To be frank and personal, I continuousl
y ponder the phenomena of ethnicity, “belonging”, cultural ties and nationality.
Consider that list of four with some care, and even interest. I enjoyed childhood in Alberttown, Georgetown in a yard where the house behind my little cottage was occupied by Indo-Guyanese milk-sellers who were also staunch, practising Hindus. And although I was/ am mostly “East Indian” myself, I knew little about Indian behaviour, beliefs and things, growing up in an Afro-oriented, Christian house, school environment and capital city.
Then I encountered RACE in my early teens but no real racism in my Alberttown. As a young teacher I later learnt the difference between RACE AND ETHNICITY. Still later I understood that while NATIONALITY referred to the legal status and the “nation” into which one was born, people decided that they (could) belong to their own cultural and religious group, even enjoying the comfort and company of their own “race”.
My childhood, and early teenaged neighbours were the Hindu Dasses. Even then I pondered their “INDIAN” music, food, dress and worship – even as they mixed and lived in the British Guiana of other groups. Often I decided that they had chosen to remain INDIAN in colonial Guyana. I now better understand that that choice was their RIGHT, even though I knew only how to be GUYANESE. How lucky they perhaps were — being able to be both INDIAN and GUYANESE at the same time.
THE COMING, THE PRESENCE…
Historian TOTA MANGAR tells us that “British Guiana was the recipient of 239,909 Indian Immigrants up to the termination of the apprentice ship system in 1917”.
Background history is almost now widsely-known and obvious. Before and after 1838 full-freedom Emancipation of African slaves, the Plutocracy in the BG colony badly needed substitute labour for the sugar plantations. Portuguese-Madeirans and Chinese, even a few free African immigrants could not do, so the local planters welcomed the GLADSTONE EXPERIMENT. John Gladstone, son of a prominent liberal British law-maker, was himself a proprietor of two West Demerara Plantations. Quickly he decided to seek permission from his Colonial Office in Britain and the East India Company to seek and import Indian labourers on contract. His scheme was eminently and relatively successful after the first two steamships filled with the indentured “immigrants” arrived on May 05, 1838. Many of the poor souls were DUPED AND TRICKED into coming to the South American tropics, but most looked forward to a far better life than they endured in their overcrowded Sub-continent Motherland.
But for the first decade or two on the colony’s plantations, they also endured “ a new form of slavery”, occupying the same slave logies and experiencing near-slavery conditions and treatment. Their religion, spirituality and determination helped them to endure, to survive and then to succeed, if not prosper. A few hundred did return to India but the vast majority remained after their contractual obligations, founded or were given villages, and as they say, the rest is history. Guyanese of Indian descent still comprise the major ethnic group in Guyana’s demographics.
It is easy to point out the “Indian” contributions to Guyana’s development. It is obvious – their historic role in nation – building-from re-laying an agricultural base –sugar, rice, ground vegetables, fishing – to plunging into the commercial and industrial life of Guyana. Their later embrace of the professions – especially legal, medical, accounting, teaching – is expressed by an overwhelming national presence with names indicating generational consistency and ownership.
Of course it is also illustrative of the Guyana identity that the descendants of the indentured immigrants have given all Guyanese exotic, Indian music and dance, clothes and cuisine.
My intrigue lies in the fact that although today’s, “East Indians” are fully integrated into the Guyana Mosaic, most still retain their little “Indias” to this day. From Hindu holidays and observances to Islamic lectures an teachings, they promote and preserve their “Indian” culture in their rural communities and urban homes and compounds.
WHAT IF…?
Guyanese Pan AFRICANIST AND African Rights activist TOM DALGETTY claims that the early African slaves and freedmen laid the foundation, then built the “GUYANA HOUSE”.
Tom claims some type of “Landlordship” for his people to the extent that he sometimes sounds PROPRIETARY. So I often joust with him jocularly – but with provocative intent. I say: “Tom, JUST look AT WHAT THE INDO-NEW COMER-TENANTS HAVE ACHIEVED! They have tended TO TAKE OVER THE HOUSE!
Therefore I ask you to contemplate, till next time: WHAT IF THOSE INDENTURED COOLIES HAD Never Arrived In B.G.
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