GU ~ Indo-Grenadian Culture pg3-Viechweg

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

GRENADA UNCOVERED

Cont'd from pg 2

Language, culture and the State of creolization

An uncommon view of Grenada’s geo-cultural beauty

The Christianizing impulse, especially after the end of apprenticeship in 1885, helped in totally effacing several expressions of ‘Indianness.’ African identity suffered, too, under the Christianizing impulse, especially when we consider that both Africans and Indians arrived in Grenada with substantial traditions in Islam, polytheism, animism and other non-Christian value systems. Hosay celebrations are still held in Trinidad,

Guyana

and Jamaica, where there are larger East Indian communities. At one point, Hosays were also celebrated in Grenada. The French first, subjected Africans to Catholicism, while the Indians were subject mainly to Anglicanism and Presbyterianism, by the English; Grenada had finally changed hands form French to English by the time the Indians arrived. Even in the context of Hindu practices, there was evidence of a healthy appropriation of African culture by Indians in Grenada. Patois, which was a healthy slave adaptation of formal French, bore linguistic elements from France and Africa, and was then enriched by the continental tonality and rhythms of Grenadian Indians. Revered Indians helped in the validation of Grenadian Patois, as is substantiated in this interview with Phillip Balwant, who recounts:

A pandit [pundit] by the name of Pariagh who wore dhoti (loin cloth) and Kurta (shirt)

and who spoke Hindi, English and patois, is known to have existed in Grenada.

(Mahabir, in Bahadursingh, 375)

Grenadian Indians also, despite police interruptions, once had their own Hosay celebrations:

“The last remembered Hosay procession in the 1930’s started

from Mohan’s yard at Grand Barcolet and continued up to

Grenville where it was checked by the police.”

Mahabir in Bahadursingh (380-381)

Indo-Jamaicans celebrate the Muslim festival of Hoosay

The pandit, Pariagh, also spoke patois because it was the functional language of his congregation. It is noteworthy that the shared use of patois occurred even against the anglicizing backdrop of anti-patois campaigns, further complicating the creolization process. Despite the overall acquiescence of the Indian community, there were elements of resistance. The patois competence of the Indians was evidence of their willingness, against the campaign of Anglicization, to embrace the common language. Generally, Indians made many attempts to cultivate cultural and social organizations, but were discouraged even by other Indians from so doing in order to avoid the perception of segregation. The Indian population in Grenada, estimated at some 9,700 (out of a national population of 95,000) in 1983, is significant, and deserves to have a more distinct cultural representation. In comparison to other large minorities like Native Americans, whose population percentage is significantly less than that of Indians in Grenada, or even to African Americans whose percentage is only slightly more than Grenada’s Indian percentage, it seems that Grenadian Indians have been a silenced minority. Indians did not sustain their cultural fight, and were terribly set back in their negotiating capacity. Today, I believe an opportunity still exists to recover some of the losses attributable to their earlier lack of commitment to cultural self-definition.

A Hosay parade in Jamaica

(with the permission of the Jamaica Gleaner)

Grenadian Indians no longer hold this celebration, but in Jamaica, like it was in Grenada, there is cross cultural interest and participation in Hosay marches,

Today, Afro-Grenadians are matured enough to recognize the pride and stability that Indians can achieve through an improved knowledge of the deep roots that still keep them standing. Yet, the efforts made by Indians to survive the New World cannot be dismissed. By 1885 Obeah and Shango had survived, but manifested themselves through the tint of Christianity. Many Indo-Grenadians became trusted practitioners of Obeah, as a new culture was creolized from the interaction of the Indians and their African countrymen. In many ways Indians used their own particular skills in their adaptation to the dominant culture. In the process, they have created something that is more than mere adaptation; they created legends:

The specific narrative forged out of each migration is best told and understood when filtered through the prism of the “intangible heritage(s)” which in the face of the conquering hegemony of colonizing powers have catalyzed sense and sensibility and shaped in large measure a distinctive “Caribbean” ethos/aesthetic through a process that scholars often refer to as creolization. (Nettleford, 3).

