad is ‘the only country in the Western Hemisphere that has had an actual Islamic insurrection’ (quoted in Cottee, 2016). Most Trinidadians I spoke to excoriated the Muslimeen as a ‘militant group’. However, Abu Sa’d at-Trinidadi, a Christian convert to Islam and an ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or Islamic State, for short) fighter, denounced it ‘for not being militant enough, and not practising the right kind of Islam’ (cited in ibid.) Evidently, radical Islam has gained ground in Trinidad since the 1990 Insurrection, even if Imam Abu Bakr may not be directly involved in it now.40 The December 2016 report in The Atlantic that an estimated 89–125 Trinidadians had joined the ISIS puts Trinidad on ‘top of the list of Western countries with the highest rates of foreign-fighter radicalization; it is by far the largest recruitment hub in the Western Hemisphere’ (ibid.). Scholars like Daurius Figueira believe this to be due to the infiltration of Salafism41 into Trinidad & Tobago. He attributes the growth of Salafism in the country to Saudi-trained proselytisers (cited in ibid.; see also Mustapha, 2019: 836). The most visible sign of this infiltration, he observes, is the ‘full hijab’: before the Saudi missionaries came, Muslim women in Trinidad did not wear it, but now it is relatively commonplace (cited in Cottee, 2016). Considering that they are well integrated with the larger society in the county and ‘have more rights and freedoms than even in most of the Muslim countries’ (Mustapha, 2019: 839), Indo-Trinidadian Muslims have no cause for complaint. Trinidad & Tobago now has over 140 mosques, over 20 government-assisted Muslim schools, three Muslim theological institutes (Madinatul Ulum, Marabella; Markaz al Ihsaan, San Fernando; and Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah Institute, San Fernando, besides the Haji Ruknudeen Institute of Islamic Studies, Chaguanas and Darul Uloom [Institute of Higher Islamic Studies and Secondary Education], Cunupia), two Muslim financial institutions, two television stations, and several community charities (ibid.).42 Thus, the Indo-Trinidadian Muslims have a visible identity, coexisting peacefully with other religious communities and participating in every walk 40

Cynthia Mahabir (2012) describes the transformation of the Muslimeen, since 1990, from being an idealistic revolutionary socio-economic movement into a criminal enterprise, which alienated it from the masses. Thus, Daurius Figueira, a Muslim himself, opines that Imam Abu Bakr ‘would never get involved with [the] Islamic State … because it is bad for business’ (quoted in Cottee 2016). 41 Salafism is an extreme version of Wahhabism that advocates the use of original sources, strict orthodoxy, a lateral ‘back to basics approach to Islam, derived from the lived example of the early, righteous generations of Muslims, known as Salaf, who were closest in both time and proximity to the Prophet Muhammad. In Trinidad, the small group of Salafists are often criticised ‘for making peripheral matters into central issues’ (Mustapha 2019: 836). 42 Halal food is freely available; employees get time off for Friday prayers; Eid-al-Fitr is a public holiday; since 1956, Muslims have been represented in Parliament and cabinet; and a Muslim was the President of the Republic from 1987 to 1997.

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of mainstream society and polity. They have, no doubt, much to fear being tainted by the radicalisation of Islam.

10.2.3 The Indo-Trinidadian Muslim Vis-À-Vis India and Pakistan To many an Indo-Trinidadian, the partition of India and the formation of Pakistan does not come in the way of selectively identifying himself with India, as the India that their ancestors had left was undivided. This may sound strange to Indian nationals as much as to the Pakistanis. An incident that took place on April 6, 1988 at Bourda, in Georgetown, Guyana is worth mentioning in this context: ‘When the visiting Pakistani Cricket team defeated the West Indies,43 the Indo-Guyanese spectators reportedly went around the stadium jubilantly waving the Indian national flag. The Pakistan captain Imran Khan and his team mates must have been dumbfounded’ (Jayaram, 1998: 51). This could well have happened in Trinidad, too. For the ordinary Indo-Trinidadian, the referent is primarily India that is geographically subcontinental and culturally civilisational, and only secondarily India that is political. This does not mean that the partition of India in 1947 and the carnage that followed did not matter to Indo-Trinidadians at all. Samaroo records how ‘stories about communal violence in India during the turbulent days of partition’ produced a good deal of communal tension leading to violence in some areas in Trinidad (1987: 55–56). Since the partition of India resulted from a demand for a separate Islamic state of Pakistan, it has posed a dilemma for some Muslims in Trinidad. This dilemma is confounded by the so-called ‘Pakistan connection’. It is not without significance that the TML was founded on the day on which Pakistan was born, i.e., 14 August 1947. The visit of religious leaders and political personalities from Pakistan were occasions for celebration. Samaroo notes that when M. A. Ispahani, Pakistan’s envoy to the United States of America, visited Trinidad in November 1948, the Muslim community ‘persuaded him to lay foundation stones for the proposed Jinnah Memorial Mosque and the Jinnah Memorial College’, both institutions named after Mohammed Ali Jinnah (1876–1948), also called Qaid-iAzam (Arabic: ‘Great Leader’), the founder and the first governor-general (1947– 1948) of Pakistan. Similarly, ceremonial reception was accorded to Maulana Abdul Aleem Siddiqui and Hafiz Fazl-Ur-Rahaman Ansari, two exponents of Islam from Pakistan, when they visited Trinidad in 1950. Their visit had a memorable impact on Muslims of Indian descent, so much so that ‘a masjid in Caroni [in central Trinidad] was named Siddiqui Masjid’ (ibid.: 52). Expectedly, some Pakistani dignitaries visiting Trinidad have subtly attempted to vitiate the communal relationship between Muslims and Hindus there. Quoting a report in Trinidad Guardian dated January 27, 1958, Yogendra K. 43

The first test match between Pakistan and the West Indies was played at Georgetown, Guyana, on 2–6 April 1988; Pakistan won the match by nine wickets.

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Malik writes: ‘In 1958, when the Pakistan cricket team visited Trinidad, the Sunnatul-Jamait arranged a reception in honour of the visitors. A. Khan, the manager of the team, addressed Hindu and Indian Christian guests as “Indians”, and Trinidad Muslims as “Pakistanis”’ (1971: 36). Apart from the partition of India and the formation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Muslim Indo-Trinidadian’s identification with India is tenuous for another reason. In its extreme form, the ideology of Umma (the whole community of Muslims bound together by ties of religion), which has been preached by a section of the Muslim leadership, denies the concept of diaspora as applied to the Muslims (see Jayaram, 1998: 52). Muslims, wherever they live, this ideology holds, belong to one Islamic community that knows no national boundaries. Nevertheless, the IndoTrinidadian Muslims can hardly ignore the large presence of Muslims in India. For that matter, next to Indonesia, India has the largest number of Muslims in the world. More important, trying to trace their roots, most Muslims will have to identify with India (see Deen, 1994). Thus, the ‘ancestral impulse’, as Ken Parmasad (1994) calls it, which has played an important role in the community identity formation among Indo-Trinidadians, has a bearing on the Muslims among them, too.

10.2.4 Hinduism and Indo-Trinidadian Muslims The Hindu–Muslim discord then prevailing in British India was understandably carried to Trinidad by the girmitiyas. V. S. Naipaul recalls that … at an early age I understood that Muslims were somewhat more different than others. They were not to be trusted; they would always do you down; and point was given to this by the presence close to my grandmother’s house of a Muslim, in whose cap and grey beard, avowals of his especial difference, lay every sort of threat (1968: 31).44

This must have been in the late 1930s or early 1940s. Although the Hindu mistrust of Muslims has endured and mutual differences are often emphasised, the Creole dominance has diminished inter-community tensions and led to greater acceptance of each other as an ethnic community.45 As Nasser Mustapha observes, ‘For both the Hindus and Muslims, religion was crucial for their identity and the relationship between the two communities in the New World may have been even closer than in the motherland’ (2004: 133). Thus, in contrast to India, Trinidad would shine as a model of Hindu–Muslim amity. In the late 1960s, Carole D. Yawney observed that 44 In his novel Fireflies, Shiva Naipaul writes that the Khojas, though they were ‘fervent Hindus’, tolerated Christianity and observed many of the events on its calendar, but ‘steadfastly refused to have anything to do with … Islam’ (2012b: 150). In Amity village, Klass found that the Muslims were referred to by the derogatory term ‘Madinga’, but ‘on the whole there is little friction between Hindus and Muslims in the village’ (1988: 138). 45 Khan clarifies that whatever Hindu-Muslim tension that is still found in Trinidad ‘is not based on subcontinental impetuses, but primarily is a response to the unequal relations of power in local Trinidadian social and cultural history’ (1995: 318).

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‘it is not uncommon to find Muslims attending Hindu prayer meetings held at the home of friends, or vice versa’ (quoted in Lowenthal, 1972: 151).46 I had frequent occasions to observe this communal amity during my sojourn in Trinidad. As a legacy transferred from India, Muslims follow several social patterns and attitudes. Some of the Muslim rituals and culinary practices bear distinct Hindu influence. As among Hindus, patriarchy and patriliny was reconstituted among Muslims.47 Observances like the ‘three-day’ and ‘forty-day’ mourning (mawlood) and offerings for the dead (neyaz) are influenced by contact with Hindus (Mustapha, 2004: 134; see also Khan, 1995: 386–471, 2004). The Muslim prayer meetings at their homes, popularly called kitabs, are akin to Satyanarayana Puja. Kitab (literally, book) refers to Koran (Quran), the holy book of Islam. During the prayer meeting it is read and interpreted by the imam. The gathering is dabbed with attar (a fragrant essential oil; non-alcohol-based perfume) as if it is a purificatory ritual. The prayer meeting concludes with a feast in which phirni48 is served, similar to prasad (consecrated food) served at the conclusion of a Hindu satsang or puja.49 Like Hindus, Muslims too observe lifecycle rituals, but these are fewer and simpler as compared to those of the Hindus. The concept of nazar 50 or the ‘evil eye’ is prevalent among both Hindus and Muslims, again brought in by the girmitiyas from India. This refers to the supernatural belief in curse brought about by the malevolent stare or the power of a person to cause harm to people, animal, or object by looking at these with envy, malevolence, etc. Preventive measures are taken to ward-off the bad consequences of nazar. Like Hindus, Muslims, too, use amulets and wear armlets (tabeez/taweez) and put jumbie (spirit) beads around the wrist of a child to ward-off evil spirits. They believe in fortune-telling, spirit healing, etc. Confronting some life crises, ‘it is not uncommon for some Muslims to seek the services of a Hindu pandit’ (Mustapha, 2004: 134). In the late 1950s, the Niehoffs found that Muslims considered it ‘dangerous for a menstruating woman to touch the dead body or go to the mosque or cemetery’ (1960: 147). This is similar to the orthodox Hindu observance of ritual pollution associated with menstruating women. Overall, the Muslims of Indian descent in Trinidad, despite the churning they have experienced over a century and a half due to diverse sectarian, theological, and political influences, have remained ethnically close to Hindus and Presbyterians than to Afro-Trinidadians, both Christian and Muslim. As Syed Mohammed Hosein, Imam of ASJA mosque had told Gillian Clarke, Muslims would rather marry a Hindu than a Christian, ‘because all our forefathers were Hindus once’ (Clarke & Clarke 2010: 46

Jayawardena (1963: 23) observed this phenomenon among Hindus and Muslims in Guyana. For an analysis of marriage, family, and kinship practices among Indo-Trinidadian Muslims, see Chaps. 6 and 7. 48 Phirni, is a slow-cooked Indian sweet pudding made with rice, thickened milk, sugar, dry fruits, and scented with cardamom powder, saffron, or rose water. It is usually served on special occasions. 49 A more recent version of kitab is the practice of reading of the Koran for several nights during which sweets are served. The event culminates in a feast served to a large gathering. In form and spirit, this is patterned after the Ramayana Yagna of the Hindus (Mustapha 2012: 48). 50 In Trinidad & Tobago, the term maljo from maljeu (French: mal + evil and yeux: eye) is also used to refer to the concept of nazar. 47

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123). Their mooring, both religious and cultural, are primarily in the civilisational India. They constitute a special element of Indo-Trinidadians as a girmitiya diaspora.

10.3 Religious Syncretism In the history of religion, there are many illustrations of sharing, blending, and fusion of diverse beliefs and practices from around the world. Such ‘religious syncretism’ (Herskovits, 1948: 553–554; see also The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2019) was only expected in a multi-religious polity like Trinidad where people professing and practising different religions, sects, denominations, and traditions and belonging to various ethnic groups from several parts of the world interacted for many decades before the country became a modern nation-state. In the preceding and the instant chapters, we have seen the metamorphosis that Hinduism, Presbyterianism, and Islam have undergone through cultural borrowing from, adoptions of, and assimilation of each other’s traditions. The metamorphosis of Muharram into Trinidad Hosay through syncretisation with Hindu and Christian elements has been discussed earlier (see Sect. 8.2.2). Muharram, introduced into Trinidad by Shia Muslims, with the passing years became an ethnic and even a secular festival with the participation of both Hindus and Christians of African origin. The orthodox Sunni Muslims have always been critical of Trinidad Hosay and have distanced themselves from it. Even the later Shia missionaries who tried to revive Shia Islam in Trinidad have dubbed its observance as un-Islamic. But it continues to be observed annually with vibrancy, attracting even foreign visitors as Carnival does. It is true that for many who participate in it, it is a colourful and joyous festivity devoid of any religious connotation. But for some Hindus, Christians, and even Muslims, it has religious significance. They participate in it to fulfil a vow that they have taken or in supplication in the expectation of a desired end. Thus, Trinidad Hosay is now a syncretised version, quite unlike the observation of Muharram by Shias in India or in Iran. It nevertheless constitutes a syncretic achievement of the girmitiya diaspora. The cultural borrowing and adoptions by Hindus, Presbyterians, and Christians from each other’s religions has been referred to in the preceding as well as in this chapter. Hindus joining Christian festivities and Hindu households celebrating Christmas, though not as a religious rite is well known. Some Muslims, too, celebrate Christmas as a secular festival. Muslims are invited to Hindu prayer meetings, and Hindus, to Muslim prayer meetings. Muslims consulting Hindu pandits and Hindus seeking the intervention of Muslim maulvis in personal matters of health and family were frequently brought to my attention. Some elements of Hinduism have also been incorporated into the Orisha/Shango religion (Houk, 1993: 161; Mahabir & Maharaj, 1996). The adoption by Hindus of some Christian religious practices emphasises the open-endedness of Trinidad Hinduism. During my visit to a rural household, on the

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wall of a puja room in a Hindu house, besides those of the Hindu deities, I saw pictures of Mother Mary holding Infant Jesus, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France, both venerated by Roman Catholics, and Ka’bah in Mecca, the most sacred site in Islam. The lady of the household, noticing the perplexity on my face, explained that she says prayer to ‘god’ and it is addressed to whomsoever is the one portrayed on her wall!51 One cannot find a better instance of religious syncretisation at the personal/household level and the ideal of religious unity than this Indo-Trinidadian’s ‘all one god, anyhow’ philosophy. This is also reflective of the accommodative and assimilative nature of Hinduism as a way of life.

10.3.1 La Divina Pastora/Sipari Mai The 0.8 m-high bust of Madonna on wooden struts, with moveable jointed arms and a round face, giving the impression of a fully figured statue when dressed, has become an idol, the symbol of divinity beyond any specific religious order or institution. Located in a Capuchin pilgrimage church, La Divina Pastora (Spanish: ‘Divine Shepherdess’),52 in Siparia town, about 16 km south of San Fernando, is an example of religious syncretism par excellence. The incessant interaction between Catholics, who venerate it as Virgin Mother Mary (La Divin, as the Trinidadian Catholics call it), and Hindus, who worship it as a manifestation of the Mother goddess or Sipari Mai53 (Hindi: ‘Divine Mother of Siparia’), has led to the combination of their originally divergent practices and worldviews into an alternative spiritual construction representing various maternal/female bodies, each conforming to distinct religious traditions.54 Though the veneration and worship of the ‘Mother’ is mainly associated with Catholics and Hindus, persons of many other faiths, including Muslims, Spiritual Baptists, Yorubas (Orishas), etc., are also known to participate in it.55 51

In the late 1950s, during their fieldwork in Penal and Debe areas, the Niehoffs had observed that Hindus ‘offer prayers to Jesus and Mary as well as their Hindu deities’ (1960: 157). 52 Quoting Fermin de Alcaraz’s 1831 Spanish publication, Tsuji explains the mythical origin of the title of this Marian image thus: ‘in 1703, the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared in a vision to Capuchin friar Isidoro de Sevilla in Andalucía, Spain. In the vision, Mary was dressed like a shepherdess and prompted him to spread the Gospel’ (2020: 121). 53 Also spelt as Sop¯ ar¯ı-m¯e, Siparee Maie, Siparu Mai, etc., in the literature on the subject. 54 This is not, however, unique. I have seen Indian and Sri Lankan Hindus as well as Christians from different parts of Europe making a pilgrimage to worship the ‘Black Madonna’ statue at the Benedictine Einsiedeln Abbey and Monastery (Kloster Einsiedeln), located about 30 km southeast of Zurich in the Canton Schwyz in Switzerland. The original statue brought and installed by Saint Meinrad c. 835 CE was destroyed in a fire in 1465, and the present one is a replica which has been blackened by the many candles lit over the years. The statue is a source of great devotion, as many miracles have been credited to it. Pope Pius XI Pontifical decree of canonical coronation to this venerated Marian image on 21 March 1934. The feast of ‘Our Lady of Einsiedeln’ is held on 14 September every year (Wiener 2019). 55 In India, Hindus, given their religious openness, worship at the Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health (also known as Sanctuary of Our Lady of Velankanni) in Velankanni, Tamil Nadu; The

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The bust is made of ‘African cedar, a dark, reddish-brown wood, which is covered with a thin layer of plaster of Paris that has been smoothed and painted’ (McNeal, 2002); hence, the expression ‘Black Madonna’.56 The darkish-brown colour of the face of the idol (murti, in Hindi) makes it look remarkably like an Indian woman (Vertovec, 1992: 220). Dressing the idol with the dresses gifted by the devotees is now a ritual, as in many Hindu temples in India, and is performed by altar ladies in the sacristy of the church; no man is allowed.57 The crown adorning the ‘Mother’, made of gold offerings by Her devotees, was stolen in 1974; its replacement is now kept in a bank safe-deposit box and is brought out to adorn her during special festival occasions. As a pastora, the ‘Mother’ also holds a shepherd’s staff in her right hand which is believed to possess divine curative power (McNeal, 2002; see also Vertovec, 1992: 219–221).58 The provenance of the idol is lost in history; not even the Roman Catholic Church, to which the bust now belongs, has any record about it (see Tsuji, 2008: 147). I have heard Trinidadians recounting several cross-cultural legends and folktales about its origin and mystical power reflecting, as is to be expected, their ethnic or religious background. What is recorded, however, is the setting up of a monastic order on the hilltop of Siparia by the Capuchin monks sometime in 1759 to evangelise the indigenous Amerindians; its patroness was proclaimed to be La Divinia Pastora by Pope Pius VI in 1795 (Gayen, 2013: 31). Siparia became a Catholic parish in 1906. The people of Indian descent began making pilgrimages to Siparia since the 1860s, as attested by the parish records of Fr Cornelius O’Hanlon and the diary of Fr Abbé Armand Massé (see McNeal, 2002; Bissessarsingh, 2015; Tsuji, 2020). By early 1890s, large number of Indians, both indentured and time-passed, mostly Hindus, but some Muslims, too, visited Sipari Mai seeking Her healing powers (Boodoo, 1993: 386). Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century, Sipari Mai had entered the pantheon of the incipient Trinidad Hinduism; she came to be identified, according to some, as the great Hindu Goddess Kali, Mahishasura Mardini, who had slayed the demon Mahishasura to save the world (see Gayen, 2013: 34–35; Mahabir nd; see also Tsuji, 2009). Steven Vertovec has clarified that the idea that Sipari Mai, for Hindus, is Kali, is a ‘somewhat uninformed’ explanation ‘provided in official pamphlets sold by the Catholic church’ ‘based on the superficial observation that Hindus call the statute … “Sipari K. Mai”—the “K” supposedly standing for “Kali”’ (1992: 220). What Basilica of Holy Rosary in Bandel, Hooghly District, West Bengal; Basilica of Our Lady of the Mount, and St Michael’s Church in Mahim, both in Mumbai, Maharashtra. They also worship at dargahs (Persian: the tombs of the Sufi saints), e.g., Ajmer Sharif Dargah (of Moinuddin Chishti) in Ajmer, Rajasthan, and Hazrat Nizamuddin Dargah (of Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya) in Delhi; and The Harmandir Sahib (The Golden Temple), the preeminent Sikh spiritual centre, in Amritsar, Punjab. 56 There is a fair-complexioned Marian statue, ‘Our Lady of Fátima’, in Laventille Roman Catholic Church in Port of Spain, in the north of the island. 57 It is popularly believed that men attempting to watch the statue undressed go blind. 58 For a video on this spiritual icon, see The Madonna Murti, written by Sharon Syriac and directed by Oyetayo Raymond Ojoade, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2124949/ (accessed on January 7, 2022).

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the Hindus actually say, in Hindi, is ‘Sipari ke Mai’, which simply translates into ‘Mother of Siparia’.59 As he elucidates, Sipari Mai is a goddess manifestation unto herself, bearing the same relationship to Kali and Durga and Lakshmi – and to all the other devis – as does any goddess (just as healing goddesses are considered ultimately to be aspects of one another in India, yet referred as separate, sacred personalities). (ibid.)

He records that, during one Navratri period, a devotee had placed ‘a small plastic murti of Lakshmi beneath the statue in the church, attesting further to the co-recognition of goddesses’ (ibid.). Devotees visit the church throughout the year, some at least once a year and with their entire family, to offer prayers of supplication and thanksgiving to La Divin/Sipari Mai. They ask for Her blessings for themselves as for their families; they beseech Her intervention in personal or family matters, including love and marriage, fertility, and cure of ailments; they pray to Her for success in their business or occupation. They also visit the church to thank the ‘Mother’ for the blessings received or answering their prayers, or for the health and prosperity bestowed upon them. The Indo-Trinidadians, especially Hindus, to whom I spoke about Sipari Mai narrated their own benign experiences as also the stories of miracles that they have heard. Hindus say their prayers and make their offerings to the ‘Mother’ in supplication or thanksgiving alongside Catholics and others. Catholics offer candles, olive oil, dresses, and flowers; Hindus offer rice, olive/coconut oil, fruits and flowers, etc. Both offer cash, and some devotees, even gold or silver jewellery; and Hindus more generously than Catholics.60 If Catholics light candles, Hindus make arathi (ritual worship with deyas [earthen oil lamps], see Sect. 9.2.4), if Christians say prayers with folded hands, Hindus touch her arms and feet and then their own foreheads. As in the case of the consecration of offerings in the Hindu temples, a portion of the olive/coconut oil is poured into a container placed near the statue and the rest is returned to the expectant devotees after the bottle is brought into contact with the murti, who would carry this ‘La Divina oil’ back home and keep it at the family shrine to anoint themselves with it as a cure-all throughout the year (Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 155–156; McNeal, 2002; Gayen, 2013: 36; Tsuji, 2020: 238–239). Catholics enter the church with their footwear; Hindus remove their footwear before entering the church, as they would in a temple. Fr Martin Sirju, the Parish Priest of Siparia, points out that Hindus who come to the church seek darshan (darsan), i.e., the ‘blessing that comes with seeing and being seen by the Divine’ (2014). Quoting Diana L. Eck, he elucidates that darshan derives from the Hindu understanding that ‘the Divine dwells in a special way in the image 59

Perhaps, the Hindi word ‘kali’, which also means ‘black’, was used to literally refer to ‘Black Madonna’ as ‘Black Mother’ (‘Kali Mai’). 60 Mahabir (nd) mentions that, in times gone by, the indentured Indians worshipping at Siparia church reportedly ‘sacrificed cocks, goats and pigs in the churchyard’; the practice was later discontinued as Catholic priests discouraged it. ‘They [the Indians] truly give the Blessed Virgin an idolatrous worship’, he quotes a parish priest as remarking in 1880.

