GU ~ Indo-Grenadian Culture pg4-Viechweg

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

GRENADA UNCOVERED

Cont'd from pg 3

An uncommon view of Grenada’s geo-cultural beauty

In the course of these difficult circumstances, Indians also had to make adjustments, because they had to culturally adjust to a dual-power thrust, one being Anglicization and the other, Afro-creolization. The Indian response to these conditions produced a uniquely different narrative, one experienced within the linguistic mix of Grenadian creolization. Indian cultural adaptability, especially with respect to language, merits study. Because India was also a British colony some Indians, in addition to their continental language(s), also brought to Grenada their own version of English 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. (Sookeran 5)

But this English replacement was an English patois, produced under similar conditions as the English patios that Indians would have brought to Grenada. Our English patio is exactly what Sookeran continues to describe as:

…the emergence of a reformulated creole formation [what Collins identifies as kriol (bad English)] which, driven by hegemonizing power, was creating a common platform for communications between, and among, Indians and Africans (5-6).

I think a study of the ensuing linguistic negotiations between Indians and Africans is worthwhile, especially when we consider the variety of languages and heritages that would have influenced Indian performance in the dominant Afro-Grenadian creolization. These negotiations would have provided vital insight into the stories of Indian excellence.

If Nettleford is correct that there are “intangible heritages” underlying the narratives forged, there are certainly facets of Indian culture in Grenada that are yet to be identified. There must also have been culturally unique elements that inspired the bravery of Indians to voluntarily embark on the high seas, especially when the odds of survival were about five times worse than that for a military tour of duty in Iraq, today. Grenadian Indians did not merely adapt to Grenadian conditions; together with Afro-Grenadians, they jointly constructed the Grenada we know today, using their unique cultural capital. Certainly, in the language formulation process, Indians would have had an impact on the formulation of Kriol. I think we need to initiate the studies and strategies that would help us identify the exact locations of Indian influence on our linguistic culture. Have Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati or Arabic had an impact on the syntax, semantics, phonetics, or morphology of our Kriols, for example?

Despite the concessions made in language, it was ultimately in the realm of culture that the outcome of the creolizing process was most crucial for the Indian. Despite their versatility and competence in language, departing from their native languages had a culturally weakening effect. It meant that the languages that preserved their cultures were soon to be forgotten:

What was happening with language was also in process across the entire cultural spectrum, but much to the disadvantage of the Indian cultural formation which, locked in a position of subordination, assumed a defensive posture as Indians were drawn further into the reformulated cultural formation with limited cultural supports (6).

Like language, a syncretized culture was formed in these difficult circumstances, one that now requires a new pedagogical approach, in order to fathom the absence of “supports” that led to the omission, or overlooking, of our Indian population. To understand the significance of Indo-Grenadians to Grenada, consider again that their percentage in the Grenadian population, (9,700 in 1983, according to Mahabir), from a 95,000 population, is just a little less than the percentage of African Americans in the U.S. population. Given the extent of Indo-African interracial mixtures in Grenada, the significance and complexity of Indian cultural representation is heightened. Yet, all cultural representations of Grenada still omit, bypass, or sidestep the historic contributions of Indo-Grenadians. In fact, the main studies of Indians in Grenada, some of which I have cited, have both concluded with the view that an almost effacing absorption of the Indian population has taken place. This is the way Mahabir summarizes the cause of this absorption:

The agents of absorption have been identified as smallness of numbers, evangelization, fragmentation of the Indian community into castes (at first) and class, westernization, an alien educational system, bias media content, disorganization, lack of genuine leadership, breakdown of the extended family, break in the link with India, political bias, etc.396

And from Sookeran, further:

It is a fact that in Grenada Indian culture is often not represented at the national level. While it is true that a few Indian items, like food, music and dance are visible most aspects of Indian life are not given any recognition (11).