I believe the grand narrative, within which all other Indian narratives are circumscribed is: there were once a people who braved the high seas to get to the other side of the world in search of a future, and who helped to build a nation in the process, but they encountered the worst possible hardships, the worst of which was a lack of national recognition, attributable to their loss of cultural history and identity. When Nettleford mentions the intangible heritages, he is talking about:

he myths, folk philosophies, oral traditions, religious rituals, traditional medicine,

stival arts and such other products of the collective creative imagination as music,

dance and orature. 12

Sometimes African Grenadians view Indo-Grenadians as displaying a penchant for secrecy, which I actually believe to be a consequence of the intangible elements of their heritage, which must also have aided their survival, as well as having positively affected the overall creolization of today’s Grenada. Many Indians had relied on a fierce protection of their family, business and trade secrets, in carving their way out of plantation servitude. I think the practice of arranged marriages was another of the intangibles that not only helped to identify the Indian community; it probably helped in physically preserving them as a Grenadian demographic entity. Nettleford represents the intangible heritages as elements of culture that are not in the open, somewhat subversive, that I believe more readily lend themselves to a truer constitution of our Caribbeanness. Indian ‘secrecy’ is, in no way, different from the protective mechanisms traditionally employed by besieged minorities throughout the world, nor does it suggest an anti-African bent. In fact, there is more than ample evidence of Indians who have shared their ‘heritages’ with the African population. Often, when there were marriages between Africans and Indians, the couples seemed to have successfully engaged in some element of commerce. Overall, Indian-African relations remained rich and varied.

Only last October I attended the funeral of a family friend from the Indian village of Ford. The deceased was an Afro-Grenadian man, who was married to an Indo-Grenadian woman. From what I experienced, I believe inter-racial harmony in Grenada is good. I was more than pleased to see such a large assembly of Indian sympathizers. For many years, I had not seen so many Grenadian Indians in one location. At the wake, prior to the funeral, I was treated to stories, including one about a diminutive Indian man from the village who, in the old days, was an expert in the African stick fighting art, Calinda (French spelling). The story of this small-statured Indian man is somewhat mythical, in his unusual ability to fight off entire villages of ‘bad johns.’ Reportedly, he would stay on Paradise Bridge and put up a fight in which no intruder could cross the bridge and head towards Ford. Some of the older Indians at the wake could speak French kriol, but the story of the stick fighter was narrated in Grenada’s day-to-day “broken” English, what Merle Collins identifies in Grenada as Kamau Braithwaite’s coinage of nation language. Even then, I detected speech patterns unique to that group, which will make for valuable linguistic study. I believe I detected a variation of the same sing-song (my impression) phonetics that some English-speaking comedians sometimes imitate when making fun of Indian speech. I think the average non-Indian realizes that there are traits and dispositions common to Indians that, while not ‘essentializing’ them, suggests the continuity of a presence and identity beyond physical appearances. But, the work on identity rectification will have to be spearheaded by indo-Grenadians, hopefully with the understanding, encouragement and co-operation of the larger population.

Speaking of the creole (Kriol) language of her native

Grenada

, Merle Collins identifies two variants. 1) Kamau Braithwaite’s nation language often referred to as “bad English,” and 2) “Patwa [otherwise spelt patois], which was a more French syntactic base, with rhythms and structures of various African languages” (91). Collins thinks that if the grammas of our Kriol languages are to be taught in Grenadian schools, so as not to be reduced to a “merely exciting aberration,” they should be taught:

in association with the history of the African and Asian communities imported into the region so that, understanding, people will begin to

develop a pride in the fact that new languages were forged in what might euphemistically be termed difficult circumstances.

(Collins, in Balutansky and Sorrieau, eds. 91)

With a strategy as suggested by Collins, the mere focus on Indian history will, in itself, allow us to more accurately examine and identify language, speech patterns, taste, dispositions and a host of other unique cultural features that describe our Indian community. The whole nation must stand up in support of such efforts, because it will make us a stronger nation by emphasizing our heterogeneity, instead of the pretense that we have a tightly knit, homogeneous culture in

Grenada

. Indo-Grenadians have participated in all facets of our dominant Afro-Grenadian culture for one hundred and fifty years now; maybe it is time now for cultural reciprocity, even if it is only at the level of encouraging educational diversity to include Indian Studies.

Grenadian Ron Sookram, in his PhD dissertation, where he addresses the culture and identity of the Indian community in

Grenada

between 1857 and 1960, also points to Indian appropriation of the Afro-French creolization that was called Patwa, which actually was a linguistic formulation of the Afro-Grenadian in his response to the dictates of French hegemony. Patwa endured, and it deserves recognition for its past prominence and reliability in day-to-day conversation. Patwa survived, in spite of formal efforts by colonial governments to discredit and stop it. Up to a significant part of the 1920s, the majority of Grenadians continued to speak French patois.

… the majority of Grenadians continued French patois up to the 1920s. With the daily interaction between Indians and Africans the Indians

adopted this language as their main mode of communication. Nevertheless, by the 1950s English had replaced French Patois as the main

language of communication. (Sookram 5)