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(murti) without ceasing to be omnipresent’ (ibid.). Thus, ‘the visual apprehension of the image is charged with religious meaning. Beholding the image is an act of worship, and through the eyes one gains the blessings of the divine’ (Eck quoted in Sirju, 2014). According to Fr Sirju, ‘eyes play a big part in Hindu worship and the eyes of a murti are among its most prominent features’; this is harder for Catholics to understand, since ‘it does not appear to be entrenched in Catholic spirituality’ (2014). Fr Sirju also clarifies a theological distinction between La Divina Pastora, Mary the patron saint of the Catholic community of Siparia and of that town, and Sipari Mai, the Hindu mother goddess manifestation. Mary, in Roman Catholicism, is only a saint, though the holiest among them—O Sanctissima. Though she is a powerful figure in Catholic spirituality for conveying God’s blessing, she is not divine. As the title ‘Mary, Mediatrix of all graces’ implies, she is only a dispenser of grace, not its ultimate source; as the ‘Queen of the Saints’, she conveys blessings from God. Hindus, however, worship her as a goddess, as Divine Mother (Mai/Mata). Incidentally, the Hindus ‘do not go to mass in the church or attend any of the other regular church functions’ (Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 156). Among Hindus, a baby’s first full head of hair is usually shaved as a traditional lifecycle rite at the time of chati or barahi, the sixth or the twelfth day after its birth, in a ceremony called mundan samskara. If, for some reason, it is not done accordingly, the parents make the pilgrimage to Sipari Mai to perform mundan, preferably on the first Good Friday following its birth, or some other auspicious day, and offer the shaved hair, along with rice and money, at the murti’s feet (see Niehoff & Niehoff, 1960: 155; Klass, 1988: 119–120; Vertovec, 1992: 220).61 While mundan is believed to purify the baby and rid it of any evil-eye or evil-presence, performing it in the premises of the church is believed to bestow health and well-being upon the baby as it grows.62 Barbers are readily available in the churchyard; there are a few ‘barber shops’ near the church complex, too. Though there was some resistance in earlier times,63 the Catholic priests try their best to accommodate the Hindus in their pujas and devotions, even if these do not have the blessings of the church.64 After all, 61

In the late 1950s, the Niehoffs noted that some pilgrims have ‘a single lock of hair cut instead of completely shaving the head’ (1960: 155). 62 In Amity village, Klass found that, alternatively, mundan is performed ‘during the celebration of Siw R¯atr¯ı [Maha Shivaratri, see Sect. 9.2.4]’ (1988: 120). 63 ‘In 1917, the then parish priest, who could no longer condone “pagans” having their way in a Catholic church, put up a notice banning the “Coolie Fete at Siparia” and declared that he would not hesitate to resort to force if the warning was not followed’ (Tsuji 2008: 148 citing Michelle A. Goldwasser). The Niehoffs refer to the attempts (in the 1920s) by the priests ‘to stop the observance of this fete by locking the doors of the church on the night of the festival’; but they revoked the decision as ‘they received the threats that the church would be burned down’ (1960: 156; see also Boodoo 1993: 387), Besides the resistance by Hindus, such moves were also opposed by the lay Catholics of Siparia (see Tsuji 2020: 223). 64 Mahabir (nd) quotes the appeal of Fr John Harricharan, one of the few Indian Catholic priests, in 1981, ‘for the Catholic church to go beyond the courtesy of extending the facilities and to adapt some form of worship to meet the religious needs of the East Indians …’. But his appeal went unheeded.

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the Hindu offerings to Sipari Mai, in cash as well as in kind, has made the church financially sustainable. For decades, Siparia has been observing two popular religious celebrations.65 One is the festival of worship of Sipari Mai by Hindus on Maundy Thursday,66 the day before Good Friday, and the other a Catholic feast in honour of La Divina Pastora on the third Sunday after Good Friday, which since 1991 has been shifted to the fourth Sunday after Good Friday.67 A large gathering of devotees—Christian, Hindu, and others—from all over Trinidad and Trinidadians from north America stand in a long queue for hours day and night for the chance to file past the ‘Mother’s’ statue/murti and spend a few moments in front of Her. The Hindus ‘charawe [present] gifts (with the accompanying gesture to their forehead) and … place a tika of sindhur on the forehead of the Mai’68 (Vertovec, 1992: 220). Transvestite dancers singing and dancing with babies in arms around an orhni (veil) to the accompaniment of Indian music,69 ‘a mode of blessing unique to the site on these days’ (ibid.: 220; see also Clarke & Clarke, 2010: 79–80; Mahabir, nd), is reminiscent of the practice in India. Since the worship of the Sipari Mai is conducted informally in a church and without a pandit,70 ‘it is relegated to a peripheral position in “official” Hindu practice’ (Vertovec, 1992: 221). Traditionally, during the Catholic feast La Divina Pastora, after the High Mass at mid-morning, the idol, dressed in new clothes for the occasion, is taken in a procession through the streets of Siparia on the roof of a car.71 During the procession, the Rosary 65

In the nineteenth century, Hindus and Catholics made their devotions simultaneously in the main chapel on the same day. In the 1910s, the church authorities separated the two festivals (Tsuji 2008: 149). 66 On Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, the Hindu Indo-Trinidadians literally take over Siparia. According to Bissessarsingh, Maundy Thursday ‘is still known by some older people as the “Coolie Fete” when La Divina Pastora is removed from the church to the nearby parish hall so Hindus may pay her homage’ (2015; see also Tsuji 2008; Gayen 2013: 36). It is claimed by the church authorities that ‘it takes two days to clean out the church afterwards’ (Niehoff and Niehoff 1960: 156). 67 The timing of the Catholic observance of the feast in honour of La Divina Pastora is understandable. But the institutionalisation of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday for Hindu worship of Sipari Mai calls for some explanation. Vertovec cites local scholars who suggest that these two, being the major holy days for the predominantly Catholic plantocracy, were holidays for the indentured Indian labourers when they were allowed out of the estate. Equally plausible is that the first Navratri of each year and Easter (both astrologically determined) take place around this time, implying ‘that Hindus would be especially involved in goddess worship during this period’ (1992: 229 En 24). 68 Application of tika [tilaka, mark] of sindhur [vermilion] on the forehead of a woman a symbol of matrimony; it is never applied by unmarried women or widows. 69 This is a fulfilment of a vow made by a hitherto childless couple to bear a child. 70 Mahabir reports that since the last decade or so a pujari (priest) of the Kali-Mai cult, ‘darkskinned and dressed in white’, is found to be collecting donations from worshippers for performing a ceremonial worship to protect those who seek his blessings by ‘jharying (stroking) [them] with knife and neem branch’. This, Mahabir, claims ‘substantiates the conception that the Hindus perceive this Divine shepherdess as Mother Kali’ (nd). While some, especially, Madrasi-origin Kali worshippers, may follow this, the idea of ‘Siparia Mai’ as a ‘mother goddess’ is far broader in scope as has been clarified by Vertovec (see 1992: 220). 71 Until 1993, when the gatherings were small, the statue was carried manually.

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is recited followed by the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. Marian hymns are sung, and as the procession returns to the church there is a solemn Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament (Theresa Noel, cited by Gayen, 2013). A ‘Trini-style’ massive fete follows the religious ceremonies of the day, even overshadowing the sacred activities. Thus, the religious festival and the fete is referred to by many Trinidadians as ‘the Siparia fete’ (McNeal, 2002). Keith E. McNeal describes this fete, which has come to be described as the ‘little carnival’, thus: ‘Hordes of people crowd the streets of Siparia, drinks in hand, music blaring, ready to while the night away in the spirit of party’; during the week-long fete that this has grown to be, ‘cycling, horse racing, carnival rides and other sporting events’ are held (ibid.). Orthodox Christians and Hindus are critical of this perverse ‘profanity’ of what was once a ‘sacred’ event, and distance themselves away from it. The focus of this chapter has been on the experience of girmitiyas vis-à-vis two other religions, namely, the Presbyterianism denomination of Protestant sect and Islam. Of all the Christian denominations which sought to evangelise the girmitiyas, both in the estates when they were still indentured and later when they settled down as subjects, Presbyterianism was the most successful; more among Hindus and less among Muslims. Presbyterianism, as it was offered to the girmitiyas was less upsetting to their sense of ethnicity and more acceptable to them culturally. An important contribution of Presbyterianism to Indo-Trinidadians as a diasporic community was facilitating their upward social mobility and modernisation through education. Muslims among the girmitiyas resisted conversion to Christianity the most, notwithstanding their sectarian affiliations. Because of their steadfastness, Islam has survived in Trinidad and is especially associated with Indo-Trinidadians. However, Muslims have experienced greater divisions in terms of both theological beliefs and religious practices. This is explained by the influence of the steady flow of Islamic missionaries of various orientations, not only from India, but also from Pakistan, the Middle East, and North America. Notwithstanding, all their differences, ethnically, they share a sense of community with the rest of Indo-Trinidadians. Overall, we find that both Presbyterianism and Islam as they came to be practised by Indo-Trinidadians have metamorphosed over the century. Resistance to conversion notwithstanding, Christianity has had a profound influence on the religious life of the girmitiyas, more so among Hindus and less so among Muslims. The interface of religions at the community level and the close interaction among individuals belonging to different religions has resulted in significant syncretic traditions. Inter-religious interface and interactions and the resulting syncretic traditions have shaped the vibrant lived experience of religion among Indo-Trinidadians as a girmitiya diasporic community.

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Chapter 11

Culture and the Community: Language and Foodways

… the most fundamental contradiction of culture: ‘culture is tenacious’, we anthropologists like to teach, and so it is, but it is also like quicksilver, changing form before our very eyes. —Morton Klass (1988: xxviii)

In the deliberations on their ethnicity, Indo-Trinidadians invariably invoke the idiom of culture. Stated explicitly or otherwise, they contrast themselves from their AfroTrinidadian counterparts. After all, besides the apparent phenotypical differences, what essentially distinguishes them from the latter, in society and polity, is culture. Since independence, Indo-Trinidadians have been actively engaged in ‘cultural renaissance’; besides politics, the sphere in which they have fiercely contested AfroTrinidadian ‘hegemony’, as they term it, has been culture (see Jayaram, 2003; see also Chap. 8). They are, indeed, proud of their culture, which, notwithstanding the religious differences among them, is generally shared by the wider community. The culture of Indo-Trinidadians is the civilisational legacy which their ancestors brought from India as indentured immigrants during 1845–1917, and revived and reconstituted its various elements since they settled down in their new homeland as a diasporic community. The fact that it came into contact with other cultures inevitably resulted in borrowings, adaptations, and even assimilation. The resulting metamorphosis of the original ancestral culture, however, has not dissolved its defining core. All elements of the ancestral culture were not uniformly revived or reconstituted; each element had a different trajectory in the diaspora. This chapter is intended to examine the metamorphosis of culture among IndoTrinidadians by focusing on the experience of two of its important elements, namely, language and foodways. These two elements have been chosen to illustrate the differential experience of ancestral cultural elements in the diaspora. Obviously, there are many other elements of culture which could be analysed similarly, such as literature, performing arts, artefacts, clothes, etc. However, limitations of space prevent these from being discussed in this chapter. Religion, as the overarching institution shaping and supporting the culture of Indo-Trinidadians has been discussed in detail in the preceding two chapters.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7_11

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11.1 Language1 Language is both a social code and an important element of culture: it is ‘the privileged medium in which cultural meanings are formed and communicated’ and ‘the primary means and medium through which we form knowledge about ourselves and the social world’ (Barker, 2004: 106–107). The status of the languages which the different diasporic communities had carried as part of their socio-cultural baggage is highly varied: They have experienced attrition and disappeared altogether, or they have survived in extremely limited spheres of life, or they have been modified and retained, or they continue to exist and are in contact with their ancestral roots, or they have been sought to be revived and revitalised with varying degrees of success. (Jayaram, 2004: 147)

It is important to understand the experience that the languages the girmitiyas brought with them into Trinidad have undergone since their arrival there.

11.1.1 Diglossia, and the Birth and Death of Trinidad Bhojpuri There is no official record of the multiplicity of languages and dialects that the girmitiyas brought with them to Trinidad. Considering that an overwhelming majority of them were recruited from the western part of Bihar, the eastern part of the then United Provinces, and the southern (or Ranchi) plateau of Chota Nagpur, it can be justifiably presumed that most of these immigrants ‘must have been native speakers of the various dialects of Bhojpuri’2 (Mohan, 1978: 8). This is also confirmed by ‘the striking similarities between the Bhojpuri widely spoken in Trinidad (in comparison with other Indic languages) and the different varieties of Bhojpuri spoken in India’ (ibid.: 11). The girmitiyas from outside the Bhojpur region, though small in numbers, brought with them other languages—Avadhi, Bengali, Magahi, Maithili, and Nepali, from north India; Tamil and Telugu from south India. Linguist Peggy Ramesar Mohan claims that ‘there is anecdotal evidence that these languages were once spoken in Trinidad’ (ibid.: 11).

1

In writing this section, I have drawn from my earlier publication on the subject (see Jayaram, 2004). 2 Bhojpuri is the westernmost member of the Magadhan family of Indo-Aryan languages spoken in north-eastern India (Grierson, 1919: 125–126). Because Bhojpuri shares many words with Hindi, it is erroneously regarded as ‘a dialect of Hindi’, or even ‘broken Hindi’. However, it is a strikingly different language from Hindi; it is ‘grammatically closer to eastern languages like Bengali’ (Mohan, 2007: 46, see also 48).

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The linguistic confusion resulting from a multiplicity of languages and dialects among the girmitiyas was often remarked by observers.3 For instance, Rev. W. H. Gamble, a British missionary noted: The Bengalis speak Hindustani and Bengali, while the inhabitants of the Madras Presidency speak Tamil, a totally different language. When these people meet in Trinidad, it strikes me as somewhat strange that they have to point to water and rice, and ask each other what they call it in their language. So totally different are the languages, the Hindustani and the Tamil, that English has to become the medium of communication. (1866: 33).

Rev. Gamble’s forecast eventually became true. Initially, however, the languages brought by the girmitiyas were preserved, as they persisted in speaking their mother tongue among themselves (Tinker, 1993: 211). This was assisted by the lack of educational facilities for their children, which would have forced them to learn an alien language in school. Even when educational facilities became available to them, many Indian parents kept their children away from school for various reasons, not excluding the fear of conversion to Christianity (Singh, 1985: 48–49). To begin with, the exigencies of plantation life made two linguistic demands on the girmitiyas: First, they were required to develop a language for communication among themselves, a lingua franca as it were. And second, they had to develop the ability to communicate with the authorities and in the market, which meant adopting Creole English4 as their link-language. About the latter, Hugh Tinker observes that ‘The plantation Indian learned to regard language as a means of protecting himself— making himself understood, when this was needed, and making himself hard to understand when that would serve him’ (1993: 211–212). The development of a lingua franca for internal communication among the girmitiyas was not easy, despite a vast majority of them hailing from the Bhojpuri-speaking areas of north India. Even the Bhojpuri they had brought to Trinidad was not homogeneous; it reflected the dialectal variations of the parts from which they had come.5 In due course, however, through a process of koineisation (levelling) of different dialects, a new variant of Bhojpuri was evolved as a reasonably homogeneous lingua franca on the estates. This variant is called by sociolinguists as ‘Trinidad Bhojpuri’ (see Mohan, 1978; Mohan & Zador, 1986) and by historians, following plantation and colonial officials, as ‘Plantation Hindustani’ (see Tinker, 1993: 208).6 3

The virtual babel of Indian tongues was, however, welcomed by the plantocracy. As the Baptist missionary Rev. H. V. P. Bronkhurst observed: ‘The proprietors or managers of sugar estates purposely choose men speaking three or four separate and distinct languages not understood by each other, in order to prevent combination in cases of disturbances among them’ (1888: 18). 4 Trinidad Creole English (called Creole or Trini) and Standard (Trinidadian) English are lexically related. They coexist ‘not as discrete codes but as a continuum of speech forms exploited according to the communicative intent of members of the speech community’ (Sealey, 1983: Intro-4). 5 In her study, Mohan found ‘evidence of this initial diglossia in the pockets of variation in presentday Trinidad Bhojpuri where the formal options correspond to features which are functionally equivalent in the different dialects of Indian Bhojpuri’. She noticed ‘the lexicon and the Present/Optative forms of the copula’ to be the aspects manifesting ‘the highest degree of dialectal variation (due to differences between the Indian parent varieties rather than to Creole contact)’ (1978: 12, 35). 6 Trinidad Bhojpuri was different from Bhojpuri in India; it was less fragmented than in India, ‘more of a lingua franca for the community’, a language that evolved ‘in the migration to Trinidad’

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According to some sociolinguists, Trinidad Bhojpuri is a linguistic system by itself (see Mohan, 1978: 1; Gambhir, 1986); it is governed by linguistic rules like any other natural language. That it is a compromise between different speakers, or that it is a simplified version of Indian Bhojpuri, does not make it linguistically less significant. Some of ‘the competing linguistic alternants from the second stage’ may, no doubt, persist in the speech of some people. These are only redolent of the multidialectal origin of Trinidad Bhojpuri (Gambhir, 1986). The evolution of Trinidad Bhojpuri as a distinct ‘ethnic language’7 has not been documented. But it may be surmised that, with every succeeding generation, the relatively greater impact of the peer group as compared to that of parents in the matter of language use must have contributed to the increasing homogenisation of Trinidad Bhojpuri. That is, there must have developed ‘a single system [of language] incorporating residual dialectal variation rather than persisting as a series of distinct dialects’ (Mohan, 1978: 13). By the time the girmitiyas had settled down as an agricultural community in the last decades of the nineteenth century, Trinidad Bhojpuri had become their ethnic language. Thus, in their report on Trinidad, James McNeill and Lala Chimman Lal observed that ‘soon after arrival all immigrants learn plantation Hindustani [Trinidad Bhojpuri]’ (1915a: 23). Although Trinidad Bhojpuri evolved as a language different from the ancestral languages, it never became a ‘native language’. This was due to the fact that, with the expansion of education, the younger generation, especially those in urban areas, gradually adopted Creole English and/or Standard English as the native language. According to a sociolinguistic profile prepared by W. Sealey on the basis of the 1970 census data, the Indo-Trinidadians shared with the rest of the population ‘varieties of Trinidadian Creole English as the major L1 [first language] and language of daily communication’ (1983: Intro-2) This community-wide language shift over the decades has meant that Trinidad Bhojpuri was already a dying language (see Durbin, 1973; Mohan & Zador, 1986; and Mahabir & Mahabir, 1990: 2–3). Using a sociolinguistics formula, Sealey arrived at the following profile of Trinidad Bhojpuri in 1970: ‘A dialect of “mainland” Bhojpuri,’ ‘a Tolerated Language’, ‘spoken as an L1 by less than three per cent of the population’ and ‘used as a language of restricted internal communication’. Trinidad Bhojpuri monolinguals are generally over 75 years of age and Trinidad Bhojpuri and Trinidad English bilinguals (including semi-speakers) are generally in the age group of 55–75 years. The fluent speakers of that language are Hindus who have remained fairly isolated in rural areas (1983: TB-1–2).

(Mohan, 2007: 46). Viewed thus, as a Trinidadian language, it was the creation of the girmitiya diaspora, a cultural achievement even if it did not survive for long. 7 Mohan clarifies that as ‘the ethnic language of the Indian community in Trinidad’, it was different from an ‘ancestral language’, differing from many varieties of Bhojpuri and other Indic languages brought to Trinidad by the girmitiyas, from a ‘native language’ in that it came to be replaced as the medium of conversation within the Indian community by Creole English or Standard English (Mohan, 1978: 1; emphasis added).

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The few native speakers of Trinidad Bhojpuri in the 1970s were mostly women, very old8 and usually living in rural areas, who used it among their friends or kin circle. It was reportedly used by the elders in the presence of strangers or children when they discussed something confidential or when they wished to exclude them from the conversation. The same was said to be true of the very few elderly persons in the Madrasi settlements in rural areas who still spoke Tamil, and or the elderly Muslims who spoke Urdu. The death of Trinidad Bhojpuri9 is explained by many factors. First, those who spoke it were poor; they had not been to school. For some, ‘it was a thing of the past, a tie to the estate’; for others, it was a ‘tooti basha’ (a broken language) to be discarded in favour of the Standard Hindi taught in Presbyterian mission schools (Mohan, 2007: 51). This was due to the fact that neither was the name ‘Trinidad Bhojpuri’ given to this language in Trinidad, nor did Trinidad Indians recognise it as a language distinct from Standard Hindi. ‘This notion, lent credence by the high degree of lexical similarity between these two languages in contrast with the grammatical differences between them’, according to Mohan, ‘is partly responsible for the failure of its speakers to transmit this language to younger generations of Trinidad Indians’ (1978: 1–2). Another important reason was that language as a cultural element is unique. Other cultural elements could be reconstituted and retained relatively effectively as they are relevant to the community only, and more or less unrelated to the other communities. But language is useful not only within the community; it is also required to functionally interact with members of other communities. Thus, in multi-ethnic Trinidad, which was dominated by Creole English and Standard English, the social significance of an ethnic language is too constricted. Many an elder retained Trinidad Bhojpuri only because he/she did not know English; they did not develop as a bilingual community. James R. Sookhoo’s ‘ajie’ (FaMo), who could not speak English, told stories in Hindi (Trinidad Bhojpuri?), and someone had to say ‘“han” (hukaria bharna)’ at the end of each sentence (Sookhoo, 1985: iii). The younger generations, exposed to English in school, became monolingual in that language and gave up native tongues. If at all, they retained only some lexical and idiomatic expressions (Mahabir & Mahabir, 1990: 3). The reconstitution and retention of Bhojpuri in Trinidad during the indenture period and the early decades of settlement, according to Mohan, had a lot to do with women migrants and ‘the community childrearing that was practised on the estates’: ‘Children on the estates were generally left for most of the day with one 8

Most of the people whom Mohan interviewed for her study were ‘women, almost all over ninety’ (2007: 15). 9 Mohan and Zador define ‘language death’ as ‘a community-wide shift to a new native language, in such a way that the community of native speakers ceases to be self-renewing, and/or the speakers cease to be native’ (1986: 293). Similarly, Freed defines ‘language attrition’ as ‘the loss of any language or any portion of a language by an individual or a speech community’ in ‘language contact situations where one language, for political or social reasons, comes to replace another’ (1982: 1). I use these terms synonymously, as ‘attrition’ of a language leads to its ‘death’ in the longer run.

