Vèpèlè-la — The Neem Tree

HOW TO FIX IN THE INDIAN MATRIX

    ■ One of the managers at my bank is Jamaican mixed with Black, White and Indian.

    When I first saw her I thought she was native indian until she spoke to me. She pursued me to get all my kids to open accounts at her branch and we became quite chatty on own homelands.

    Two years ago, I gave her an invitation for two to attend an Indian cultural evening and she showed up in full Indian regalia, she was beaming, shining and could not get over how beautiful she looked and how comfortable she felt.

    After the show, we went to an Indian restaurant named Balucchis in Forest Hills to dine.

    The owner and waiters know us well and treat me like a king whenever I am there, so when we walked in and they gave us the nod and select table she was shocked that the musicians acknowledged our presence and played music to our table.

    Apparently, this was the first time she donned a sari and dressed indian. Her white american husband wore a dress pants and Nehru shirt.

    Since that event she has attended many indians cultural events at Manhattan Centers and NJ centers on Indian culture.

    She told me she vaguely remembers her indians grandmother who spoke a funny language of Indi, Hinglish and Creole.

    So we do have Indians trying desperately to go white and Spanish or in many cases Bollywood and people of Indian mixes seeking their indian roots and trying to learn how to fit into the indian matrix.

    Many people in America who are mixed with Sikh blood and now look completely white (they ancestors came to the USA in the early 1800's) are now beginning to be proud of their sikh heritage.

    The more we understand and appreciate each other the better for all of us.   

Contributed by Varuna Singh
    An Indo-Guyanese professional living in New-Jersey, USA.

PHANTOMS OF THE SUGAR CANE

Phantoms of the Cane
by Dr. Sheila Rampersad

From Preface to
THE GREEN FACE MAN
by Professor Rosanne Kanhai
ISBN: 976-620-227-3

    ■ I was born in the cane fields of Central Trinidad and raised on stories of cane.
Among my earliest memories are those of my mother and grandmother cautioning
that, since I had to taxi through the cane fields to get home from school, I was not
to stay out late. After dark, they said, a phantom straddled the cane road; anyone
attempting to pass between his powerful legs was crushed. When the phantom
appeared, pedestrians could not go forward, only backward.

    As if that was not terrifying enough, the soucouyant or the la diablesse herself,
accompanied the phantom. My mother never saw the la diablesse herself, but she
told us of her fear on particular nights when, walking along a dark Central road -
one of those straight access roads that quarter the cane fields - she heard a child
crying in the bushes. She looked and looked, through the stubborn stems and in the
long ditches. She found no child, but felt the presence of the la diablesse.

    The soucouyant, according to my grandmother, was one of our neighbours - an
old woman, Miss L - whose movements were suspiciously brisk for her age. At
nights, she pulled off her own skin in favor of the soucouyant's translucent peel and
flew into village homes to suck people's blood to make her strong and youthful.
Many nights my sisters and I stayed awake, salt in hand, waiting to throw it at the
flying soucouyant. The next morning, according to my grandmother, we would see
the burn marks on Miss L. On those nights Ma stayed awake long after we fell asleep,
and in the morning we would see clumps of salt in a protective ring around the house.

    As I entered my teenage years, book-learning confronted folklore. The cane fields
became a place of literary romance. My favorite literature teacher spoke tenderly of
the Central landscape, preparing me to appreciate Samuel Selvon's world of the
cane as one of nobility, drudgery, and bitterness. When she taught V.S. Naipaul, it
was as if she was in the middle of acres of young cane, spreading her arms into the
dry season wind and claiming every sharp stalk, every light flower, every speck of
soot.

    Cane has inspired the creativity of many Caribbean writers, Samuel Selvon and
V.S. Naipaul entered the belly of cane with literary genius. Feroze and JoJo, the
Adamic Indian and African, have their first encounter in the cane fields of Earl
Lovelace's Salt. Derek Walcott's Saddhu of Couva sits amidst cane, listening to the
Anopheles' drone as that of the sitar.

INDIANS AND WEST INDIANS IN PANAMA, CULISOS

Indians have been in Panama since the 1800's...
   
