Introduction
The problem of the relationship between races, the interaction of different nations in a complicated multicultural and multiracial society has always attracted the attention of scientists and ordinary people. The issue is so important to understand because it not only concerns relations in the international community but touches every human being in particular. I mean that everyone can be involved in a racially-based conflict if he or she does not know the basic principles of human ethics and respect towards others. Lots of armed conflicts around the world are consequences of the lack of such knowledge and reluctance to go into details of the issue.
Especially vividly this is illustrated by the conflicts in the countries where, historically or because of other reasons, several nations happen to live together. For instance, today’s Pakistan-Indian conflicts, clashes inside of Iraq community between Sunnis and Shiahs, and war between Israel and Palestine.
All these grievous examples prove the thought of the necessity of interracial understanding. And what can be a better way to acquire the needed knowledge for future use than the study and critical analysis of historical events related to the problem of international development and interracial relationships. The paper is going to examine the course of adjusting one culture to another, speculate on the points which were problematic during this adjustment and analyze today’s results of the process.
Historical circumstances
The emancipation of black slaves in the Caribbean caused a labor shortage in sugar plantations as well as the hardship in India contributed to the143, 000 East Indian indentured laborers to Trinidad between 1845 and 1917. This paper will explore the difficulties East Indians faced in coming to terms, politically and culturally, with the legacies they had inherited from the colonial past as they attempt to create a national identity in the post-colonial era in Trinidad.
The history of India, if we take a look at it, gives us a clear view of the reasons for the process of migration and indentureship of Indians to Trinidad and Tobago at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. There were various reasons, including political, social, cultural, and natural ones, for the process we are to study in this paper. And in further passages, these reasons will be examined to understand the essence of the “creolization” phenomenon.
The first point attracting the researcher’s attention is the historical circumstances surrounding the epoch when the process of Indians’ migration began. The middle of the 19th century is a difficult time in the history of India. British colonization started as the British East India Company, resulted in the seizure of control over the whole territory of India by the British Empire. The new authorities implemented new laws and the new order of living in the newly acquired land. The British confiscated numerous estates (over 20, 000) from their Indian owners and the reason for that was the improper title. These actions of the British East India Company caused the first and almost the greatest revolt against British rule throughout the whole history of India.
The Mutiny in 1857 started as an uprising of several detachments of Indian troops serving in the British Army, namely the Bengal Army. The reason for the rebellion was the way British rulers treated Indians. The soldiers headed by Mangal Pandey expressed their disobedience to the British Command and soon the revolt embraced the whole country. Some scholars consider the 1857 Mutiny to be the first War for Independence of the Indian People.
The battles lasted almost for a year and swayed back and forth. The beginning of the rebellion was won by the rebels but then various contradictions between separate groups of them split the rebellion army and the result of the war was predetermined by the better organization of the British Army. 1858 was the end of the rebellion, the Peace Treaty was signed and the British rule became even more severe than it was before the uprising.
The 1858 Government of India Act formally dissolved the East India Company and transferred all its powers to the British Crown. This Act had severe consequences for the whole of India, especially for its parts supporting the rebellion. What happened at once after the Act was called by historians “Devil’s Wind” (Adams, 1). It was a cruel campaign aimed at punishing all the people who took part or even were thought to be in the revolt against the Rule of The British Empire. The whole villages and settlements were wiped out from the face of Earth. From that time on the British rule arose lots of small and large rebellions and Independence wars but the general state of things did not change. Only in 1947 British Empire gave independence to India and the Republic of India was officially proclaimed in 1950 with the first presidential election.
As can be observed from the fact the Indian history, there were quite enough reasons for thousands of Indians to leave their motherland and choose to live abroad. Migration had a lot of other reasons among which we can pay attention to such ones as natural disasters, cultural and religious customs, and prejudice and various personal motives for this or that person to change his country.
What we are to consider next are those natural conditions which, together with the political and social factors influenced the process of indentureship of Indians to live and work in Trinidad. Indian history knows plenty of natural disasters that could destroy the country. The 19th century also presents examples of the kind. But at the circumstances formed in India at that time majority of these examples were products of human activity rather than the result of natural problems. The Great Famine of 1858 was a product of rainfall, unknown in India for many years and, what is more important, of the economic and administrative policy of the British Government in India.
And this policy was predetermined by nothing else but the rebellion described above. As punishment for those who rebelled against the British Crown not only punitive forces activity was used but also economic sanctions which, sometimes, had even more terrible effects. People who were not executed by British authorities had not much choice: either die of famine having no money to buy food for themselves and their families and no estates to grow the necessary food, or leave India for some other land offering work and no racial discrimination. Trinidad was the country which conformed to the needs of poor Indian workers – it did not just offer job, it was in a great need of workers so the needs of two sides coincided and Trinidad became a new motherland for Indians who could not find their places in India.