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older woman, called khelauni, when they were below the age of six, and even a bit later, when they were at the age of stabilizing their first language’ (2007: 47–48). The significant role played by the earlier generation of women in the reconstitution and retention of language10 is reflected by the fact that the lexical and idiomatic elements of Bhojpuri and Hindustani which have survived among Indo-Trinidadians to this day have primarily to do with kitchen and kinship.

11.1.2 Presbyterian Mission and the Rise and Decline of Standard Hindi The role of the Presbyterian Mission in introducing Standard Hindi in its evangelical and missionary activities in Trinidad has been discussed in the preceding chapter (see Sect. 10.1.3). The credit for this goes to its zealous founder Rev. John Morton. From early on Rev. Morton appreciated the importance of offering Protestant Christianity to girmitiyas in their ‘native language’; he chose ‘Standard Hindi’11 (‘the language of the civilised’) instead of ‘Trinidad Bhojpuri’ (‘the language of the heathens’, also called ‘Coolie language’) for this (see Morton, 1916: 66–67). He painstakingly learnt the language and was appointed by the government as an official interpreter of the language. Assisted by Andrew Gayadeen, Rev. Morton translated and prepared hymns, and started a Hindi printing press. At this press was printed copies of Prarthna Mala (‘The Garland of Prayers’), the Hindi hymn book, which is used by Trinidad Presbyterians even today. His ‘International Sabbath School Lessons’ in Hindi with a simple commentary in English, systematised the teaching of Hindi in the Sunday School. At this press Morton also translated, printed, and published government notices and circulars in Hindi (ibid.: 424–425, 431–435). The members of the Mission learnt Hindi, religious services began to be given in Hindi; the Presbyterian teachers qualified in both Hindi and English Although the Mission continued to use Hindi for its activities right through the first half of the twentieth century, gradually the initiative was lost and Standard Hindi experienced attrition even among Presbyterians. According to Arthur and Juanita Niehoff, the Mission gave up the emphasis on Hindi as its administrators found that ‘the young Indians no longer have any interest in it’. In fact, their fieldwork in the late 1950s, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, revealed that ‘except for the very old, they [the Presbyterians] show very little interest in maintaining Hindi as a spoken language and it is very rarely heard in Christian homes’ (1960: 1949, 151). At a thanksgiving ceremony in a Presbyterian household in La Romaine in south Trinidad in December 1995, I heard an octogenarian lady recite what she called a 10

Mohan, an authority on Trinidad Bhojpuri, states that it was her ajie (FaMo) ‘who taught me this dying language from my earliest childhood in solitary defiance of convention, and, more recently, helped me to decipher and transcribe all my recorded data’ (Mohan, 1978: iii). 11 Rev. Morton uses the word ‘Hindui’ as including the Urdu dialect (Morton, 1916: 67).

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bhajan (hymn) in Hindi, and freely translate it into English for the benefit of those (i.e., nearly the entire audience!) who did not understand the original. She lamented on the loss of Hindi among her Presbyterian brethren. The religious service that evening was carried out exclusively in English, and the hymn book (Hymns and Choruses, published by the Presbyterian Church in Trinidad) circulated among the members of the audience, consisted of five bhajans12 in Hindi printed in Roman characters.

11.1.3 Bhojpuri/Hindi in Early Indo-Trinidadian Literature In the absence of any ethnographic work about language as a cultural element among Indians in Trinidad prior to 1950s, we have to fall back upon the literary sources available to us. In this context, the pioneering writing of Seepersad Naipaul (1906– 1953), father of the Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018) and his litterateur brother Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985), is an indispensable source. He was the first writer of Indian origin in Trinidad, and perhaps of the girmitiya diaspora itself. He did not write much: one long story and a few short stories. But his book Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales, first published in 1943, and later in 1976 as The Adventures of Gurudeva (2001) (Gurudeva, for short), was a landmark in Indian diasporic fiction.13 Set in the 1930s and 1940s in rural Trinidad, Gurudeva is an exposition of the Indian community there ‘cut adrift from its origins, coming to terms with a confusing, changing world’ (French, 2008: 44). This book might well be dismissed as ‘a literary curiosity, the work of a famous writer’s father’ (ibid.). But it is, as Patrick French avers, ‘a book of rare quality in its own right, an early text in the tradition of Indian diasporic fiction that was to develop vigorously later in the [twentieth] century’, giving the reader ‘a rapid, intimate glimpse of a completely alien world’ (ibid.). Seepersad Naipaul’s literary achievement, limited as it may have been, in many ways guided and shaped the writings of his son V. S. Naipaul, especially his early writings (see Jayaram, 2022). Gurudeva ‘was my private epic’, declares V. S. Naipaul (1984: 43) and his father’s stories … are a unique record of the life of the Indian or Hindu community in Trinidad in the first fifty years of the [twentieth] century. They move from a comprehension of the old India in which the community is at first embedded to an understanding of the colonial Trinidad which defines itself as their background, into which they then merge. To write about a community which has not been written about is not easy. To write about this community was especially difficult; it required unusual knowledge and an unusual breadth of sympathy. (Naipaul, 2001: 23–24)

12

‘Karo Meri Sahai’, ‘Yesu Massee’, ‘Prema Nidhar’, ‘Kya Man Bhulah Hai’, and ‘Yishu Ne Kaha, Jivan Ki Roti’. 13 It is remarkable that Seepersad Naipaul received only an elementary school education; he had taught himself how to read and write English.

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It is important to note that Seepersad Naipaul himself was a part of the process of change that he describes in his stories. ‘In a way he was a “participant observer” recording the “ethnography” of a girmitiya diasporic community in the making’ (Jayaram, 2022: 137). Gurudeva’s narrative is in standard English; Gurudeva speaks in dialect. The narrative and the conversations are replete with Bhojpuri/Hindi/Hindustani/Urdu expressions then current in rural Trinidad among the Indian settlers. These expressions encompass a variety of socio-cultural spheres: Religion: katha (story, usually that of Satyanarayana), bhajan (singing of hymns), dakshina (a Brahminic present), kuti (place of worship), sanch (a conch-shell), ghanti (a tiny bell), Sanatan Dharma (eternal religion, Hinduism), jhandi (flag), gow-mata (cow-mother), gowhatia (cow-murder), ku-jat (outcaste), arti (moving a lighted camphor on a brass platter circularly round the images), chandan (a caste mark), devatas (the gods), patra (astrological almanac), nazar (evil eye), devi (goddess), tulsi (holy basil), chela (disciple), etc. Lifecycle rituals: barahi (a twelfth-day celebration on the birth of a man-child), teeluck (dowry), doolaha (bridegroom), doolahin (bride), garbhin (pregnant woman), Kinship terms: bap (Fa), beta (So), mai (Mo), bhowji (ElBrWi), nana (FaFa), etc. Kitchen and food: roti (Indian bread), bharth (cooked rice), bhaji (greens/spinach), masala (a mixture of ground spices), maleeda (sweetmeat), mohan-bhog (a sweetmeat of flour, ghee, milk, and sugar), sohari (puri), tarkari (vegetables), achar (pickle), chulha (fireplace), bode (yard long beans), leepey (daubing), meethai (sweets), lotah (brass/copper tumbler), dibbi (small wooden/steel box/cabinet), dainki (the eight-foot long wooden instrument for pounding paddy), thali (a brass plate), simta (tong), tava (baking stone), etc. Household objects: khatiah (the bed of hempen string), cheelum (Indian smoking-pipe), baithaka (place to sit down), matchan (a slatted table of round wood), etc. Clothes: dhoti (waist cloth), koortah (collarless shirt), orhani (veil), jhoolah (bodice), ghungri (anklet bells), chappals (sandals), etc. Abusive terms: badmash (dishonest), pukka badmash (thoroughly dishonest), randi-baj (lecher), phakkar (a spendthrift), chandahl (low-caste), makhichus (a miser), bahila (barren woman, barren cow), etc. Miscellaneous: gatka (duel with sticks), oustard (ustad, veteran), chamar (a sweeper and worker in leather; low-caste), ahir (a India-born cowherd), Angrezi (English), churki (the long tuft of hair back of the skull), chela (disciple), chha-angura (six-fingered), chookoo-mookoo (sitting down on foot, cross-legged), peerha (pedastal), kothri (closet), moach (moustache), kusanghat (bad companionship), pukka shaharia (a rank city man), etc. Popular expressions: Shabas, beta! (Bravo, son!), achcha (yes), Shukriya (thank you), Hanh (yes), Wha-wha (exclamation)

Many of the characters in Gurudeva—Jaimungal, Old Boodhoo—speak in Bhojpuri/Hindi: ‘In nearly half a century’s residence in the island Boodhoo still spoke nothing but Hindi …, he being India-born’ (Seepersad Naipaul, 2001: 89). Some characters, e.g., Bhakhiran’s wife, speak in ‘mongrel Hindi’, ‘a sort of patois Hindi which, spoken elsewhere but in Trinidad, would be unmeaning gibberish’ (ibid.: 51). Gurudeva ‘spoke, or tried to speak, the Hindi of the vernacular weekly

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paper’ that came in batches from India once in three months. ‘It was a clever decision’ on his part, says Seepersad Naipaul: He knew well enough that his Hindi … was more or less on a par with his English; but whereas his bad English would be glaringly patent to many, his bad Hindi, particularly if he applied [the weekly newspaper’s] pronunciation and intonation, would be patent to none. Those who knew Hindi knew little of it to be able to correct him; those who didn’t know – well, they didn’t know. (ibid.: 138)

Seepersad Naipaul makes a reference to the proceedings of a panchayat meeting which was ‘conducted wholly in Hindi’ (ibid.: 163). In his lectures on Hinduism, Gurudeva, made it known that it is the ‘duty’ of the boys and girls ‘to learn Hindi’. He said, ‘he had discovered to his shame that not two in a hundred knew their mother tongue … hitherto they might have had excuses in the fact that they had no one to teach them; but now they had no such excuse’; he was available in his kuti (ibid.: 150). This is in contrast to his own father’s opposition to his learning Hindi in school, as he had feared like many other Hindus, that learning Hindi in Presbyterian schools would mean their conversion to Christianity. As Mr Sohun, the school teacher, remarks: ‘In school you [Gurudeva] never were keen on Hindi. Your father felt that teaching you Hindi was only a ruse on my part to teach you the Bible. He preferred his sons to grow up as ignorant Hindus rather than as intelligent Christians’ (ibid.: 130). Reading Gurudeva as a sociological text provides us with the scenario of language flux in which the Indians in Trinidad found themselves in the 1930s and 1940s. Both ‘Trinidad Bhojpuri’, the language that had emerged out of the unconscious levelling of different languages and dialects that their ancestors had brought with them, and ‘Standard Hindi’, which the Presbyterian Mission had consciously introduced, were facing attrition. Whatever has survived is mostly in their folksongs and in their lexicon of kitchen and food, and to some extent in their kinship terminology. The only systematic ethnic use of Hindi still to be found is in the religious realm among Hindus. While this loss was felt emotionally, it was not missed pragmatically. They embraced the emerging reality of language: Standard English, was demanded in formal education and official matters, and Creole English had become the language of communication among different ethnic groups.

11.1.4 Attrition of Trinidad Bhojpuri and Standard Hindi The attrition of native languages among the girmitiyas in Trinidad, and the attrition of the spontaneously evolved Trinidad Bhojpuri and the consciously developed Standard Hindi within a century of their arrival in the island has intrigued scholars studying the girmitiya diaspora. This is particularly so considering that Indo-Trinidadians constitute the single largest ethnic group in Trinidad & Tobago,14 and considering that other elements of culture (e.g., religion, food habits) and social organisation 14

According to the 2011 Census, the Indo Trinidadians (‘East Indians’, as they are referred to officially) constituted the single largest community in Trinidad & Tobago, forming 35. 43% of

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(e.g., marriage and family) have been reconstituted and retain their ethnic identity, as discussed in earlier chapters.15 Seen from a socio-historical perspective, we find that throughout the period of indenture, and later too, the immigrant Indians experienced ridicule, marginalisation, and suppression of their ancestral culture by the economically dominant plantocracy and the politically dominant colonial administrators. There was continuous pressure on them to Creolise. It goes to the credit of the Indians that they resisted the obliteration of their ‘Indianness’ under these conditions. Though with some loss (including their language), they retained more of their ethnic and cultural identity than their African counterparts (see Tinker, 1993: 208). As discussed earlier, although it was through dialect-levelling that the girmitiyas evolved Trinidad Bhojpuri or Plantation Hindustani as a lingua franca, they did not recognise it as a language distinct from ‘Standard Hindi’, which came to be advanced by the Presbyterian missionaries. Rather, they came to look down upon Trinidad Bhojpuri as a ‘corrupted’ variety of Standard Hindi—‘broken Hindi’ or ‘bad Hindi’ (Mohan, 1978: 2; Sealey 1983: TB-2). Some even referred to it disparagingly as ‘Chamar Hindi (low-caste Hindi) or gaoo bolee (village speech)’ (Mahabir & Mahabir, 1990: 3). The feeling of inferiority about Trinidad Bhojpuri was ‘partly responsible for the failure of its speakers to transmit this language to younger generations of Trinidad Indians’ (Mohan, 1978: 2).16 Significantly, as discussed earlier, right from the beginning, the Presbyterian Mission adopted Standard Hindi, and not Trinidad Bhojpuri, as its language of evangelisation. This was in a way counterproductive, as many a Hindu and Muslim alike viewed the use of Standard Hindi by the missionaries as a stratagem for their conversion to Christianity. The identification of Standard Hindi with the Presbyterian Mission subdued its chances of developing as a second language in the country. Whatever may be the reason, Standard Hindi did not survive; the Mission switched over to English even before a century after its establishment. English, and literacy in English carried high prestige in the colonial period. As a language of education, English became a sine qua non of upward mobility in the colonial social order. Their native language was one element of culture that English-educated Trinidad Indians sacrificed as part of their upward mobility and modernisation. Not only has there been a shift towards Trini (Trinidad Creole English) as the first language, and even the mother tongue, among them, but also a pronounced strain towards monolingualism in that language. This is explained by the fact that their

the population and the single largest community in the main island of Trinidad, forming 37.01% (Central Statistical Office 2012: 15 and 16). 15 Thus, Sperl’s explanation that this was due to the acculturation to wider society and the decreasing meaningfulness of ‘guiding principles’ rooted in religion and tradition (see Sperl, 1980) is, therefore, unacceptable. 16 Mohan recalls her ‘Ajie’ (FaMo) and ‘Nana’ (in fact, FaMoFa), as she called him, would laugh indulgently when she would ‘butt in with the Bhojpuri phrases that I knew …. Nana would fondly tell me to go and study my French, Spanish and Latin, and to forget about this [Bhojpuri] language … though he was touched that I wanted to learn the language’ (2007: 50–51).

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native or ethnic language has no use whatsoever in commerce and administration.17 From the utilitarian viewpoint, those who study an additional language, invariably choose Spanish or French. As sociolinguist Nancy Currier Dorian puts it, the younger generation knows ‘very well on which side their linguistic bread is buttered’ (1982: 47).

11.1.5 Retention and Survival of Linguistic Heritage According to Jean Berko-Gleason, ‘the traditional linguistic subsystems (phonology, morphology, syntax, and vocabulary) may suffer differential loss in attrition, since they are learned separately’ (1982: 21). Both Trinidad Bhojpuri and Standard Hindi were predominantly a part of the oral culture, and script was largely confined to the religious literati—the Hindu pandits and the Presbyterian ministers. This explains both the general attrition of these two languages among Indo-Trinidadians and the survival and retention of some elements of their native languages. Thus, as already mentioned, Hindi is still used in liturgy and Bhojpuri is retained in folksongs. The survival of Bhojpuri, Hindi, Urdu, and even Tamil words in the spheres of food, domestic worship, and kinship relations is also to be understood in this light (Winford, 1972: 13–14).18 The routines (such as ‘polite routines’) and ‘routinized sequences’ (Berko-Gleason, 1982: 21), which are taught/learnt explicitly, have been similarly retained.19 These expressions have little intellectual or referential content, but serve socio-cultural purposes. Similarly, numbers, songs, and emotionally laden words like curse- or swear-words have survived.20 Language retention is also an age-related phenomenon. As mentioned earlier, in 1995, Trinidad Bhojpuri monolinguals were generally over 75 years of age, and Trinidad Bhojpuri and Trinidad Creole English bilinguals (including semi-speakers) were mostly in the age group of 55–75 years. The same could be said about the 17

Trinidad Creole English (Trini) is the first language of most Trinidadians and Standard English is the official language of the country. Trinidad Creole English (at primary level) and Standard English (at Secondary level and beyond) are the media of education. 18 See the dictionaries compiled by Mahabir and Mahabir (1990) and Sookhoo (1985). It is noteworthy that, in compiling their dictionary of common ‘Trinidad Hindi’, Mahabir and Mahabir have relied on ‘purely oral’ sources and have not consulted any existing Hindi–English dictionary or glossary. Sookhoo’s Hindi–English dictionary, which cannot claim such purity of source, has in addition, however, 104 proverbs and 110 pithy sayings. 19 Polite routines such as ‘Sitaram’ (greetings) and ‘Kaisen hai’ (How are you?), and routinised sequences such as ‘Shabas, beta!’ (Bravo, son!) and ‘Wha-wha’ (exclamation) are still in use in Trinidad. 20 Sometimes an expression used by a public figure becomes a catchword. For example, the expression ‘nimakaram’/ ‘nemackharaam’ (Hindi and Urdu: namakharam, ingrate, disloyal, or treacherous) used by Basdeo Panday (the leader of opposition in Parliament and later the prime minister of Trinidad & Tobago) in 1986 to refer to some of his erstwhile cabinet colleagues in the then National Alliance for Reconstruction government has become so popular that even people of non-Indian descent use it now.

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retention of Standard Hindi. These elders retained their first language mainly because they did not know English or knew only some words and expressions; they did not develop as a bilingual community. With the younger and newer generations becoming increasingly proficient with English, their incipient bilingualism gave way to monolingualism in English. There is a gender dimension to language retention. The reconstitution of patriarchy in the post-indenture period meant that it was men who had the major share of interactions in the outside world where English, either Creole or Standard, was the language in use. While women were not entirely confined to the household, they were primarily responsible for managing the household and the socialisation of children. Not surprisingly, it is in the spheres of kitchen and food, and household and kinship that the survival of the lexical and idiomatic elements of Trinidad Bhojpuri and Hindi are most pronounced. These lexical and idiomatic expressions have also had an impact on English, especially Creole English (see Mahabir, 1999).

11.1.6 Ethnicity and Linguistic Revival Although an ethnic group is not necessarily coterminous with a linguistic or ‘speech community’,21 in a multi-ethnic polity characterised by cultural contestations language could become an important marker of ethnic identity and a potent symbol of group solidarity. Thus, the efforts at revival of Hindi (not Trinidad Bhojpuri) and its propagation, which began in the 1950s, could be viewed as a conscious reaction by sections of the Indo-Trinidadians against the loss of their distinctive cultural heritage through linguistic attrition. Several organisations and individuals, religious and/or cultural, played a role in this.22 The Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS), the major religious body representing the Hindu population, the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, and other Hindu religious bodies took an interest in Hindi23 as a liturgical language of the Hindus.24 Pandits went to India to study Hindi and learn Hindu scriptures; knowledge of Hindi became a 21

A ‘speech community’ is defined as a group of people ‘characterised by regular and frequent social interaction by means of shared body of verbal signs, and set off from similar aggregates by significant differences in language usage’ (Gumperz, 1968: 381). 22 Seepersad Naipaul’s portrayal of the Indian community in rural Trinidad reveals the concern among some of its members as early as in the 1940s about their linguistic heritage facing extinction (see Sect. 11.2.3). The celebration, in 1945, of the centenary of the arrival of the first Indians in Trinidad, and the introduction of adult suffrage in 1946, gave the ethnic self-perception of Indo-Trinidadians a boost. 23 Visiting Hindu missionaries from India, such as Pandit Hariprasad Sharma (in 1914) and Pandit Kunj Beharry Tiwary (in 1917), had commented on the loss of the native language among Indians and its adverse impact on Hinduism. The arrival of Pandit Jaimini Mehta (in 1928) marked a milestone in the development of Hindi on the island, as he assisted in the establishment of a Hindi school in Marabella. Also, even before their incorporation, the Hindu organisations had been in the vanguard of the effort to retain or revive Hindi. 24 Sanskrit is the sacred liturgical language of Brahmanical Hinduism in India. Traditionally, Brahmans, the priestly caste group, held a monopoly over it. In the Indian diaspora, however, it is Hindi which has taken the place of Sanskrit, from which it is derived, in Hindu liturgy.

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prerequisite to be a pandit. Hindi is taught in mandirs (temples) under the jurisdiction of the SDMS, and as part of a sponsored radio programme ‘Dharm Shiksha’ (Religious Education) for school children. With the objective of teaching Hindi and elements of Indian culture in rural areas, in 1952, the Hindi Education Board was established under the sponsorship of the then High Commissioner of India, Anand Mohan Sahay. After being in existence for two decades the Board became defunct due to infighting (see Jayaram, 2004: 159– 160). In 1977, Hari Shankar Adesh, a diplomat from India, founded the Bharatiya Vidya Sansthaan (BVS), which sought the all-round development of Indian culture, including the teaching of Indian languages (Hindi, Sanskrit, and Urdu), music (both vocal and instrumental), and performing arts (like dance and drama). The BVS has made considerable contribution to the revival and propagation of Hindi in Trinidad, including publishing a monthly magazine called Jyothi. A former pupil and a notable BVS activist, Kamla Ramlakhan, has written two Hindi language textbooks for Trinidad learners (ibid.: 160–161).25 The BVS has sought to popularise ‘Namasthe’ as a form of greeting among Hindus, whose culturally rooted mode of greeting has been ‘Sitharam’ (Panday, 1993). Contrasted with the Hindu bias in the propagation of Hindi by the SDMS and BVS is the secular orientation of Hindi Nidhi (Hindi Foundation of Trinidad & Tobago), established in 1986. The Hindi Nidhi has brought out a few Hindi textbooks for beginners, and in the 1990s it sponsored the teaching of Hindi in schools and the ‘Hindi Sikhiye’ (Learn Hindi) programme on the radio. It organised the International Hindi Conference at Couva in Central Trinidad in April 1992 and, in collaboration with The University of the West Indies, the Fifth World Hindi Conference in April 1996. The Government of India has also evinced keen interest in the revival and propagation of Hindi in Trinidad. Besides the now defunct Hindi Education Board, the High Commission of India in Port of Spain has been offering facilities to Trinidadians for learning Hindi in about six centres around the country. Annually, it celebrates the ‘Viswa Hindi Diwas’ (World Hindi Day) on 10 January. Trinidadians are provided scholarships for studying Hindi in India. The Indian Council for Cultural Relations has been offering the services of Hindi Professors since 1987. The spurt in the use of Hindi in the audio-visual media since the early 1990s is also noteworthy. Before 1993, Indian cultural programmes hardly got a few hours of broadcast time on the radio. Now there are three radio stations broadcasting IndoTrinidadian and Hindi programmes, and two are exclusively so, too. They also carry a few advertisements in Hindi. Hindi films and film-based programmes, and cultural programmes using Hindi in varying degrees are regularly telecast by the local TV stations. In the pre-streaming media-services era, cinema halls regularly screened 25

Ramlakhan also has to her credit Smaran, a compilation of Hindi Bhajans in Nagari script with transliteration in Roman alphabets and translation in English. Incidentally, in the collection of poetry in Hindi written by people of Indian origin abroad, Raj Kishore Pandey (1985) has included the poems of two Trinidadians—Karmchand Ganesh and Tara Vishnudayal Singh, both of whose mother tongue is English.

