Legacy of Slavery and Indentured Labour

Linking the Past with the FutureConference on Slavery, Indentured Labour, Migration, Diaspora

and Identity Formation.June 18th – 23th, 2018 , Paramaribo, Suriname

Org. IGSR& Faculty of Humanities and IMWO, in collaboration with Nat. Arch. Sur.

Emancipation and Arrival: How Emancipation Day and Indian Arrival Day have shaped ethnic identities in 21st-century Trinidad & Tobago

Bridget Brereton

ABSTRACT

Emancipation Day (August 1) was made a public holiday in Trinidad & Tobago after the 150th anniversary of emancipation in 1984; Indian Arrival Day (May 30) became another after the 150th anniversary of the first arrival of indentured Indians in 1995. Since then, and especially over the last 20 years, they have been celebrated with increasing enthusiasm, with many high-profile activities of different kinds associated with each day. Each has become inextricably linked to the development of Afro-centric and Indo-centric narratives of the nation’s history, a subject I have been studying (and writing about) since 2007. Each has played a role, not always positive from a national perspective, in reinforcing and solidifying ethnic identities. My paper will study the role of the two public holidays over the last 20 years, especially in the years since 2010, and will be based mainly on the nation’s newspaper press.

Introduction

August 1, 1834, marked the formal end of enslavement in the British Caribbean, and August 1, 1838, saw the termination of the quasi-slavery “apprenticeship” system. The day was celebrated in Trinidad and Tobago into the early twentieth century, but it was not an official holiday. In the 1920s, the first Monday in August was made a holiday as “Discovery Day” (Columbus arrived at Trinidad on July 31, 1498). Several individuals and groups, in the years before and after national Independence (1962), lobbied for a high-profile celebration of August 1 as Emancipation Day, and on the 150th anniversary of emancipation (1984) the government declared that August 1 would be an annual public holiday, Emancipation Day (ED), from 1985. In 1992 the Emancipation Support Committee (ESC) was founded, a NGO led by prominent citizens, and it has continued to be the main organiser and promoter of activities to mark the day. [1]

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While slavery was ended by a single piece of legislation, the indenture contracts of Indian immigrants terminated at different times during the period of indentured Indian immigration to Trinidad (none came to Tobago). By the time all remaining indentures were cancelled, at the start of 1920, the vast majority of Indians in Trinidad had either been free for many years, or had been born there. As a result, the date of the arrival of the first ship bringing Indians to Trinidad, May 30, 1845, has been taken as the most suitable commemorative day, though not without controversy. The centenary was celebrated in high-profile events organised by prominent Indo-Trinidadians, and in the post-Independence years, groups and individuals lobbied for the day to become a public holiday, in part influenced by the decision about Emancipation Day. Trevor Sudama, then an Opposition MP, presented a motion to that effect in Parliament in 1990. It was then defeated, but in 1995, the 150th anniversary of Indian arrival, the government announced that May 30, 1995, would be a one-off public holiday to be known as Arrival Day. A new government, with an Indo-Trinidadian Prime Minister, declared the following year (1996) that the holiday would be annual and would be known as Indian Arrival Day (IAD). [2]

The celebration of these two “ethnic” holidays, in a pluralist nation in which people of African and Indian (South Asian) descent each comprise around 40 per cent of the total population, has certainly helped to shape what I have described as the Afro-centric and Indo-centric narratives of the nation’s past. Indeed, they have become the principal means through which particular interpretations of local history have been fixed in the national imaginary. They have also contributed to solidifying ethnic identities, though there are certainly tendencies, demographic, cultural and social, which counter this result. My examination of these developments is based mainly on the nation’s daily press, and also draws on my previous writings on the broad theme of national and ethnic narratives of Trinidad & Tobago’s history. [Brereton, 2007: 169-196; Brereton, 2012: 45-62; Brereton, 2013: 145-162; Brereton, 2015; Brereton, 2016: 129-141]

Emancipation Day

From its foundation in 1992, the ESC, led by Khafra Kambon, who had been a key leader of the Black Power movement of the early 1970s, has been the most visible spokesman and organiser of ED events. Kambon and his colleagues, while clearly broadly Afro-centric, are careful in their public statements, and generally nuanced in their positions on race relations and the nation’s past. Each year, the events surrounding August 1 stimulate a public discourse through which the Afro-centric narrative is constructed, and ED has become the principal national moment for recalling the horrors of enslavement and its harsh aftermath, but the ESC has not used the celebration to attack or demonise the ethnic ‘Other’, whether this is seen as Euro- or Indo-Trinidadians. A significant feature of ED since 2000 has been the increasing involvement of the government; between 2002 and 2009, for instance, it invited leading African politicians to visit for the celebrations, including the Presidents of Nigeria, Uganda and Ghana. [Brereton, 2012: 45-62] [3]

In 2007, the ESC made the bicentennial of the abolition of the British transatlantic slave trade the focus of its ED activities, with the theme “Remembering the Middle Passage: Act to