    ●  They came to work on the Transisthmian Railroad, and later on the Panama Canal.

    Later waves of Indians have arrived for business purposes. Panama is an international commercial center which has attracted people from all over the world, including Indians and Chinese.

    Indians have become an integral part of our society and are very respected, usually excelling in business. Some Indians have totally assimilated into the culture but some who have arrived recently live in very tight knight communities, marrying among themselves or finding brides/grooms in India.

    I grew up interacting with Indians or people of Indian descent. My godfather for example, was of Caribbean ancestry and his last name was Desai. He was a very good looking man, I should say!

    Anyway, its not unsual to see Indians in Panama. We call Indians "hindus". Ah, something interesting about the term "coolie", that term was used in Panama as well to refer to Indians. The term merged into the term culiso (Panamanean Spanish).

    A "Culiso" is a person of dark skin and wavy or straight here. So, obviously the term derives from "coolie" which was used to refer to Indians. Isn't that fascinating?

    Most of the Indians who moved onto Columbia returned to Panama thence to Belize and Mexico. They were always in search of work. Many worked hard to raise cash to buy land. In 1891 it was estimated that about 300 East Indians were living in Belize where they worked on the sugar estates where they diversified the sugar based agri industry with plantains, bananas and other crops.

    The colonial government of British Honduras was so pleased with their agricultural skills that they issued them land which was never given to freed black slaves to develop diverse crops.

    Heavy taxation drove the East Indians out of Belize in significant numbers.

    My grandfather and his uncles who were doctors on ships transporting workers all across the globe indicated many workers now free labourers moved onto Africa etc. seeking work.

    My grandfather's journals got burnt to ashes in the early 1960's but I recall dinner and lunch table conversations.

    Some East Indians even went as far as the Yucatan but left because of the 1848 war between the Mestizo and Mayan Indians who felt their lands were being misuse. I would venture to say that many Panamanian blacks and natives are mixed with East Indian since these guys made many kids with many women back then.

    ●  Indian Indentures to the Caribbean went to Panama as non-contracted labourers in the 1800's. However, there were also some Sikhs who were in America as early as 1812 or earlier, who intermarried with Mexicans who went to Panama as merchants.

    So Panama has had significant people of indian descent.

    ●   In most cases, minorities in the Latin American countries shed their identities faster than those in English speaking countries.

    For some, they were forced to assimilate. In Panama for example, the president Arnulfo Arias during the 1940's, designated non Spanish speaking East INdians, Blacks and Chinese as "races of prohibited immigration".

    Also, some Chinese were forced to marry Panamanians if they wanted to keep their businesses. One of my best friends' grandparent was a target of this law. He was Chinese (from China with a family in China). He lived and had children with a Black spanish-speaking Panamanian. So, we have a generation of Chinese-Mestizo people in Panama.

    We still have very closed-knit communities in Panama, though. The Jewish, Lebanese, Indian, Chinese population hardly mixes. I would say that earlier waves of immigrants tended to mix a little. But the recent wave is keeping within themselves.

    Not so for people of West Indian ancestry.

    Because the Panama Canal Zone was VERY segregated due to Jim Crow laws, West Indians kept within themselves because they were forced to. They also did because of choice. Those who lived outside of the Panama Canal or other West indian communities intermixed a bit more with the local Panamanians. that has changed drastically. Now, you can hardly tell who is of West Indian ancestry and who is not.

    There has been an incredible amount of intermixing and the evidence is seen in people's
physical appearances and the names they carry. For example "Malcom Garcia Reed". The Irish last name might be an indication of a mother of West Indian ancestry.

    ●  We are fairly certain that some Indians who originally went to the Caribbean to work on the sugar estates later moved on to Panama to work on the Panama Canal.

    On the site http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tr/panama.html there is talk of English speaking West Indian blacks working on the later stage of the canal.

    "Nowhere were efforts more dramatic than at the Culebra Cut, where 100,000,000 cubic yards of earth and rock would have to be removed. The laborers at Culebra-mostly English-speaking West Indian blacks who made ten cents an hour-moved as much as 200 trainloads of spoil a day."