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Hindi-language movies. And several cultural associations often use Hindi in varying doses.

11.1.7 Prospects of Hindi as an Ethnic Language What then are the prospects of Hindi becoming the ethnic language of IndoTrinidadians, and of Indo-Trinidadians becoming a distinct bilingual speech community? The growth of interest in Hindi since the celebration, in 1995, of the sesquicentenary of the arrival of Indians in Trinidad, and its increased observability in the audio-visual media may suggest that the prospects are bright. However, a sociological review of the historical experience of language attrition and revival among Indo-Trinidadians does not allow us to be sanguine. The development of a speech community is a complex and long-drawn sociolinguistic process, and more so in an ethnic group which has experienced language attrition. First is the problem of the interface between Hindi and Hinduism. Certainly, there is no necessary or intrinsic linkage between language and religion. However, conscious efforts to introduce a language or to revive it can hardly be religiously neutral. One may recall here that the Presbyterian Mission carefully chose Standard Hindi, instead of Trinidad Bhojpuri, as its liturgical language. This move kept many Hindus away from Standard Hindi in the colonial era. It was ironical that at a time when the Presbyterian missionaries were getting their scriptural materials translated into Hindi, Hindu religious leaders were using English translations of their scriptures. Today, successful efforts at propagating Hindi are associated with Hindu religious bodies or organisations leaning towards Hinduism in one form or another. Whereas, for Hindu pandits, Hindi is a sacral language, for Presbyterian priests, it has long since been replaced by English, and for Muslim maulvis, Arabic rather than Urdu and much less Hindi is the sacral language.26 The excessive emphasis on the sacral nature of Hindi and its identification with Hinduism is, therefore, likely to alienate non-Hindus from learning it, let alone adopting it as an ethnic language. The emphasis on the Shudh (literally, Pure; Standard) variety of Hindi on the part of its propagators, including the Indian and India-trained teachers, is an impediment to the revival of Hindi in the girmitiya diaspora. As Savitri Rambissoon Sperl has observed, ‘language loyalty movements among Indians in Trinidad attempt to counter the language shift towards Creole/English by promoting not Trinidad Hindi, the ordinary local vernacular, but Standard Hindi as spoken in India’ (1980: 9). For 26

Muslims formed 14% of all girmitiyas who embarked from Calcutta for Trinidad and they constitute 4.97% of the country’s population today (see Sect. 10.2). Urdu, the language which most of them spoke has faced attrition. In 1995, there were few elderly Muslims who could converse in Urdu. But, for the rest of the population, the observations made about language attrition, retention, and survival among Hindus will hold good. Currently, under the auspices of the Anjuman Sunnatul Jamaat Association (the major organisation representing Indo-Trinidadian Muslims), the Haji Ruknuddeen Institute of Islamic Studies, offers a course in Arabic, not Urdu, as part of a Diploma in Islamic Learning.

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Indo-Trinidadians, learning Standard Hindi is as good as learning an alien language. In fact, most of those who have learnt Standard Hindi become diffident, and even apologetic, when they have to use that language in interacting with Indian nationals. How to interpret the burst of Hindi in the audio-visual media over the last few years? One must remember that Hindi movies and Hindi film music have always been popular among Indo-Trinidadians. Hindi movies portray what Indo-Trinidadians perceive as the society and culture of their ancestral land. They even seem to subconsciously identify themselves with the dynamics of family and folk culture depicted in the movies and television serials. The impact of Hindi film music, both songs and dance, on what Indo-Trinidadians call ‘the Indian culture’ in Trinidad is pronounced, as witnessed in such extremely popular programmes as ‘Mastana Bahar’ and ‘Indian Cultural Pageant’.27 What the average Indo-Trinidadian is interested in is Hindi movies, and not Hindi per se. Hindi movies screened in Trinidad invariably carry English subtitles, and a few popular Hindi movies have even been dubbed into English. In their Sunday magazine section, the two prominent Port of Spain dailies often include supplements—‘Tamasha’ (Entertainment; Sunday Express) and ‘Savera’ (Morning; The Sunday Guardian)—containing news and articles in English about Bollywood (the Indian film industry based in Mumbai), the Indian equivalent of Hollywood. The average Hindi moviegoer’s familiarity hardly exceeds a few routine phrases or popular dialogues and a few lines of film lyrics. Most Indo-Trinidadians listen to Hindi songs without understanding them.28 These songs may be characterised by soothing melodies, lilting tunes, or fast beats. Their appeal may be in the emotions or sentiments they convey or in their easy adaptability to dance. Reviewing Mani Ratnam’s Bombay, Joannah Bharose wrote: ‘I could not understand a word of Hindi or Arabic but the music sounded great’ (Trinidad Guardian, September 7, 1995). Similarly, columnist Omatie Lyder declared: For years I have listened to Indian singers and sung along with them. It never mattered to me that I couldn’t translate a verse of Kishore Kumar’s or Lata Mangeshkar’s songs. Not understanding them didn’t take away the joy of listening. The same can be said of my fascination with Latin Music. (Daily Express, May 6, 1995)

The interest in Hindi songs sans their meaning can result in piquant situations with songs being sung on wrong occasions. I have heard a funereal song sung at a farewell function and a love song with sexual innuendoes sung at a thanksgiving party. Considering the nature of Trinidadian ethnic politics in general and the politics of culture in particular, the increasing observability of Hindi in the audio-visual 27

Some Indo-Trinidadian commentators have been critical of this trend. Maharaj (1995: 31–32) is of the opinion that Indo-Trinidadians would have been culturally more creative if they had not started imitating the packaged Hindi film culture and music. He bemoans that the Indo-Trinidadian drama has become almost extinct, and at weddings and other social ceremonies the folksongs are being replaced by loud speakers playing Hindi film music. 28 Interestingly, a key objective of Hindi Nidhi’s Hindi courses for beginners, as advertised in Trinidad Guardian (September 8, 1995), was to help them ‘comprehend dialogues and songs from Hindi films’.

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media appears to be an attempt by sections of Indo-Trinidadians to occupy the keenly contested cultural space in the country. In ethnic terms, this ‘culturalisation of politics’ (Jain, 1997; see also Jayaram, 2003) is significant considering the Indo-Trinidadian perception that ‘national culture’ in Trinidad is almost exclusively identified with the Creole culture of Afro-Trinidadians.29 Substantively too, the Hindi programmes (mostly film-based) offer readymade material to fill the available broadcast/telecast time. Shrewd entrepreneurs are always alert to exploit the resulting situation to their own advantage. In view of the ethnic tag attached to Hindi, even today, nobody dares to raise the cause of Hindi without being apologetic about it. Addressing the ceremony to launch the Fifth World Hindi Conference in 1996, Foreign Affairs Minister Ralph Maharaj was constrained to assure that there was nothing to fear from sections of the national community seeking to rediscover their roots since Trinidad & Tobago is a cosmopolitan country. He even expressed a desire to see Afro-Trinidadians teach their ancestral languages (Daily Express, February 17, 1996). Thus, although the basic material (demographic and organisational) requirements for the revival and development of Hindi are there in Trinidad, the language lacks functionality, as it is not used in interpersonal communication in everyday life either at home or in the community. Furthermore, since Indo-Trinidadian ethnicity has evolved even without language being an emotional glue, and in view of the likely identification of Hindi with Hinduism, there is not much use of Hindi as an ethnic binder either. The prospect of Hindi becoming an ethnic language of Indo-Trinidadians and their becoming bilingual does not, therefore, appear to be bright. It will, no doubt, take deep roots as a sacral language of the Hindus and it will be widely tapped and used in popular culture. As such, while Hindi may develop as a language among IndoTrinidadians, Indo-Trinidadians are not likely to become a Hindi speech community.

11.2 Foodways ‘Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are’, wrote Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826), the French high-priest of gastronomy (Anderson, 1879: xxxv). This aphorism is apposite about the people of Indian descent in multi-ethnic Trinidad. Foodways is a salient marker of the ethnic identity of Indo-Trinidadians, as their cuisine is the most ubiquitous and, in some ways, the most consequential element of cultural survival since their arrival in the colony.30 This, according to David Lowenthal, is true of the diasporic Indians throughout the Caribbean (1972: 154). As we shall see, their cuisine and eating habits, despite being subjected to forces 29

According to John La Guerre, the first International Hindi Conference held in Trinidad in April 1992 was a celebration of ‘not really a language, but the presence of the Indians on the social and political stage of Trinidad & Tobago’ (Daily Express, April 20, 1992). 30 Not surprisingly, it is in association with kitchen and food that Bhojpuri/Hindi/Urdu, the language of the girmitiyas has survived the most.

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of change, determined by both geo-climatic and social-cultural factors, have metamorphosed into a distinct foodways, locally referred to as ‘East Indian Cuisine’ (Indar and Teelucksingh 2002: 76–97), but can legitimately be called ‘Indo-Trinidadian Cuisine’.

11.2.1 Breaking Commensality Barriers In Jahajin, Mohan quotes Deeda, her great-great-grandmother’s mother (FaMoFaMoMo) Janaki-didi’s jahaji-bahin and roommate in the same barrack in Esperanza estate, recounting food-related experiences on the ship journey: The ship carried ‘all the things we would be eating’: rice, dal, white flour, and dried saltfish; potatoes, onions, pumpkins, and dried peas; sugar, salt, and masalas. They carried ‘big, big pots to cook food’ for those on board. There were bandhaaris (cooks) and masaalchis (cooks’ assistants) (2007: 27). Deeda goes on to narrate the food that was served to them on the ship journey: They fed us twice a day, dal [split pulses] and rice, once in the morning, when the sun was up and bright, and once again in the evening, just before sunset. In the evening we would also get rotis with our food. They would make us squat in a line on the deck and wait, and then they brought out the food and put it into thariyas [Hindi, th¯al¯ı: a metal plate] for all of us. Sometimes they used to put imli, tamarind, or khataai, dried mango, in the dal, and give us raw onions and dried salt-fish with the food. (Deeda quoted in Mohan, 2007: 54)

Ignoring the poor dietary provision for the emigrants on board the ship and its adverse consequences for their health, especially in the earlier years of emigration, it is important to note that all of them were served the same food, irrespective of their religion and caste. This, in years to come, broke the commensality barriers associated with caste, if not religion, in India.31 Furthermore, given their low wages on the estate, they could hardly afford to be choosy in matters of food; they had to eat what was locally available and what everybody else ate. Thus, right from the beginning of immigration, a process of levelling of foodways was set in motion.32 As if in anticipation of a longer stay in Trinidad, if not also of eventual settlement there, some girmitiyas had taken with them seeds of plants and fruit-bearing trees— as the Indian custom went, they did not want to go khali hath (empty handed) to the mezabaan desh (host country) (see Chap. 3, Fn 23). Since most of them had been small peasants or landless agricultural labourers back in their village, it was natural for them to attempt to practice cultivation during their indenture. In her narrative, Deeda recounts how, with the permission of the estate manager, they were planting 31

As already discussed, the near disappearance of the complex rules governing commensality and food pollution is the most striking aspect in the metamorphosis of caste among Trinidad Hindus (see Sect. 9.2.5). 32 One survival from the early days of indenture has been the drinking of rum as a way of relaxation (Laurence, 1994: 257), a habit that came to be cultivated by every batch of newly arriving immigrants. Today, in Trinidad, this liquor is identified with Indo-Trinidadians.

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‘things for themselves in the cane rows between the new plants’; they found karailli (bitter gourd) vine and ‘chowrai bhaaji [Hindi: chauraee/chauli = amaranth leaves], with pink stems and green leaves’ growing around the barracks (ibid.: 117, 146–147; see Sect. 3.1.3). In some estates, they were allowed to cultivate unused land, as if as a prelude to their settling down in the colony as cultivators of rice and other food crops as subsistence crops. The girmitiyas cooked boiled rice (bhaat), dal (split pulses), and bhaaji (greens, spinach) on a chulah (earthen hearth)33 ; that was their food every day, especially at lunch (ibid.: 147). They made chokha (any toasted and pounded dish), e.g., grilled tomato-onion chutney (sauce), with roasted and pounded saltfish or smoked herring, or roasted baigan (melongene/eggplant) and tossed into the chhaunkh (seasoning) mustard oil, garlic, and pepper (ibid.: 128–129). Accustomed to eating freshwater fish in India, they easily adopted Cascadura, a small Trinidadian freshwater catfish with tough scaly skin.34 Deeda mentions that occasionally, they made peynoose (paynuse), a sweet dish made with colostrum35 mixed with sugar (cheeni) and ginger. As their economic situation improved after settlement, they started adding cinnamon and almond, and a dash of Angostura bitters to it.36 This Indo-Trinidadian dish is now commercially vended, but is made with all types of milk available.

11.2.2 Revivals, Adaptations, and Innovations Initially, the girmitiyas clung to traditional dietary habits; they used rice and edible oils and prepared curries with masalas (ground or powder spice mixture)—all they were familiar with. Gradually, however, they began adapting to locally available vegetables37 and other items that were locally available, and the recipes of other ethnic groups, most notably, those of African descent. V. S. Naipaul writes, ‘we were steadily adopting the food styles of others: the Portuguese stew of tomato and onions [chokha], in which almost anything might be done, the Negro way with yams, 33

This typical Indian-origin stove survived well into the 1970s, and I saw that in a village household even in 1996. However, most Indo-Trinidadians have now switched over to stoves using either liquified petroleum gas or electricity. 34 Those who eat Cascadura, wheresoever they may wander, end in Trinidad their days, goes the native folklore (see Chap. 3, epigraph). 35 The overseers on the estate did not use colostrum, the milk of a buffalo or cow that has just given birth, since it curdled when boiled. The girmitiyas knew what to do with it. 36 Angostura bitters is a concentrated herbal alcoholic preparation distilled and bottled singularly at The House of Angostura in Trinidad. It is typically used for flavouring beverages and, sometimes, food. 37 One noteworthy adaptation was the use of bandhaniya (Eryngium foetidum; chardon bénit, pronounced shado beni) leaves in place of dhaniya (Coriandrum sativum; coriander) leaves, for seasoning food; both aromatic herbs have the same fragrance, but vary in their taste. Carripulay (Murraya koenigii; Tamil: kariveppilai, or curry tree) leaves are also used as an aromatic ingredient. As the name suggests, it is a survival of a Tamil word introduced into Trinidad by the Madrasi immigrants.

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plantains, breadfruit and bananas.38 Everything we adopted became our own’ (1968: 33). The girmitiyas improvised cooking instruments and appurtenances. The mud-clay chulah was improved as brick-and-mortar chulah. The baking stone tava (the frying pan) came to be replaced by iron/cast iron/aluminium tava; now non-stick tavas are also used. Tavas are now available in various sizes; they may be rectangular or round in shape; and they are either flat or curved: the concave side is used for frying and the convex side for cooking flatbreads and pancakes. Irrespective of their size, shape, etc., they are all tavas, an Indo-Trinidadian word that has entered the country’s vocabulary. Another kitchen appurtenance, whose concept was brought from India and improvised over time in Trinidad is sil-lorha, known in north India as sil-batta, a traditional pared stone device used for grinding spices to make a rich full-bodied masala. Sil, is a flat rectangular stone slab with its upper surface chiselled to make it rough, and lorha is a cylindrical stone polished to make it smooth, both sourced from river beds. The lorha is rolled over the sil in a rhythmic fashion to grind spices placed in between. Although some Indo-Trinidadian women in rural areas and authentic Indo-Trinidadian cooks still use sil-lorha, the device has given way to modern mixergrinders and a variety of readymade masalas, both locally made and imported from India.39 Similarly, jaataa, a pair of flat round stones used for grinding grains, was revived in the initial decades, but gave way to modern flour mills and later to the commercially available readymade flours. Other traditional utensils introduced into Trinidad include chauki and bailna (the board and the rolling pin), kalchul (metal ladle), phooknee (iron pipe used to blow fire in chulah), simthaa (a pair of thongs), etc.; some of these are still used in Indo-Trinidadian kitchens. The vast majority of the girmitiyas came from the rice-eating Bhojpuri region in north India. So, it is not surprising that rice was their staple diet and the key ingredient of many dishes. Rice was simply boiled (bhaat) and consumed with cooked vegetables (tarkaree)40 or cooked cereals (dal). It was boiled along with split peas or other cereals and eaten as kicharee. The thick draining from the unrefined boiled rice (maar) was consumed with salt and anchaar 41 (spicy pickle). Rice was boiled with milk and sweetened with sugar and consumed as rice pudding (kheer or meetha bhaat).

38

Other vegetables adopted by the girmitiyas since arrival include tannias, cassavas, maize, and sweet potatoes. 39 Factory-made sil-lorhas are still available in ‘Indian stores’, which also sell a variety of masalas. 40 The tarkaree (literally, vegetables) refers to the side dish of curried vegetables. Damadole (tomatoes), baigan, kohrahn (pumpkin), bodi (yard-long beans), chataigne (bread fruit), karaylee (bitter gourd), cho cho (christophene; Sechium edule) green-fig, dasheen, cassava, eddoes, and peppers (chilies) are some of the popular vegetables and bulbs used. Also used are spinach and leaves (bhaji) of chowrai, poi, kirmi, dasheen, and pumpkin plants. 41 Anchaar/aachar is an Indo-Trinidadian spicy pickle made of green mangoes or pommecythere (Sponadias dulcis; ambarella), or some other fruit mixed with masala, mustard oil, and pepper.

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Although rice still remains an important part of Indo-Trinidadian diet, over a century and a half, roti (unleavened Indian flat bread made with white flour) has replaced it as their most popular primary dish. Roti, though consumed with relish by other ethnic groups, including Afro-Trinidadians,42 is ethnically identified as an Indo-Trinidadian food item. There are different kinds of rotis: saada (plain) and dosti (two of them with butter in between), made with dough only; paratha (buss-up-shot [burst-up-shirt]), which has more oil and is scrambled; puree, which has dough filled with ground split peas (dal, dalpurie) and potatoes (aloo puree); sohari, which is rough rolled out and fried in clarified butter (ghee); chontha, which is a soft flour-mix poured and spread directly on the tava; and sweet roti. Often fine ground peas, corn, and cassava are mixed with flour and baked on the tava or fried in coconut (nariel) oil. In Trinidad, rotis are made with imported white flour, called ‘phoolaawa’ (Mohan, 2007: 58)—a bilingual pun, as phool means flower in Bhojpuri, Hindi, and Urdu. Mohan clarifies that The Hindi word atta, which means whole-wheat flour, simply doesn’t exist in Trinidad Bhojpuri. There isn’t even a memory of the word, because our ancestors had never seen brown flour in India,43 unless they were from further west … Wheat was not being grown in east district the migrants came from … (Ibid: 59).

The use of wheat spread from north-western India to other parts of the country only since World War II. The girmitiyas must have seen the white flour (imported from Europe) for the first time in the emigration depots in Calcutta and on their ship journey to Trinidad. According to Mohan, out of ‘this experience grew the tradition of making large translucent stuffed dalpuris, and thick white layered parathas, common to the entire purabiya [eastern] diaspora but unknown in the purabiya heartland’ (ibid.: 59). Thus, the Indo-Trinidadian roti, is a cultural adaptation in the diaspora. Rice and rotis are consumed with a variety of vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes, besides the omnipresent dal. Most Indo-Trinidadians are non-vegetarian and the repertoire of their non-vegetarian cuisine has widened over the decades, influenced by European as well as Afro-Trinidadian cuisine.44 Some of the wellknown Indo-Trinidadian non-vegetarian dishes include goofta (minced beef or lamb), vindaloo (beef or lamb, cubed), a wide variety of curried chicken (chicken curry with dumplings, oriental chicken with yogurt, tandoori chicken), curried duck, curried eggs and potato, curried goat or lamb with chana, curried shrimp, shrimp dalkani, and 42

This is a remarkable change considering that, in one of our many conversations at The University of the West Indies, Dhanayshar Mahabir recalled that in his childhood roti was looked down upon by Afro-Trinidadians; during the lunch break, he and his Indian descent classmates ate roti literally hiding. 43 Incidentally, during the three years of my stay in Trinidad, I did not come across the word chapati/chapathi, which is made out of whole-wheat flour called atta. Today, atta imported from Canada and India, is available in supermarkets and in Indian stores; it is in demand by the Indian nationals working in Trinidad. 44 Some Indo-Trinidadians, who had grown up as non-vegetarians, are embracing vegetarianism/veganism by choice for various reasons.

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oriental biryani. The routine vegetarian curries include chana and potato, chataigne, mixed vegetable, ochre (okra, ladies’ fingers), potatoes, besides baigan chokha, baigan tamatar (eggplant cooked with tomato), mango tarkaree (see Indar and Teelucksing 2002: 76–97).45 The use of milk in a wide variety of preparations is a dietary and cultural revival of an ancestral tradition. Milk has a special place in the diet of Indo-Trinidadians. Pasteurised milk is used by itself for nourishment and as an ingredient in beverages. It is mixed with boiled rice and sugar in the preparation of kheer/meetha bhaat (rice pudding) or in the preparation of meetha roti (sweet roti). Milk is curdled to make curds (dahee). Dahee is consumed plain as yogurt, and is also made as a delicacy with the addition of honey or sugar. Dahee is also used as a side dish with bhaat and roti. Butter (makkan) is extracted from curdled milk and clarified as ghee.46 Ghee is used as an ingredient in the preparation of food, and as a medicinal rub for sores and rashes. It is also used to light deeyas (sacred lamps) during pujas or special prayers. Apart from the routine food items, Indo-Trinidadians prepare several delicious deep-fried snacks. These include aloo pies, made with mashed potatoes in flour dough; baiganee, cross-slices of large baigan coated with barah batter spread over47 ; barah, made with flour and ground urdee (urid dal)/split pea; dhoree, which is ground rice mixed with sugar, ginger and other spices worked into small balls; goolgoolah, which is ripe fig spread with a batter of flour and sugar; kachourie, made with ground chick pea, split peas, grated potatoes; phulourie, are small balls of a mixture of flour and ground split peas; saheena, is the mixture for barah spread over dasheen leaves, steamed, cut into slices, dipped in flour/chick pea paste before frying; and samosas, made with minced meat or vegetables as fillings in flour dough. Appropriate spices are added to all these snacks (see ibid.). A variety of Indo-Trinidadian snacks, having an Indian connection, but which have also been improvised. Excepting the dhoree and goolgoolah, these deep-fried snacks are consumed with chutney (sauce) or anchars (pickles). Fruits and vegetables such as green mango, pommecythere, imli (tamarind), chaltah (Dillenia indica; elephant apple), coconut, pawpaw (papaya), tomatoes, and onions serve as the base for preparing chutney and anchars. Homemade (rarely now) and readymade tomato sauce and chilli sauce are also often used. Bandhaniya and carripulay are used to add flavour to the sauce and other side dishes. Doubles is an Indo-Trinidadian food innovation, which is now a national roadside breakfast and is available in cities like London, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, New York, Toronto, and Winnipeg, where the Indo-Trinidadian diaspora is found. It is a vegan delicacy made of two barahs sandwiching curried chana (chickpeas), pepper sauce 45

Mahabir (1992) describes about 70 traditional Indo-Trinidadian/-Caribbean vegetarian recipes handed down by girmitiyas orally and by practice for over four generations. 46 Nowadays, more and more Indo-Trinidadians are switching over to buying dairy made curd, butter, and ghee. In the mid-1990s, I had come across an advertisement for ‘Gowma Pure Ghee’ which was claimed to have been made from ‘100% fresh cows’ cream’ with ‘no additives or preservatives added’ and as ‘ideal for all … religious ceremonies’. This and similar other brands of ghee are sold in supermarkets, Indian stores, and puja shops. 47 A variation of this is done with cauliflower (florets).