Mahabir, in assessing the role of politics in compounding Indian cultural absorption, notes that:

No Government in Grenada has developed a theoretical framework of cultural pluralism or a heterogeneous and differentiated social and cultural system… (Bahadursingh 391)

He is indicting all political authorities, including the PRG. He thinks that “the pivot of the Black Power ideology and later the PRG as it relates to Indians, was a total denial of Indian racial and cultural identity,” and that “it was to Bishop’s advantage to see the Indians completely ‘creolized’ so that they could easily be united with their African counterparts to fight against white American imperialism.“ (394). But the creolization of which Mahabir is here lamenting, is not the heterogeneous creolite of Confiante, but of a homogenizing totality, one that silences and subordinates cultural difference to social class. The problem for the Indian in such a totalizing scheme is that he will never be able to fulfill his unique cultural dreams in a way the African might. On hindsight, it would seem that the PRG was not, then, fully attentive to the abiding dynamics of indigenous culture that, now, seem to outlast revolutionary upheavals. To underscore his point, Mahabir quotes Bernard Coard from a 1979 interview with Chris Searle in which Coard revealed his stance with regard to minorities like the black population in England:

A population of black people comprising about 2 percent of the total population has no hope whatsoever of ever achieving its just rights, of being treated equally, unless there is forged an alliance of all working people regardless of race. (393).

He proceeds to complain about the silence in the collected speeches of Bishop, where he never even makes mention of Grenadian Indians nor their culture. But cultural factors have proven to be more resilient, more subterranean, and too dynamic for the broad classifications than many political ideologies have devised. Look at Grenada, Russia and Eastern Europe and we would see that there were post-revolutionary explosions of culture, not all of which could be deemed ‘constructive,’ however. Throughout, the lesson we have learnt is that a political alliance must interrogate itself as to its embrace of hegemonism or its disavowal of heterogeneity, without which, the cycles of political oppression will continue.

An Indian bus conductor on “Liberty”

Even if it seems idealistic, we still have to proceed from the premise that a cultural group that constitutes only 2 percent the population still deserves independent recognition for its contribution to nationhood and citizenship. A minority group, regardless of its size, should not have to depend on a subordination of its culture in order to gain recognition.

Mahabir recognizes the complacency of Indians, as complicit in their cultural absorption, but Sookeran more squarely places the onus on the Grenadian Indian population. He thinks that:

One reason for such an attitude by Grenadian governments over the years might well have been because little effort was made by Indians themselves in advocating for the promotion of the elements of their culture that had survived. Further, most Indians did not consider themselves as culturally Indian but as Grenadian (11).

But, there is hope that one day there will be renewed interest in the Indian cultural heritage of Grenada. There must be a start to all movements, and it seems that the re-valuation of Grenada’s Indian heritage begins at the level of discourse, in the re-positing of the facts of our history.

Offering guidance against slippage into a kind of complacency and easy recourse to a homogeneous, totalizing view of nationhood, Homi Bhabha suggests that:

Despite its firm commitments, the political must always pose as a problem, or a question, the priority of the place from which it begins, if its authority is not to become autocratic. 65.

At no time must our nation be satisfied with its definitions of nationhood, as we stand the chance of exercising hegemony over areas of marginal existences within the nation. Bhabha posits a necessary instability, in order to ensure that at no given moment, would a heterogeneously total nation slip into the oppressive state of homogeneous totality. Even when Grenada attempted to embrace an advanced notion of nationhood under the PRG, it still fell short, because of its embrace of an idealistic notion of proletarian globalism, where sub-cultures like Rastas, Muslims, lumpens, and others were being systematically silenced, without realizing that that silence ultimately acted against the interests of the revolutionary nation. Self examination to the PRG seemed not to have involved a questioning of the very ideology they espoused. Post colonial theoreticians like our Caribbean Creolistés (proponents of creolenes) are different in, that, they have required an on-going and necessary questioning of the theory and application of Créolité (creoleness) , itself, which is consistent with the instability inherent in heterogeneity.