Alvin Kallicharran, Rohan Kanhai, VS Naipaul,  Lady Shakira Caine or Kamala Persad-Bissessar. Do these names ring a bell? West Indians you say? You are right.They belong to different countries in the Caribbean: Trinidad, Tobago, and Guyana among others. They are also known as Indo-Caribbeans, East Indians, Indo-Trinidadian, Trinindians, Indo-Guyanese, but seldom as Indians. These labels confuse you? Imagine the confusion that this group must have experienced and continue to experience when trying to explain their cultural identity or where they come from to others or themselves. To add to the confusion imagine the attitude of Indians towards them.Ever wonder what it feels to be dislocated, displaced and being born in exile? Forget the recent sobriquet for the immigrant Indian: Non Returnable Indians (NRI) to describe those that left India in search of better economic opportunities. In stark contrast to NRIs, the Indo-Caribbean immigration experience is laced with shame, hurt and a loss of identity. “The whole idea of Kala Pani with the social, religious and cultural stigma has trickled down to the community and they feel they have compromised their Hinduness,” explains Prof. Brinda Mehta, who teaches at Oakland’s Mills College. She has researched and worked extensively on the Indo-Caribbean community with specific focus on the French-speaking island of Martinique.

You get a sense of the private challenges about their identity and dislocation when you speak to members of the community. Take Jay Ali, a New York based Trinidadian. Her name sounds Christian and Muslim, right? Many people think she is Muslim because of her last name. But then her first name does not sound Muslim at all. When you talk to Ali you get a very complex, confusing and at times painful picture of her identity. Her maternal side converted to Christianity (Episcopalian, to be precise), while her widowed paternal grandmother (who was a Muslim) got remarried to a Catholic and brought up Ali’s father as a Catholic. Growing up in Trinidad Ali went to a Muslim school because her father had started his own private journey of discovering his religious roots and wanted his youngest child to go to a Muslim school. “I went to a school filled with rejects. I did not see myself as an Indian or a Muslim, but as a reject.” Ali also kept a careful distance from other Indian kids. “I would not lime with Indian kids, who were very cliquish. I would lime with others.” (Lime is a Trinidadian term for hanging out.)  Complicating the picture further was her mother’s prejudice towards dark skinned people, including Ali. “Color was important,” to her mother confesses Ali and today she has a better understanding of her mother’s attitude. But not when she was growing up in Trinidad where she was surrounded with different layers of prejudice. Is it any surprise when you hear Ali confess she does not like to talk about race and religion?

Besides the prejudices at home and school Ali also had to deal with the tension that existed between the Indian and African communities in Trinidad. The tension between the two communities spills and exists in other Caribbean islands besides Trinidad and Tobago. Perhaps one of the few times when you see the two communities come together is when they play cricket as a team: West Indies cricket team. But should you pry open that cultural Pandora box you will unearth a whole lot of pain, hurt and fractured identities and a constant desire to find their place under the sun.”The family history is anchored in pain and that impacts inter-generational history and relationship,” explains Mehta. Navigating through this multi-layered, intricate social web left a strong residue of rejection and confusion in many people’s minds.

HOW THEY ARRIVED:
When you look at a world map you notice the West Indies are a string of islands located not too far from Cuba and Puerto Rico. If you trace an arc from Puerto Rico you will notice the string of islands including Virgin Islands, St Lucia, Guadalupe, Martinique and Tobago and Trinidad and then your finger bumps into the coastline of Venezuela in South America. It is to these string of islands that the Indians were brought in from their safe haven into this New World and new way of life.

So, how did Indians land here thousands of miles away from their country of origin? The British brought them here over 160 years ago to work in the plantations as cheap labor. You can get a an excellent picture of how people were recruited and sent overseas in Amitav Ghosh’s book Sea of Poppies. Ghosh outlines how the workers were recruited, and how they recorded the details of each indentured laborer before being shipped off in a “coolie” ship to Mauritius (not the Caribbean)  Typically, each laborer signed an “agreement”  or “bond”  and hence the term “ghirmitias”  used to describe the indentured laborers that were shipped to various plantations around the world from Fiji to Mauritius to the Caribbean.