Leaving the country
Besides all these politically and naturally predetermined factors, there were lots of people who left the country because of their reasons and culturally conditioned causes. Firstly, there is a need to consider people’s reasons. They include belonging to a low caste and hope for better living in another country, absence of wish to follow Hindu religious traditions, like limiting of a widow’s freedom after her husband’s death, and finally attempts of criminals to escape punishment and start a new life in another country.
The division of Indian society into castes has always been a powerful factor influencing the whole life of a certain person. Hindu tradition divides the whole population of the country into certain castes, some people do not belong to any caste which means their lowest social status. The whole society has four castes, Varnas in Hindu language, which are characterized by the following features. The highest caste in this hierarchy is the caste of Brahman, they take the best positions in the society being priests and the most educated part of the society. Then there is the caste of Kshatriya who presents the aristocracy and the ruling class of India.
The caste of Vaisya constitutes the business elite of the nation, and the lowest caste is Sudra – peasants and the working-class of Hindu society. The lowest layer of Indian society is people called “the untouchables”. Members of castes are not allowed to touch them as this presupposes social contempt towards them and expulsion from the caste they belong to. The untouchables do not belong to any of the four Varnas and are called “outcasts” because of this reason. The division is so strong that people born as one caste members have no chance to enter a higher caste; untouchables are bound to be the dregs of society with no prospects in life. This is rather a substantial reason to be unsatisfied with the state of things and to seek a better fate.
Another point touches the religious traditions of this society where men and women had incomparable rights. Although women were considered to be the basis of the culture, the beginning of new life, they had few rights and could not call themselves free members of society. For example, widows were forbidden to remarry after their husband’s death and were not allowed to conduct any kind of social activity. Women left by their husbands were despised in the society as women who were not thankful to their fate and husbands for such nice lives. There were also women whose freedom was limited by their husbands or other family members for a certain reason.
There was a powerful custom according to which, for example, women did not need education – men were supposed to work and their wives were only housekeepers who should please the eye of their husbands and no one else. All these factors were a powerful impact on Indians, especially women, to search for a better life, they did not seek complete independence from men, they wanted only to change the balance of rights in their families and acquire more freedom in setting their own goals and being allowed to achieve them.
So, that is how the process of indentureship was motivated from the Indian side. In Trinidad, there also were certain reasons for the process. The number of workers at sugar plantations was very small, simply to say there was a short supply of labor force. Besides, men who worked at those plantations were unsatisfied with the proportion of the female population in this region – 1, 354 men to 1, 000 women (Mohammed, 383). Taking into account these factors planters tried to change the situation for the better and the process of indentureship began. Although it did not change the state of things drastically some improvements were obvious, especially concerning the status of women in the community.
Let us examine the phenomenon called “the creolization” of Indian women in Trinidad, its effect upon the Indian culture, as well as the contribution of this process into the women’s rights movement and women’s emancipation phenomenon.
“Creolization”
If we speak about “creolization” we should at first find out the origin and the meaning of the term. There is a great variety of its interpretations in the scientific literature. In some cases, it was used offensively to indicate the Indians who had consorted with the descendants of African slaves, women who dropped their cultural traditions and changed eating, dressing, and behavior habits of their nation in favor of new ones. But from another point of view, the term has a different meaning – it is used to distinguish the people of African origin from Indian immigrants. In this case “creolization” would mean the process of acculturation of the Indian part of the society, its adjustment to Black traditions and customs at the expense of its own culture.
This meaning is also somehow offensive to the Indian people who do not want to admit the complete assimilation with the culture of the Black part of the population of the Island of Trinidad, whom they considered being untouchables and any contact with them to be a shame (Mohammed, 381). But the term itself has a much wider meaning, it derives from the Spanish word “criollo” which is used to indicate a person born or committed to living in a certain area.
In another meaning, it can be referred to the people of mixed origin, for example, Spanish or French and African, whose parents are foreigners but they were born in a certain area and can be considered indigenous people of this area. One more meaning ascribed to the term “creolization” is connected with the processes concerning the colonial policies and metropolitan influence upon them. The pressure from the metropolis was taken hostilely but, at the same time, internal adjustment processes were taking place between representatives of different races and cultures. In this meaning, the term means the enrichment of both cultures by each other’s means excluding any compulsive measures from a third side.
As we can see, the “creolization” of women in Trinidad can be interpreted as the way for these women to become more modern and free taking the best from the culture they happened to live in but, at the same time, not deviating from their original culture or, in other words, Indian women tried to create the society they wanted to have in India – old traditions in their modern interpretation with the shift of the role of women and their freedom of actions and choice.
