GU ~ Indo-Grenadian Culture pg2-Viechweg

Cont'd from pg 1

GRENADA UNCOVERED

Abolition, Indentureship and Creoleness: Reflections on the Indo-Grenadian Predicament

I was born in 1957, the same year of the Indian Centenary celebration. Prior to learning of the centenary event, I had been fascinated by other 1957 trivia: in that year Johnny Mathis made the song Chances Are; Bridge Over the River Kwai, which presented multiple perspectives of WWII, was one of the top movies of the year; I think I was fascinated to learn that Elvis’ Jailhouse Rock topped the charts that year. And, it was always memorable to me that in 1957 Eisenhower sent troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to ensure school access to African Americans. Also, I learnt from my mother, who is a douglah, that on the day I was born in 1957 the nurse, after delivering my three and one-half pound frame, went across nearby Camel River, to deliver another baby who unfortunately died at birth. On my birthday, I sometimes remember that that little child was also given my name. Now, in my mind, the Indian Centenary celebration has upstaged all these other 1957 events because it celebrated, in the Callaloo section of my home village of Hermitage, the 100th anniversary of the first Indian arrivals in

Grenada

aboard the ship, Maidstone. But, the confluence of events continues.

My paternal Grandfather, the mulatto son of a Mung Mung (Grenadian white) for almost twenty years, starting before World War II, was then principal of the same Hermitage Government School where the Indian Centenary celebration was held; he was deceased for about a year prior to the Centenary celebration. Both of my parents attended Hermitage Government School. On the same piece of land with the school, was my grandmother’s house. In fact, hers was the closest building to the school. It was from my grandmother, and her family, that I saw Indian Dinners and Mundans (celebration of a boy’s first hair cut), learnt words like belangene, bodhi, seem, curry, talkari, dahl and mahr. My grandmother must have been bold, as she married my Afro-Vincentian/Grenadian grandfather (whose mother experienced the tail end of apprenticeship in St. Vincent), against a backd rop of prejudices and taboos at that time. Together, my maternal grandparents had ten children, my mother being the one before the last. It was from my grandmother that I learnt poignant lessons about what ‘vice’ meant, after she caught me smoking a cigarette; and about saving money, which she conveyed as literally ‘hiding’ your money.

Many Indians changed their names in the course of cultural absorption, but my relatives never did. For example, in Hermitage there was a Jagoo who became a De Gale and a Mahadai who became a Thomas; Indo-Grenadian society is replete with such name conversions. I found out that my grandmother was a byproduct of Bobogee and Haroo. My great grandmother was called Mama Gooya and my great great grandmother was called Ms Bobogee. I inquired further and found that the name Bobogee is common in the Kashmir area of India and that it possibly means “sister.” Regardless, I believe our Indian citizens should be encouraged to salvage as much of their roots as they can, so that they do not have to be a silent cultural entity in Grenada.

I have volunteered this much, because I value the circumstances of creolization that has produced my mongrelized Grenadianness. I am overwhelmingly, and proudly, African in my appearance, but my particular mixed-up Caribbean circumstance, bearing African, Indian and European culture, has caused me to appreciate the need for the preservation of our nation’s cultural heterogeneity. When we assume that we have a homogeneous society, it is often patterned on North American notions of a “color-blind” society, which I regard as dangerously deemphasizing of cultural difference. Requiring color-blindness is a tacit acknowledgement by a hegemonic power of the color burden with which it has saddled itself, and now needs to forget. The marginalized subaltern community has to be cautious in its acceptance of the terms of cultural reference dictated to it. Even extremely wealthy African Americans will tell you that parity in wealth and class does not translate into cultural parity; it does not alleviate their cultural silencing, especially when it concerns concrete steps, like the exploration of Ebonics as a linguistic model in buttressing the English competence of some African American children; in these circumstances, the dominant American English machine kicks into full gear, influencing even African Americans to thwart the Ebonics effort.

The Centenary events and Indian Arrival Day declined in significance, with time, because of the absence of conscious Indian agency. Indian Arrival Day, I believe, is a good re-starting point from which our 150-year-old Indian community can culturally re-negotiate its presence in Grenadian society. African Grenadians have had the benefit of cultural affirmation, thus strengthening their voice and presence in society. Shango, Obeah, saraka, Carnival, black power, Rastafarianism, etc., have all helped to reinforce African pride and presence. Now, I think the African community is sufficiently evolved to appreciate the Indian endeavor to bolster his pride and presence, too. Grenada will be stronger when its Indian population is no longer relegated to cultural silence.