Between the 19th and early 20th century nearly 500,000 Indians mostly from what is today Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were brought in as indentured laborers. The group consisted of Hindus, Muslims and Christians, but the predominant group tended to be Hindus. The first batch left India sometimes in 1838 and reached the Caribbean after a long and arduous journey across the oceans. The term used to describe the indentured laborers was a derogatory one “coolie,” which sadly continues to be used when people want to show their disrespect or prejudice towards the Indo Caribbean community.

Interestingly in the initial phase both men and women were taken to the Caribbean explains Mehta. The women immigrants were either widowed or escaping an arranged marriage or were sex workers she explains and this theme is explored quite a bit in the book The Swinging Bridge by Ramabhai Espinet, a well-known Caribbean writer. For many of the women it was personal reasons that prompted them to escape to a new land and that is why women tend to play such a strong role in the Indo-Caribbean community adds Mehta.

Mehta points out that about 90 percent of the immigration was not voluntary and many of them were not told where their exact destination was. “They basically signed their lives away for these indentured ships,” she adds. Typically, the initial contract (agreement) was for a period of 5-7 years with an option to return. There was a catch. The indentured laborers had to pay for their passage back to India and since they were constantly in short of money that option was often ruled out. Caught between a rock and a hard place, the indentured laborers ended up reselling themselves and continuing to live in these islands where they put down their roots and learned to preserved their rituals, customs and norms and continued to hand it down to succeeding

Communicating and forging a common identity for the early settlers was not easy since they were distributed unevenly across different islands that were colonized by the British, Dutch and French. Consequently, some countries have a higher percentage of Indians when compared to others, and in some countries they have fared much better compared to others. Currently the islands of Trinidad and Tobago (former British colony) has over 42 percent of the population is of Indian origin, while the French speaking islands of Martinique and Gudalupe have 13 percent of the population of Indian origin and in Jamaica (former British colony) the Indo-Caribbean population is a fraction (2 percent) of the population. In each of these countries the members of the Indian diaspora forged their own identity in their new places of dwelling. In the French speaking islands there were a few more wrinkles in the search of identity and what has emerged is a “Creolized identity with a strong Indian component,” says Mehta.

The upshot of the geographical spread of the community combined with the isolation forced the immigrants to the New World to celebrate their own understanding of “Indianness” points out Mehta. And that sense of Indianness  are  frozen concepts largely derived from a 19th century British India, which is a fixed sense of India explains Mehta. To create a sense of stability and rootedness various members of the community forged an innovative way of claiming their identity.

 

Music and food became the channels through which the members negotiated their identity and that became the common variable for this diverse group. “In Jamaica although numerically small, the Indian immigrant population has had a disproportionate influence with ‘curry goat’ practically being the national dish,” says Annie Paul. publications editor, University of West Indies in Jamaica. And then there is Chutney Music and its derivatives  of  Chutney Soca and Chutney Bhangra. This new music is a blend of the old and new traditions of Indian music.  ”Chutney Soca is the delightful product of musical mixing between the Bhojpuri singing tradition of the immigrants, Bollywood music and the vibrant Soca music of Creole Trinidad,” says Paul. Chutney music has helped the Indo-Caribbean musicians  to cross the race barrier and reach out to the Afro-Caribbean music. Take Draupatee Ramgoonai, who has infused Calypso music into her songs.

 

As if their internal struggle for identity was not enough, a new challenge has been brewing for a few years and that stems from the relocation of Indo-Caribbeans to the US, Canada and UK or with Indian professionals going to work in the Caribbean. Paul, who grew up in India and moved to Jamaica nearly 20 years ago describes the new Indian professionals as being “remarkably unfriendly,” to the local Indo-Caribbean community. “They are downright hostile to the descendants of the indentured, making a big point of distinguishing themselves as high-caste professionals who look down on the lowly antecedents of Indo-Caribbean indentured laborers.”   It is unsurprising then to discover that the new Indians are not very popular with the local population. “They treat Indo-Caribbean culture as debased and vulgar and are generally unpopular even with the Afro-Caribbean population, which finds them insular and arrogant,” adds Paul.

There has been a steady trickle from the Indo-Caribbeans, who have gone to India in search of their roots. Many have come sorely disappointed because of the non-acceptance by the local communities in India. “We stopped with South Africa and Gandhi. But, what about the brutality of the indentured experience? Why has this history remained silent? India should claim this history,” questions Mehta. She points out that many Indo-Caribbeans occupy this no-man land, where they are neither Indian enough or Caribbean enough and they act this out in their everyday life.