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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Divali in the Creole World

by

20121113

A dai­ly news­pa­per ran a pho­to of a very re­laxed-look­ing Dr Kei­th Row­ley in In­di­an eth­nic cos­tume at the Di­vali Na­gar last week. The gen­tle­man seemed al­most at home. It was a Ko­dak mo­ment.

An inane in­ter­pre­ta­tion might be that the Op­po­si­tion Leader was play­ing a mas to re­as­sure po­ten­tial vot­ers that the PNM know 'bout In­di­an, etc. But it's al­so pos­si­ble that he was just fol­low­ing an or­tho­dox script writ­ten by said In­di­ans.

It was (to me) a re­minder that In­do-or­tho­doxy, via spec­ta­cles like the Na­gar, pre­scribes a par­tic­u­lar way of see­ing In­doTrinidad to the non-In­di­an pop­u­la­tion. The im­pli­ca­tions of those pre­scrip­tions might be a lit­tle less an­o­dyne than Dr Row­ley's in­ter­pre­ta­tion-in par­tic­u­lar, their ef­fects on the In­do and na­tion­al imag­i­na­tions.

Much of the Di­vali Na­gar seemed de­vot­ed to com­merce, mu­sic and re­li­gious dis­play-spec­ta­cle, in the the­atri­cal sense. Giv­en this, the Na­gar and Di­vali be­ing "jus­ti­fied" as tourist at­trac­tions was in­evitable-a log­i­cal, if mal­adroit re­sponse to the lu­di­crous false­hood that Car­ni­val is a tourist at­trac­tion.

We con­tribute to the trea­sury, say the Car­ni­val peo­ple. We too, say Hin­dus. State­ments of eco­nom­ic vi­a­bil­i­ty are be­lied by the $100 mil­lion state sub­ven­tion to Car­ni­val, and the $3 mil­lion sub­ven­tion to the Di­vali im­pre­sar­ios-and the ab­sence of cal­cu­la­ble re­turns.

Noth­ing new there, though I'm cu­ri­ous as to how the Hin­dus, whose nar­ra­tive is self-re­liance and suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neuri­al­ism, rec­on­cile go­ing af­ter state mon­ey.

But more im­por­tant­ly, I find the eva­sion of the pol­i­tics of the Na­gar in­ter­est­ing. From in­cep­tion, the Na­gar has been a po­lit­i­cal state­ment: a di­rect re­sponse to the PNM/state-cre­at­ed "Cre­ole" no­tion of cul­ture as fes­tiv­i­ty, spec­ta­cle and eth­nic af­fir­ma­tion, but al­so a heavy-hand­ed sig­nal of the In­di­an pres­ence and its por­tents-which have nev­er been mild or lack­ing in am­bi­tion.

But what of that am­bi­tion? It has en­riched many In­di­ans, but what of the in­ner life of the com­mu­ni­ty, its imag­i­na­tion? The Na­gar is a snap­shot of 19th-cen­tu­ry Hin­du re­li­gious prac­tices and Bol­ly­wood vi­su­al cul­ture, prof­fered in a de­cid­ed­ly dog­mat­ic way. Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions in In­dia, I un­der­stand, are sec­u­lar, ma­te­ri­al­is­tic, and bac­cha­na­lian-much like In­di­an art, so­ci­ety, and pol­i­tics.

But the Hin­du Tri­ni es­tab­lish­ment presents it­self as ul­tra-con­ser­v­a­tive, pu­ri­tan in the re­la­tion of re­li­gious and sec­u­lar lives. What's miss­ing are the in­no­va­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty of In­dia, which are ab­sent in In­doTrinidad.

The lack of cre­ativ­i­ty is im­por­tant be­cause the es­tab­lish­ment sig­ni­fiers of the Na­gar's cos­tumes, showy re­li­gios­i­ty, and food, have be­come em­bed­ded in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion: Dou­bles, dho­tis and dhar­ma, against a Bol­ly­wood back­drop. This has al­so shaped the way In­di­ans/Hin­dus de­fine them­selves. In protests ear­li­er in the year In­do pro­test­ers as­sumed lo­tus pos­es, chant­ed bha­jans, and threw ep­i­thets like "Ra­van" at the Gov­ern­ment.

