Following Jaishima Leladharsingh's dismissal for his Facebook rizzle is an opportunity to discuss Indians in Creole society, which has been handled with customary caprine delicacy by media and academe. (Creole society means "town," north-of-the-Caroni people and institutions.)
From last week, Creole Indophobia goes back to the 19th century and pre-independence. Apropos of the Jaishima outburst, there's one moment that this phobia fused into the nationalist complex: 1970. Because of the way history is whored in sweet T&T, ideas about Black Power are simplistic, dishonest, and/or at best highly romanticised in public and academe. (An exception is Selwyn Ryan's 1995 anthology.) Popularly it's seen as a liberating moment for Africans/the nation; the starting point of the present nationalist trajectory.
But important facts are absent from the public consciousness of Black Power. The first and most important is the criminal element. Armed rebel groups in the 1970s (NUFF and WOLF), waged guerilla war on the State. A years-long arson campaign raged in Port-of-Spain. As a result, Black Power bred fear, anger, and betrayal in many Trinidadians of all ethnic groups, which led to a gush of emigration to the US and Canada.
Of interest here is the effect of Black Power on Indo consciousness. To my knowledge this has not been acknowledged, much less studied by local social scientists. As I've noted before, much history and social sciences in Trinidad resemble Afrocentric therapy: solipsistic searches for self-esteem and reparation which is passed off as mainstream.
Among the things this episteme has purged from institutions is the inkling that half the population (at least) was written out of the national narrative post-1970–that is, the nation's conceptions of the common good, national ideals, visual identity, culture and whatnot.
All discussed in this space before. But this willful blindness had consequences on the consciousness of Indo-Trinidadians, particularly those who came of age during Black Power, and therefore the country. This strand of history started from 1958 ("hostile and recalcitrant") and onwards there was a low-intensity conflict on Indo-Trinidadians via state institutions. States of emergency were implemented in Indian areas in the 1961 elections and in 1965, in the sugar belt. The 61 and 66 elections were brutal and bloody, and the consciousness of Indians as "the enemy" escalated, climaxing in 1970.
This is not how it's told. A romantic anecdote of 1970 was the march to Caroni, told by Makandaal Daaga and Khafra Kambon, when the black marchers were received with kindness by the Indians. This is not false, but not the whole truth.
In his autobiography, Albert Gomes reports that during political campaigns, he saw "Black men go out of their way to molest Indian women." During Black Power, Bhadase Maraj revealed an orchestrated rape campaign against Indian women during the debate of the Emergency Powers Bill in Parliament (on April 29, 1970).
The theme in Afro-Indo hostility recurs: Hulsie Bhaggan brought it up in the 1990s. Anand Ramlogan, in a series of narratives published in this newspaper on the kidnapping epidemic of the first decade of this century, described racial rape of Indo kidnap victims. The response from Creole society has been invariant: they ent want to hear no race talk. Unless it's about slavery or black oppression.
The consequence has been a sense of injustice and anger sublimated into the consciousness of Indo-Trinidadians who came of age during Black Power, and many after. (A worldview, incidentally, similar to the African-American civil rights generation.)
This consciousness is recorded in one or two places. It's in the first three books of Neil Bissoondath, A Casual Brutality, Digging up the Mountains, and The Worlds Within Her. Bissoondath, who emigrated at 18, was a teenager during 1970. Those early books show the Indo-Trini consciousness of terror and threat at Black Power.
Another source is an address given by another �migr�, Winston Mahabir, at a UWI conference in 1984 (published in this paper on September 2, of that year). Mahabir was a psychiatrist and a former PNM minister who had emigrated to Canada. Assuming an ironic tone, he said that if Trinidad had become Guyana, (the fear in those days), there would be a few unmistakable signs. There would be rampant denial of Indians from state resources (jobs, scholarships, housing); scapegoating; the importation of illegal immigrants to counter-weigh their vote; and a general racialised corruption of every state institution to preserve PNM power.
In such a state, he wrote: "The dependency syndrome will flourish. Ipso facto, the influence of Indian and other minorities will be systematically eroded.... At another level, alcoholism, family breakdown, suicide, the need for psychiatrists–all will increase. If even a few of these signs appear, there is cause for the entire country–not just one community–to be alarmed."
Re-read that paragraph and look around. An Indian government is in power. But resentment and Indophobia from 1970 and before persist, generating a reciprocal response to Afrocentrism, and, unfortunately, to Africans, among sections of the Indo population, which irrupt sporadically.
Before the knowing head-shakes and pursed lips set, this animus is not anomalous: Creole culture has various media through which its endless ethnic resentment is catharsised–like Dimanche Gras, Canboulay, Emancipation activities and the newspapers. It even has a walking icon, a fellow decked in ethnic costume going round making the outrageous statements on Indians, and other things, being awarded with honorary doctorates and awards. Then there's the Canboulay fakers and Emancipation groups linked to Louis Farrakhan, who get state support, and get away with it.
So pound Jaishima if you like. He deserves it. But don't delude yourself with "gotcha" high-fives. The ethnic culture accepted as normal is anything but.