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or mango chutney, and offered in different degrees of spiciness, hot, medium, and normal. The ‘sandwich’ is wrapped and served in greaseproof paper. It is vended in Indo-Trinidadian food shops, small roadside stalls, or on mobile bicycles. Doubles is claimed to have been created in 1936, in Princes Town, by Emamool Deen (Mamoo Deen) and his wife Raheman Rasulan Deen (Deen, 2013).48 It is plausibly assumed by some, especially Indian nationals, that Doubles evolved from the north Indian dish chole bhature—a popular combination of chole (chana masala) and bhature (poori, made of maida flour). ‘Having eaten chole bhature in Delhi, Haridwar, Rishikesh, and Varanasi’, Badru Deen writes, ‘the taste and culinary differences between chole bhature and Doubles’ is vast. He claims, ‘They are literally worlds apart, as Trinidadian curries and chutneys have evolved with their own creatively distinct presentation, ingredients, and taste characteristics’ (ibid: 3). Having eaten both, I can attest to Deen’s claim (Photograph 11.1). Another Indo-Trinidadian food innovation is what is widely known on the Internet as Trinidad Channa Punch. It is a drink prepared by blending chana and oatmeal with either whole milk or evaporated milk or coconut milk in a mixer-grinder, sweetened with brown sugar, and spiced with vanilla, nutmeg, and Angostura bitters. It is relished, preferably thickish, with sweet bread or rum cake. I felt a large glass of this punch was a meal by itself!

Photograph 11.1 Doubles: The number one street food of Trinidad & Tobago. Source https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doubles-GT.jpg (Courtesy GeoTrinity [Wikimedia Commons] copyright free) (Accessed January 31, 2022)

48

Badru Deen, who has documented the origin and early development of Doubles (from ‘poorpeople-food’ to multimillion-dollar-industry) is their second son.

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11.2.3 Of Fasting and Feasting Religion has an important bearing on the food habits of East Indians. The orthodox among the Hindus (Brahmans) and those engaged in priest craft (pandits) are vegetarian. By and large, the remaining Hindus, Christians, and Muslims eat a variety of non-vegetarian food such as eggs and chicken, meat, and fish and other sea foods. Many Hindus, especially those following the more orthodox interpretations of Hinduism, eschew both beef and pork.49 Pork is proscribed by Islamic dietary laws, and Muslims consume only halal (Arabic: permissible, as contrasted from haram: proscribed) meat, i.e., meat of animals acceptable and slaughtered according to Islamic norms. Shops selling halal meat prominently display a board proclaiming it. Christians have no restrictions on eating beef or pork, though many a Presbyterian, out of respect for the sentiments of their Hindu friends/relatives eschew beef from their menu. Though not as a rule, non-vegetarian dishes are especially prepared during the weekends or to entertain guests. Many Sanatanist Hindus, who are traditionally non-vegetarian, temporarily become strict vegetarians during specific religious occasions. These include Maha Shivaratri or Diwali, the days on which special pujas and yagnas are performed and satsangs are held. These also include the days when they keep vrat (vow) for varying periods, or when they are required to observe ritual fasting for lifecycle rituals. Fasting among Indo-Trinidadians is defined not as abstinence from food, but as abstinence from non-vegetarian food, an idea borrowed from Christianity. In fact, Brahmanical Hinduism preaches vegetarianism as a prerequisite for spiritual enlightenment (see Klass, 1991: 62). This is in contrast to ‘hog puja’, traditionally associated with lower-caste Hindus, in which animal sacrifice, usually that of a pig, is involved. The meat of the sacrificed animal is distributed among and consumed by the participants as prashad (see Sect. 9.2.4). Christians, too, temporarily turn vegetarian and abstain from alcohol (some voluntarily even from sexual relationship) during the 40-day period of Lent (starting on Clean Monday and ending at noon on Holy Saturday). Lent is a solemn observance in the Christian liturgical calendar commemorating the 40 days that Jesus Christ spent fasting in the desert before beginning his public ministry. Hence, the description of fasting during this period as ‘Lenten Sacrifice’. In Trinidad, Lent, as a season of grief, is observed by Christians of all denominations, including Presbyterians and Roman Catholics; it begins the day following the conclusion of the Carnival celebration. Indo-Trinidadian Muslims, like their co-religionists around the world, observe ritual fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, during which Prophet Mohammed is believed to have received the initial revelations of the Koran, the holy book of Islam. As one of the five pillars of Islam, this fasting is mandatory for all devout healthy adult Muslims and requires abstaining from eating any food, drinking any liquid, smoking cigarettes, and engaging in sexual relationship, from dawn to sunset. 49

I gathered from my Hindu informants that ‘a vegetarian considers herself/himself superior to a non-vegetarian; and a non-vegetarian who eschews beef and pork considers herself/himself superior to one who consumes them’ (Jayaram, 2006: 167).

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Before sunrise, they eat a pre-fast meal (suhur) and after sunset they break the fast with iftar after prayers. However, non-vegetarian food is not proscribed during any Muslim religious festival. Indo-Trinidadians celebrate the annual festivals in their respective religious calendars with an elaborate feast. On these occasions and during family gatherings, in addition to the routine dishes and snacks, Indo-Trinidadian households serve some special sweat dishes such as barfi/coconut burfi, carrot halwa, ghul/ghula, goolab jamoon, jellaby, kurma, ladoo, and peera (peda). Additionally, as part of consecrated food, Hindus distribute prasad after puja and satsang. Prasad is made out of flour/cream of wheat, granulated sugar, evaporated/condensed milk, cardamom seeds, and raisins; tulsi (holy basil) leaves are sprinkled on it. Other items served as prasad include panchamrit (Sanskrit: pancha = five; amrita = immortality, nectar of immortality) and mohanbog (flour parched in ghee and mixed with milk and sugar). Strict ritual conditions govern the preparation of bhojan or ritual dishes served on such occasions. On all special occasions food is served on sohari (Calathea lutea) or cashibo leaves. At the conclusion of a Muslim kitab prayer meeting phirni is served (see Chap. 10, Fn 48). For Eid-al-Fitr (commemorating the end of the fasting month of Ramadan), Muslim households prepare a special sweet dish called sawine/sawaine, which is made of vermicelli cooked in evaporated milk, cinnamon, and sugar, to which chopped almonds and raisins are added. Another popular sweet confectionary served by Muslims during special occasions is malida/maleeda, which is made of crumbled and coarsely pounded rotis stir-fried with ghee, sugar, dry fruits and nuts. All these Muslim sweet specialities are widely popular in India, too. I would like to conclude this section with a note on the ‘intense fear of pollution by others’ body secretions, more especially by the saliva’ that prevails in India (Spratt, 1966: 145). Writing about his childhood days in Trinidad in An Area of Darkness, V. S. Naipaul recounts: It still horrifies me that people should put out food for animals on plates that they themselves use; as it horrified me at school to see boys sharing Popsicles and Palates, local iced lollies; as it horrifies me to see women sipping from ladles with which they stir their pots. This was more than difference; this was the uncleanliness we had to guard against. (1968: 33)

This idea of pollution, which is derived from the caste system, is denoted by special terms in Indian languages. Focusing on the Hindi term juthaa—food and drink that have become ‘polluted’ by being partially consumed—Aisha Khan has explored the underlying ideology and its implications for social relations in Trinidad: though castederived, the concept of juthaa, she argues ‘is indicative of an egalitarian morality at work in concert with hierarchical principles’ (1994: 249). I did not, however, come across any ritual among Trinidad Hindus for cleansing pollution resulting from juthaa. Going by Edward Burnett Tylor’s oft-quoted definition of culture in its wide ethnographic sense as including ‘knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’ (1889: Vol.1, 1), the coverage of this chapter focusing on language and foodways among

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Indo-Trinidadians is admittedly a limited exploration of culture. Many other integral elements of culture brought by the girmitiyas experienced varying degrees of attrition and change. Some of these elements have been revived and reconstituted keeping India as a reference point, and some have metamorphosed through adaptations of Afro-Trinidadian cultural elements. Thus, soon after their arrival on the estates, women stopped wearing saris. ‘What we wore now were ghangris [ankle-length skirt], long skirts, jhoolas [short-sleeved, tight-fitting bodice] and blouses, and orhnis’; the way the orhni was worn also underwent change: ‘We would tie one end of the orhni around our waists, and throw the other end over our heads. It didn’t look too different from the saris we had had on before’ (Deeda quoted in Mohan, 2007: 146). Today, orhni is worn, if at all, by elderly women; orhni has given way to hijab among some Muslim women and girls. In everyday life, women have switched to wearing skirt and blouse, pant and shirt, or ‘dresses’. Similarly, men have given up dhoti-kurta (-collarless shirt) in favour of pant and shirt.50 Only on auspicious occasions like lifecycle rituals and religious observances do Indo-Trinidadians wear traditional dress: women wear sari-choli (choli = a shortor long-sleeved blouse); Hindu men, dhoti-kurta and Muslim men, salwar [a pair of light, loose, pleated trousers]-kurta. Regularly, only Hindu pandits wear dhoti-kurta and pagadi/pagri (turban or headscarf) and Muslim maulvis wear salwar-kurta and taiyah (the skull cap). The younger generation of Hindu and Muslim women, wear salwar-kameez [-a long tunic] as an ethnic wear on special occasions. These ‘ethnic dresses’ are imported from India (and also America, Canada, and England) and sold in Indian stores. The switchover to western attire is more or less complete among Presbyterians and other Indo-Trinidadian Christians. In the realm of the performing arts—dance and music—there has been considerable revival. A host of Indo-Trinidadians have contributed to the revival and rejuvenation of Indian classical music since the 1970s: musicians Mungal Patasar and Ravi Shukla (sitar), Nandlal Jadoonanan and Amar Rajkumar (tabla), singers Mohan Samlal, Uma Boodram, and Kalicharan Dookie; and dancers Satnarine Balkaransingh (Kathak, Kuchipudi), Mondira Balkaransingh and Sandra Sookdeo (Odissi), Rahesh Seenath (Kuchipudi), Radhica Loukaran and Susan Masoom (Kathak), and Rajkumar ‘Krishna’ Persad (Bharatanatyam) are noteworthy (see Samaroo et al., 1995: 173). The folksongs the girmitiyas brought with them have survived in the oral tradition and are sung on various occasions: Chowtal (holi songs), Sohar (songs related to child birth), Chaitee and Barahee (songs in celebration of sixth and thirteenth day of childbirth), and Biraha (topical songs on different themes)—many in Bhojpuri. Muslims sing Qaseeda, Urdu songs in praise of Allah. The tassa (drum), tabla (twin hand drums), dhol/dholak (two-sided cylindrical drum), dafli (tambourine), jhanj (cymbal), khartal (wooden clapper)—are the Indian musical instruments introduced 50

Laurence notes that the girmitiyas, both men and women, were mocked at for their traditional attire and treated with contempt by the ruling class as well as the emancipated African slaves, who had switched over to western clothes (1994: 281–282; see also Ramesar, 1994: 113–114).

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into Trinidad by the girmitiyas that have survived. The dhantal/dandtal used for percussion is girmitya invention,51 so are the use of ‘lota and coins’ and ‘bottle and spoon’ as musical instruments (see Balkaransingh, 2016: 175). The IndoTrinidadians have also contributed to tassa, chutney,52 and soca music and dance, which are an integral part of Trinidadian culture now (see Constance, 1991). For a very long time, in the process of community formation, the Indo-Trinidadians were entertained musically by orchestras. Some of the notable orchestras include Beena Sangeet Orchestra, Dil-e-Nadaan, Dil-ki-Awaz, Gulshan Bahar, Khazana, Indian Art Orchestra, Manoranjan, Melody Makers, National Indian Orchestra, Naya Andaz, Naya Zamana, Sur Sangeet, and Triveni (Samaroo et al., 1995: 285). Until the arrival of the Internet media streaming of Indian performing art pieces, the IndoTrinidadians relied on FM radio, television, pre-recorded cassette and video tapes and compact discs to popularise and enjoy ethnic music and dance. As is to be expected, their performing arts have been heavily influenced by Bollywood movies. Another notable cultural contribution of Indo-Trinidadians is in the realm of literature. The names of the three Naipauls—father Seepersad, and sons Vidiadhar Surajprasad and Shiva— and of Samuel Selvon are by now well known in modern English literature. Primnath Gooptar and Ashram B. Maharaj, both living in Trinidad, have written sensitively about their community. Among Indo-Trinidadian expatriate writers, mention must be made of Neil Devindra Bissoondath, Harold Sonny Ladoo, Jang B. Bhagirathee, and Celeste Mohammed in North America, and Lakshmi Persaud and Ingrid Persaud in United Kingdom.53 An analysis of the survival, reconstitution, revival, and metamorphosis in dress, performing arts, and the contribution to literature as cultural elements in the girmitiya diaspora would have, no doubt, made this analysis comprehensive and insightful. Regrettably, this could not be pursued here for want of space as also because my sociohistorical research did not focus on these elements in any detail. My purpose in this chapter has been limited and driven by the theoretical concern with the contrasting experience of language and foodways in the life and culture of Indo-Trinidadians. Both these elements were brought into Trinidad by the girmitiyas, but one (language) has almost disappeared and the other (foodways) has thrived, though through revival, adaptation, and innovation to become uniquely Indo-Trinidadian. V. S. Naipaul insightfully observed that More than in people, India lay about us in things: in a string bed or two …; in plaited straw mats; in innumerable brass vessels; … in drums and one ruined harmonium; in brightly coloured pictures of deities on pink lotus or radiant against Himalayan snow; and in all the 51

Dhantal is metre-long and a centimetre thick steel rod, which the girmitiyas adapted from the iron bows that yoked the oxen and pulled the carts on the estates. Its top was tapered to a fine point to allow for greater resonance and its bottom was rounded to rest on the ground. Originally, a horseshoe was used as the beater. Today, the instrument is commercially produced. 52 For a discussion of chutney as a protest against patriarchy, see Sect. 7.3.3.3. 53 For a review of the Indo-Trinidadian literature, see Rampersad (2002). For an analysis of the depiction of the person of Indian origin in literature, see Ramchand (1995), and for an analysis of ethnicity, self-knowledge, and literary sensitivity as reflected in the first four novels (all on Trinidad) of V. S. Naipaul, see Jayaram (2022).

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paraphernalia of the prayer-room: the brass bells and gongs and camphor-burners like Roman lamps, the slender-handled spoon for the doling out of the consecrated ‘nectar’ (peasant’s nectar: on ordinary days brown sugar and water, with some shreds of the tulsi leaf, sweetened milk on high days), the images, the smooth pebbles, the stick of sandalwood’ (1968: 29)

Thus, while the links of the Indo-Trinidadians with their Indian past are most pervasive in the realm of material culture, it is the weakest in language, the medium through which cultural meanings are formed and communicated. This remains an interesting facet in the making of Indo-Trinidadians as a girmitiya diaspora.

References Anderson, R. E. (1879). Gastronomy as a fine art: Or, The science of good living (A translation of the Physiologie du Goût of Brillat-Savarin). Scribner and Welford. Balkaransingh, S. (2016). The shaping of a culture: Rituals and festivals in Trinidad compared with selected counterparts in India, 1990–2014. Hansib Publications. Barker, C. (2004). The SAGE dictionary of cultural studies. SAGE Publications. Berko-Gleason, J. (1982). Insights from child language acquisition for second language loss. In R. D. Lambert & B. F. Freed (Eds.), The loss of language skills (pp. 13–23). Newbury House Publishers. Bronkhurst, H. V. P. (1888). Among the Hindus and Creoles of British Guyana. T. Woolmer. Central Statistical Office. (2012). Trinidad and Tobago 2011 population and housing census— Demographic report. The Central Statistical Office, Ministry of Planning and Sustainable Development, Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Retrieved November 28, 2020, from https://cso.gov.tt/stat_publications/2011-population-and-housingcensus-demographic-report/ Constance, Z. O. (1991). Tassa, chutney and soca: The East Indian contribution to the calypso. The author. Deen, B. (2013). Out of the doubles kitchen: A memoir of the first family of doubles – The number one street food of Trinidad & Tobago. Caritrade Inc. Durbin, M. A. (1973). Formal changes in Trinidad Hindi as a result of language adaptation. American Anthropologist, 75(5), 1290–1304. Dorian, N. C. (1982). Language loss and maintenance in language contact situations. In R. D. Lambert & B. F. Freed (Eds.), The loss of language skills (pp. 44–59). Newbury House Publishers. Freed, B. F. (1982). Language loss: Current thoughts and future directions. In R. D. Lambert & B. F. Freed (Eds.), The loss of language skills (pp. 1–5). Newbury House Publishers. French, P. (2008). The world is what it is: The authorized biography of V. S. Naipaul. Picador. Gambhir, S. K. (1986). Mauritian Bhojpuri: An international perspective on historical and sociolinguistic processes. In U. Bissoondoyal and S. B. C. Servansing (Ed.), Indian labour migration (pp. 189–206). Mahatma Gandhi Institute. Gamble, W. H. (1866). Trinidad: Historical and descriptive: Being a narrative of nine years’ residence in the island (with special reference to Christian missions). Yates and Alexander. Grierson, G. A. (1919). Linguistic survey of India (Vol. I, Part I). Government of India, Calcutta. Gumperz, J. (1968). The speech community. In D. L. Sills (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social sciences (Vol. 9) (pp. 381–386). Macmillan and The Free Press. Indar, P. & Teelucksing, C. (Ed.). 2002/1988. The mutli-cultural cuisine of Trinidad & Tobago and the Caribbean: Naparima Girls’ High School cookbook (updated and revised edition). Naparima Girls’s High School. Jain, R. K. (1997). A civilisational theory of Indian diaspora and its global implications. The Eastern Anthropologist, 50(3–4), 347–355.

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Jayaram, N. (2003). The politics of ‘cultural renaissance’ among Indo-Trinidadians. In B. Parekh, G. Singh, & S. Vertovec (Eds.), Culture and economy in the Indian diaspora (pp. 123–141). Routledge. Jayaram, N. (2004/2000). The dynamics of language in Indian diaspora: The case of Bhojpuri/Hindi in Trinidad. In N. Jayaram (Ed.), The Indian diaspora: Dynamics of migration (pp. 147–171). Sage Publications India. Jayaram, N. (2006). The metamorphosis of caste among Trinidad Hindus. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 40(2), 143–173. Jayaram, N. (2022). Ethnicity, self-knowledge, and literary sensitivity: A sociological reading of V. S. Naipaul’s first four novels. Sociological Bulletin, 71(1), 133–149. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 00380229211063378 Khan, A. (1994). Juthaa in Trinidad: Food, pollution, and hierarchy in a Caribbean diaspora community. American Ethnologist, 21(2), 245–269. Klass, M. (1988/1961). East Indians in Trinidad: A study of cultural persistence [reissued edition]. Waveland Press. Klass, M. (1991). Singing with Sai Baba: The politics of revitalization in Trinidad. Westview Press. Laurence, K. O. (1994). A question of labour: Indentured immigration into Trinidad and British Guiana, 1875–1917. Ian Randle Publishers. Lowenthal, D. (1972). West Indian societies (American Geographical Society Research Series – Number 26). New York: Oxford University Press (published for the Institute of Race Relations, London in collaboration with the American Geographical Society, New York). Mahabir, K. (1999). The impact of Hindi on Trinidad English. Caribbean Quarterly, 45(4), 13–34. Mahabir, N. K. (1992). Caribbean East Indian recipes. Chakra Pub. House. Mahabir, K. & Mahabir, S. (1990). A dictionary of common Trinidad Hindi. Chakra Pub. House. Maharaj, A. B. (1995). Impact of Indian movies. In The Indian review (Commemorating the sesquicentenary of the arrival of Indians to Trinidad, 1845–1995), 31–32. Indian Review Committee. McNeill, J. & Lal, L. C. (1915a). East India (Indentured Labour): Report to the Government of India on the conditions of Indian immigrants in four British colonies and Surinam: Part I Trinidad and British Guiana. H. M. Stationery Office. Available at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id= umn.319510010510680&view=1up&seq=25. Accessed April 5, 2021. Mohan, P. (1978). Trinidad Bhojpuri: A morphological study. PhD thesis in Linguistics. The University of Michigan. Mohan, P. (2007). Jahajin. HarperCollins Publishers India (with The Indian Today Group). Mohan, P., & Zador, P. (1986). Discontinuity in a life cycle: The death of Trinidad Bhojpuri. Language, 62(2), 291–319. Morton, S. E. (Ed.). (1916). John Morton of Trinidad: Pioneer missionary of the Presbyterian Church in Canada to the East Indians in the British West Indies (Journals, letters and papers). Westminster Company. Naipaul, S. (Seepersad). (2001/1976). The adventures of Gurudeva (with a Foreword by V. S. Naipual; Indian edition). Buffalo Books. Naipaul, V. S. (1968/1964). An area of darkness. Penguin Books India. Naipaul, V. S. (1984/1982). Prologue to an autobiography. In V. S. Naipaul, Finding the centre: Two narratives (pp. 15–85). André Deutsch. Naipaul, V. S. (2001/1976). Foreword. In S. (Seepersad) Naipaul (Ed.) The adventures of Gurudeva (pp. 7–28). Buffalo Books. Niehoff, A. & Niehoff, J. (1960). East Indians in the West Indies (Milwaukee Public Museum Publications in Anthropology No.6). Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Public Museum. Panday, T. (1993). Trinidad mein Hindi (in Hindi). Gagananchal (Indian Council for Cultural Relations, New Delhi), 16(4), 109–122. Ramchand, K. (1995). Literature and the person of Indian origin. In B. Samaoo et al. (Ed.), In celebration of 150 years of the Indian contribution to Trinidad and Tobago – Volume II: The sesquicentenary review, 50 years later – 1945–1995) (pp. 144–172). D. Quentrall-Thomas.

