Papers

Vijay Jassodra Maharaj examines the representations of the Indo-Caribbean home and family through a range of literary, socio-cultural and theoretical discourses. He focuses on the crucial period between the end of indentureship and the attainment of independence, examining the often conflicting or contradictory (and always interlocking) pulls of imperialism, creolisation, and the idea of Indian belonging. "I want you to have that chance which I have never had: somebody to support me and mine while I write..." says Seepersaud Naipaul to his son Vidia, who will go on to become V S Naipaul. In these words, Vijay Maharaj sees the formation of a "fragile defence of familial relations, which the Indo-Caribbean constructed against the mournful echoes of the Gita and the unknown future in a world already globalised by rampaging European imperialism and the capitalist colonialism it trailed in its wake."

He constructs the Indo-Caribbean home and family as essentially marginal to the process of creolisation that was framing a dominant nationalist ideal of what home and family was to be. In his analysis of Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur, he observes that Naipaul's Indo-Caribbean family lacks self-reflexivity and a sense of "personal inwardness." Yet, this is seen against a larger backdrop of creolisation as imperialism, and later, as too informed by Afro-Caribbeanism to be engaged with by the Indian.

In sum, Vijay Maharaj would seem to be critical of the assimilationist agenda of creolisation, both due to its colonial antecedents and exclusion of the Indian cultural experience. Similarly, he would seem to be suspect (from the perspective of hegemony, as defined by Gramsci, of being a force which subsumes all marginal identities and incorporates them 'willingly' into the prevailing power structure) of the works of Sam Selvon, who - he alleges - writes from the position of the creolised Indian.

Sherry-Ann Singh's paper, 'Socio-religious change among Hindus in Trinidad 1920-1945: A view from the inside' seeks to address Trinidadian Hinduism, which is seen as unreflexive, unchanging, conservative and static, as being instead a community where the process of social mobility was constantly in use, a community which was therefore, dynamically religious. Deriving from the term 'Sanskritisation,' referring to the Indian sociologist M N Srinivas' concept of mobility among castes, she coins the phrase 'Selective Sanskritisation' to refer to mobility within the Hindu community of Trinidad. Sanskritisation, when introduced by Srinivas, in the context of Hinduism in India, was something of a breakthrough concept. It addressed the fluidity of caste relations, and of communities' desires to constantly upgrade and improve themselves. He wrote of it as a process by which "a 'low' Hindu caste, or tribal or other group, changes its customs, ritual ideology, and way of life in the direction of a high and frequently 'twice-born' caste. Generally such changes are followed by a claim to a higher position in the caste hierarchy than that traditionally conceded to the claimant class by the local community..." Concurrent with such changes, as in the Caribbean, are the powerful forces of modernity, imposed by the state. Within such a framework, it is possible to see the upward mobilization of caste identity as not merely aping Brahminism: but rather, as signs of a larger fluidity, plurality and inclusiveness, as marginal castes assimilate into the mode of the dominant caste system in their area.

In the arena of religion Sherry-Ann Singh provides numerous examples of this renegotiation with traditions imposed by prevailing caste structures. She talks of low-caste 'pandits' being chosen over their high-caste counterparts due to a better ability to chant and sing, of the adoption of vegetarianism, of women priests being included in the ritual ceremony. In the family structure, she sees inter-marriage (with the black community) as an acceptable feature of lower-caste Hindu life, but not of the higher-caste communities. Again, the underlying principle of social mobility (though negatively reinforced here, through a stereotype of race) would be the driving factor here, connected to a notion of Hindu class and status. But more importantly, she sees the Hindi film, introduced in the Caribbean since 1935, as the primary means of negotiating with 'western' elements of culture: while Indo-Caribbean nativists might see the influence of Hindi cinema as reinforcing an 'Indian' culture, she notes how the Hindi film in India was itself assimilating western modernism, and thus, by the same process, so was its Indo-Caribbean audience.

Shaheeda Hosein, in 'A Space of their own: Indian women and land ownership, 1900-1945' discusses a relevant and (for this journalist) fascinating facet of Indo-Caribbean history: the question of feminism. She writes: "Perhaps one of the most significant activities in which rural women in Trinidad were engaged over the period 1900 to 1945 was the acquisition and ownership of arable land."

The way in which these women came into possession of land itself is interesting. It is framed in the larger legal illegitimacy of Hindu and Muslim unions in that period (Muslim unions were eventually recognised a little earlier than Hindu ones), where as a result of cohabitation rights not being recognized, a feeling developed that the law took away land from women whose husbands died intestate. Thus, with the increased participation of women in the production process, and in control of it, the strongest feminist identities emerged from the women who were able to combine land acquisition, its economic use, and a traditional domestic role.

Shaheeda Hosein describes the difficulties that faced Indian women in their quest for obtaining land ownership. When the male owner of a property died, the estate would automatically convert to the Crown. Indians rarely made wills, and added to that, was the fact that the state did not recognise common-law unions. Thus, what proceeded was a period of contestation and appeal, where widows frequently petitioned for their rightful inheritance on the behalf of, or with, their children.