My grandmother, portrait of an Indo-Grenadian

The end of the slave trade in 1807 portended emancipation for the African and the beginning of a quasi-slavery, an indentureship, for the Indian. In some ways the end of the slave trade meant the cessation of new African arrivals to Grenada, and the beginning of new Indian arrivals. Yes, before slavery was fully abolished in 1865, the 1857 trade in East Indian indentures started. Indians were imported to work the plantations that freed slaves had understandably abandoned. It seemed, then, that Indians and Africans were poised for both cooperation and contest in the formation of Grenadian culture. However, time has shown that the cooperation and contests were not effectively handled, evidenced by the relative silence/absence of today’s Indo-Grenadians.

The first Ship to arrive in Grenada bearing East Indian Immigrants was the already mentioned, Maidstone, which landed at Gouyave Bay on May 1^st 1857, carrying 289 passengers, 86 having perished on the voyage from India. Maidstone arrived exactly half a century after the abolition of the slave trade and seven years before the end of apprenticeship/slavery. In 1858 Fulwood landed with 362; in 1859 Jalawar brought 249. Between 1856 and 1878 approximately 3033 East Indians were brought to Grenada [figures, courtesy Mahabir].

My Grandmother (1900 -1973)

On a personal level, the abolition of the slave trade, which led to the abolition of slavery and the coming of indentures, led to my chance at life through an East Indian grandmother and her indentured parents.

Today, in a typical description of Grenadian culture, one does not immediately derive the understanding that Indo-Grenadians were significant in the formation of Grenadian culture. Homogeneous descriptions of Grenadian culture need to be deemphasized and to be informed by theories that reveal, rather than maintain silences about the distinctiveness of indo-Grenadians. While the silences in themselves do no invalidate Indian presence they, nonetheless, fail to provide an inclusive enough portrayal of the nation.

Based on their large minority representation and the uniqueness of their heritage and contributions, it seems odd that Indo-Grenadians can be described as Grenadians, when the very definition, “Grenadian,” needs tweaking so as not to convey notions of an African-only population. One such theory that may help in establishing the true coordinates of our culture is that of creolite (creoleness), which seeks to validate all the cultural heritages that make up our community, without these cultures necessarily loosing either their distinctiveness or their leeway to bargain, in the course of creating our national identity. Creolite is distinct from creolization in the sense that creolization, like mongrelization, is an inevitable consequence of any ad hoc mixing of entities; creolite, however, is the conscious effort to shepherd the direction of creolization so as not to silence, or marginalize, any of its entities.

The Grenadian ex-slaves were too psychically degraded by generational slavery to have felt superior to the poor Indians who were now suffering in the same places where the indignities of 200 years of African slavery were still smoldering. There was at that time, then, no class basis for African-Indian ethnic discord. The major concern that time had borne out was the danger of Indian absorption into the dominant Afro-Grenadian culture. Absorption was dangerous because, in the process, Indian cultural currency, its cultural heritage, was lost. Afro-Grenadians can still point to Big Drum, Shango, Saraka, calendar dances, and carnival celebrations as locations of African cultural expression. But the Indians’ once distinct cultural expression has vastly disappeared. One thing Indians and Africans in Grenada share, however, is an equal estrangement from their motherlands. Indians and Africans in Grenada both consider Grenada their functioning motherland. As such, it is urgent that both groups explore and examine the ways in which, as exiles in the land of the obliterated Carib ‘Indians,’ they can culturally inform each other in the course of shaping Grenadian Creolization.