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Repair the Damage”. In his speech at the launch of the ESC’s programme, Kambon emphasized the importance of remembering the slave trade and chattel slavery, and the agony of the ancestors who endured them. Implicitly recognising the difficulty of pushing an Afro-centric narrative in a country like Trinidad & Tobago, he contrasted the Emancipation Park in Kingston, Jamaica, with the absence of any comparable monument in his country. “As Africans in Trinidad”, he asked, “what do we have as a place of memory?...We have been fighting for an Emancipation Park. The picture the world creates of helpless African slaves needing to be rescued is false. How disappointed they must feel that we are not lighting that candle”. Kambon told his listeners to be vigilant as some, he said, wanted to eliminate ED from the national calendar: “you have to eternally fight and struggle for that little slice of Africa we call Emancipation Day”. [4]

The involvement of the People’s National Movement (PNM) government in ED events was highlighted in 2008. The Government Information Services put out a two-page advertisement titled “The Legacy of Freedom” which wished readers “Happy Emancipation Day” and featured short pieces on “individuals who struggled for the freedom of slaves”. The veteran journalist Lennox Grant took note of the increasing involvement of the government in his newspaper column: “In all but name, the emancipation project has been nationalised”, he wrote; “the State has emerged with surprising prominence as client and sponsor”, while a “private organisation [the ESC] retains ownership of the franchise, so to speak”. He noted the transformation of the Prime Minster, Patrick Manning, into an apparently Afro-centric figure, who had “embraced opportunities to link the Afro-creole PNM tradition of his upbringing to an emerging Afro-centrism for which the ESC is one flag-bearer”. [5]

During the 2009 ED celebration, a spokesman for the ESC, Ayinde Kafile, speaking to an audience in southern Trinidad, called on African men “to be mindful of the effects of mental slavery and to try to build a strong family system like that which exists among Indian communities” in Trinidad. Africans and Indians, he said, must get rid of “hatred, malice and spite and must embrace one another”, for their problems were the same. Kafile concluded that “both Africans and Indians should be proud of their ethnicity and must work together to escape the challenges of mental slavery”. [6] This combination of an Afro-centric narrative with a refusal to pull down the ‘Other’ has been generally characteristic of the ESC’s approach to ED.

But in the years between 2006 and 2010, a new organisation briefly emerged which took a contrasting approach to the ED narrative. This was the National Association for the Empowerment of African People (NAEAP), more or less a one-man body led by Selwyn Cudjoe, a Trinidad-born academic based at Wellesley College in the USA who has long participated in the public discourse on race relations and on Trinidad’s past. Notably, he chose not to lend his talents and resources to the ESC, but instead to create his own Afro-centric vehicle, which annually came to life around August 1 for about five years. At a high-profile public function for ED in 2006, Cudjoe stated: “All the turmoil that we see in our society today not only represents a relentless struggle on the part of the East Indians to dominate the society; it also suggests that the agents of their group are prepared to utilise any means—be they legal, political, academic or religious—to achieve ethnic dominance”. [7]

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In 2008, Cudjoe’s address at the NAEAP dinner, which was attended by the Prime Minster, the President and the visiting President of Ghana, and newspaper articles by him, generated most of the media coverage of ED that year. In one of these articles, he contrasted the misery of the formerly enslaved in Trinidad after emancipation with the situation of the “over 237,000 Indians” who came to the island; “according to the terms of their indentureship they were given lands in lieu of their passage back to India”, he wrote, while Africans remained landless—“a people without land may be headed towards another form of enslavement”. It was easy to refute the historical myth-making here, and several did: it was 147,900 Indians who arrived not 237,000, and at no point was a right to land part of the indenture contract, though for eleven years (1869-1880) a few ex-indentureds did receive land grants in lieu of repatriation. [8]

In his address to the NAEAP dinner, Cudjoe declared that Africans in Trinidad “remain the last group that is struggling still to be freed”. He called on the State—the government then in the hands of the PNM—to help: “When African people elect a black government to conduct its affairs it expects that its chief function is to take care of their affairs”. [9] He complained that NAEAP’s efforts to establish “an African-based school” (he did not explain what this might mean), and to obtain a radio licence for an “African” station, had failed through lack of assistance from “our African-elected government”. Cudjoe concluded by calling for “specially targeted programmes” for African-Trinidadians who were still suffering from “the traumatic occurrences of the slave and colonial experiences”. Unsurprisingly, these utterances were attacked in the press, notably by Satnarine Maharaj, the leader of the nation’s main Hindu organisation. [10]

NAEAP, or rather Cudjoe, continued to generate a great deal of media coverage during the ED events in 2009. At his ED dinner he again attacked the “black prime minister and black government” (Manning and the PNM) for failing to ensure that “equality” was guaranteed to Afro-Trinidadians. But the most striking feature of this speech was the extraordinary claim that the local media systematically and deliberately ignored “the black community”: “Nothing of importance to the black community is given any space in our media”. Only negative stereotypes of Africans were presented in the media, he claimed. With Africans now being a “minority”, it was imperative for them to rally round the NAEAP. “If we do not pull ourselves together as a group and support one another, I see only a negative future for Africans in this land”. The narrative of suffering, deprivation and discrimination—in a country governed by a party based on Afro-Trinidadian voters—seemed to be concluding in a gloomy picture of future marginalisation. [11]