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Ramesar, M. D. S. (1994). Survivors of another crossing: A History of East Indians in Trinidad, 1880–1946. School of Continuing Studies, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Rampersad, K. (2002). Finding a place: IndoTrinidadian literature. Ian Randle Publishers. Pandey, R. K. (Ed.). (1985). Videsh ke Hindi kavi (in Hindi). Hindi Prachar Sabha. Samaroo, B., Haraksingh, K., Ramchand, K., Besson, G., & Quentrall-Thomas, D. (Eds.). (1995). In celebration of 150 years of the Indian contribution to Trinidad and Tobago. Historical Publications Limited. Sealey, W. (in collaboration with P. Aquing). (1983). A sociolinguistic profile of Trinidad (Paper presented for the Caribbean Lexicography Project, June 1983) (Mimeo). Singh, K. (1985). Indians and the larger society. In J. G. La Guerre (Ed.), Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (2nd ed., pp. 33–60). Extra Mural Studies Unit, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Sookhoo, J. R. (1985). Hindi–English dictionary: Build your Hindi vocabulary through English. Trinidad Industrial Laboratories Research. Sperl, S. R. (1980). From Indians to Trinidadians: A study of the relationship between language behaviour, socio-economic and cultural factors in a Trinidad village. Unpublished M. Phil. thesis. University of York. Spratt, P. (1966). Hindu culture and personality: A psychoanalytic study. Manaktalas. Tinker, H. (1993/1974). A new system of slavery: The export of Indian labour overseas, 1830–1920. Hansib. Tylor, E. B. (1889/1865). Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom (2 vols; 3rd American edition). Henry Holt. Winford, D. (1972). A sociolinguistic description of two communities in Trinidad. Unpublished M.Phil. thesis. University of York.

Chapter 12

Conclusion

The difficulty lies in the fact that you are too much of a majority to assimilate, too much of a minority to dominate. On every hand you are pressed by Western influences. You cannot be entirely Oriental, nor entirely Occidental; you can no more be entirely Western than you can be entirely Eastern; neither a hundred per cent European nor a hundred per cent Indian. You will be distinctly West Indian. —Mr Sohun, the Presbyterian school teacher, remarking to his former student Gurudeva, in Seepersad Naipaul’s The Adventures of Gurudeva (2001: 131), originally written in the early 1940s. In retrospect, Mr Sohun could have as well said: ‘You will be distinctly Indo-Trinidadian’!

This book has explored the making of a girmitiya diaspora: the saga of the indigent indentured migrants from India who were taken to the faraway island of Trinidad between 1845 and 1917 to work on the sugar and cocoa plantations there. They were recruited majorly from the western parts of Bihar and eastern parts of what is Uttar Pradesh now, and minorly from the Madras Presidency and other parts of the Indian subcontinent. They were made false promises of a new and better life in ‘Chini-dad’, literally the land of chini, sugar. New, their life turned out to be for sure; better, it never was. From the time of their recruitment to their transportation to emigration depots in Calcutta or Madras to await boarding, from the commencement of their long ship-voyage to their arrival in Trinidad, and from their assignment to estates to the eventual completion of their indenture, their life turned out to be one of continuous struggle for existence against a variety of adversities. What was supposed to be a temporary sojourn in Trinidad, for various reasons, became for many a new land of permanent settlement. These indentured Indian immigrants—the girmitiyas—in Trinidad and their descendants born there, endeavoured over the next century or so to create a new ethnic community, Indo-Trinidadians.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7_12

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12.1 India in the Indian Diaspora Implicit in the idea of diaspora, especially as suggested by the hyphenated descriptor ‘Indo-’, is an emotional, socio-cultural, and even material bonding with the homeland; in the instant case, India. This bonding with India was real for the original immigrants; it was the lived experience of their past. But with succeeding generations this bonding gradually became a memory or an imagined idea of their ancestral homeland formed by their elders as perceived and narrated by them. The essence of this is inimitably captured by V. S. Naipaul in An Area of Darkness when he writes: … India had in a special way been the background of my childhood. It was the country from which my grandfather came, a country never physically described and therefore never real, a country out in the void beyond the dot of Trinidad; and from it our journey had been final. It was a country suspended in time; it could not be related to the country, discovered later … [….] To me as a child the India that had produced so many of the persons and things around me was featureless, and I thought of the time when the transference was made as a period of darkness, darkness which also extended to the land, as darkness surrounds a hut at evening, though for a little way around the hut there is still light. The light was the area of my experience, in time and place. And even now, though time has widened, though space has contracted … something of the darkness remains, in those attitudes, those ways of thinking and seeing, which are no longer mine. (1968: 27, 30)

If, for the girmitiyas who settled down in the colony, India was their ‘Motherland’ and Trinidad became a ‘Stepmother Country’, for their descendants born there, Trinidad is their ‘Mother Country’, even if some of them have been ‘doubly displaced’ by emigration to England or North America. India, for them, as Satnarine Balkaransingh appositely labels, is the ‘Grandmother’ country (2016: 8). In the imagination of the ordinary Indo-Trinidadians today, the idea of India is primarily geographically subcontinental and culturally civilisational, and only secondarily India that is political.1 This fact, as will be discussed later, is often missed by the Indian nationals visiting Trinidad or Indians meeting Indo-Trinidadians in India or elsewhere abroad. In the development of an Indian diaspora community in Trinidad, and the ethnic community identity, first as ‘East Indians’ and later as Indo-Trinidadians, what Ken Parmasad calls (1994) ‘ancestral impulse’ has played a significant role. This explains the proclivity among Indo-Trinidadians since independence to trace their roots in material India. V. S. Naipaul, though he had ‘not learned acceptance’ but ‘separateness from India’ in the year (i.e., 1962) that he spent in the land of his ancestors, thought it his duty to visit ‘the village of the Dubes’, ‘the village which my mother’s father had left as an indentured labourer more than sixty years before’ (see 1968: 252). Not only Indo-Trinidadian dignitaries visiting India make an attempt to locate their ancestral village, but ordinary folk, too, have been trying to trace their roots. In 1994, in the early months of my sojourn in Trinidad, Brinsley Samaroo introduced me to Shamshu Deen, a teacher at the Cowen Hamilton Secondary School, who 1

As Samaroo has clarified, the India in the Indo-Trinidadian imagination ‘is not necessarily the physical landmass but a whole complex of attitudes, thought-processes and beliefs which come as part of the inheritance of that civilization’ (1987: 56).

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was painstakingly tracing the roots of his extended family.2 He had then explained to me the arduous process involved in ‘solving the East Indian roots in Trinidad’. Later that year, he published his book incorporating both this process of genealogical research and the product of his research (see Deen, 1994). He has since turned his passion for genealogy to a challenging career, that makes his life as fulfilling as it has for more than 300 families in Trinidad to trace their family roots in India and nearly ten families in India to locate their loved ones in three countries (see Agrawal, 2018).

12.2 The Metamorphosis of the Girmitiya Socio-cultural Bundal The girmitiyas brought with them elements of both material and non-material culture. The elements of the material culture included their clothes, ornaments, kitchen utensils, musical instruments, etc. The elements of non-material culture included institutions of family, marriage, and kinship; belief systems and ritual practices; languages and dialects, folklores and recipes; values, norms, ethical principles for guiding their behaviour, etc. The girmitiyas’ metaphorical socio-cultural bundal has been a subject of interest to anthropologists and historians alike for almost seven decades now. In the early years of indenture, most of these elements experienced varying degrees of erasure and de-constitution. This was to be expected as it was built into the nature and functioning of the indentured system of migration, i.e., the process of recruitment of the migrants, the manner of their transportation to Trinidad and allotment to estates there, and the work on the estate and life in the barracks. The indentured recruits to Trinidad, as also to many other sugar colonies, were predominantly young, single, and male. Although they mostly hailed from parts of Bihar and the United Provinces in north India, they were heterogenous in terms of their religion and caste, language and dialects, socio-cultural practices and foodways, etc. Most of them were indigent and illiterate to have a sustained socio-cultural direction to start with. Furthermore, the conditions of work on the estates were so arduous and regulated, that they neither had the time nor the freedom of movement for mobilisation as long as they were indentured. The girmitiyas’ location in the economic, political, and social hierarchy in the colony was also detrimental to their socio-cultural life. They were largely looked down upon by the colonial administrators and the planters; their personal appearance as also social and cultural practices, which were often driven by the need for survival and security, were ridiculed. They came to be known by a new identity, ‘coolie’, a term by which they were both referred to and addressed by the powers that be. The marriages conducted according to the Hindu and the Muslim rites were not recognised and the progeny of such unions were regarded as illegitimate. Their 2

Shamshu Deen is a fifth-generation descendant of an Indian family that migrated from Bihar; his great-great-grandfather, Mohammed Mookti had arrived in Trinidad in 1852 (Agrawal 2018).

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religious celebrations like the firepass ceremony and Hosay processions were sought to be unduly regulated. The Hindu practice of cremation was banned. There was considerable social pressure on them to convert to Christianity. They suffered hostility and prejudice even at the hands of the emancipated slaves, the people of African descent, the Creoles as they were called by the administrators and planters and came to be known as kirwals among the girmitiyas. The Creole looked down upon the girmitiyas, as they came to occupy the places vacated by them on the estates, and in the process suppressed wage rates. Also, since they had been converted to Christianity and embraced western culture, they thought they were superior to the girmitiyas. (Since independence, too, the political dominance of the Afro-Trinidadians is perceived by the Indo-Trinidadians as a threat to their ethnic identity and culture. No wonder, the ‘cultural renaissance’ among the IndoTrinidadians has gone hand-in-hand with ‘cultural contestations’ against the AfroTrinidadian ruling class). Under these circumstances, for the girmitiyas, their very survival as individuals and as an ethnic community meant that they had to forego the familiar, adapt to and assimilate the unfamiliar, and innovate themselves. As we have already discussed, some elements of their socio-cultural bundal almost disappeared (e.g., language and dialects), some were reconstituted and re-institutionalised, but underwent changes since then (e.g., family, marriage, and kinship), some became homogenised under the influence of their counterparts (e.g., Hinduism), some lost their functionality, even if their underlying ideology persisted (e.g., caste), and some not only survived, but with adaptations and innovations became unique representatives of culture (e.g., foodways). From the 1950s through the 1980s, anthropologists and sociologists tried to grapple with the dynamics of the girmitiya socio-cultural bundal through the conceptual apparatus of survival/retention/persistence or change. Approaching the sociocultural dynamics in the diaspora with such a conceptual dichotomy is not only simplistic and problematic, but also theoretically fruitless. It is simplistic because some elements of a people’s culture persist or change when they relocate themselves to another cultural context either voluntarily or because they are forced to. It is problematic because such analyses invariably posit ideal types of social institutions and cultural practices as they were supposed to have existed in the past or as they exist now. They then marshal data, cherry picked as it were, to prove their (hypo)thesis (see Sect. 1.2). There is no gainsaying that the social institutions and cultural practices under reference would have undergone changes in their original locale itself. Also problematic with such analyses is the presumption that their point of reference, in this case the ideal typical notion of the ‘Indian’, has remained unchanged. At best, this holds well for the diasporic imagination of the ‘civilisational India’, but not the ‘existential India’. India, as is known today, is characterised by enormous diversity and unprecedented change in its social institutions and cultural practices since the time the diasporic ancestors left the country. Theoretically, the concepts of survival and persistence, and more so, retention, undermine the ingenuity of the diasporic community and its creativity in adapting and developing an institution as required by the society and the socio-cultural context

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in which it exists. Raymond T. Smith identifies this problem when he writes, ‘Most interpretations of religion the West Indies concentrate heavily on the origins of particular items of ritual or belief, a procedure which inevitably diverts attention from the creative use to which these items are put in the ongoing process of social life’ (1976: 337–338). Thus, it is important to emphasise, as Peter Manuel does with reference to ‘East Indian music in the West Indies’, that Rather than being … simple transplants or degraded version of that of the mother country, [they] were unique, having their own richness and depth and presenting their own set of challenges to research…not mere transplanted fragments of homeland societies, but distinctive entities often with original and dynamic art forms. (2000: xiii–xiv)

It has been my endeavour in this book to highlight the use of metamorphosis as an analytical device in explaining the dynamics of the society and culture of the Indian immigrants and their descendants in Trinidad as also in understanding the evolution of this unique hybrid or hyphenated identity, ‘Indo-Trinidadian’, which is indicative of both persistence and change, but neither of them exclusively.

12.3 Social Construction of the ‘Other’ Indian3 It has been the analytical thrust of this book that the girmitiyas have evolved into a distinct ethnic community in Trinidad, whose cultural elements today constitute a distinct achievement of a diasporic community. To complete Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘banyan tree’ analogy of the civilisation of India (see Sect. 1.3), a branch of the tree has grown in ‘the further soil’ in distant Trinidad and blossomed there. Regrettably though, the distinctiveness of this tree and its growth in a soil and climate not favourable to it is not appreciated by the Indian nationals who come into contact with Indo-Trinidadians. During my three-year sojourn in Trinidad (1994–1996), I observed this as part of the larger process of the social construction of the ‘other’ Indian (see Jayaram, 1998).4 This takes place when Indian nationals come into contact with IndoTrinidadians either in Trinidad or India or elsewhere. Their direct face-to-face interaction provides the scope for inter-cultural perception, interpretation, and evaluation.5 The logic underlying the social construction of the other Indian implies that these two remain distinct from each other as long as it is possible. The Indian nationals in Trinidad are mostly professionals (doctors, engineers, and teachers) who are employed there or are business people. Most Indian nationals I 3

In writing this section, I have drawn on my earlier publication on the subject (see Jayaram 1998). The theoretical perspective briefing my observation of this phenomenon is derived from Berger and Luckmann (1971). V. S. Naipaul’s essay ‘East Indian’ provides an insightful episode of his interaction with an Indian-national journalist on a flight from London to Paris in the early 1950s (Naipaul 2004a). 5 Theoretically, this ‘first-hand experience’ is distinct from ‘second-hand knowledge’ that we obtain by reading books or hearing speeches or some other source (see Wilson 1983: 9–10). 4

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came across in Trinidad went there since the 1970s and see themselves as ‘transients’ eventually to return to India, or using their stay in Trinidad as a conduit to enter the USA or Canada. However, a few of them have settled down in Trinidad and taken up residence or citizenship there. Indian nationals exchange among themselves ‘reports’ about their interactions with Indo-Trinidadians. Similarly, Indo-Trinidadians exchange among themselves ‘reports’ about their interactions with Indian nationals, as also those of the experiences of some of their relatives and friends who have visited India. Such ‘reports’ form the knowledge base for constructing the image of the other Indian: IndianIndian/Indian national or Trinidad-Indian/Indo-Trinidadian. Once constructed, this image of the other Indian influences their interactions with each other; they either identify with or differentiate themselves from the other Indian.6 This identification/differentiation process can only be understood in the context of specific events and experiences in which it takes place. Afro-Trinidadians largely recognise the distinction between Indo-Trinidadians and Indian nationals; they do not perceive the latter as a competitor in the economic or political spheres. However, if the Indian national perceives that the Afro-Trinidadian is orienting himself towards him in the same way that he does to the IndoTrinidadians, he/she throws in his/her lot with the latter. If Afro-Trinidadians are not a reference group, the ‘we–they’ relation persists between Indian nationals and Indo-Trinidadians. All the same, the behaviour of the Indo-Trinidadians visà-vis Indian nationals is scrutinised by Afro-Trinidadians. This is perceived by the Indo-Trinidadian as a test of his loyalty to Trinidad & Tobago.7 One facet of the othering by Indian nationals relates to their superiority complex vis-à-vis the social institutions and cultural practices of Indo-Trinidadians, which as I mentioned earlier is a consequence of their lack of appreciation of the creativity of diasporic Indians. I observed that Indian nationals generally tend to view these institutions and practices as imitative, poor, or corrupt reflections of the ‘original’ or ‘authentic’ forms to be found only in India. An extreme ethnocentric and socioculturally insensitive appraisal of an Indo-Trinidadian cultural performance was made by Seema Goswami in the Sunday weekly. Commenting on the cultural pageant in Trinidad organised as part of the celebration to mark the sesquicentenary of the arrival of the first Indians on this island, at which the then President of India, Shri Shankar Dayal Sharma, was the chief guest, she wrote: ‘The applause was, of course,

6

The reminiscences of Winston Mahabir, the well-known Indo-Trinidadian novelist who migrated to Canada, are insightful on this: Over the years I became increasingly secure with the double, if unequal roots of East and West. Even Prime Minister Nehru of India could not confuse me in 1957. After I was introduced to him as a West Indian he said ‘but you are Indian, aren’t you?’ to which I replied, ‘my great-grand-parents were born in India. Racially I am Indian. But I am West Indian’ (1987: 72). 7 I was advised by both Indo- and Afro-Trinidadian friends that if I have to negotiate with a Trinidadian official, for instance, in immigration, customs, police, etc., it is safer approaching an official belonging to the Afro-Trinidadian ethnic group. Given a similar situation, this is what an Indo-Trinidadian himself would do!

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strongest for a bastardised version of the Lavani performed by both Indian [IndoTrinidadian] and Black [Afro-Trinidadian] girls wearing Maharashtrian-style saris, and doing pelvic grinds that would put Karisma Kapoor … to shame’ (1995: 79). Not all Indian nationals are brazen enough to reveal their perceptions or evaluations to their Indo-Trinidadian acquaintances. They, no doubt, discuss them with their fellow nationals. Open expression of such ethnocentric evaluations is understandably not liked by Indo-Trinidadians. This often results in unpleasantness in interaction; sometimes it terminates the interaction itself. Mahin Gosine, an Indo-Trinidadian sociologist based in the USA, has observed that, most Indians from India ‘tend to look down on East Indians from other countries’, and think ‘that they are superior merely because they were born and raised in India’ (1993: 18).8 He reiterated his disappointment with this when I met him in Trinidad in April 1994. Gaiutra Bahadur, the Indo-Guyanese journalist now living in the USA provides a nuanced understanding of this phenomenon: We did feel solidarity with Indians in our neighbourhood because of the [Dot Busters’] attacks … But the embrace offered to the Indo-Caribbeans by immigrants directly from the subcontinent often has a subtle edge. Their tenderness can be patronizing…. I doubt they mean to offend, or to hold us to the light like an artifact, a fascinating shard of pottery. Often, there is no embrace at all but just a nod, like one given to a poor cousin, barely acknowledging kinship. Sometimes, there isn’t even that. Sometimes, they would rather deny us like an ‘outside child’—which is what West Indians call a child born outside a legal marriage. To some, we are India’s outside child. When class isn’t their issue, authenticity—some apparent concern over our parentage—seems to be. (2013: 8)

An important consequence of the inter-cultural perception by Indian nationals and Indo-Trinidadians has been that both these groups have maintained a discernible social distance between them. Many an Indo-Trinidadian finds it difficult to identify with India and its way of life, and a few even loath doing so. The ambivalence resulting from a feeling of affinity and allegiance to the ‘Mother Country’, or the ‘Grandmother Country’ for the later generation of Indo-Trinidadians, on the one hand, and the experience of social distance from it, on the other, is well illustrated by V. S. Naipaul. Recapitulating his experiences on his first visit to India, in 1962, in his book India: A Wounded Civilization, he writes, India is for me a difficult country. It isn’t my home and cannot be my home; and yet I cannot reject it or be indifferent to it… I am at once too close and too far. … India, which I visited for the first time in 1962, turned out to be a very strange land. [….] In India I know I am a stranger; but increasingly I understand that my Indian memories, the memories of that

8

Similarly, in his letter to the editor of India Abroad (New York, April 19, 1996, p. 3), Vijay Jagdeo, an Indo-Guyanese raised in the United States of America notes that ‘India-born Indians’ believe ‘that West Indies-born Indians have “tainted blood”’. He avers that being an Indo-Guyanese-American, ‘even though a part of my heart belongs to America and the West Indies, the rest of my heart and all of soul belongs to India’. In his report from New York appearing in The Economic Times (Bombay, May 21, 1995), Arthur J. Pais records similar observations: An Indo-Trinidadian feels that ‘at best, the Indian community treats us like step children’; this being so, according to an Indo-Guyanese, because ‘we are not made at home (i.e., India)’.

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India which lived on into my childhood in Trinidad, are like trapdoors into a bottomless past. (1979: 8–10)9

V. S. Naipaul’s admittedly ambivalent response to India deserves some clarification. According to Timothy F. Weiss, ‘the encounter between Naipaul and “motherland” generates controversial works in which, on the one hand, he seeks a connection with, a rootedness in India, while on the other, he emphasizes his difference from Indians and his repulsion of the “decay” of the country’ (1992: 113). ‘In encounters between Naipaul and his Indian others’, Weiss feels pertinent to ask, ‘who is he and who are they?’ (ibid.: 115). Selwyn R. Cudjoe, however, is more critical of ‘Naipaul’s psychotic relationship to India’: He views India: A Wounded Civilization as ‘the frantic and frenetic outpourings of a man who is primarily concerned with dealing with the problems of his own identity by confronting his ancestral home, a man undecided about his own objectivity and about those with whom he comes into contact’ (1988: 179 and 182). On their part, the Indian nationals in Trinidad, too, have isolated themselves as a different community, though sharing some cultural elements with the IndoTrinidadians. Most often the social network among the Indian nationals works in an informal way. Typically, networks exist among the Hindi-speakers or those hailing from particular linguistic regions in India—the Bengalis, the Kannadigas, the Malayalis, the Tamilians, the Telugus, etc. In isolated cases, such a network transforms itself into a formal association, e.g., the Gujarati Association of Trinidad & Tobago. The consequences of such self-isolation are evident among Indian nationals who profess Hinduism. It is very rare for them to get a puja performed by an IndoTrinidadian pandit. Other than the pujas that they routinely do at home in Trinidad, they normally get all special pujas done when they go on a visit to India, either in their home there or in a pilgrimage centre. Some even request their extended family members back in India to get a puja performed for them there. On rare occasions, if an Indian national invites a local pandit to perform a puja in his house, it is not uncommon to find him instructing the pandit as how to go about it or what he expects to be done. (This is unlike a puja performed in an IndoTrinidadian house, where the pandit is in total control). Even so, one will invariably hear comments and criticisms from Indian nationals who have congregated about the way the pandit has gone about the puja: the procedures he has adopted or the mantras (sacred incantations) he has recited. ‘It is not like this in India!’, is a familiar refrain. In comparing themselves with Indian nationals culturally, Indo-Trinidadians have an obvious difficulty. They meet Indians hailing from different parts of India, and thus come into contact with the plurality of social norms and cultural forms as they exist in India. They, more than Indian nationals, notice that there is no identity between 9

V. S. Naipaul is not alone in such ambivalence towards India. Other Indo-Trinidadians like, Peggy Mohan, who now lives in India, mentions that an Indo-Trinidadian visiting India has ambiguous appearance and has anxieties about how s/he will be viewed and treated (2007: 233). In her autobiographical narrative, the Indo-Trinidadian journalist Ariti Jankie Jagirdar, who has dual homes—one in Trinidad and the other in India—writes about ‘the mysteries of the so familiar yet so strange land’, India (2002: 2).

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India as a country and any one norm or form as the Indian. That is, there is no unitary culture in India which can be termed Indian culture. Indianness is assigned to the different norms and forms because they are found in India as a politico-geographical entity, and they share in varying degrees elements of Hinduism or norms and values influenced by it.