The ownership of land provided women with a means of production. In a pattern repeated into the present day, Shaheeda Hosein sees the element of control as a significant factor in emancipating the women who possessed it thus. In a 1997 interview, she recounts the experience of a Trinidadian woman who bought land and started cultivating it in the face of her farmer husband's alcoholism and laziness:

"Well, when I see he only drinking and we working and selling, planting rice, planting cane and we still couldn't make money so much. So I go and buy 1 acre of land not too far from where we other land was. I hire two or three people to work on it. Well, the money coming in from that piece is my money. He can't touch that."

She further goes on to critically assess the ways in which ownership of land mediates a woman's identity. Clearly, there is a significant linkage between the family and the firm: an Indian woman's ownership of land was thus the ability to provide for her family. But it was also leverage for being looked after in her old age, and a means by which she could negotiate her own, independent identity in the family, village and her community.

She initially suggests that the Indian woman's association with commercial (agricultural) land is similar to a man's - thus, merely, a means of production. Spirituality, and a special attachment to land and space, she argues, would come out more in residential and domestic space (though contemporary eco-feminist scholarship would see closer links between the two, and argue differently). Rightly, therefore, she shifts track, concluding with this heart-warming account of a woman's relationship with her land, in testimony to her thesis that Indian women in Trinidad had a generally more "holistic" approach to their commercial land:

"When you buy a piece of land, the man want to cut down all the trees and clear it out, so he could plant whatever he want easier. So he go come and cut down all the trees and thing, and just plant what he want. But you see, he not cooking, he don't have to worry where we getting firewood. Is we the woman who cooking everyday and who have to get the firewood, we know how hard it is. So for we, it better if you leave some trees in the land... Then them man and them only want to see money, to spend, to drink. I want to feed me family, sell a little something. But I like to see the trees and thing too. We taking from Mother Earth, we must give she back something too. So we don't take away everything..."

Brinsley Samaroo, in an account of the "Mutiny" aboard the Guyana-bound Clasmerden (in 1862) seeks to connect a seemingly innocent uprising on a ship full of indentured labourers, and the Indian revolt of 1857. The parallels and analyses of history and its circumstances are fascinating, and it is an interesting glimpse into the possibly trans-national manifestations of anti-colonial mobilisation.

Gietree Kistow, in her paper, seeks to map out issues confronting Indian children, women and their education in Caribbean society, through the fictional works of Seepersaud and V S Naipaul. Ron Sookram examines the processes of assimilation and preservation among Indians in Grenada, at a time of cultural conflict, especially as positioned against a dominant 'creole' nationalism. Al Creighton talks of the 'Cosmic Dance' in understanding the influence of Hindu myths in popular Guyanese culture, paying particular attention to the Sita legend from the Ramayana, in understanding the construction of marriage rituals and the assumed role of the woman as wife and consort.

Some of the other scholarship, in the literary session, included

'The real and the speculation in Guyanese and West Indian writing,' and 'Post-modern diaspora: Indo-Caribbean Guyanese Imagined Homelands' (Ruby Ramraj and Victor Ramraj, respectively, both from the University of Calgary - Alberta, Canada), Further sessions at the conference engaged in the use of proverbs in our everyday lives, facets of history from the Indian-Caribbean perspective, the place and role of religion, feminist traditions and the political dimensions of the Indian identity.

A sample of the papers discussed includes: 'History of the Guyana-Suriname dispute' (Robert Drepaul, President, Middlesex Law Society, Middlesex, UK), 'Racial Equality in Guyana' (Hydar Ally, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Guyana), and 'Indian Attitudes to the People's National Congress: Prospectus for 2006' (Frederick Kissoon, UG Turkeyen). In general, the conference saw a wide range of scholars coming in, from universities in Canada, and of course, from the UWI and UG campuses.

In reference to the clutch of scholarship presented at this conference, two important points strike this writer. One: the association of 'Indian' with Hindu. Though clearly the dominant religious group within the East Indian community, it is astonishing that its dominance should preclude a discussion (or inclusion) of the Islamic Indian history and experience (assuming that the Christian Indian population might have converted locally, and later, rather than assumed their religious identity in a more 'original' sense). Two: the significance given to the perspective of a 'distinct' Indian identity as opposed to the (sometimes mentioned, but rarely discussed) plural instances of inter-race identity. Surely the historical (and, in the case of Guyana, contemporary, political) factors influencing the importance of a distinct race-identity position are important. As surely, however, are race-relations, inter-race community issues, instances of plurality and (dare I say) creolisation, important. No one would question the validity of the positions of most of the scholars who presented at this conference. Rather, one would just wish that a larger space be created, for positions that more bravely confront issues on the inside and the outside of the significant Indo-Caribbean population.