    Another site http://www.thechronicle.demon.co.uk/tomsite/8_8_12ma.htm talks of "Jamaicans, Barbadians and other islanders flocked to Panama to build the link between the two Americas that the Frenchman de Lesseps and later the Americans had dreamed of."

    There appears to be a Museum of West Indian labour on the canal. "Housed in a one-room former colonial church in Panama City's rundown Caledonia district, the Panamanian West Indian Museum has championed the memory of the canal's black work force since the museum opened in 1981."

    They were desperate for labour on the Canal, and did much recruiting in the West Indies. I believe the former indentured Indians would have been an attractive target, as they were used to working in heat and tropical conditions, and most of them would have picked up some English during their time on the sugar estates.

    The obvious place to look for overseas Indians in Panama would be the customs and immigration records in Panama, and the passenger manifests of ships that came to Panama during the recruitment period. On our side, we should take a look at the newspapers in the West Indies during the time of recruitment, which should contain mention of attempts to get West Indian labour to the Canal.

    There is some reference to Canal labourers moving on to sugar estates in the nearby regions of Colombia after the canal was completed, and those sugar estate records and land ownership records may be useful too in pinning down the movement of the Indians.

    Some interesting work for an interested party here, friends. Wish it were me, but Canada is a bit too far off for that and I don't speak or read Spanish.

    Contributed by Ibn Panema, Varuna Singh, Ram Jagessar.

 

INDIAN NAMES IN TRINIDAD, GUYANA AND ST. LUCIA

Sunil, Sanil, Sanjay, Sanya, Rajiv, Indira, Nalini...

    ● An overwhelming majority of Indians in Guyana and Trinidad no longer speak any indian languages.

    Many stopped wearing indians clothes and many have no knowledge of their heritage and history yet , we are in such a large number. Up until the late 1950's and very early 1960's in Guyana, many people spoke Hindi, there were cultural events done in hindi, plays in hindi but most have since disappeared. 

    It is noted that many hindus and moslem Indians have given their children Christian first names.

    My wife's father who was a Roman Catholic gave his kids Christian first names and Indian middle names. I asked him why he gave them Indian middle names and he told me all their middle names were the names of his and his wife's parents Indian names and that of their siblings and uncles and aunts, that he wanted them to remember they are Indian.

    I thought he should have done it the other way around, Indian first name and christian middle name. But he indicated back in the 1930's if you had a Christian first name you were more likely to get called back for employment.

    Today, we don't face the same challenges. Yet Indians continue to give their kids Christian first names.

    Two of my older kids were born in Guyana and camne to the USA at 4 and 2 years old and my remaining kids were born here. I gave them all complete Indian names and as they grew older and wiser I asked them to honor, respect and recognize the struggles of our ancestors by giving their kids Indian names and that they ask the same of them.

    I have also done my best to help them maintain knowledge of their history and a deep sense of pride of their indianness. So far, we have all been successful in this regard. My daughter's sense of Indian pride rubbed off on some of her Indian friends who have Christian names and a few have since done name changes to Indian names.

    So this unfortunate situation/process  of disassociation can be corrected... all is not lost!

    - Varuna Singh

 

 ● In my family, I have given names to two of my cousins kids and others always ask me for Indian name ideas.

    In St. Lucia, it's not a surprise for people who were born in the 50's and 60's to give their children Indian names. The kids themselves take the names for granted and sometimes believe it is some French or Italian name.

    A name is very important because it makes a statement. I once asked my mother why she didn't give any of her children Indian names and she told me that because she felt we weren't Indian enough to have Indian names.

    I knew exactly what she meant by this. A dougla is considered to lose all Indian ties simply because he/she has Black in them and has no right to have such a name.

    I used to believe the same thing, but then I realized no one has dominion over anyone's name.

    You will now find some Afro-St. Lucians who grew up around Indian people giving their kids Indian names. The most common ones I have heard are Sunil, Sanil, Sanjay, Sanya, Rajiv, Indira & Nalini to name a few.

    All is not lost.

    - James Rambally

    VPLLA thanks both contributors.