While not being chattel slaves like their Grenadian slave predecessors, Indians suffered mercilessly first through the tropical rigors of plantation servitude, then through the uncertainties following the economic collapse of the sugar plantations. It was said that the health of Indians on the estates was bad and that mortality rates were high, particularly on Mt. Alexander. It is believed that the majority of the early Indians were threatened by almost total extinction, as they were “abandoned to fate”:

kicked off the estates, and allowed to die of yaws and other diseases, conditions deteriorated on the beausejour and La Fortune estates, the latter having indentured labourers looking like grinning skeletons. (Mahabir in Bahadursingh, 373)

There was no relief in terms of a return to India, because, as Professor Chandrashekar Bhat observes:

While it could be discernible that the British Raj had only the interest in replacing ‘slavery’ by recruiting ‘indenture labor’ from India, the policies it pursued were essentially to facilitate labor emigration rather than to mitigate the plight of their life in the plantation barracks. Not only there was ‘encouragement’ to renew the period of their contract under indenture system but the colonial rulers actively discouraged the labor from returning, charging heavy amounts of money for their return passage. (Bhat. 4)

Early Indian arrivals must have felt exiled on Grenada, just as the early Africans may have felt abandoned upon realizing that there was no return to Africa. There is no denying the degree of similarity in the historical experiences of Indians and Africans on Grenadian plantations. But, the relatively small size of the Indian population, and an absence in advocacy, were major reasons for its omission as a distinct cultural entity and, hence, an omission of recognition for his/her historic sacrifices in building Grenadian culture.

Despite the difficult circumstances stated, early East Indians had the advantage of close family structures as well as and actual knowledge of continental ancestry, which later aided their industriousness, as they sought to emerge with dignity from the losses suffered from indentureship. Individual Indians did elevate themselves in Grenadian society through hard work. Indians became very prominent in the island’s retail and commercial trades. But their success could never surmount their loss of cultural identity, nor the fact that the masses of Indians in Grenada were still relatively poor. Yet, I do believe there are resourceful elements of Indian heritage that would have aided their proportionately high rate of commercial success, compared to the rate of Afro-Grenadian success.

Although I do not see absorption as an expression of finality or non-existence, I agree with the lamentation of Mahabir that the study of the Indians in Grenada is essentially one about a relatively weak minority who could not effectively resist absorption. Gone are the celebrations of Hosay, an Islamic event celebrated by Grenadian Muslims, often attended by Grenadian Hindus. As evidence, the Royal Grenadian Police Force is known to have interrupted a Hosay march into Grenville. Hosay marches were held by the Indian Muslims, commemorating the heroic martyrdoms Prophet Muhammad’s Grandsons in Karbala, Iraq. The RGPF, at the time, was enforcing the anglicizing dictates of the British colonialism.

There were pujahs (dinners) occurring in Grenada as late as in the 1970s. Residents of Ford, Maran, Samaritan, Clozier, Conference, Gouyave, Grand Bacolet and Belair would probably remember these dinners. These were dinners where the African population had an opportunity to taste Indian curry dishes, roti, talkari, dahl, etc. Indian visitors sat on the ground and ate on bluggoe leaves rice, meats, stews and vegetables in the same fashion as in African sarakas where vast quantities of food were likewise served to the community on banana and bluggoe leaves. Accompanying the pujas were the drumming and dancing as one would find in the African sarakas. There was the fact, too, that on both occasions (Saraka and Puja) there were token appeasements of ancestral spirits. One of the common traits shared by some Africans and some Indians in Grenada, despite proselytizing pressures, was a fair disposition towards polytheistic expression. An inevitable creolizing force was occurring even among Indians, themselves; in Grenada Hindu and Muslim Indians would unite around Hosay, which would have been religiously divisive on the Indian subcontinent.

In the historical process, there may have been an absorption into the dominant culture, of features that are formally Indian. Indian cultural features are still active at the core of Grenadian culture; they have not actually dissolved into a homogenized stew. A hybridized heterogeneity has taken place in Grenadian culture, and it requires our keen examination and re-presentation, so as to correct the erroneous perception of Grenada as being an Africanized homogeneity. One of the goals of future research would be to investigate Grenadian culture to unearth the active Indian remains from prior cultural negotiations, because the mere fact that many Grenadians are still recognized as ‘Indians’ means that their absorption is not total. Indo-Grenadians have left us more than just a legacy of cooperation and correspondence in religion, dancing and folklore. Indians have forever influenced our food and vocabulary, because of their popular uses of certain foods with names like chutney, bhaji (bush), roti, tarkari (vegetables), dahl (peas), pomcythere (breadfruit), bhodi (string beans), seem (flat beans), belangene (egg plant) Roti, and even our much-loved curried goat are of Indian origin. African Grenadians owe to their Indian countrymen much more than what our pedagogy and theories have yet conceded to them.