The NAEAP’s last appearance was in 2010, when it hosted its last ED dinner; it subsequently faded away. By August 2010 the PNM government, so often attacked by Cudjoe, had been defeated, and a coalition dominated by the Indo-Trinidadian based United National Congress (UNC) was in power. In his speech, Cudjoe continued with the gloomy narrative of the previous year. If current trends continued, he said, “the entire black population would degenerate into the lower depths of poverty and despair”. While he congratulated the new government and Prime Minister (Kamla Persad-Bissessar), he concluded that “there will be turbulent times ahead for Africans in this country”. The “divide” between Africans and

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Indians was “likely to grow as time goes on”, he said. Of course, he showed no awareness of the contribution that his own rhetoric, whether in his ED speeches or his newspaper articles, might have made to the growth of that divide. [12] The annual events staged by Cudjoe and his (fortunately?) short-lived and shadowy organisation, in my view, exemplify the clearly negative fall-out which can be generated from ED observances undertaken by “ethnic entrepreneurs” (to use Anton Allahar’s phrase) with little care for the nation’s pluralist society. [Allahar, 2005: 244-257]

With NAEAP no longer garnering maximum media coverage over the ED period, the ESC continued to use the celebrations to promote an Afro-centric narrative without an overtly divisive dimension. In 2010, the first ED after the new Indo-based government came to power, the ESC chose the theme “Reawakening the Spirit of Liberty”. A new feature was the performance of a play, Freedom Morning Come!, scripted by Eintou Springer, a poet and longtime ESC activist. The play was performed early on the morning of August 1 in Port of Spain, followed by the now traditional “Kambule” procession through the city; it became an annual event from 2010 on. It depicts the events on August 1, 1834, when the Emancipation Proclamation was read to assembled ex-slaves (now “apprentices”) in the capital city, through a few (fictional) characters and their dialogue. Through this play, and through the procession which recalls the noisy torchlight procession of Afro-Trinidadians usually known as “Canboulay” that was the opening event of the annual Carnival up to the mid-1880s, the ESC is constructing an Afro-centric narrative of Trinidad’s past. [13]

The ED theme in 2011 was “Celebrating Our African Heritage”. Launching the ED programme, Kambon lamented the way African achievements had been marginalised or ignored: “The loss of memory is the hardest to recover from because when you lose your memory you really cease to exist in your own person. If you look at Africa and the role it has played on the planet you would know that we can’t die, can’t kill and are incapable of suicide as a people, because we are too ancient, too strong and too many. Heritage is what will see us through”—perhaps a rebuke to Cudjoe’s gloomy prophesies the previous year. In a newspaper article, Kambon noted the social and political pressures which made assertion of an African identity difficult in Trinidad, and concluded that “in an environment of hostility to institutional developments that could preserve and enhance an African sense of self, the Emancipation commemoration is the most dominant of the advances that survived, and it has done so under pressure.” Indo-Trinidadians had successfully brought about a “cultural renaissance” since the 1970s, he wrote, because of their “profound self-awareness” and strong “communal motivation”. The ED celebration was “the most established basis on which Africans can rebuild a positive sense of self” to achieve a similar renaissance. [14]

It has become almost routine that the daily papers devote editorials to ED and its meaning. In 2012, for instance, the Express called on the ESC to do more than promote and organise the events on the day; it had announced long-term goals for Afro-Trinidadian self-help, self-improvement and “psycho-social healing and renewal”, and the paper looked forward to these initiatives bearing fruit. But it argued that the first task would be to “analyse the extent to which history plays a part in the issues identified by the ESC”: “If slavery left psychic wounds, does the ESC’s promotional strategy of a glorious African past help heal such

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wounds? After all, much of their historical remembrance is contradicted by the research of professional historians”. How far were the social conditions of some Afro-Trinidadian communities due to slavery and racial oppression, as opposed to class, location and other factors? If the ESC wished to promote self-help, should it still, after twenty years “and many millions of State dollars”, be going “kufi in hand to the government” for funding? The same paper, in its ED editorial in 2013, pointed to the absence of a monument of some kind to mark the spot where the Emancipation Proclamation was read in Port of Spain, but also welcomed the increasing decentralisation of ED activities, with events taking place in several other places, organised by civic-minded individuals and groups. [15]

