In a previous column, I suggested that I would provide some alternative analyses of East Indian (hereafter Indian) identity in Guyana and in the Caribbean. My suggestion coincides with one hundred years of indentured emancipation (March 2017) and the ongoing discussions, discourses and debates on ethnic relations in Guyana.
My hope is that my columns in the upcoming weeks would contribute to a better understanding of who really is an Indian in Guyana and in the Caribbean. My hope also is that my thoughts on Indian identity would foster a better relationship amongst the ethnic groups since the Ministry of Social Cohesion has so far proven to be a lame and limp department, lingering on a league of its own to which this social sore only understands. I urge the President to dismantle this thing now because it is a waste of time, a waste of resources, and above all, a waste of humanity.
I will begin by focusing on how migration has led to the formation of different types of identity among Indians in the Caribbean. I have already presented two alternative analyses of Indian identity in the Caribbean in two previous columns.
To call, the first is Coolieology, that is, a theoretical as well as a practical framework that argues that Indians in the Caribbean have not overcome the indignities of indenture.
The second is a multipartite approach that argues that Creolisation identity (Euro-African) does not apply to a majority of Caribbean Indians.
To repeat, Creolisation is predominantly black, marginally white and faintly brown.
I will not repeat that information here but show instead that the identity of Indians in the Caribbean can be conceptualised on an ethno-local, an ethno-national, a trans-Caribbean, and a global level. Within all four there is a sense of struggle to maintain these identities. Some overlaps also exist in this multipartite structure of Indian identity.
To understand the four alternative forms of Indian identity, it is instructive to observe how Indian identity has evolved as well as examine some prevailing thoughts and trends related to Indian identity in the Caribbean. Here we go.
Indentured Indians brought with them to the Caribbean a form of identity that revolved around their religion—Hinduism and Islam—and their social structure: mainly caste which is a strict form of social stratification into which individuals are born to specific stations of life and remain so until death.
There were, of course, some mobility between castes in India but they were not the norm. Nineteenth century indentured Indians socialised according to their caste position.
These forms of identity were powerful in terms of guiding day-to-day activities and life in general amongst indentured Indians in their homeland. However, upon their arrival in the Caribbean, these forms of identity were immediately challenged.
The Caribbean plantation system identified with and revolved around western values, which were different from the eastern values of the migrants. For instance, western plantation values were motivated and guided by the production and profit and the practice of Christianity while eastern values were motivated and guided by caste rules such as purity, rank and the practice of Hinduism.
The differences between the two value systems whenever they clashed had an enormous impact on the eastern value system for two fundamental reasons.
The first is that the western plantation system was more powerful largely through the force and facet of colonialism, imperialism and capitalism. Moreover, the eastern value system was a transplant without any firm grounding in the new environment. The outcome was a struggle in which the indentured migrants had to adapt to or resist the plantation system to find a place for themselves.
In the islands where Indians were the minority population (St Lucia, Grenada, Jamaica, for instance), they were quickly absorbed into the wider society with relative ease largely due to the exposure to western education, the work of Christian missionaries and the desire of the migrants themselves to live a different life from their homeland.
The result is that these Indians have lost practically every aspect of their ancestral homeland culture and custom. They are considered to be Creole, although there have been efforts in these islands to revive some aspects of their ancestral Indian customs through direct communication with India and with resident Caribbean Indians in Guyana, Trinidad and Suriname. These efforts, however, have revealed unfortunately more sentiments of symbolism than substance.
The situation was different in countries, for example, like Guyana, Trinidad, and Suriname, where Indians have now formed the majority population.
I will continue this assessment in my next column. (Send comments to [email protected])