The ef­fect of this un-cre­ative self-de­f­i­n­i­tion on the Hin­du and the na­tion­al imag­i­na­tions is not recog­nised, since many peo­ple don't get the dis­tinc­tion be­tween imag­i­na­tion and in­tel­lect. In­di­ans, as the schol­ar­ship lists show, have plen­ty in­tel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal.

But this cap­i­tal is in­ef­fec­tive­ly de­ployed, and dis­plays no ev­i­dence of an imag­i­na­tive di­men­sion. To be sure, suc­cess­ful In­di­ans in Trinidad abound: doc­tors, lawyers, con­trac­tors, and so forth. And one or two artists and writ­ers have In­di­an names-the on­ly Tri­ni to win a No­bel Prize has an In­di­an name. But these are anom­alies, pre­cip­i­tat­ed when the Hin­du world­view en­ters in­to a di­a­log­ic re­la­tion­ship with Cre­ole Trinidad.

Oth­er­wise Hin­du-In­do-Trinidad's tra­jec­to­ry is bi­fur­cat­ed: on one path, ma­te­ri­al­is­tic and re­ac­tionary, con­gru­ous with the Cre­ole tra­jec­to­ry; on the oth­er, in the pri­vate Hin­du world, who knows? So Hin­du eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal suc­cess is lo­cat­ed firm­ly in­side the sta­tus quo but Hin­duism as a so­cial or cul­tur­al force has pro­duced no in­no­v­a­tive way of look­ing at the world, or any in­ter­ven­tion in­to the philo­soph­i­cal, moral, or artis­tic na­tion­al spheres.

This Hin­du back­drop to suc­cess is im­por­tant in the way Chris­tian­i­ty forms the back­drop of west­ern so­ci­ety, pol­i­tics, sci­ence and art. Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples (the tri­umph of right­eous­ness; the im­per­a­tive of fair­ness re­gard­less of colour, gen­der, or caste; virtue val­ued for its own sake) are wo­ven in­to every­thing, from the Kar­dashi­ans to the ca­lyp­so.

But Chris­tian­i­ty is a mere or­na­ment in the pri­vate world of the 300,000 or 400,000 Hin­du In­doTrinida­di­ans. As Naipaul put it, de­scrib­ing his re­la­tion­ship with Derek Wal­cott, there were things about him (Naipaul) Wal­cott could nev­er un­der­stand.

This con­sti­tu­tion of this pri­vate world can be found (for ex­am­ple) in the Hin­du epics (the Ra­mayana, Ma­habara­ta), which pro­pose al­ter­na­tive re­al­i­ties of moral and po­lit­i­cal log­ic, aes­thet­ics, even so­cial the­o­ry. If these al­ter-ideas could be mixed in­to the na­tion­al con­scious­ness, they could of­fer a rich­er re­al­i­ty. (Amartya Sen dis­cuss­es this in his book The Ar­gu­men­ta­tive In­di­an.)

But no such world­view has flow­ered in Cre­ole Trinidad. All the Hin­du-In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty has of­fered to the na­tion­al idea are Bol­ly­wood vi­su­al tropes, peas­ant moral­i­ty, food and re­li­gious mys­ti­cism. The rea­sons for this are pret­ty clear: his­tor­i­cal­ly, the "na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment" hasn't been ex­act­ly nur­tur­ing to counter-or al­ter-ideas of the na­tion.

The PNM was an an­ti-Hin­du/In­di­an par­ty as late as the Ma­ha Sab­ha ra­dio li­cence and Chief Jus­tice af­fairs in the last decade. They de­signed na­tion­al cul­ture from 1956 to erase the In­di­an pres­ence, and lat­er, set up ad-hoc bi­na­ries in Afro-folk cul­ture. The Cre­ole folk-cul­ture ap­pro­pri­a­tion of Ram­leela is dis­tress­ing, a sub­ver­sion of the pos­si­bil­i­ties of Hin­du-Trinidad cul­ture, and UWI aca­d­e­mics were and re­main will­ing­ly im­pli­cat­ed in this.

For me, the most un­for­tu­nate thing here is that the epics, rather than su­perb po­et­ry and en­thralling sto­ries, are seen as In­do ar­ti­facts, which the "na­tion­al" com­mu­ni­ty is en­cour­aged to tol­er­ate, via the odd cos­tume, or dou­bles, but not to em­brace as some­thing to which they're en­ti­tled. And this em­brace, more than any­thing, could make us a great na­tion.


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