12.4 Indo-Trinidadians Today: Ethnicity not Out A close examination of the experience of Indo-Trinidadians visiting India, their ‘Grandmother Country’, convinces them that howsoever ‘Indian’ they may be in Trinidad, they are not much like Indians in India. Our analysis of the mobilisation of Indians in Trinidad in the colonial times and their participation in electoral politics since independence (see Chaps. 4 and 5) has highlighted the singular importance of ethnicity in the making of the girmitiya diaspora community. From early on, as Earl Lovelace notes, they ‘were tied to their culture because in this new land where they were strangers, it gave them a sense of being’ (1988: 340). As Ramdath Jagessar has observed, the average Indian who knew ‘little of his past’, was ‘unable to argue well for his way of life or his religion’, but believed in it nonetheless; he remained separate because he had ‘little in common with the urban Negro people’ (1969: 7). That is, heightened by their isolation, ignorance, and fear in a distant land, the ethnic differences between the people of Indian and African descent engendered ‘negative, persistent, and inclusive group stereotypes’, not only in Trinidad but across the Caribbean (see Lowenthal, 1972: 156). In her historical and ethnographic case study of the political and cultural struggle between these two traditionally subordinate ancestral groups in Trinidad, Viranjini Munasinghe (2001; see also Tsuji, 2006) argues that the Indo-Trinidadians seek to become a legitimate part of the nation by redefining what it means to be ‘Trinidadian’ and not by changing what it means to be ‘Indian’. Their leaders have challenged the implicit claim of the Afro-Trinidadians that their ethnic identity (as IndoTrinidadians) is antithetical to their national identity (as Indo-Trinidadians). Their cultural contestation during the last three decades has been to change the national image of Trinidad by explicitly introducing elements of Indo-Trinidadian culture alongside those of the Afro-Trinidadian (Creole) culture. Considering the socio-economic conditions with which they started their life in Trinidad as girmitiyas during their indenture and the socio-cultural marginalisation they experienced for decades since their settlement there, it is indeed phenomenal where they have reached as an ethnic diaspora community. Symbolic as it definitely is now, in 1995, the sesquicentenary of the arrival of the first batch of the indentured Indian immigrants, the grandson of a girmitiya cane-cutter became the prime minister (the first of Indian origin) of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago. The making of IndoTrinidadians as a girmitiya diaspora community was now significantly complete. I was in Trinidad during the Indo-Trinidadians political coming of age in November 1995; that calendar year was the last of my three-year sojourn as Visiting

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Professor of Indian Studies at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine. During the three later visits to the island—in 2008, 2014, and 2017—the Indo-Trinidadian presence and influence was even more palpable. Driving through the country I saw more mandirs and masjids, jhandis, Hindu schools and Muslim schools, roti shops and puja stores, and Indian grocery markets and clothing expositions dotting the landscape of the country than I had seen 20 years before. Many businesses, big and small, bear Indo-Trinidadian names. There was more of Indian and Indo-Trinidadian audio and audio-visual content on FM (frequency modulation) in radio stations and on television channels. Seen from a historical perspective, I marvel at all this stupendous achievement. Coda Before I close this book, a clarification on the background of a researcher studying a diasporic community is in order. The disciplinary background of a researcher obviously determines the scope and objective of the study. The historian may either traverse a long period in time or on a delimited segment of it, or focus on an event or episode in its historical context, making use of documents and reports from the past and oral history, too. The anthropologist does ethnographic fieldwork, involving an extended engagement of varying periods with a community; immersion in the life-world of the community studied is a sine qua non. It may also involve varying degrees of participant observation, either planned or spontaneous as demanded by the occasion. The sociologist may cover a larger population through surveying on specific aspects of social organisation or process, often using quantitative techniques of data analysis. However, a sociologist can also do fieldwork on a more extensive scale, using qualitative approach and in-depth interviews with key informants covering a whole gamut of issues. Irrespective of their disciplinary background, a scholar’s ideological predilections—Marxist, feminist, liberal, etc.— can also influence her/his writings. The instant book is interdisciplinary in that it is based on an extensive reading of the literature on emigration from India during the colonial times and the girmitiya diaspora in Trinidad in particular, and the Caribbean in general. Drawing insights from the literature, both historical and anthropological, an attempt was made to weave the data from observations and interviews with Indo-Trinidadians continuously over a period of three years (1994–1996), and briefly during the three later visits in 2008, 2014, and 2017. Accordingly, the analysis here is based on the history of the girmitiyas from a sociological perspective; it is thus an exercise in historical sociology. There is another issue about the background of the researcher and that concerns her/his national/ethnic background. It is well known that researchers trained in the same discipline can have different perspectives for interpreting the data on hand depending upon their nationality and ethnic background. This fact is to be kept in mind while reviewing the literature on the girmitiya diaspora and understanding the interpretations of a researcher thereof. This was more than evident to me while I reviewed the literature on the origin and development of Indo-Trinidadians as an

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ethnic community: empathy and sympathy, as also malice and prejudice sneak in either while reporting ‘facts’ and/or interpreting them. More important, in anthropological/sociological discussions on studying cultures or communities, there is a debate on the methodological implications of the researcher being an ‘insider’ versus ‘outsider’.10 Many of the notable scholars who have done pioneering or pathbreaking work on Indo-Trinidadians—like Michael V. Angrosino, Richard H. Forbes, Morris Freilich, Morton Klass, Frank J. Korom, Joseph J. Nevadomsky, Arthur and Juanita Niehoff, Carolyn V. Prorok, Barton Morley Schwartz, and Judith Ann Weller from the USA, and Colin G. Clarke and Steven Vertovec from the UK—are outsiders, both in nationality and ethnicity. Among other outsider scholars who have produced insightful writings on the subject are Viranjini Munasinghe (Sri Lankan), Ralph R. Premdas (Indo-Guyanese), and Tsuji Teruyuki (Japanese). The Indo-Trinidadian scholars like Satnarine Balkaransingh, John La Guerre, Kusha Haraksingh, Rosanne Kanhai, Aisha Khan, Kumar Mahabir, Kirk Meighoo, Patricia Mohammed, Peggy Mohan, Dennison Moore, Nasser Mustapha, Marianne Ramesar, Brinsley Samaroo, Rosabelle Seesaran, Kelvin Singh, Sherry-Ann Singh, Jerome Teelucksingh, and Gerad Tikasingh have done seminal work on their own community. These are all doubly insiders, both being born in Trinidad and belonging to the ethnic community they researched on. Valuable contributions on the subject have also come from insider–outsider Afro-Trinidadian scholars Rhoda Reddock and Selwyn Ryan, who are Trinidad born but of Afro-Trinidadian ethnicity. And then there is the well-known historian Bridget Brereton, who was born in Madras (now Chennai) to British parents but has settled down in Trinidad for more than half a century now; she is now an insider by citizenship, but an outsider ethnically. Similarly, Keith Laurence was an insider by citizenship, but an outsider ethnically. Among Indian nationals who have researched on the history, society, and culture of Indo-Trinidadians, mention may be made of Ravindra K. Jain, N. Jayaram, Jagdish Chandra Jha, Yogendra K. Malik, and K. N. Sharma. They are all outsiders nationally, but shared cultural elements with the hyphenated community of IndoTrinidadians, whose ancestors had come to Trinidad from British India. They are the other Indians who have sought to academically understand Indo-Trinidadians as an ethnic community in the Indian diaspora. Obviously, these scholars—outsiders, insider-insiders, insider-outsiders, outsiders-with cultural links with insiders—have varied interest in what they have studied, and their disciplinary orientations and methodological perspectives. How the variations in scope and objectives, and orientations and perspectives have influenced their scholarly studies is a fit subject for research by itself. Suffice it to say that both the community they have studied, namely, Indo-Trinidadians, and the interdisciplinary area of the Indian diaspora studies to which they have contributed owe a debt of gratitude to their scholarly labour.

10

Srinivas (2009) provides a classical exposition of this debate, which was first published in 1984 and republished several times since.

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References Agrawal, P. (2018). Family trees: Searching through the fog of history, this man helps Trinidad families trace their Indian roots. Scroll.in (5 March 2018). https://scroll.in/magazine/864273/ searching-through-the-fog-of-history-this-man-helps-trinidad-families-trace-their-indian-roots. Accessed January 15, 2021. Bahadur, G. (2013). Coolie woman: The odyssey of indenture. Hachette Book Publishing. Balkaransingh, S. (2016). The shaping of a culture: Rituals and festivals in Trinidad compared with selected counterparts in India, 1990–2014. Hansib Publications. Berger, P. L. & Luckmann, T. (1971/1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Penguin Books. Cudjoe, S. R. (1988). V. S. Naipaul: A materialist reading. The University of Massachusetts Press. Deen, S. (1994). Solving East Indian roots in Trinidad. The Author. Gosine, M. (1993). The forgotten children of India: A global perspective. In J. K. Motwani, M. Gosine & J. Barot-Motwani (Ed.), Global Indian diaspora: Yesterday, today and tomorrow (pp. 11–28). Global Organization of People of Indian Origin. Goswami, S. (1995). Travels with the President: On the road and in the air with Shankar Dayal Sharma. Sunday, 25 June–1 July, 78–81 Jagessar, R. (1969). Indian iceberg. Tapia (No. 3, 16 November 1969, p.7). Tapia House Publishing Co. Jagirdar, A. J. (2002). East of the west: A journey. Commonwealth Publishers. Jayaram, N. (1998). Social construction of the other Indian: Encounters between Indian nationals and diasporic Indians. Journal of Social and Economic Development, 1(1), 46–53. Lovelace, E. (1988). The on-going value of our indigenous traditions. In S. Ryan (Ed.), Trinidad and Tobago: The independence experience (pp. 335–344). Institute of Social and Economic Research, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Lowenthal, D. (1972). West Indian societies (American Geographical Society Research Series – Number 26). Oxford University Press (published for the Institute of Race Relations, London in collaboration with the American Geographical Society, New York). Mahabir, W. (1987). Our diasporas: Sowers and seed. In I. J. Bahadur Singh (Ed.), Indian in the Caribbean (pp. 63–84). Sterling. Manuel, P. (2000). East Indian Music in the West Indies: Tan singing, chutney and the making of Indo-Caribbean culture. Temple University Press. Mohan, P. (2007). Jahajin. HarperCollins Publishers India (with The Indian Today Group). Munasinghe, V. (2001). Callaloo or tossed salad? East Indians and the cultural politics of identity in Trinidad. Cornell University Press. Naipaul, S. (Seepersad). (2001/1976). The adventures of Gurudeva (with a Foreword by V. S. Naipual; Indian edition). Buffalo Books. Naipaul, V. S. (1968/1964). An area of darkness. Penguin Books India. Naipaul, V. S. (1979/1977). India: A wounded civilization. Penguin Books. Naipaul, V. S. (2004a/1965). East Indian. In V. S. Naipaul (Ed.), Literary occasions: Essays (pp. 35– 44). Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan. Parmasad, K. (1994). Searching for continuity: The ancestral impulse and the community identity formation in Trinidad. Caribbean Quarterly, 40(3–4), 22–29. Samaroo, B. (1987). The Indian connection: The influence of Indian thought and ideas on East Indians in the Caribbean. In D. Dabydeen & B. Samaroo (Eds.), India in the Caribbean (pp. 43– 59). Hansib/University of Warwick. Smith, R. T. (1976). Religion in the formation of West Indian society: Guyana and Jamaica. In M. Kilson & R. I. Rotberg (Eds.), The African diaspora: Interpretive essays (pp. 312–341). Harvard University Press. Srinivas, M. N. (2009/1984). The insider versus the outsider in the study of cultures. In The Oxford India Srinivas (pp. 553–570). Oxford University Press.

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Appendices

Appendix 2.1 Chronological list of ships by which Indian indentured labourers arrived in Trinidad during 1845–1917 Year

No. of ships

Name of the ship

1845

1

Futtle Rozack

1846

9

Dutchess of Argyle; Bangalore; Duke of Bedford; Medusa; William Abrams; London; Cadet; Lord William Bentinck; City of Poonah

1847

8

Duke of Portland; John Line; Lochlomond; Duke of Bedford; Emma; Cornwall; Bangalore; Poictiers

1848

2

Agincourt; Duke of Bedford

1851

1

Eliza Stewart

1852

5

True Briton; Hyderabad; Equestrian; Eliza Stewart; Mary Shepherd

1853

7

Benares; William Jardine; Harkaway; Maidstone; Mallard; Eliza Stewart; Bank of England

1854

2

True Briton; Sussex

1855

1

Windsor

1856

2

Scindian; Agincourt

1857

5

Adelaide; Eveline; Sir George Seymour; Granville; Scindian

1858

6

Wellesley; Ellenborough; Saladin; Salsette; Edith Moore; Roman Emperor@

1859

10

Akbar; Themis; Marmion; Dudbrook; John Duncan; Labrador; Palmerton@ ; Hope@ ; Cleaveland@ ; Clara@

1860

7

Conway; Tyburnia; Thomas Lowry; Appleton; Bruce@ ; Chatham@ ; Hunter@

1861

8

Clarence; Sydenham; Castle Howard; Adelaide; Brechin Castle; Nourmahal; Ex Tyburnia; David Malcolm@

1862

4

Ex Daniel Rankin; Alnwick Castle; Clarence; Colgrain (continued)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7

297

298

Appendices

(continued) Year

No. of ships

Name of the ship

1863

5

Alnwick Castle; Assaye; Athleta; Brechin Castle; Golden City

1864

2

Alnwick Castle; Spitfire

1865

6

Sydenham; Atalanta; New Castle; Carleton; Empress; Koomar

1866

1

Humber

1867

8

Roxborough Castle; Salisbury; Alnwick Castle; Sevilla; Hornet; Hougomont; Liverpool; Ellenborough

1868

4

Sevilla; Ancilla; Albert Victor; Malabar

1869

8

Poonah; Arima; Sevilla; Ancilla; Flying Foam; Beaumaris Castle; Varuna; Wiltshire

1870

4

Atalanta; Cochin; Java; Wiltshire

1871

4

Brechin Castle; Hougomont; Indus; Atalanta

1872

8

Syria; Ganges; Indus; Atalanta; Woodburn; Wiltshire; Dilharee; Rajah of Cochin

1873

7

Colmonell; Howrah; Jumna; Atalanta; Syria; Winchester; John Allan@

1874

4

Brockham; Jumna; Ganges; Golden Fleece

1875

6

British Empire; Essex; Brechin Castle; St James; Foyle; Jorawur

1876

3

Ganges; Foyle; Jorawur

1877

3

Syria; Jorawur; Lightning

1878

6

Syria; Ganges; Sheila; Brenda; Jura; Ailsa

1879

4

Artist; Sheila; Brenda; Jura

1880

6

Bann; Jumna; Foyle; Jura; British Nation; Sheila

1881

6

Neva; Bann; Foyle; Jumna; Earl Granville; Sheila

1882

5

Lee; Neva; Bann; Scottish Admiral; Hesperides

1883

4

Southesk; Boyne; Brenda; Jura

1884

6

Sheila; Grecian; Neva; Brenda; British Statesman; Jura

1885

3

Nerbudda; Brenda; Sheila

1886

4

Jura; Brenda; Sheila; Jura

1887

4

Bann; British Nation; Brenda; Sheila

1888

3

Jura; Rhine; Hereford

1889

6

Jura; Jumna; Grecian; Volga; Avoca; Jura

1890

5

Hereford; Grecian; Bruce; Ganges; Allan Shaw

1891

6

British Peer; Avon; Rhone; Main; Avoca; Rhine

1892

5

Danube; Allan Shaw; Rhone; Rhine; Avoca

1893

3

Rhine; Rhone; Moy

1894

4

Rhone; Main; Moy; Hereford

1895

5

Foyle; Rhone; Rhine; Main; Avon

1896

5

Grecian; Main; Erne; Avon; Rhine

1897

3

Mersey; Ems; Elbe (continued)

Appendices

299

(continued) Year

No. of ships

Name of the ship

1898

2

Ems; Rhone

1899

2

Bann; Ems

1900

1

Main

1901

6

Moy; Avon; Arno; Foyle; Virawa; Elbe

1902

3

Erne; Clyde; Rhine

1903

6

Avon; Ems; Bann; Forth; Main; Avon

1904

2

Rhine; Indus

1905

2

Avon; Rhine

1906

8

Indus# ; Lena# ; Mersey; Avon; Rhine; Elbe; Ganges; Arno

1907

3

Mutlah; Ganges; Forth

1908

4

Ganges; Indus; Mutlah; Sutlej

1909

3

Ganges; Indus; Mutlah

1910

2

Mutlah# ; Ganges#

1911

6

Ganges@ ; Mutlah; Indus; Chenab; Ganges; Mutlah#

1912

6

Sutlej# ; Indus; Chenab; Indus; Mutlah; Chenab

1913

6

Indus; Mutlah; Chenab; Sutlej; Dewa; Mutlah

1914

2

Chenab; Sutlej

1915

3

Chenab; Dewa; Ganges

1916

4

Chenab# ; Sutlej; Ganges; Chenab

1917

2

Mutlah; Ganges

Total

317

Note @ = Ships arriving from Madras exclusively; # = Ships arriving from Calcutta and Madras; all other ships arrived from Calcutta Source National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago (Nd.) [General Register ‘O’ for 1907–1909 is missing in the Archives. The missing information is obtained from Deen (1994: 279–280)]

Appendix 2.2 Alphabetical list of estates in Trinidad 1

Adela

47

Edinburg

90

La Vega

135

Reform

2

Arandale

48

El Dorado

91

Laventille

136

Retrench

3

Aranguez

49

El Reposo

92

Les Efforts

137

Rio Claro

4

Aripero

50

El Rosario

93

Los Angeles

138

River

51

El Socorro

94

Lothians

139

Rivulet

140

Rostant

141

San Antonia

5

Bagatelle

52

Endeavour

6

Barataria

53

Enterprise

95

Macoya

7

Beaulieu

54

Esmeralda

96

Malgretoute

8

Beausejour

55

Esperance

97

Marabella

142

San Felipe

9

Bel Air

56

Esperanza

98

Maracas Bay

143

San Gill (continued)

300

Appendices

(continued) 10

Belle View

11

Ben Lamond

12

Bien Venue

57 58

Exchange Fairfield

99

Mararaval

144

100

Mausica

145

San Francisco San Jose

101

McBeab

146

Santa Clara

13

Briken Hill

59

Felicity

102

McLeod Plain

147

Sevilla

14

Bon Accord

60

Florissante

103

Milton

148

Siparia

15

Bon Air

61

Forres Park

104

Moka

149

Spring

16

Bonasse

62

Frederick

105

Mon Desir

150

St Anns

17

Bonne Aventure

63

Friendship

106

Mon Jaloux

151

St Augustine

18

Brechin Castle

64

Fullerton

107

Mon Plaisir

152

St Charles

19

Bronte

108

Mon Repos

153

St Claire

20

Broomage

65

Garden

109

Montrose

154

St Helena

21

Brothers

66

Garth

110

Mt Pleasant

155

St Johns

111

Mt Stewart

22

Buen Intento

67

Glenroy

23

Buenos Ayres

68

Golconda

69

Golden Grove

112

156

St Madeleine

157

St Marie

Nelson

158

Stretham Lodge

159

Suzannah

160

Terre Promise

24

Camden

70

Green Hill

113

Ne Plus Ultra

25

Canaan

71

Guaracara

114

New Grant

26

Cane Farm

115

New Hope

116

Non Pariel

27

Carmelita

72

Harmony Hall

28

Caracas

73

Harris Plain

29

Carolina

74

Henry

117

161

Toruba

162

Tortuga

Orange Grove

163

Trafalgar

164

Trois Amis

165

Union

166

Union Hall

30

Caroni

75

Hermitage

118

Oropouche

31

Cascade

76

Hindustan

119

Otaheite

32

Champs Elysees

77

Hope

33

Cedar Groove

34

Cedar Hill

78

Industry

79

Inverness

35

Columbia

36

Concord

37

Concordia

120

Palmiste

121

Palmyra

122

Papourie

167

Valsayn

123

Paradise

168

Verdant Vale

Patna

169

Victoria

80

Jordan Hill

124

38

Constance

125

Perseverance

170

Villa Franca

39

Corinth

81

La Fortune

126

Petersfield

171

Vistabella

40

Coryal

82

La Gloria

127

Petit Morne

41

Craignish

83

La Horquetta

128

Phillipine

172

Washington

42

Cupar Grange

84

La Pastora

129

Phoenix Park

173

Waterloo

43

Curepe

85

La Resource

130

Picton

174

Wellington

86

La Retraite

131

Plain Palais

175

Williamsville

44

Diamond

87

La Romaine

132

Plaissance

176

Woodbrook

45

Dinsley

88

Las Almas

133

Poole Syndicate

177

Woodford Dale (continued)

Appendices

301

(continued) 46

Dumfries

89

Laurel Hill

134

Providence

178

Woodford Lodge

179

Woodlands

Source Adapted from Deen (1994: 266–267)

Appendix 7.1 Hindu kinship terminology Relation descriptor

Term of reference

Term of address

English usage

Remarks

Fa (male parent)

p¯a, p¯app¯a, (b¯ap)

p¯a, p¯app¯a, daddy

Father

b¯ap, used by earlier generation; is on the decline

FaFa

a¯ j¯a

a¯ j¯a, grandpa

(Paternal) grandfather

Also used to refer/address FaFaBr4,5

FaFaFa

par¯aj¯a, parp¯aj¯a

MoFa

n¯an¯a

MoFaFa

parn¯an¯a, parpn¯an¯a parn¯an¯a

(Maternal) great-grandfather

FaBr (El)

d¯ad¯a

d¯ad¯a

(Paternal) uncle

Any male cousin of Fa senior in age to him3

FaBr (Yo)

k¯ak¯a

kaka, name + kaka

(Paternal) uncle

Any male cousin of Fa junior in age to him; some use the term c¯ac¯a (ch¯ach¯a), a term used by Muslims

Fa(El)BrWi

d¯ad¯ı

Fa(Yo)BrWi k¯ak¯ı, tante6

(Paternal) great-grandfather n¯an¯a

(Maternal) grandfather

d¯ad¯ı

Aunt

k¯ak¯ı, name + k¯ak¯ı

Aunt

MoBr (El)

m¯am¯u

m¯am¯u

(Maternal) uncle

MoBr (Yo)

m¯am¯u

m¯am¯u

(Maternal) uncle

Mo (female parent)

m¯a, (m¯a¯ı)

m¯a, mom, mommy, mamma

Mother

MoMo

n¯an¯ı

n¯an¯ı

(Maternal) grandmother

MoFaMo

parn¯an¯ı, parpn¯an¯ı

parn¯an¯ı, parpn¯an¯ı

(Maternal) great-grandmother

FaMo

a¯ j¯ı

a¯ j¯ı, grandma

(Paternal) grandmother

FaMoFa

parn¯an¯a, parpn¯an¯a parn¯an¯a, parpn¯an¯a

(Paternal) great-grandfather

FaFaMo

par¯aj¯ı

(Paternal) great-grandmother

par¯aj¯ı

The term is also used to refer/address MoFaBr and any male cousin of ego’s MoFa of the same generation.5

Any equivalent

Anyone of the 2nd ascending generation on Mo’s side5

Also used to refer/address to FaFaBrWi, etc.4,5

(continued)

