East Indian
Solidarity In Nation Building In Guyana
An integrated pluralist
model
Resistance to assimilation
East Indian subculture
Contribution to sugar
and rice
Common solidarity
Conclusion
Indo-Caribbean culture, today is not widely
accepted as a legitimate field of study because the Caribbean
is still seen as African. Numerous studies of Afro-Caribbean
history and culture attest to this definitive conclusion.
These studies show an Afro-centric approach toward the Caribbean.
Given a sizable number of East Indians in Guyana, the notion
and application of an Afro-centric philosophy entrenched
in Caribbean Studies certainly reduce the significance of
East Indian labor in the Caribbean from the beginning of
Indenture.
Some features of the Indo-Caribbean experience may very
well be dislocation from India, massive burden of labor
in the Caribbean, ethnic victimization in the post-colonial
era, and migration to the metropolitan centers. These characteristics
generate a double marginalization, as Naipaul would say
(Birbalsingh 1997: xv). First, there is marginalization
via their a subservient relationship to American and Euro-centered
Creole-Caribbean condition. Second, there is marginalization
via their ‘outsider’ status as East Indians
in the Caribbean.
An
integrated pluralist model
Guyana emerged from the White planters’ clutch as
a plural society with multiple class and cultural traditions.
People have ingrained belief systems and values, driven
by their cultural norms. In a multiethnic society, the cultural
institutional structure, i.e., family, kinship, religion,
and ethnicity, are presented as dimensions of pluralism.
Therefore, the traditional pluralist model comprises two
concepts: culture and ethnicity. Smith describes a plural
society as a society divided into separate social and cultural
sections, each of which was typified by a different system
of basic institutions. He argued that “This basic
institutional system embraces kinship, education, religion,
property and economy, recreation, and certain modalities”
(Smith 1965:82).
He argues that a plural society lacks a common value system
shared by the separate cultural sections. Under these seemingly
conflict and unstable conditions, therefore, order and control
functions become a premium, and these are effected through
a political machinery controlled by the dominant cultural
section. However, the ruling elite has a dominant value
system, with which subordinate groups have to comply, even
in situations of cultural coexistence.
Clearly, cultural coexistence under the traditional pluralist
model could breed ethnic cleavage and closure, with only
minimal participation of the competing ethnic groups in
the economic sector of society. This analysis of pluralism,
if true, suggests minimal social interaction between Africans
and East Indians in Guyana. But the empirical evidence would
indicate otherwise. For instance, observation of these two
races in the adolescent and adult socialization process
in Guyana shows consistent meaningful interaction, even
during colonial times.
In these circumstances, class as a third dimension needs
to complement the other two concepts of culture and ethnicity
in the pluralist model. However, ethnic cleavage and closure
become diluted when both competing ethnic groups begin to
perceive themselves as holding a similar class position
at each level in the class structure. Indeed, the possibility
still exists for people of similar ethnicity and race, but
from different class levels to experience prejudice and
discrimination. Any of the three factors of race, class,
and ethnicity, or their combination is capable of triggering
off the ugly faces of prejudice and discrimination.
Therefore, class, race, and ethnicity are lived simultaneously
(Andersen & Collins 1992:xxi) to create stratification
systems, and they interact to facilitate or thwart access
to social and economic rewards, intensifying the impact
of any of them individually (Rothman 1999:15-16). Rothman
argues that the interaction of class, race and ethnicity
can be illustrated in examining the distribution of income.
For instance, then, those East Indians and Africans who
comprise the working class, will share similar occupation,
income, and education characteristics, referred to as socioeconomic
status (SES). This similarity is observed for all race and
ethnic groups at all class levels of the stratification
system.
In this integrated pluralist model, we can now identify
the level of cultural pluralism in Guyana, albeit theoretically
(Gordon 1959:143), by first examining four types of cultural
pluralism. These are:
• The tolerance level – minimum cultural coexistence
• The good group relations level – more secondary
and less primary contacts transcending ethnic lines
• The community integrational level – increasing
primary contacts with less emphasis on ethnicity
• The pluralistic integrational level – growth
of subnational heritage where there is free movement among
different ethnic groups.