Cultural events, such as the play first performed in 2010, have become a key element in the ESC’s suite of activities to mark ED. Eintou Springer, and her daughter Dara Healy, an actor, newspaper columnist and cultural organiser, have been frequently interviewed in the daily papers about ED over the last few years, and Healy regularly writes on related issues. They both emphasise what they see as the spiritual dimension to the celebrations. As Springer put it in a 2015 interview: “Now, the celebrations have become very big but the ESC is trying to bring back that ritual and remembrance. It’s lovely to parade the streets in your beautiful [African] clothes and enjoy the music, but there’s a spiritual core of the celebrations; there’s the recognition of our ancestors, the recognition of history. Lest we forget, lest we forget”. They both lament the absence of a monument or official place of memory for Afro-Trinidadians, a point Kambon has also made, and regularly call for more history in the school curricula which reflects African perspectives. As Springer said in 2017, “the presence of the African is not recognised in any of the place names as if Africans had nothing to do with Emancipation. Not even a plaque at Treasury Building to say Emancipation Proclamation was read. These are crimes against African people.” Kambon, for his part, agreed that the ED celebrations had helped to create a cultural revival in the nation and a renewed sense of pride in the African heritage. For instance, he said in 2016, the annual event helped to keep the art of African drumming alive, and to build the communities from which the drummers came. [16]

The involvement of the government, which had been so conspicuous during the years when the Afro-Trinidadian based PNM was in power (2002-2010), continued under the UNC dominated government of 2010 to 2015. The state funded the ESC’s activities each year; in 2010, for instance, to the extent of TT$2 million, with $700,000 going to smaller groups. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar spoke at the beginning of the Kambule procession on August 1, 2010, her first ED feature address; she paid tribute to the Black Power movement of the 1970s and their work to reclaim the African heritage. In her 2011 ED address, she promised to help the ESC acquire a permanent home for its year-round activities; it would be a “place to preserve African culture and traditions and a place of learning and history and a reminder that T&T continues to lead the way not only in terms of emancipation but also for ensuring the dignity of humans everywhere”. All ethnic heritages should be preserved, she said, so that future generations could know their history and create strong moral and spiritual foundations for the nation. In 2015, just weeks before her party was defeated, Persad-Bissessar used her ED “message” to pledge the support of her government for the CARICOM

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campaign for reparations for slavery, and for all the local groups “lobbying on behalf of our citizens of African descent”. [17]

As Lennox Grant noted in 2015, the “nationalisation” of the ED activities continued regardless of the party in office: “Emancipation keeps on rolling along, with truck transports bearing central and local government markings. All this is taken for granted, beyond the grant or subvention funding”. In 2017, the largely ceremonial President (Anthony Carmona) issued a full-page “message” for ED—a first so far as I know—which, among other things, expressed strong support for the CARICOM call for reparations. [18]

In 2016, Kambon linked the ED celebrations that year—the first since the PNM had taken office the previous year—to the reparations cause. He said that reparations were “fundamental to cultivating greater self-respect among peoples of African origin”: “It is not only about financing measures that will help to correct the damage that has been done, but acknowledging that slavery had affected the growth and development of the people of the region”. Ironically, it was the Persad-Bissessar government which had set up a Trinidad & Tobago Reparations Committee to help drive the process locally; after the PNM came to power, the Committee (which, following convention, had offered its resignation on the change of government) was not re-constituted. Despite the President’s 2017 statement, the evidence suggested that the PNM government had little interest in promoting the reparations cause. The chairman of the Committee, Aiyegoro Ome, has publicly complained about his frustrations at the lack of response from the government to his efforts to get the local process going again. [19]

Indian Arrival Day

As with ED, the high-profile celebrations of IAD (May 30) have helped to fix the Indo-Trinidadian narrative in the public imaginary of the nation. Each IAD generates a spate of articles in the national newspapers, and some television programmes, through which the Indo-centric narrative is developed and disseminated. [Brereton, 2007: 169-196; Brereton, 2013: 145-162] Though nothing strictly comparable to the ESC has emerged, IAD celebrations are organised by the National Council for Indian Culture (NCIC), by the main Hindu body the Maha Sabha, and by various local groups.

In 2010, IAD followed by just a few days the landslide electoral victory of a coalition led by a Hindu woman and based mainly on Indo-Trinidadian voters. The function organized by the NCIC featured speeches that rehearsed the mainstream Indo-centric narrative of the nation’s past, while the High Commissioner of India congratulated the new Prime Minister (both were special guests) on becoming the “first woman PIO [Person of Indian Origin] Head of Government in the world”. For her part, Persad-Bissessar was diplomatic: she said that while the election of a woman of Indian descent to her high office was a legitimate source of pride, “she would rather like the nation to be proud that one of the descendants of the collective experience of hardship and sacrifice today represented their hopes for a better life and freedom”. She was careful to name Afro-Trinidadian heroes, as well as Indians, in the “struggle for recognition and equality”. Her conclusion was that IAD was “more a day of

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gratitude and remembrance of our ancestors, whose contribution to nation building came through empowering the lives of future generations through their vision and sacrifice”. [20]

Satnarine Maharaj was far less diplomatic at the Maha Sabha IAD function. He recalled the scene at President’s House in December 1986 when Basdeo Panday was to be sworn in as a Cabinet minister: no “Bhagwat Geeta” could be found at the residence, the ceremony had to be halted while officials frantically scrambled to procure a copy so that he could take the oath. “Oh, how far we have travelled”, Maharaj commented; “we saw so many Bhagwat Geetas recently rising at the ministers’ swearing-in ceremony. Shouldn’t I be happy? From being totally discriminated against, we find an equal place at last”. Insisting that he and his community only wanted equality with all others, rather than any special privileges, he ended by stressing that, in the face of sustained discrimination from past PNM governments, “that we have survived is only because of the strength of our religion, our culture and the dedication of our people”. [21] (It is not clear if ‘we’ referred to Indo-Trinidadians or Hindus; in his speeches and writings, Maharaj routinely, and wrongly, conflates the two.)