302

Appendices

(continued) Relation descriptor

Term of reference

Term of address

English usage

Remarks

FaSi (El)

ph¯ua¯ , (b¯ua¯ ), ph¯uph¯u

ph¯ua¯ , name + ph¯ua¯

Aunt

Any female cousin on father’s side of father’s generation

FaSi (Yo)

ph¯ua¯ , (b¯ua¯ ), ph¯uph¯u

ph¯ua¯ , name + ph¯ua¯

Aunt

MoSi (El)

m¯os¯ı, m¯au¯ s¯ı, m¯as¯ı tante

m¯os¯ı, m¯as¯ı, name + m¯os¯ı/m¯as¯ı

(Maternal) aunt

MoSi (Yo)

m¯os¯ı, m¯au¯ s¯ı, m¯as¯ı

m¯os¯ı, m¯as¯ı, name + m¯os¯ı/m¯as¯ı

(Maternal) aunt

Br (El)

bh¯eya, bhaiyya

bh¯eya (bhaiyya), name + Elder brother bh¯eya (bhaiyya)

Br (Yo)

bh¯eya

By name, pet name

FaBrSo (older than ego)

bh¯eya, bhaiyya

bh¯eya (bhaiyya), name + cousin bh¯eya (bhaiyya)

FaBrSo (younger than ego)

bh¯eya

By name

FaSiSo (older than ego)

bh¯eya, bhaiyya

bh¯eya (bhaiyya), name + Cousin bh¯eya (bhaiyya)

FaSiSo (younger than ego) MoBrSo (older than ego)

By name

bh¯eya, bhaiyya

MoBrSo (younger than ego) MoSiSo (older than ego) MoSiSo (younger than ego)

Eldest Br is often called d¯ad¯a

Younger brother

Cousin

Cousin

bh¯eya (bhaiyya), name + Cousin bh¯eya (bhaiyya) By name

bh¯eya, bhaiyya

Any female cousin of mother of same generation

Cousin

bh¯eya (bhaiyya), name + Cousin bh¯eya (bhaiyya) By name

Cousin

Si (older than ego)

d¯ıd¯ı, (b¯ah¯ın)

d¯ıd¯ı, name + d¯ıd¯ı

(Elder) sister

Si (younger than ego)

chota (b¯ah¯ın)

By name, per name

(Younger) sister

FaBrDa (older than ego)

d¯ıd¯ı

d¯ıd¯ı, name + d¯ıd¯ı

Cousin

Used to refer to or address older female cousins, often as a proper name or form of address)

(continued)

Appendices

303

(continued) Relation descriptor

Term of reference

FaBrDa (younger than ego) FaSiDa (older than ego)

d¯ıd¯ı

FaSiDa (younger than ego) MoBrDa (older than ego)

d¯ıd¯ı

MoBrDa (younger than ego) MoSiDa (older than ego)

d¯ıd¯ı

MoSiDa (younger than ego) So

bet¯a (bituwa)

Term of address

English usage

By name

Cousin

d¯ıd¯ı, name + d¯ıd¯ı

Cousin

By name

Cousin

d¯ıd¯ı, name + d¯ıd¯ı

Cousin

By name

Cousin

d¯ıd¯ı, name + d¯ıd¯ı

Cousin

By name

Cousin

bet¯a, bet¯a + name, pet name

Son

BrSo

bet¯a

bet¯a + name, pet name

Nephew

SiSo

bet¯a

bet¯a + name, pet name

Nephew

SoSo

n¯at¯ı

bet¯a + name, pet name

Grandson

SoSoWi

n¯atp¯ato

bet¯ı + name, pet name

SoSoSo

parn¯at¯ı

bet¯ı + name, pet name

Great grandson

n¯at¯ı

bet¯a + name, pet name

Grandson

DaSoWi

n¯atp¯ato

bet¯ı + name, pet name

DaSoSo

parn¯at¯ı

bet¯ı + name, pet name

So of anyone ego calls bet¯a or bet¯ı

also SoDaSo Also used to refer to SoSoWi; any equivalent

Great grandson Great grandson

DaDaSo bet¯ı (bitiya)

bet¯ı + name, pet name

Daughter

BrDa

bet¯ı

bet¯ı + name, pet name

Niece

SiDa

bet¯ı

bet¯ı + name, pet name

Niece

DaDa

n¯at¯ın

bet¯ı + name, pet name

Granddaughter

bet¯ı + name, pet name

Great-granddaughter

DaDaDa

Also used to refer/address So of ego’s sibling, cousin, or of ego’s spouse’s sibling or cousin

Also used to refer to DaSoWi; any equivalent

DaSo

Da

Remarks

Also used to refer/address Da of any sibling, cousin, etc.

Also used to refer to SoDa; any equivalent (continued)

304

Appendices

(continued) Relation descriptor

Term of reference

Term of address bet¯ı + name, pet name

Great-granddaughter

SoDa

n¯at¯ın

bet¯ı + name, pet name

Granddaughter

SoDaHu

n¯at d¯am¯ad

DaSoDa

SoSoDa

English usage

Remarks

Also used to refer to DaDa; any equivalent

bet¯a + name, pet name bet¯ı + name, pet name

Great-Granddaughter

FaSiHu

ph¯uph¯a, ph¯o¯ı

ph¯uph¯a, ph¯o¯ı

Uncle

HuFa

p¯a, s¯as¯ur

p¯a

Father-in-law

Any equivalent

WiFa

p¯a, s¯as¯ur

p¯a

Father-in-law

MoSiHu

m¯os¯a, (mous¯a)

m¯os¯a, name + m¯os¯a

Uncle

MoBrWi

m¯am¯ı, (tante)

m¯am¯ı, name + m¯am¯ı

Aunt

Fa(El)BrWi

d¯ad¯ı

d¯ad¯ı

Aunt

Anyone equivalent

Fa(Yo)BrWi k¯ak¯ı

k¯ak¯ı

Aunt

Anyone equivalent

HuMo

m¯a, s¯as

m¯a

Mother-in-law

WiMo

m¯a, s¯as

m¯a

Mother-in-law

Hu

pati

attention drawing sound ‘O!/Oy!/Oye!’(‘oh!/aye’) or teknonymy1

HuBr (Elder)

b¯ark¯a

Brother-in-law

HuBr (El) Wi

bark¯ı

Sister-in-law

HuBr (Yo)

chotka

WiBr (El)

sala2

chotka, by name

Any equivalent

The term is less in use now. ‘Boss’ is used by some; ‘my man’ by lower caste women or when a woman is angry Anyone equivalent

Brother-in-law Brother-in-law

Anyone equivalent to WiBr. The term is used to refer to anyone Wi calls Br, e.g., WiMoBrSo

WiBr (Yo)

sala

By name

SiHu

bahnoi

bh¯eya (bhaiyya), name + Brother-in-law bh¯eya (bhaiyya)

HuSiHu (woman speaking)

nandoi

Brother-in-law

Or any equivalent (anyone who calls her salajhaj, see WiBrWi)

Brother-in-law

Or any equivalent

WiSiHu

salubhe

SoWiFa

samdhi

samdhi

Brother-in-law

In-laws

DaHuFa

samdhi

samdhi

In-laws

Wi

patni

Pet name; dolah¯ın [lit. bride], attention drawing ‘E!’ (‘hey!’), teknonymy1

Wife

By name

Sister-in-law

WiSi (El)

sali

WiSi (Yo)

sali

Husband of anyone ego calls d¯ıd¯ı brother of their husband or wife

The term is less in use. ‘My woman’ is used, especially when a man is under the influence of alcohol

Sister-in-law (continued)

Appendices

305

(continued) Relation descriptor

Term of reference

Term of address

English usage

Remarks

Br(El)Wi

bhauji, bhowji

bhauji, name + bhauji

Sister-in-law

Anyone ego calls bhaiyya

Br(Yo)Wi

chotki

By name

WiBrWi

salahaj

Sister-in-law Sister-in-law

Or anyone equivalent to WiBrWi

SoWiMo

samdhin

samdhin

In-laws

DaHuMo

samdhin

samdhin

In-laws

DaHu

d¯am¯ad

d¯am¯ad

Son-in-law

Also used to refer to anyone ego calls bet¯ı

SoWi

dol¯ah¯ın, bah¯uriya bah¯u, (patoh)

dol¯ah¯ın

Daughter-in-law

Also used to refer to anyone ego calls bet¯a; dol¯ah¯ın (feminine of dol¯ah¯a, bridegroom) is more commonly

Abbreviations Br brother, Da daughter, El elder, Fa father, Mo mother, Si sister, So son, Wi wife, Yo younger Notes 1 Teknonymy = the practice of calling a person who has had a child ‘father/mother of so-an-so’, i.e., combing the parental term with the child’s name, instead of using a kinship term or personal name 2 Sometimes a distinction is made between brothers who are older and younger than one’s wife; the wife’s elder brother is called b¯ark¯a saal 3 There are some variations. Some call father’s eldest brother as b¯ ark¯a d¯ad¯a, grouping all other father’s elder brothers as d¯ad¯a. Klass mentions that ‘in one case, Fa eldest Br was called b¯ark¯a b¯ap (big father)’ (1988: 96). This is more akin to Dravidian custom of calling father’s elder brothers as ‘big father’ and father’s younger brothers as ‘small father’. In some cases, the term d¯ad¯a was earlier used by younger brothers to refer or address their eldest brother 4 The terms a ¯ j¯a and a¯ j¯ı are used to refer to all males and females respectively on ego’s father’s side in the 2nd ascending generation (e.g., FaMoBr, FaSiHu, etc., and FaSi, FaMoSi, FaMoBrWi, etc.) 5 The same terms—¯ aj¯a and a¯ j¯ı and n¯an¯a and n¯an¯ı are generally used for appropriate 2nd generation affinal kins 6 Tante is French for aunt Source Prepared by the Author

Appendix 7.2 Muslim kinship terminology Relation

Term of reference

Term of address

English usage

Fa

abbu

Daddy

Father

FaFa

dadajaan

dadajaan

(Paternal) grandfather

FaFaFa

pardadajaan

pardadajaan

(Paternal) great-grandfather

MoFa

nanajaan

nanajaan

(Maternal grandfather)

MoFaFa

parnanajaan

parnanajaan

(Maternal) great-grandfather

FaBr (El)

c¯ac¯a (ch¯ach¯a)

c¯ac¯a (ch¯ach¯a), name + ch¯ach¯a

(Paternal) uncle

Remarks

(continued)

306

Appendices

(continued) Relation

Term of reference

Term of address

English usage

FaBr (Yo)

c¯ac¯a (ch¯ach¯a)

c¯ac¯a (ch¯ach¯a), name + ch¯ach¯a

(Paternal) uncle

FaBr(El)Wi

c¯ac¯ı (ch¯ach¯ı)

c¯ac¯ı (ch¯ach¯ı), name + Aunt ch¯ach¯ı

FaBr(Yo)Wi

c¯ac¯ı (ch¯ach¯ı)

c¯ac¯ı (ch¯ach¯ı), name + Aunt ch¯ach¯ı

MoBr (El)

mamu

mamu, name + mamu

(Maternal) uncle

MoBr (Yo)

mamu

mamu, name + mamu

(Maternal) uncle

ammi, mom, mummy

Mo

ammi

MoMo

nanijaan

(Maternal grandmother

FaMo

dadijaan

(Paternal grandmother)

Br (El)

bara bhai/ bhaiyya

Remarks

Mother

bhai sahab, name + bhai

Elder brother Younger brother

Br (Yo)

chota bhai

By name

Si (older than ego)

bei

bei, name + bei

Si (younger than ego)

bahen/choti bahen

By name

So

bet¯a

bet¯a, bet¯a + name, pet Son name

BrSo

bhatija

By name

Used to refer to or address older female cousins, often as a proper name or form of address Younger sister

Nephew

SiSo

bhatija

By name

Nephew

SoSo

pota

By name

Grandson

DaSo

pota

By name

Grandson

Da

bet¯ı

bet¯ı + name, pet name Daughter

BrDa

bhatiji

By name

Niece

SiDa

bhatiji

By name

Niece

DaDa

poti

By name

Granddaughter

SoDa

poti

By name

Granddaughter

HuFa

susar

Father-in-law

WiFa

susar

Father-in-law

HuMo

saas

Mother-in-law

WiMo

saas

Mother-in-law

Hu

shohar

Husband (continued)

Appendices

307

(continued) Relation

Term of reference

Term of address

English usage

Remarks

SoWiFa

samdhi

samdhi

In-laws

Any male of the generation of Fa of any person ego calls So or Da. Two men who are samdhi to each other may call each other bhai if a close friendship develops between them

DaHuFa

samdhi

samdhi

In-laws

See SoWiFa

Wi

biwi

pet name; attention drawing ‘E!’ (‘hey!’) teknonymy1

Wife

SoWiMo

samdhin

samdhin

In-laws

Any female of the generation of Mo of any person ego calls So or Da

DaHuMo

samdhin

samdhin

In-laws

See SoWiMo

Notes 1 Teknonymy = the practice of calling a person who has had a child ‘father/mother of so-an-so’, i.e., combining the parental term with the child’s name, instead of using a kinship term or personal name Source Prepared by the author

Glossary

In the literature on Trinidad and Indo-Trinidadians several non-English and modified English words are used. This glossary provides the intended meaning of the words as used by the people, either Indo-Trinidadians or others. These meanings may be at variance from the meaning of the original words in the language in which they are used. The variations in the spellings of the words as used in the literature are given, with the most common spelling given first. Only words that appear repeatedly are included in the glossary; those occurring only once or twice are explained in parenthesis in the text or in a footnote. The Hindu and the Muslim kinship terminologies are provided in Appendices 7.1 and 7.2 respectively. agvaa, a¯ gw¯a, agua, aguwah one who negotiates a marriage; marriage-matchmaker ajah, aja father’s father, paternal grandfather ajie, aji father’s mother, paternal grandmother anchaar, aachar a spicy pickle made of green mangoes or pommecythere (Sponadias dulcis; ambarella), or some other fruit mixed with masala, mustard oil, and pepper arkatia (masculine); arkatiniya (feminine); arkatiya , arkati unlicensed recruiter of immigrants for indenture baigan melongene, eggplant bandhaniya Eryngium foetidum; chardon bénit (Cnicus benedictus, St Benedict’s thistle, or blessed or holy thistle; shado beni leaves used for seasoning food in place of dhaniya (Coriandrum sativum, coriander) leaves barah, bara, baaraa a deep-fried delicacy made out of ground flour, urid dal/split pea and spices barahi, barah¯ı, barahie twelfth day after childbirth when the birth celebration is held and the child is given a name barat, baraat the groom’s marriage procession (motorcade) to the bride’s home bhaat cooked (boiled) rice bhaiya elder brother; a respectful form of addressing an elder male bhajan devotional song or devotional singing © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Jayaram, From Indians in Trinidad to Indo-Trinidadians, GeoJournal Library, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3367-7

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Glossary

bhaji, bhaaji, bhagee, bhajee greens, spinach bundal, bandal the baggage wrapped in cloth (bundle) in which the indentured migrants carried their personal belongings; called ghatri elsewhere in the girmitiya diaspora callaloo Creole word for a local dish prepared by blending a variety of ingredients carripulay Murraya koenigii; Tamil: kariveppilai, or curry tree leaves Cascadura, Cacadoo, Casquedoux a small Trinidadian freshwater catfish—genus: Hoplosternum littorale; subfamily: Callichthyidae—with tough scaly skin chamain a Chamar woman; midwife charhaway, charhaawe offerings to god or deity chataingne breadfruit chathi, chati, catee, catth¯ı, chatee sixth day after the childbirth when the mother and baby are bathed and ‘purified’ chela disciple of a guru chhaunkh, chownkay, chhowke seasoning of dishes with mustard oil, garlic, pepper, etc. Chinidad, Chini-dad literally, ‘land of sugar’; an expression used by arkatias to cajole gullible people to sign the indenture agreement chitty rotational lottery chokha, chokhaa roasted and pounded dish, e.g., grilled tomato chutney chulha, choolha an earthen hearth; a fireside made of mud and clay plastered with cow-dung chutney, chatnee a spicy or savoury condiment or sauce made of fruits/vegetables with tamarind/vinegar and spices; a distinct Indo-Trinidadian fusion genre which blends Bhojpuri folk music with Caribbean calypso and soca music coolie an indentured labourer on a sugar estate; a term of abuse for a person of Indian descent Creole a word of Spanish origin denoting African born in Trinidad, as distinct from the African-born; English patois spoken by Creoles and now by Indo-Trinidadians; also called Trini dal, dhal split pulses, cooked cereals dalpuri a paper-thin roti with split-pea stuffing deota, devta a Hindu god deya, diya small earthen/clay oil lamps dhoti the garment (loincloth) worn by males dougla, doogla progeny of mixed union of Africans and Indians in Trinidad; Indic word doogala or dogl¯a, which means a person of impure breed, a hybrid, a mongrel driver work-foreman or headman on an estate gauna a northern Indian custom and the ceremony associated with the consummation of marriage ghar ka adami literally, ‘home people’; a survival from the indentured days, to refer to bonds developed by fellow Indians on the estates regardless of religion, caste, or place of origin in India girmit corrupt form of the English word ‘agreement’ girmitiya derivative of girmit; one who has signed the indenture agreement

Glossary

311

guru Hindu spiritual guide/teacher/preceptor hafiz a Muslim who has committed the Koran, the sacred book of Islam, in its original Arabic to his memory hijab head-covering worn by Muslim women Hosay, Hosé, Hosey, Hosse, Hosein Shia Muslim festival of Muharram to commemorate the martyrdom of Hosain, Prophet Mohammed’s grandson in CE 680 imam a religious leader, one who leads Muslim worshippers in prayer. jahaj the ship or vessel that brought the indentured immigrants to Trinidad jahaji-bahin sisterhood of the ship jahaji-bhai brotherhood of the ship jahaji bundal (see bundal) the bundle in which the indigent jahajis carried their personal belongings slung over the shoulders or carried on the head jahajis, jahaji (M), jahajin (F) the girmitiya passengers on the ships jamaat congregation or district organisation of the Islamic faithful jatis (see varna) local configuration of endogamous groups in the Indian subcontinent jhandi a ritual flag, a Hindu religious symbol jharay; jharaying sweep(ing) away or dispel(ling) evil with prayers jhil swamp joola, jhula the bodice worn by women, with arms up to wrist juthaa pollution of food and drink by being partially consumed; pollution through saliva kajari a popular folk music form; notably sung during the rainy season; Mirzapur in eastern Uttar Pradesh is considered to be the real home of this genre, which is sung in Bihar, too Kalkatiyas, Calcatiyas those who emigrated from the port in Calcutta (now Kolkata) kangany (see maistri) foreman or overseer Kangany system a system of recruitment of labour for migration to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Malaya (now Malaysia) under which the kangany (himself an Indian migrant) recruited families or groups of Tamil labourers from single villages in the erstwhile Madras Presidency karailli, karaylee, carraillee, carrailli bitter gourd katha reading from a sacred Hindu text, generally combined with prayers and bhajans, e.g., Satyanarayan Katha kazi, qazi a Muslim judge who interprets and administers the religious law of Islam khatiya wooden bed frame with a criss-cross of jute string (now polythene) on which the bedding was put kheer, meetha bhaat rice pudding khelauni child-minder, who took care of children when their mothers went to work on the estate kirwal corrupt form of Creole kitab readings from the Koran, the sacred book of Islam, with sermons and songs kutia, cutia small temple or shrine of Hindus La Trinite The Holy Trinity; the English name of Trinidad lota, lotah a small tumbler, usually of brass or copper and round in shape

312

Glossary

Madrasis, Madrassis, Madrasses those who emigrated from the port in Madras (now Chennai) mahar, mahaar, maher, mahr a gift or contribution made by the husband-to-be to his wife-to-be under Islamic law, for her exclusive property, as a mark of respect for the bride, and as recognition of her independence. maistri (see also kangany) supervisor Maistry system a system of recruitment of labour for migration to Burma (now Myanmar) under which the maistry (himself an Indian migrant) recruited families or groups of Tamil labourers from single villages in the erstwhile Madras Presidency mandir a Hindu temple mantra a word or sound that is believed to have a special spiritual power; a sacred chant in Hinduism and Buddhism, masala a spice mixture ground into paste or powder used in Indian cookery masjid mosque, Muslim place of worship matikor, maticore, matikura, matti kore a woman-centred and woman-dominated ceremony of female sexuality and sexual ribaldry on the eve of a Hindu wedding ceremony maulvi, moulvi a learned teacher or doctor of Islamic law in India, a form of address for a learned Muslim who ministers to the religious needs of his community mirgi seizure moonsie, munshi a scribe, secretary or language teacher mufti an expert in Islamic jurisprudence who is empowered to give rulings murti a small statue, figurine of a Hindu god/goddess namakharam, nemackharaam, nimakaram ingrate or traitor namaz, namaaz literally, obeisance; the ritual prayers prescribed by Islam to be observed five times a day nana mother’s father, maternal grandfather nani mother’s mother, maternal grandmother orhni, ornie, oronhi veil; a traditional scarf worn by women loosely over their shoulders or about the neck or the waist pagri male headdress pal jahaj sailing ship pandit, pundit a male Hindu priest/scholar pandita a Hindu priestess; feminine form of pandit panditai Hindu priestcraft panth, panthi, phunt a spiritual path, faith; a sect paynuse, peynoose, phenus a sweet-dish traditionally made from the milk of a cow that has just given birth (colostrum) and sugar, ginger, cinnamon, almond essence, bitters, etc. phoolaawa white flour; a bilingual pun: phool = flower in Bhojpuri phuunknee a small blowpipe prashad, parsad, persad, prasad consecrated food served after a puja or satsang puja ritual worship to a deity pujari performer of a puja

Glossary

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roti unleavened Indian flat bread made with white flour roucou a fruit of the achiote tree (Bixa orellana); its extract is widely used in Trinidad and elsewhere in South America as a food-colouring called Annatto saadi-biyaah wedding sadhu, saddhu a Hindu holy man, who abstains from non-vegetarian food and alcohol sagaai betrothal; engagement ceremony satsang a religious meeting where people read holy texts, think deeply about or talk about religious matters, etc.; a spiritual discourse. sil-lorha a traditional pared stone device used for grinding spices to make a rich fullbodied masala (known in north India as sil-batta). Sil, is a flat rectangular stone slab with its upper surface chiselled to make it rough, and lorha is a cylindrical stone polished to make it smooth, both sourced from river beds sirdar/sardar Indian headman on board ship or estate/overseer on the estate sloka verse from a religious text/epic soca an acronym formed from Soul of Calypso Sonar/Sunaar goldsmith, jeweller soonaarin a woman of goldsmith caste taabeej amulet tarkaree cooked vegetables tassa an Indian drum; percussion instrument tava the frying pan taziyha, taziya, tazeah, tazzia, tadjah a replica of the tomb of Husain, the martyred grandson of Muhammad, that is carried in processions during (Hosay in Trinidad) the Shiite festival of Muharram thariya, tarriah a metal plate used for serving/taking food; a circular brass tray varna (see jati) pan-Indian abstract hierarchical classification of communities yag, yagya, yagna a four-, seven-, or fourteen-day series of rites and readings from a sacred text