Some mutual accommodation to each group’s cultural
values, some freeing up of ethnic endogamy, and their increasing
informal interaction, may very well symbolize in Guyana
a good group relations level of cultural pluralism.
Seeing Guyana today as being characterized with a cultural
pluralism only in terms of race and ethnicity, motivates
a person to largely focus on the distinctiveness of beliefs,
values, kinship groups, and institutions.
However, each ethnic group’s culture is distinctive
but permeable, due to the injection of class as a variable
into the pluralist model, creating an integrated pluralist
paradigm. This expanded pluralist model has the potential
to facilitate a focus on ethnic similarities and not ethnic
differences, thereby preventing a minority group's assimilation
to a dominant culture.
Resistance
to assimilation
Most societies have a stratification system where there
is an upper class, a middle class, a working class, a lower
class, and an underclass. People are located at different
levels of this class structure. Let us assume for a moment
that a person is part of the middle class as an East Indian.
Are there not Africans who, too, are part of that middle
class? And because they are part of that middle class, even
though their race and culture are different, the East Indian
middle class person would tend to have more meaningful interaction
with those Africans who have a similar economic status.
Some people may not accept it, but I think that you should
ponder for a moment about the many similarities East Indians
have with Africans. If you accept this level of similarity,
then the quality of interaction between the two major ethnic
groups will be enhanced. The same argument can apply to
any of the class level for both ethnic groups.
The obsession with ethnic differences and not ethnic similarities,
has driven people to believe that in Guyana as in all multiethnic
societies, the achievement of a common culture or a common
value system is the panacea for race problems and nation
building. Nothing can be further from the truth. The U.S
with a multiplicity of cultures, and it has a lot more than
six cultures, does not appear to have a common culture.
People who are American citizens or Green Card holders in
the U.S. generally comply with the legal requirements of
the system, and still sustain their own cultural heritage
and contribute to nation building of that society.
A false assumption is used to promote assimilation toward
a common culture, as the focus is, mainly, on ethnic differences.
The false assumption is that racism can be resolved by creating
a common culture, achieved only through assimilation. A
spotlight on ethnic similarities will preserve and advance
each other’s culture. Both East Indians and Africans
have to develop a reduced focus on these differences, and
place greater emphasis on cultural universals; cultural
universals, are values, norms, or other cultural characteristics
found in all societies (Henslin [1993] 1995:49). These are
commonalities shared by different cultures, implying that
East Indians and Africans, in this context, have cultural
similarities, and, of course, as well as differences.
Picture the bridges and the coalitions these cultural universals
can establish with both cultures. We must respect other
people’s culture, and understand that the cultures
of the Amerindians, East Indians, Portuguese, Chinese, Africans,
Mixed, can coexist through cultural universals. Whole cultures
cannot be bridged, only those components common to different
cultures can be bridged; these common components are cultural
universals. However, such cultural universals are necessary
but not sufficient to create the bridges; they are, nevertheless,
useful building blocks that can become the linkages among
different cultures.
Cultural universals refer to aspects of different cultures,
and, therefore, do not constitute a whole culture. Therefore,
any bridge established through cultural universals, represents
a pluralist unity, and not the ‘conventional national
unity’.
National unity conventionally refers to a fusion of several
minority cultures that become absorbed into the dominant
culture. These many minority cultural slices will not produce
any unified ‘Guyanese culture’, the achievement
of which is perceived to be national unity. This is so because
this preposterous ‘Guyanese culture’, presented
as the consummation of national unity, presupposes a condition
of forced assimilation, manifest or latent, on minority
groups by the politically dominant. Whole cultures in Guyana
do not have to linked. Only relationships premised on ethnic
similarities have to be bridged.
East Indians understood well the need to preserve their
culture, and have resisted any attempt to dilute the East
Indian heritage. This resistance to any type of assimilation
to Creole or White culture, facilitated the social construction
of East Indian solidarity. The solidarity showed deference
to and sustained the colonial value system through the ‘total
institution’ framework on sugar plantations in the
colonial period.