For IAD 2010, the Guardian published a special supplement. Several articles rehearsed the Indo-centric narrative. “The Indian Diaspora came here and survived under very inhumane, uncivilised and deplorable conditions that historians today are now coming to their senses and researching their Arrival meticulously”, wrote Paras Ramoutar, going on to detail the hardships and triumphs of the community, so that today “a very large percentage are involved in business, the professions, corporate and government jobs”. Other articles in the supplement celebrated two immigrants: Sonnylal, who arrived as a baby in January 1917 with his mother (and therefore was not himself indentured, though the headline describes him as “one of the last male indentured immigrants”); and Willimah, who arrived from Madras in 1916 at the age of 16, “one of the last Madrassi indentured women”, who died in 1989. Both profiles present the archetypical stories of hardship, struggle, determination and faith. [22]

In 2012, two years after the election of the Persad-Bissessar-led government, IAD celebrations stimulated several expressions of pride and, indeed, triumph in the achievements of the Indo-Trinidadian community. In a column headed “Indians in T&T—A Story Of Triumph”, Maharaj rehearsed the successes of the local Indian/Hindu community. He emphasised the importance of the Ramayana for the Hindu immigrants and their descendants—knowledge of the saga is “inbred”, he claimed—and described Hindu religious practices and traditions as “the richest heritage known to man [which] embodies the highest principles”. [23]

Various Hindu government ministers expressed much the same at the Maha Sabha IAD dinner in 2012. Tim Gopeesingh, for instance, said “we feel proud of where we are today and what we have achieved…because of the values and culture our foreparents imbibed in us: values of honesty and integrity and determination, self-reliance and ambition”. A newspaper article by another minister, Suruj Rambachan, rehearsed the same story of triumph: “It is remarkable that within less than 50 years, the children of the jheel (lagoons) migrated from the jheels to become lawyers, doctors, teachers, nurses and businessmen, as well as public servants and even prime ministers. Such is the power of vision and culture”. [24]

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As usual, the celebration of IAD in 2014 stimulated several public expressions of the Indo-Trinidadian narrative. At an IAD function of the El Dorado Shiv Mandir, Surujdeo Mangaroo declared that “the Indian Diaspora is not a tribal group or a minority group pushing for recognition or accolade…The Indian Diaspora must not allow the social media or the morass of Western civilisation to penetrate its millennia old history and ethos of its rich and glorified civilisation, traditions and in [sic] the preservation of its heritage”. This speaker was sure that “Indians not only salvaged Trinidad and Tobago, but we steadfastly built it and we continue to do so despite criticisms”. Nevertheless, and perhaps unaware of any implicit contradiction, Mangaroo went on to call for Indians in Trinidad to develop a true Caribbean identity in a cooperative movement with all the other ethnic groups. [25]

An interesting event connected to IAD in 2014 was the Central Bank’s decision to start an annual “Rudranath Capildeo Legacy Lecture” alongside its long-standing Eric Williams Memorial Lecture event. The Bank’s governor, Jwala Rambarran, said it wanted to “create a similar opportunity to honour Capildeo, who stood with Dr Williams and fought for Independence for Trinidad & Tobago, and who contributed elements to our Constitution that would ensure fairness for all…As thinkers and leaders, Capildeo and Williams were both pivotal to the formation of our country, of our Independence, and should be richly honoured”. The recognition of “heroes” of Indian ethnicity is, of course, one of the ways in which ethnic and national narratives are constructed. [26]

In 2015, the 170th anniversary of the first arrival of Indians was marked in the IAD celebrations. All three of the nation’s daily papers produced lengthy special supplements, lavishly illustrated and full of advertisements with suitable themes and images. The Guardian supplement featured articles on Hindus in Tobago (where they are a very small group), Indo-Trinidadian classical dancers, singers and educators, the deity Hanuman, the long-running Indo-Trinidadian talent show Mastana Bahar, yoga, Indian festivals and fashion, and family history research for descendants of the indentured immigrants. That produced by the Express was enriched by historical photographs from the Paria Publishing collection, and included articles on the “poetics of Indo-Caribbean labour”, the jhandi, doubles (the flat-bread and chick peas sandwich beloved of all Trinidadians), a woman (Samoondari Doon) who had been born in 1912 on an immigrant ship en route to Trinidad and was still living, and an essay on the Indian contribution to Caribbean civilisation. For its part, Newsday featured an interview about Indian immigration with a historian (this author) and pieces on classical Indian dancers and singers, Hindu deities, Indian cuisine, the Nelson Island depot where most of the immigrants were first landed and processed, and (rather unusually) the contribution of the Muslim Indian community. [27] These kinds of publications help to shape and disseminate interpretations of the national history and ideas about “Indian identity” in Trinidad & Tobago.