AIME CESAIRE ET LES INDIENS DES ANTILLES

    A l'occasion du décès d'Aimé Césaire, sa vie et son œuvre furent passés en revue, analysés, décortiqués, tant dans la presse antillaise que dans celle de l'Hexagone.
   
    Son enfance à Basse-Pointe, ses années au lycée Schoelcher, son entrée à Normale Sup' à Paris, sa rencontre avec Léopold-Sédar Senghor, sa première élection en tant que maire de Fort-de-France et député de la Martinique etc...furent exposés en long et en large, souvent accompagnés de photos d'époque inédites.

    Du très beau travail.

    Sauf qu'un point a été complètement occulté : le rapport du poète avec les Indiens martiniquais et le pays tamoul. Jean S. Sahaï nous rappelle que la "da" de Césaire était une Indienne et qu'elle lui chantait des comptines en tamoul, que la commune d'enfance de celui-ci est celle de la Martinique qui compte le plus d'Indo-Martiniquais et que toute sa vie, Césaire s'est passionné pour la langue tamoule, l'une des plus vieilles de l'humanité, faut-il le rappeler.   

   Oui, dans la Négritude de Césaire, il y a eu une part non négligeable d'Indianité.

   Lire l'article

NO EVIL CASTE IN INDENTURE DIASPORA

    It is only in the East Indian indentureship diaspora we see caste being of little or no importance.

    My great great Nanny, Phooljarria Ramnarian who arrived in Suriname in 1881, broke from India as a 28 year old widow of a pandit to escape the ravages of religious dogmas. She left India at 28 with a 14 year old son and she remarried a non brahmin in Suriname. She went on to become a pretty influencial person for Indian rights in Suriname and the first Indian woman to own her own rice mill.

    Perhaps some of you may have heard of Guyana's first millionaire, Resaul Maraj. His wife was a non brahmin and was the catalyst to his financial and business success. Today in Guyana, the USA and all over the world we see people of lower caste and women breaking barriers and achieving great accomplishments in every field and discipline.

    It is no surprise to me that my family became very matriarchial since the women were treated as equals, with great respect and reverence since the 1880's.

    I still meet many indians from India who are very educated and successful but still submit to caste as westerners do class. It is no wonder India's advance is slower than other other large democracies. In the 1960's, my parents adopted students in India of low castes to be educated and they were very strict that they must come from lower castes and deprived homes.

    Guyana's ambassador to India in the 1960's was the man who did all the selections. My aunt, who was very succesful and wealthy, adopted small entire villages and built schools for these untouchables who became educated and move forward and upward in life but India needed legislation coupled with national conversation to end not only the systems but the mindset that one indian is of higher grade than others.

    My ancestors on all sides always opposed the caste system and me and my descendents do also. We believe all men and women can aspire to greatness and great things which has nothing to do with any preconceived notions or stereotypes.

    Caste in India, as has been viewed and institutionalized, is an evil not to be equated with any other social issues of other countries since it is steeped in the hindu religion, which goes against the tenets of Sanatan Dharma.

    Varuna Singh

©JS S. Photo :
West Indian Bharat-Natyam Dancer
and Choreograph Consuelo Marlin

WHITBY AND HESPERUS : REMEMBER MAY 5TH, 1838

FIRST SET OF INDIANS TO SET FOOT ON THE AMERICAS

    The journey to the New World begun on January 13th 1838, from the Calcutta port with 249 Indians, and lasted 5 long months, traveling half way around the world, from the Indian Ocean, around Africa and then up into the Atlantic Ocean and then to the waters of Guyana.

    On May 5th, 1838, after the abolishment of slavery in the British Caribbean, the first group of East Indians set foot in the Americas arriving on the Whitby, a British ship, where 244 Indians set foot in Guyana.

    The long voyage across the oceans brought seasick, hunger and diseases to the Indians onboard the ship, where 5 people had died and only 5 females came alive.

    Shortly after the arrival of the Whitby in Guyana, another ship known as the Hesperus, which left India on January 29th 1838, arrived in Guyana with another 165 Indians, where only 6 females came alive and 13 Indians died at sea.

    See Brian Ally's full article here
    Photo : Guadeloupe, Pointe-à-Pitre market place.
    ©JS Sahai, 2008.