By Nalini Mohabir
This essay was originally written for the commemorative magazine of the Vedic Cultural Centre in Markham, Ontario. Nalini Mohabir teaches gender studies at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus.
As the 175th anniversary of Indian Arrival in the Caribbean draws near, I find myself revisiting previous commemorations: Ruhomon’s Centenary History of the East Indians of British Guiana, and Dabydeen and Samaroo’s India in the Caribbean, published on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Arrival. Not yet part of the cycle of public holidays, anniversaries of Arrival were seen as an opportunity to take stock of the community’s progress or loss.
By the time of the sesquicentenary, an Indo-Caribbean identity had gained visibility in the diaspora, promoted through national conversations, historical research and the literary efforts of academics and writers. Yet in spite of the seminal efforts of these thinkers (Frank Birbalsingh and Samuel Selvon among them), the historical legacy of indentureship remains a relatively little-known chapter to those in the rest of the world; lost between the gross unfreedoms of slavery and the celebratory freedom of a mobile workforce hoping to make it big “in foreign.”
At the very first academic conference convened to explore Indo-Caribbean themes, (1975, at The University of the West Indies, Trinidad), V S Naipaul remarked that after the initial crossing of the kala pani, memories of origin receded:
“We forget; we have no idea of our past; it is part of the trouble…. after the old culture has more or less been lost, its value overthrown; it is only today that people can begin to look at themselves. This is the first paradox: that self-awareness should have come only with this loss.”
Even in the 1970s, when individual ex-indentured labourers were still alive, very little information of life before the crossing had been passed on to the younger generation. The possibility of an Indo-Caribbean identity linked through a continuous connection to India was lost; all that remained was the black waters in between a life before, and after, arrival.
In the same speech, Naipaul also cautioned against reducing East Indians to “economic facts” (signs of progress, or justification of an immigrant narrative). He also advised against what he deemed superficial issues (eg, a focus on food or jewellery) that belied cultural loss. As he argued, either of these reductions would miss a greater truth of experience.
How do we begin to recognize and bear witness to a truth of experience, shaped inevitably by the crossing? Take the jahaji bundle, the modest little handkerchief tied to a stick, which carried the sum of what was needed for life in the new world: seeds, spices, the cuttings of plants, and so on. These humble items changed the landscape of the Caribbean. I have often wondered: what did the next generation to leave home and venture across oceans carry? My mother stood on the docks of Port of Spain, with a small grip, ship-bound for England. In Toronto, I have seen cast- iron tawas and heavy masala grinding stones, shipped north to their new homes. However, the tangible is not all that we carried with us.
The jahajis and jahajins brought intangibles, such as cultural and religious practice, myths, and stories. And into the next diaspora, we too carried stories. Family efforts to maintain (hi)stories have been my window into these experiences. For instance, my ‘cousin’ (not by blood, but by jahaj bonds, even though he was born in Guyana and I in Canada), Martin Latchana shared his experiences as a member of the Ontario Society for Studies in Indo Caribbean Culture (OSSICC), a group founded by Professor Frank Birbalsingh, at York University. As I pursued graduate studies, Martin brought me treasured books from his old university days, books like the aforementioned India in the Caribbean, and Birbalsingh’s From Pillar to Post. I devoured them. These books possessed a hidden knowledge of my place in the world, an image obscured by a mainstream Canadian education. They became books I read, not only for information, but to locate myself through a long thread of history which exceeded the borders of Canada. Latchana’s seemingly small act of lending books to a younger cousin, as well as sharing his own memories of Albion estate, drove me toward further studies. Our stories – both written and unwritten – are part of the symbolic jahaji bundle carried with us as we arrived in this new land whence missionaries came (Canada). This is why publications commemorating ‘arrival’ are important, both as a lasting record of reflection, and as a marker of change.
To consider change, I would like to reflect upon the epigraph to India in the Caribbean which quotes the Bajan writer George Lamming:
“…those Indian hands – whether in British Guiana or Trinidad – have fed us all. They are, perhaps, our only jewels of a true native thrift and industry. They have taught us by example the value of money; for they respect money as only people with a high sense of communal responsibility can.”
An eloquent and politically inclusive statement, nonetheless, one wonders whether notions of self-sacrifice for the communal good seem quaint now, especially in this new diasporic space of Canada. Left behind in that other space now confined to the past are logies (barracks), a lack of (regular) electricity, or safe tap water as we enthusiastically adopt signs of progress through migration. These signs include educational attainment or other footholds into the middle class (the acquisition of property, a car, annual vacations), now seen as individual achievements, rarely a sign of community upliftment. As Naipaul (1975) reminded us, even by the 1970s, changes occurred rapidly over only a generation or two. These changes take place not only in terms of geography or material things, but they are also psychological; we are people in one place with ties to other places, and as Naipaul suggests, if this widens our perspective, rather than limits us, we are lucky.
Although some of us are lucky, many of us are not. How many times have you seen an older woman in a frayed black coat and well-worn shoes, plastic bags by her feet, standing in the cold in Toronto, waiting for the bus at a bleak Scarborough intersection? Selective memory affects how we collectively grapple with the hardships of immigration, racism, domestic violence or other community-wide issues in the diaspora. Perhaps diasporic homes (both here and there) are fragile places, too fragile to interrogate. Or perhaps this acquiescence to silence is the price of a move from the margins to the metropolitan centre.
At this time of Arrival, I want to raise what I hope will be some relevant questions, related to the emotional life of identity, at home and in the diaspora:
What is the scope of our Arrival Day celebrations? What about the “othered” Indians that arrived, or are arriving? Does anyone disappear under Arrival Day?
Does Arrival Day provide a ‘history for the future’? If so, what do we need to be mindful of when we commemorate ethnic histories?
How do our everyday social interactions (family, friends, work, neighbours, village life, community) challenge the ‘official’ narratives of Arrival? What kinds of spaces — national, regional, and And what kind of emotional spaces do we need to foster to live with dignity?
As we saw during the centenary and sesquicentenary, arrivals cannot forget previous suffering, otherwise in the pursuit of a higher status and standard of living, we simply become the next generation of labouring bodies, bereft of emotional complexity. On this note, it is perhaps fitting to return (as we are wont to do in the diaspora) to Naipaul who, in the same essay, reminds us of the then not so distant colonial attitudes which viewed all non-Europeans as a “non-descript brownish mass” of “work machines” stripped of personality. My own parents struggled in Toronto, when overseas qualifications were not recognized, and relatives back home required support. And yes, the sacrifices of their dreams allowed my brother and I opportunities they did not have. However grateful we are for Canadian policies of multiculturalism which carved out a small space of belonging in a new land, we cannot, on this occasion of Arrival, give in to a singular celebratory narrative of immigrant mobility, for it is not all of how we came to be, here, in this hemisphere.