In a thoughtful three-part series of articles headed “Celebrating Indian Arrival”, former Cabinet minister Trevor Sudama set out the history of IAD and provided strong arguments for celebrating arrival despite the hardships and indignities of indentureship. Unlike the case of ED, he pointed out, there could be no single day to celebrate the end of indenture, as the immigrants’ contracts all ended at different times. He rejected the idea that IAD (or ED)

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might generate greater divisiveness or fragmentation in the society, and concluded that “we are basically an immigrant society in which certain groups played a major role in its evolution, and one of these groups came from India and their descendants…[IAD] is a day of national historical significance and an integral part of the sum total of our history”. As has become almost traditional at IAD functions, a harsher note was struck by Maharaj at the Maha Sabha celebration at Debe in southern Trinidad. First, he attacked the labour hero and left-wing politician of the 1930s/40s, A. C. Rienzi, for changing his birth name Krishna Deonarine—“a man who distanced himself from everything our ancestors believed in”. Then he called for the national capital to be relocated, as Port of Spain, generally regarded as a “Creole” or non-Indian space, “doesn’t suit us anymore”, “us” being presumably Indo-Trinidadians. Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar, who was present (her last IAD in that office), not surprisingly expressed her disagreement with this, saying “you do not bring down one, to lift another”; her aim was to “develop every part of Trinidad and Tobago”. [28]

One by-product of the celebration of IAD has been the generation of stories about the lives of older Indo-Trinidadians, either surviving immigrants like Samoondari mentioned above, or the children of immigrants (indentured Indian immigration to Trinidad was ended in March 1917, though the last indenture contracts were not cancelled until January 1, 1920). In 2016, an interesting newspaper article presented, through oral history testimonies and photographs, the experiences of five women and two men born between 1912 and 1914, all of them in Trinidad to immigrant parents, except Samoondari who was born at sea. Published research of this kind helps to archive the stories of people who experienced post-indenture conditions and who knew first-hand the immigrants and their cultural worlds. [29]

In March 2017, the centenary of the abolition of indentured Indian immigration was marked with a high-profile international conference, the “Indian Diaspora World Convention”, organised by the US-based Indian Diaspora Council along with the NCIC in Trinidad. [30] This gathering and related events generated considerable coverage in the national press. IAD, two months later, was relatively muted in terms of press coverage. Paras Ramoutar, a longtime activist for Indo-Trinidadian culture, thought that IAD should be used “as an educational opportunity aimed at alerting the national citizenry of the serious and critical role the Indian Diaspora has played, and will continue to play for generations to come”. Echoing similar calls by the ESC, he thought there was an urgent need to include in the school curricula “the history of all ethnic groups”. “Let IAD 2017 become another point to recalibrate our thinking, aspiration and benevolence to Trinidad and Tobago”, he concluded. Jai Parasram, a Canadian-based Trinidadian journalist, felt that the point of IAD was not to glorify indenture in any way, but to “celebrate the resilience of our ancestors”, “the unnamed and forgotten thousands who kept people and culture alive in spite of the adversities they faced”. In its customary IAD editorial, the Express noted that the nation “cannot but remain grateful for the ways in which our society has been enriched and enhanced by those in whose honour we mark this day”. [31]

Opposition

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Over the last few years, many have expressed opposition to, or at least reservations about, the implications of high-profile celebrations of the two “ethnic” (as opposed to religious or national) public holidays. Neither the Afro-Trinidadian nor the Indo-Trinidadian community is monolithic, of course, and the national discourse on these and other issues is distinctly robust.

One line of opposition to celebrating ED argues that the situation of the nation as a whole, and that of people of African descent in particular, is too troubled to justify any such celebration. The prominent medical researcher Courtney Bartholomew, an Afro-Trinidadian, took this line in a 2010 newspaper column headed “Emancipation (?) Day”. He felt that the extent of crime, the loss of civility, and the general erosion of standards all made celebration inappropriate: “May I suggest that during next year’s Emancipation Day parade, we should all wear plain sack cloth instead of the colourful dashikis, head scarves and braids. That’s when I will join the parade”. A few years later, Steve Smith objected to the name “Emancipation Day” for the holiday: “If someone celebrates their ‘emancipation’ they are rejoicing at an action taken by someone else on their behalf. What is being inadvertently celebrated seems to be the initiative of other people who saw it fit to liberate a captive people. We direct praise to our colonial masters for their act of emancipating”. Instead, he argued, “our celebration should focus on the advent of African people to the West and their enrichment of western culture, and not on the emancipation of a people by anyone”—though this seems to come close to suggesting celebration of the slave trade and slavery. [32]

These two critics are both Afro-Trinidadians, but in 2016 two newspaper columnists, one of Indian and the other of European descent, wrote thoughtful pieces on the ED celebrations. Sharda Patasar thought the critical question was “what does emancipation mean to the younger African generation in Trinidad?” She believed that “Emancipation means that we now have the power to understand the history that has shaped our cultures and attitudes”. In an implicit rebuke to the ESC, she concluded “Emancipation means that we work towards changing the rhetoric of victimhood that our leaders, political and otherwise, perpetuate.” By contrast, Peter O’Connor rehearsed the horrors of enslavement and post-slavery oppression of Africans in the Americas, and concluded that “I do know that white people must learn the depths of the wounds that will not heal themselves. If we can learn, that might help in providing the foundation” for rebuilding society. [33]

