Mobilizing Diaspora: The University of the West Indies hosts International Conference on The Global South Asian Diaspor

By Amar Wahab

Amar Wahab is a lecturer in Sociology at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad & Tobago

For the region’s Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott, “the traveller cannot love,” unlike those more settled and put in place. If this is so in a region ironically settled by diasporic populations, what does it mean for those who have moved from home, those who are stranded while mobile, those who yearn for resettlement of self, family and community while aiming for boundless possibility? The myriad factors that push and pull, wax and wane and which organize diasporas and diasporic circuits are increasingly important to the region, where Walcott’s sense of ‘love’ (and hope) remains ever elusive.

Of the many regions that historically and presently impact the Caribbean, South Asia, especially India, has had and continues to have a deep connection with the Indo-Caribbean diaspora in  Guyana, Trinidad and Jamaica. A similar relation to seemingly far off places like Mauritius, Fiji, and South Africa brings these countries, which share histories of colonialism and indentureship, into fruitful encounter with the Caribbean. The increasing attempts by India to marshal its troops in the global diaspora through economic, political and cultural venues, like clothes and jewellery fairs, Bollywood cable channels, and joint-venture banking, etc. can only be realistically assessed when thought of in relation to the response of the diaspora to this invitation to allegiance to homeland.

At the same time we see similar gestures of reciprocity connecting the Indo-Caribbean diaspora in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, The Netherlands and France, though with different intensities and directions of exchange.  These increasingly fluid mobilizations of love for return and returning for love’s sake must be watched to understand what they can make possible and problematic. Perhaps it is this attention to what Tejaswini Niranjana terms ‘mobilizing India’, and I would add, mobilizing diaspora in the name of India (People of Indian Origin and Non-Resident Indians), that the region needs to carefully consider alongside longstanding concerns about Western neoimperialism, as a unique framing consideration of our 21st-century horizon.

These are a few of the many issues that will soon heat up a four-day international conference on The Global South Asian Diaspora in the 21st Century: antecedents and prospects to be held at The University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine campus, June 1-4 2011). Co-hosted by the UWI, The University of Trinidad and Tobago, and the National Council of Indian Culture in Trinidad, the conference will bring together a range of local (Trinidad), regional (Belize, Guyana, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Suriname, and St. Lucia) and international (Austria, Canada, India, Mauritius, The Netherlands, South Africa, The United Kingdom, United States) scholars and non-governmental organizations to share, discuss and debate some of the leading currents of thought and practice in the global diaspora.

By no means is this the first initiative of this kind in the region; in fact, this is the seventh conference related to the Indo-Caribbean diaspora, started by Professor Brinsley Samaroo at the UWI in 1975.

This year’s conference views the need for expanded and critical dialogue beyond the prevailing themes of arrival and celebration as timely to a 21st century platform for the global diaspora. The start date of June 1st, the day after Indian Arrival Day in Trinidad and Tobago (in Guyana Indian Arrival Day is commemorated on May 5th), is in fact, deeply symbolic of an awakening consciousness within the diaspora to think, talk, write, live, and perhaps, love, differently in ways that matter crucially to ‘here’ and ‘there, and ‘not here, not there either’.

The  forty odd highly stimulating papers to be presented across fourteen conference panels dealing with themes such as cultural reconstruction, economic and technological development, the abolition of indentureship, and gender issues (among others) in and across the global diaspora, all reflect the urgency of a consistent space of this kind.  In addition, the conference finale, a film component that features independent short documentaries and films (Canada, India, South Africa, Trinidad, and the USA) suggests that the sentiments of diaspora are not always Bollywood-bound. The papers and documentaries signal a critical call across the global South Asian diaspora (the Caribbean included) to self-organize and self-mobilize in the context of an emerging global realignment. In fact, the level of interest in this conference from across the globe has been tremendous and telling; quite ironic given the fact that in the fifty odd years post-independence in the Caribbean, there is yet no Institute for Studies on the Global South Asian Diaspora at any of the leading tertiary academic institutions in the region – and no talk of it.

Perhaps this could change if a sampling of the ideas and angles of engagement represented in this conference were made more public. Presenter Amitava Chowdhury’s (Queens University, Canada) paper on Diasporic Bridges: Reciprocity and the Indian indentured labour diaspora will focus on the “reciprocal relationship between the home and the diaspora” that linked the abolition of the indentureship system in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean to mainstream nationalist activism in India. While Chowdhury’s piece highlights the element of mutual reciprocity, another paper by Daniel Bass (Lynn University, Florida) will investigate the not-so-mutual linkages between Sri Lankan Tamils and up-country Tamils from India in the coffee, tea and rubber plantations of Sri Lanka – what Bass terms “the diaspora next door”. It is not difficult to imagine the relevance of Bass’s paper to the intra-regional movement of Guyanese migrant workers as a diaspora next-door – in fact, ‘swept under the carpets’ of elite residences, grand hotels and construction projects across the region.

One only has to surf the major Caribbean dailies and weeklies to see that Bass’ paper is of crucial importance to this form of structural violence against migrant labour that takes place right here in the Caribbean, whether it is against Indo-Guyanese in Barbados and Trinidad, Haitians in the Dominican Republic or Chinese migrant labour in Jamaica.

In another vein, the struggles around the promotion of ethnic identity while claiming nation for all will take centre stage in the panel on cultural reconstruction in diasporic communities. Veda Mohabir of The Canadian Guyanese Centre for Human Rights and Social Justice will deliver a critical response to UWI Cave Hill campus scholar Dr. Kean Gibson’s publications, known for “denouncing and defaming the Hindu religion and East Indians of Guyana”. Balancing this perspective is leading historian on Trinidad, Professor Bridget Brereton’s contribution which “will examine the emergence of ‘Indocentric’ and ‘Hinducentric’ narratives of Trinidad and Tobago’s history during the post-independence period.”  Both these and other papers in the panel invite us to think critically about the Indo-Caribbean diaspora as an agent of resistance as well as complicity.

How might these region-centric conversations, seemingly focused on culture, pave the way for a broader reference for questioning India’s increasing presence in the Caribbean? How might ‘Indocentric’ and ‘Hinducentric’ narratives affect current governments in countries like Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, how might it shape efforts to attract capital from India and the global diaspora?

At what cost? In another panel on economic enterprise in the South Asian diaspora, Jwala Rambarran (CEO, Infinity Financial Engineering, Trinidad) and Prakash Ramlakhan (UWI, St. Augustine), will share their views on diaspora bonds whereby the Caribbean can “tap into the wealth of the diaspora during difficult times to obtain a stable and cheap source of external finance”. Will this mechanism to exchange finance for sentiment bode well for those living in the region or could this emerge into a situation whereby crucial economic and political decisions are directed by those living outside the Caribbean?

These are just some of the possible questions and conversations this conference promises to engage, reinforcing this column’s premise that the Caribbean’s future is in part meaningfully dependent on those in the diaspora who remain tied to the region as their canvas of inspiration.

For further information on the conference please visit: http://sta.uwi.edu/conferences/11/gsad/ or contact Amar Wahab at E-mail: 2011gsad@gmail.com