Last week, I addressed Indian identity formation in the Caribbean where Indians have been a minority population and argued that in these countries Indians have retained practically no cultural characteristics from their ancestral homeland. Instead, they have become creolised, displaying more commonalities with Caribbean Africans.
In this column, I will show that although some creolisation has occurred amongst the more urban-oriented Indians in Guyana, Trinidad and Suriname, the identity formation of Indians in these aforesaid countries has been different from indenture to independence.
The word independence here implies “freedom” from the yoke of indenture and colonialism, although technically Indians in the Caribbean have been dragging the chains of indenture and suffering from the impact and bouts of external and internal colonialism on their daily lives.
Some may ask why Indian indentured labourers were favoured more in Guyana, Trinidad and Suriname and not so much in St Lucia and St Vincent, for example.
The answer is that the planters were more determined to carry on with plantation agriculture after slavery in the expansive land space in Guyana, Trinidad and Suriname than in the smaller islands. There were also economic and ideological reasons such as to ensure planter safety and security through the policy of divide and rule.
Whatever might have been their reasons for Indians coming to these countries rather than to other countries, one event is certain. That is, the continuous arrival of Indians led to them forming the majority population, which in turn, invariably produced some natural social dynamics, although some were consciously purposeful.
Indians formed what can be described sociologically as we-ness, meaning that they maintained, reconstructed and modified their ancestral culture while assimilated selectively to their new and semiwesternised environment.
This sort of a hybrid identity was possible because Indians were isolated from the wider society, because Indians began to acquire land and because Indian numbers grew steadily. These characteristics provided a deep anchorage for cultural persistence, selective cultural assimilation, and cultural resistance, hence identity formation amongst them along these social lines.
However, and like in the islands where Indians were a minority, the Indian caste system was transformed into a class system, although this process went through a stage when elements of both social structures were combined to form a unique Indian identity never seen before in Guyana.
This cultural process is not even mentioned in the tons of literature on Indians in Guyana and elsewhere. It is believed that Indians jumped from caste to class. What is also missing in the literature is that during indenture Indians developed an internal social structure and system that was analogous to the Euro-African plantation system in terms of social and economic divisions, which arguably, is still visibly present. Can one any seriously deny that there exists in Guyana a serious division between Indian elites and Indian masses?
The focus question and concern here is not whether Indian identity has experienced change during and after indenture but rather how much of it has changed, and to what degree and in what direction? The argument on the how Indian identity has evolved has unfortunately been flat for some time based on the over used binary opposite thought of cultural loss and cultural creativity in an ever conflict-habituated plantation domain.
Sociologists A Niehoff and M Klass argued over forty years ago that in spite of pressure to change, Indians were determined to maintain their identity in the Caribbean.
Displacement from India and isolation in the Caribbean provided opportunities, not obstacles, in the struggle for cultural retention and persistence. By contrast sociologist J Nevadomsky argued that the dire need to respond and react to local conditions in the Caribbean in order to survive caused much change in Indian social structure.
That Indian ancestral identity changed amidst some retention during and after indenture is hardly surprising. The Caribbean plantation was a fertile place where conditions and thought patterns were challenged, reconstructed, and re-evaluated—as evidenced during slavery.
Immigrant labouring groups, forced or free, had to conform or contribute to the regimen of plantation life, which produced patterns of cultural change and continuity. Moreover, it would be myopic to conclude that Indian culture and identity is a monolithic entity with firm boundaries.
While the above existing literature has contributed to the understanding of how Indian identity has evolved, there have not been many new convincing trends and thoughts on Indian identity formation.
What has happened because of this limitation is that there has been the repetition of the cultural loss/retention theories without new and meaningful analyses as well as misconceptions of Indians in Guyana, namely that Indians vote for the PPP, Indians are country people, and Indians are stoic to non-Indian customs.
Next week, I will address Indian ethno-local identity in Guyana. ([email protected])