Some Indo-Caribbeans, especially academics, have long objected to celebrating “Arrival” because of the iniquities of the indenture system. To quote a Guyanese-American writer, “to celebrate IAD is to celebrate the beginning of our slavery sentences…to celebrate death”; or in the words of a Canadian-Trinidadian academic, Indians were “merely the cargo of the system of indentureship, and it is ridiculous that we would celebrate the beginning of bondage”. This view was forcefully articulated in 2011 by two prominent (non-Hindu) Indo-Trinidadians. Veteran attorney Israel Khan, in an interview, said: “My forefathers arrived in this country in a situation where they were held in ‘coolie bondage’ in conditions similar to the African slaves. Psychologically, I and many other Indo-Trinidadians cannot celebrate the atrocities suffered by our forefathers. What we celebrate is the abolition of the Indentureship system, not their arrival into slavery”. He hoped that “all of us can one day celebrate one

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‘Arrival Day’”. For his part, Raffique Shah, former politician, union leader and journalist, headed his column published just before IAD in 2011 “I arrived in 1946” (the year of his birth). He explained that he had been opposed to celebrating IAD ever since the idea first surfaced in the 1970s, though it was “no big deal for me”, holiday or not: “I did not need to proclaim my ‘Indianness’, wave a flag, since that was who I was, who I am”. In a more recent piece, Shah wrote that he found the “ethnic” holidays tended to be more divisive than unifying. In a column headed “I arrived by birth”, he said he was proud of his Indian roots, but was also happy that his forebears came to Trinidad: “When I arrived by birth 101 years after my great-grandfather came on the Fatel Rozack, the burial of my navel string in this land signalled the severing of ancestral loyalties”. [34]

The idea that the celebration of ED and IAD is inherently divisive is certainly part of the public discourse on race relations in Trinidad (Tobago is much less involved in this debate). Steve Alvarez, for instance, in a 2017 letter, wrote that if he had the opportunity, he would eliminate both as national holidays. “Instead, I would replace them with holidays that unite our people like a national day of thanksgiving or a unity day where people of all ethnicities, religions and class are encouraged to experience the cultural diversity of our people…It is time to end the division and segregation. A good place to start is with the abolition of holidays that divide us ethnically”. The idea of “merging” IAD and ED has been discussed since the 1990s, but, of course, it is strongly opposed by the most prominent groups which organise activities for each day. In 2010, Kambon of the ESC insisted that “nobody is going to be allowed to take away” the right to celebrate Emancipation and to promote and strengthen African cultural expression in the nation; the president of the NCIC felt that both holidays were “significant in their own right” and each marked formative events in the nation’s history. [35]

The high-profile celebrations of ED and IAD have become an entrenched part of the nation’s cultural calendar, and certainly will not be “abolished” by any conceivable government, present or future. They have helped to shape powerful ethnic narratives of the nation’s past, and to reinforce many aspects of the ancestral cultures of the two “majority” groups that make up Trinidad & Tobago’s population. On the whole, with some notable exceptions, the groups and individuals who promote and organise these celebrations have been reasonably cautious in their rhetoric and symbolism, and have not sought to use them to attack or demonise the ethnic ‘Other’. But perhaps the Guardian was right when it suggested, in a 2014 editorial about ED, that the “the two major ethnic groups should begin to reserve elements of their celebrations to focus on the positives of having a multi-ethnic and multicultural society reaching out to each other and to the minorities. The message must be that a nation can be woven together out of the trials and misadventures of the past”. [36]

Notes

Abbreviations: The Express (T&T): Ex; The Guardian (T&T): Gd; Newsday (T&T): Nd; Trinidad & Tobago: T&T

1. Ex 31 July 2016, 33-34: From the ESC.

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2. Nd 25 May 2015, 12; 1 June 2015, 12; 8 June 2015, 12.

3. It should be noted that the celebration of ED and IAD is sometimes affected by national politics in T&T. The PNM, Afro-based, was in power 2002-2010 and again 2015 to the present; the UNC, Indo-based, dominated the coalition in power 2010-2015.

4. Ex 27 June 2007, Mix 4; Gd 11 June 2007, G-Life 33.

5. Ex 1 Aug 2008, 36-37: from GIS; Gd 3 Aug 2008, A13.

6. Gd 5 Aug 2009, A24.

7. Ex 6 Aug 2006, 7.

8. Gd 1 Aug 2008, A13; for refutations of Cudjoe’s claims, see Gd 11 Aug 2008, A24; 13 Aug 2008, A25; 22 Aug 2008, A13.

9. It should be noted that in T&T, “black” is not used of people of South Asian descent (Indo-Trinidadians), whatever their skin colour.