The first steps in the process of “creolization” were difficult for Indians in Trinidad as they were looked at as strangers or barbarians and expressed no wish to adjust to the culture of “Creole” society. Indian people came to Trinidad first of all to work and with a great hope to return someday to their motherland. They felt no need to communicate with the Black population of the island whom they regarded as untouchable because of their living customs and the job they did. Africans were adjusted to eating cattle and pigs meat, were involved in types of work considered ritually impure by Indians (Munasinghe, 2001). All this did not affect positively the attitude of the indentured people towards the “Creole” people.
Besides, Africans in their turn also thought not much of Indians whom they called aliens speaking a “barbarous” language and exposing strange manners, keeping to strange customs, and working so hard for such low wages. Mutual contempt and misunderstanding between two cultures did not allow the process of cultural exchange and “creolization” to begin, but soon the circumstances assisted to improve the situation (Nevadomsky, 1982).
The movement of Indian plantation workers from estates to small villages made their communication with the “creoles” inevitable and much more productive. From this time on the process of “creolization” began to develop at higher rates and its results could be seen already at the beginning of the 20th century. Indian women understood the new culture much better than Indian men did and there were specific reasons for this. While living at estates Indians could not exercise their ethnic customs in full amount. Men were not allowed to suppress women as they also had to work, women were given some rights inaccessible to them in India.
At that period there was a great wave of female killing and in a majority of cases (65 cases of the total of 87) were killings of wives by their husbands (Mohammed, 383). Analysts suppose that this was the result of the cultural change which made Indian men feel helpless and powerless and angered the male part of Indian immigrants. Men thought that movement to villages will allow them to implement old customs again but the result of the process was the opposite.
There was no way back to old times, besides the acculturation of Indian women, caused by closer contact with “creoles” and diversification of work led to more rights given to women, at least some of them, who became braver in demanding and using their rights. The “creolization” can be traced by addressing calypsos, Caribbean folk songs, which were dedicated to the phenomenon at the beginning of the 20th century.
The acculturation of Indian women can be exemplified by their choice to take Creole names instead of Indian ones. But still, the conflict of cultures was evident, Indian women, although they wanted to get more rights in their society did not want to break all ties with their original culture because it constituted an integral part of their identities. But being a Trinidadian meant change in the inner world of these women, they had to be more modern to fit the standards of the culture they lived in. This contradiction caused numerous inner conflicts within personalities and women were confused not knowing which way to choose.
The novel by R. Espinet “Swinging Bridge” shows the inner state of a young girl who is torn apart by the ideals she possesses and has to adjust to if she wants to become a modern woman. Besides she feels the need to preserve her culture and national identity and simultaneously become a member of Trinidadian society: “Mona Singh. That’s me. I live in the eye of a storm. My whole life arches backward and forwards according to the speed of the gust around me.
In the center, near the eye, in the place where I live, it is still. Small mercy.” (Espinet, 2004). Some women chose to forget about their past, about their lives in India, and about the culture which always suppressed women, giving them roles of passive spectators. Everything that could remember those women about their past made them sad and angry: “Those were the words I was writing in my notebook early one morning in January when the phone rang and everything in my life turned around. Those old-time words were calling out to me, words like Marilee, sem, macajuel, mammy-sapote, arising unbidden out of parts of my life no longer in use. Signals, beckoning me into the past.”
But there were a lot of exceptions, I mean cases when Indian women coped to combine features of both cultures and become welcome members of both communities, Indian and Trinidadian, uniting these cultures by their examples. No hostility could be seen to Indian women who successfully took up Trinidadian, or Creole, culture. Creole men even preferred “creolized” Indian women to Trinidadian ones and when an Indian woman was singing a calypso, the impression it made on people could not be compared to anything else:
“Her voice vibrates
Past stage to the audience,
Through all transmissions
The whole country listens
Night insects, they to stop their churring
As she sings and “winds”
To calypso and “pan”
With a ”Tassa” blending” (Ramkissoon-Chen, 50 – 51).
In the poetry and songs in Trinidad we can find other evidence to the fact that the clashes between cultures took place at the beginning of the Indian indentureship but with the time spent the two nations got used to each other and understood that they needed to live in peace because they have nothing to argue about, only rich cultures which they could share:
“That’s the damned thing self
That makes it sweet
Brother bring your drum, let
We start to beat…
One lovely nation
Heading to salvation
The Ganges did meet the Nile.” (Rudder, 1998).
Other traces of “creolization” of Indian women can be found in their attitude to marriage. According to an old Indian tradition, men were marriageable from the age of sixteen up to thirty years, girls could marry only between fifteen and seventeen years. If a girl was not married after seventeen she became a burden for her family and the reason why the family could be looked down on in society. But moving to Trinidad and “creolization” brought drastic changes into the situation.