At first, East Indians showed solidarity to colonial culture,
and latently, demonstrated resilience against assimilation
through their cultural persistence, followed by a period
of solidarity with Africans in battling colonial hegemony
up to the 1950s. Ethnic cleavage and closure by East Indians
was practically nil in their show of support for Whites
at the beginning of indenture through the 1860s. However,
in their pursuit of cultural preservation to ward off any
threat to their culture, ethnic cleavage and closure displayed
by East Indians, became a predominant factor of social life.
Africans continued to distrust the East Indian “…for
his ‘blackleg’ entry into their struggle”
(Cross 1980:4), well beyond the indenture period. By the
same token, East Indians consistently showed cultural resilience
and persistence, aided by their ceremonial ethnic cleavage
and closure against Africans and Creoles. But amid their
conflicts of interest, East Indians also showed solidarity
with Africans in the early beginnings of trade unionism,
industrial resistance, and sustaining the sugar and rice
industries.
Labor resistance by East Indians against the plantocracy,
and politicized constituents within the East Indian population,
such as, Bechu in the 19th Century, and Peter Ruhoman, and
Dr. Cheddi Jagan in the 20th Century, among others through
the 1950s, confirm the evolution of East Indian solidarity
with Africans against colonial hegemony. Obviously, under
these conditions, inter-ethnic solidarity tended to reduce
the level of intra-ethnic cleavage.
East
Indian subculture
What factors sustained East Indian culture since 1838? Through
the characteristics of the East Indian subculture, inclusive
of the family system, religious organizations, and educational
institutions, East Indians have been able to uphold their
culture and contribute to societal development.
Malik (1971:27) argues that the unit of the East Indian
community is not the individual but the joint family. At
marriage a girl leaves her ancestral family and becomes
part of the joint family of her husband…a very important
feature of this social unit is that all property is held
in common” (Madan:10-11). The joint family system
and kinship pattern were effectively relocated to the Caribbean
from India, demonstrating a continuity between cultures.
This continuity was significant in enabling the family to
socialize the child in the formative years.
Klass (1961:93) shows that “…an East Indian’s
first allegiance is to his family, his next to his wider
circle of kin.” East Indian life revolves primarily
around the family, and secondarily encompassing social and
public life. The family-centered approach, according to
Malik (1971:30), promotes particularist and ascriptive values,
and strong ethnic identification as attachment to family,
village/estate, and religion. This attachment, however,
gets transformed into primary tasks for the individual,
and encourages ethnic politics. Some East Indian leaders,
notwithstanding their localized psychological attachment,
have used their ethnic base to integrate ethnicity, race,
and class into political activism through advancing to higher
levels of cultural pluralism.
East Indians are not a collectively united ethnic group
because of a division into several religious groups –
Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and others. Religious-cultural
diversities contribute overwhelmingly to the East Indian
way of life. For instance, the majority of the Hindu population
until the 1960s, were followers of the Sanatan Dharma Maha
Sabha. These East Indians stood tall when their religious
organization became susceptible to political aggression.
Burnham, conscious that he would not win the East Indian
vote without destroying the hold that the Sanatan Dharma
Maha Sabha had on East Indian Hindus, successfully engineered
the removal of some of its significant leaders.
Subsequently, Burnham was still unable to secure a large
cross-section of the East Indian vote. Burnham’s attempt
to fragment the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, demonstrated
his perception of the political power of this Hindu organization.
In the twenty-eight dark years of the Burnham Dictatorship,
East Indians sought solace in their religion, be it Hinduism,
Islam, or Christianity. Their religion and religious organizations
provided the solidarity and activism needed to resist the
authoritarian regime that posed a threat to their culture.
In the Burnham Dictatorship years, ethnic cleavage and closure
as projected by East Indians were high.