10. Gd 3 Aug 2008, A22-23, and 10 Aug 2008, B28. For Maharaj’s response, Gd 22 Aug 2008, A13.

11. Ex 7 and 8 Sept 2009 and Gd 3 Aug 2009, A7, for Cudjoe’s speech. Many wrote to refute his claims, eg Maharaj (Gd 13 Aug 2009, A11) and Selwyn Ryan (Ex 16 Aug 2009, 11).

12. Gd 1 Aug 2010, A8; 2 Aug 2010, A6; 6 Aug 2010, A29. Though the NAEAP disappeared after 2010, Cudjoe continued to write on ED and related issues in the national newspapers: eg Ex 6 Aug 2017, 14.

13. Ex 1 Aug 2010, Mix 11, and 2 Aug 2010, 5; Gd 14 July 2010, A48. The play has been published in Gibbons, 2010: 55-80. The ESC prefers the Kikongo word “Kambule” for the procession traditionally called the “Canboulay”.

14. Ex 1 June 2011, Section 2, 3-4, and 28 July 2011, 12.

15. Ex 3 Aug 2012, 12, and 1 Aug 2013, 12.

16. Eg: Gd 14 July 2010, A38; Nd 26 July 2015, Women 4; Nd 1 Aug 2015, A12; Ex 31 July 2016, 33; Ex 2 Aug 2017, 7; Nd 2 Aug 2016, A5. For the place names issue, see Trotman, 2006: 39-63.

17. Ex 23 July 2010, 7, and 2 Aug 2010, 5; Nd 2 Aug 2011, A5; Gd 2 Aug 2011, A6; Ex 2 Aug 2015, 11.

18. Ex 2 Aug 2015, 13; Ex 4 Aug 2017, 27.

19. Nd 31 July 2016, A30-31; Ex 22 Jan 2018, 16; Gd 8 Dec 2017, A22.

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20. Yatra May-June 2010, 21-22. Yatra was a (short-lived) magazine of the High Commission of India to T&T.

21. Gd 10 June 2010, A33.

22. Gd 30 May 2010: IAD Supplement.

23. Gd 30 May 2012, 25.

24. Nd 28 May 2012, 19; Gd 30 May 2012, 27.

25. Gd 30 May 2014: IAD Supplement, 7-10; Gd 28 May 2014, B7.

26. Ex 14 May 2014, Section 2, 1. Capildeo was Leader of the Opposition when T&T achieved Independence in 1962.

27. Gd 30 May 2015, IAD Supplement (24 pp.); Ex 30 May 2015, IAD Supplement (16 pp.); Nd 30 May 2015, IAD Supplement (24 pp.).

28. Nd 25 May 2015, 12; 1 June 2015, 12; 8 June 2015, 12; 31 May 2015, 9.

29. Nd 29 May 2016, A42-43.

30. Indian Diaspora World Convention 2017, 100th Anniversary of Abolition of Indian Indentureship (2017 booklet/magazine).

31. Ex 25 May 2010, 15; Gd 28 May 2017, A13; Ex 30 May 2017, 12.

32. Ex 11 Aug 2010, 13; Nd 10 Aug 2015, 14.

33. Nd 31 July 2016, A15 and A13.

34. Gd 28 May 2017, A13; Gd 5 June 2011, A37-38; Ex 29 Oct 2011, 15; Ex 29 May 2011, 14; Ex 30 May 2017, 13. The Fatel Rozack was the ship bringing the first Indian immigrants to Trinidad in May 1845.

35. Ex 30 May 2017, 14; Ex 20 May 2010, 29.

36. Gd 1 Aug 2014, A22.

References

Allahar, A. (2005). “Class, ‘Race’, and Ethnic Nationalism in Trinidad” in A. Allahar (ed.), Ethnicity, Class and Nationalism Caribbean and Extra-Caribbean Dimensions. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books: 244-257.

Brereton, B. (2007). “Contesting the Past: Narratives of Trinidad & Tobago History”, New West Indian Guide 81 (3 & 4): 169-196.

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Brereton, B. (2012). “’All ah we is not one’: Afrocentric History in the Pluralist Nation of Trinidad & Tobago” in A. Diptee and D. Trotman (eds.), Remembering Africa & Its Diasporas. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press: 45-62.

Brereton, B. (2013). “Ethnic Histories: The Indocentric Narrative of Trinidad’s History” in K. Mahabir (ed.), Caribbean Issues in the Indian Diaspora. New Delhi: Serials Publications: 145-162.

Brereton, B. (2015). “An Authorised Version? The Indo-Trinidadian Narrative Since 2010”. Paper presented to Conference on the East Indian Diaspora, University of the West Indies, Trinidad.

Brereton, B. (2016). “Eric Williams and the Independence Narrative” in D. McCollin (ed.), In the Fires of Hope. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers: 129-141.

Gibbons, R. (2010) (ed.) Emancipation Moments Contemporary Caribbean Plays. St Augustine, Trinidad: University of the West Indies Open Campus.

Trotman, D. (2006). “Public History, Landmarks and Decolonisation in Trinidad”, Journal of Caribbean History 40: 39-63.

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