An unmarried girl after seventeen was not considered to be a problem and a financial liability anymore in families influenced by the “creolization” process, and girls themselves were not ashamed of being unmarried at this age. One more change happened in the attitude towards marriages with foreigners, as in some cases they provided a great perspective for Indian women. A husband of American or European origin was considered an opportunity for an Indian girl because with his help she could take a higher position in society and get a better job with a higher payment.
Older generation family members were against such an attitude towards marriage and traditions of the nation and it caused conflicts inside families but could not stop the adjustment of Indian women to the new culture and newly gained rights. The “creolization” of every woman depended mainly on her inner state, but also her family attitudes or religion she worshipped. Either they were Hindu, Muslim, or converted to Christianity, there still was contempt towards other religious communities and alienation while being among their members, but religion, especially conversion to Christianity was a positive step (Seesaran, 2002). As we can observe there were certain obstacles on the way of “creolization” but those who wanted to take it up did it.
Access to education given to Indian women in the Creole society in Trinidad was another step towards their emancipation and freedom. In Indian society, it was thought to be unwise to educate girls and women. The reasons are illustrated in the following words from “Adventures of Gurudeva” by Seepersad Naipaul which we can find in the cited article by P. Mohammed: “…she is only a woman and will ever be foolish, no matter what you do…” (Mohammed, 390).
Women were to be only housekeepers and wives to the men, all professions were taken by men who were considered to be the most skillful in all spheres of human activity. But by the middle of the 20th century, the situation had already been different. Indian women would study to get a profession and earn money on their own in order not to be so dependant upon men. According to the public opinion research conducted in 1957, the prospective for Indian girls underwent great changes due to the process of “creolization” ( Mohammed, 389). The survey among a considerable number of secondary school students illustrated this change has shown that only 17% of Indian female students see housekeeping as their future career development, while among White girls there are 50% who want to stay at home instead of making a career after completing their education.
In the survey, one of the questioned students expressed her intentions to take part in the Legislative Council Elections and become a Minister of Health or Education in case of success. She was inspired by the wish to help her nation and by the access of women to educational and even political establishments which were unimaginable in the traditional Hindu society (Mohammed, 389 – 390).
The political activity of women is a result of the development of Indians’ self-identity caused by the “creolization” and emancipation processes. There are different groups among Indians – some do not show any interest in politics, others keep to nationalist ideas and take part in various political and social organizations struggling for equal rights of the Indian population in Trinidad (Tata, 1986).
All this is clear evidence of the process of “creolization” taking place in the multicultural society of Trinidad. The “creolization” of women is an important part of this process, especially taking into consideration the peculiarities of Indian culture and the place women take in it. What is important for a more complete understanding of the problem is to draw the line between the terms “creolization” and “modernization”. Both terms are interrelated in the context of Trinidad society but the difference still exists. Creolization refers to the commitment to the culture of the Creole part of the Trinidad population, while modernization is an indicator of the society that is constantly developing and changing, ready to accept innovations and modern trends.
Conclusion
The conclusion can be made based on all the above said that the process of “creolization” of Indian women in Trinidad was very important for several reasons. Caused by historic, natural, and human factors, Indian indentureship to Trinidad and “creolization” which followed it, contributed to the positive change in the social attitude towards the problem of women’s rights and affected positively the self-identity of women in Indian society making them more confident about their social status and being rightful members of human community. Though it conflicts with the traditions and customs kept in India for several centuries, but preserves the basics of national Indian culture. That is why this process enables women to become rightful participants of the social life and makes the society itself more modern and highly developed.
References
Nevadomsky, J. (1982). Social Change and the East Indians in Rural Trinidad, Social and Economic Studies, 31:1. Web.
Tata, Robert J. (1986). Racial Separation Versus Social Cohesion: The Case of Trinidad-Tobago , Revista Geográfica, 104.. Web.
Munasinghe, Viranjini. (2001). Callaloo or Tossed Salad. New York: Cornell University Press.
Seesaran, Rosabelle, E. B., (2002). From Caste to Class: The Social Mobility of the Indo-Caribbean Community 1870-1917. Trinidad: Rosaac Publishing House.
Mohammed, P. (1988) The “Creolization” of Indian Women in Trinidad. An Introduction to Caribbean Studies, course kit, v2, p. 381 – 397.
Espinet, R. (2004). Swinging Bridge. Toronto: Harper Collins Canada.
Rudder, D. “The Ganges Meets the Nile” (song).
Ramkissoon-Chen, R, “When the Hindu Woman Sings Calypso” (poem).
Adams, John (2007). The Devil’s Wind India in Torment, 1857. Web.