In the upcoming weeks I will examine published studies on indentured historiography with the expectation to provide new modes and models of thoughts on the Indian sojourn experience during 80 years of indenture.
My aim is to share as much information as possible as we approach 100 years of indentured emancipation in March 2017.
I am convinced that anyone who has conducted a careful analysis on indentured historiography in the Indophone Caribbean will realise that there has been an upsurge in published studies in the past three decades which have arguably enhanced and advanced our understanding of Indian experience during indenture.
Unfortunately, he or she will also realise that most of the recent published works on indentured Indians have not come out of Guyana, a country that ironically has the largest concentration of Indians in the Americas outside of North America. Worse still is that the University of Guyana does not have an Indian studies programme.
By contrast, the University of West Indies in Jamaica has one of the most vibrant African studies programme in the Caribbean, which I believe, is intended to understand and promote African interests in the Caribbean. One would think that other countries in the region would follow this model, especially in multi-ethnic Guyana where an African and Indian programme –jointly or separately – has the potential to embrace social cohesion more efficiently and effectively among the two most conflict-habituated ethnic groups in Guyana.
That being said, a majority of studies – mainly historical – on Indians during indenture have some serious shortcomings because of the repeated use and reliance on the records of the colonisers to write the history, narrative, and memory of colonised indentured Indian servants.
The result is that Indian indentured experience is seen as total submission to the planter plantation system which I label as decay.
Sure enough, the brutal aspects or what is known as neo-slave experience of indenture should be told and I am certainly not downplaying and adapting a pro-imperialist stance to that experience here.
What is surprising, though, is that the academic discussion on how to write a balanced history of colonised people had been brewing for some time, starting with scholars like Gayatri Spivak, Franz Fanon, Edward Said, Homi Bhaba, Ranajit Guha, to list a few.
Taken together, these studies reveal not only how the history of the colonised had been written from a pro-imperialist perspective but also how damaging this approach had been on the history of the colonied.
The pro-imperialist approach to writing the history of the colonised has caused epistemic violence, marginalising and making the colonised essentially voiceless in the writing and understanding of their own history.
Certainly, one would have expected that the above balanced trends would have been copied or marginally followed in the analysis of indentured historiography in the Indophone Caribbean.
After all, indentured Indians were also colonised and were not involved in the writing of their own history, at least initially. Yet, for some reason, the subaltern approach, which was actually conceived and developed in India and subsequently spread to other parts of the Developing World, was hardly applied to Indian indentured historiography. I label the subaltern approach as determination.
To contextualise and to avoid contradictions, archival records are key to examining events of the past and are very useful in writing a narrative, memory, or history of any group of people. These records are indispensable, and if analysed carefully, can authenticate or even provide a framework for competing interpretations of history.
This has certainly happened with regard to Indian indentured historiography in which a number of scholars have used archival information to produce a sound collective memory of people bringing artistically that memory in tune and tandem with its community.
This is, however, in the minority. Early writings on indentureship are based on the use of archival records to write history, narrative, and memory that reflect their own interpretation of events and evidence, and not to purvey accuracy.
The history of indentured Indian people was written, for the most part, by the supporters of the colonisers or individuals who have used the records of the colonisers to write the history of the colonised.
The consequence is that this approach has reflected imperial domination, exploitation, poor representation, and a negative history of the indentured Indians with isolated glimpses of positivity. To be continued. (send comments to: [email protected])