Contribution
to sugar and rice
Stereotypes have alluded to East Indians as ‘sugar
and rice people’; notwithstanding this stereotypical
negativity, the allusion is also paradoxical. The paradox
lies in the reality that both industries would have had
a premature mortality, had it not been for skilled East
Indian labor. The refusal of Africans to continue to till
the sugar lands at the end of slavery, and to focus their
energies in developing a successful village movement, would,
indeed, have spelt the death of sugar. The presence, however,
of indentured East Indian labor in Guyana, notwithstanding
their replacement of Africans in sugar, guaranteed the persistence
of sugar.
It is appropriate to mention here that East Indians, Portuguese,
and Chinese were not brought to Guyana because there was
a shortage of labor to man the sugar plantations; African
workers were in adequate numbers to keep the sugar mills
alive. Indentured servants were really induced to Guyana
to act as an alternative source of cheap labor. Of course,
White planters were successful in this mission. Eventually,
East Indians constituted the main labor force in sugar.
Prior to the East Indian arrival in 1838, White planters
attempted to cultivate rice, obtaining rice seedlings and
advice from Louisiana, and other parts of the United States
of America. Several attempts were effected, but all ended
in failure. The East Indians, some with experience and skills
in rice cultivation, consolidated the rice industry. Rice,
today, is the second largest export earner for Guyana.
Common
solidarity
East Indian descent demonstrated a remarkable history of
active struggle, despite their containment within a total
institutional framework. Rigid labor laws produced criminal
convictions for the slightest violations. Medical doctors
and magistrates operated in the ruling class interests,
once they were paid off handsomely. East Indian women became
frequent targets for sexual assaults by White overseers.
Interestingly, East Indians did make active responses.
Although arrests were common, East Indians continued to
resist. East Indians effected 31 strikes in 1886, 15 in
1887, and 42 in 1888. The years 1874 through 1895 saw 65,084
indentured East Indians convicted of violating the labor
contract. Strikes against the White planters persisted throughout
the colonial era until 1966.
Even though the East Indian presence in 1838 was manipulated
to undermine the bargaining power of Africans on the sugar
plantations, we witnessed a burgeoning industrial solidarity
between Africans and East Indians in the colonial period
that needs to be re-ignited today. Rodney (1982:xxiii) attributes
the common pattern of victimization perpetrated on both
Africans and East Indians as the catalyst inducing a genuine
solidarity in the plantocracy. This inter-ethnic solidarity,
however, disintegrated after 1966.
Conclusion
A main theme defining East Indian contribution to the socioeconomic
development of Guyana is solidarity. This solidarity is
evidenced in their economic and industrial resistance, projecting
their own grievances, but linking with the protracted and
unrelenting African cause against White planters.
Out of this solidarity emerged a wholesome unity between
the East Indian and African working classes during 28 dark
years of the Burnham Dictatorship.
Political accommodation and support were, again, demonstrated
by East Indians toward Africans after the 1997 national
election, as evidenced in the Herdmanston Accord and the
St. Lucia Statement. This point has credibility only if
we agree with the perceived ethnic loyalties commanded by
both the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/Civic)
and the People's National Congress (PNC). Even if this credibility
is mired in doubt, we need to say that joint East Indian
and African working-class struggles, over the years, demonstrate
solidarity in the form of political accommodation and support
shown by both East Indian and African and working class
brothers and sisters toward each other.
East Indian and African solidarity has the potential for
longevity. But that solidarity must be premised on developing
the following conditions, in order to reduce ethnic cleavage
and closure:
*Cultural
pluralism based on race, ethnicity, and class to produce
meaningful interactions among all groups; a coexistence
of cultures, with an aggressive focus on cultural universals
that transcend the falsely rhetorical Guyanese culture.
*A
stock of knowledge and authentic data base systems on the
socioeconomic status of all groups by ethnic origin.
*Race
and ethnic relations policies to be based on an interaction
of race, class, and ethnicity.
In a period of economic weakness, ethnic
cleavage and closure and ethnic apportionment of blame have
become a remarkable feature of social life which can easily
as well return us to servitude and indentureship. We must
never allow this to happen again.
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