Introduction

Introduction CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Investigating the Production of East Indianness in Guyana They had warned me not to go there, assured me it was too dangerous to interfere with the people of that obscure temple. “They kill beasts and will do things that can make you go mad,” a befriended university graduate told me after she had found out I wanted to attend the Devi (Kali) mandir’s Sunday service. According to her, my research definitely was not worth risking my life, or at the least my sanity. As far as she was concerned, I could easily focus on other things instead, just for the sake of well-being. And she was not the only one with doubts. Even my generally reasonable East Indian wife was far from confident I would return home intact. “Fine, do whatever you want to,” is what she sighed before she made me promise I would not accept any of the foodstuffs the worshippers would inevitably offer me. And I agreed, I had to do whatever I wanted to, could not let those tales dictate my course. Mukesh, my friend and frequent companion, brought me there on his brand new Chinese motorbike. While he remained outside, I entered the house of worship, introduced myself to the presiding pujari (priest), and took a floor seat amidst two dozen flabbergasted devotees. Now, about forty minutes of hymns and rituals later, I am watching a small number of hardcore believers go around the gloomy and steaming sanctuary in an odd procession en route to please and glorify each and every one of the many members of this sect’s peculiar pantheon. While the congregation sings the appropriate bhajans, they perform puja (homage) at all of the many statues and portraits of gods and other divinities there. In front, dressed in orange dhoti and white t-shirt, is Suraj, the pujari and leader of the pack. He guides. Behind him, there are a couple of similarly clad male assistants carrying the rum, cigarettes, a pan with smouldering coals and some other items required for sacrificial activity. At the back of the parade, two ladies and a girl are dancing or ‘playing’ as it is called in this place. I recognise one of them as Suraj’s unofficial other half. She and the other two are possessed. According to the talkative woman sitting next to me, their frenziedly shaking bodies are momentarily occupied by godheads eager to interact with the highly devout mortals of this temple on the outskirts of the inhabited world. The three ladies are 17 GUYANA JUNCTION accompanied by several men with buckets of water. Whenever the possessed are overheated, and lose control of their wobbly bodies, the bucket-men grab them and make sure they cool down. The ‘divinities’ follow the parade, soaked to the skin, and move from icon to icon. As they reach an indiscernible tiny picture in a far corner of the dim building, the procession and the singing suddenly stop. I notice Suraj’s ‘wife’ – possessed by Shiva’s fearsome form, here known as Bhairo Baba – has raised her stick and summons the pujari. With her eyes half open, long wet hair dripping, and a translucent sodden pink sari revealing too much of her copious middle aged body, she addresses him and the crowd in strangely voiced tongues. Suraj translates: “Baba [Bhairo Baba] says he is unsatisfied…this is not the right kind of worship he says…you all have to sing louder…we can’t worship the Lord if you all not sing good…we must do it correct.” I witness Suraj’s wife shake her head. Only a brief message from ‘above’ this time. The solemn looking musicians lift their instruments and restart their performance. And while the pujari and his assistants stoop down in front of the framed image, the remorseful ‘Playing’ (Kali Mai service in Essequibo) congregation picks up its song, much louder: “Oh Lord Jesus come, thank God he is here again…” Thousands of miles away from India, somewhere in the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, I thus witnessed the son of the Christian god being adored by Hindu descendants of Indian indentured labourers who first arrived in the area more than one and a half century ago. It was a beautiful performance of localised Indianness1, an illustration of distinctively Indian thoughts and practices that are – and could only have been – established in a joint venture between (the offspring of) migrants and their multireligious surroundings. Jesus puja is incorporated in a belief system that has managed to remain a marker of cultural difference in the New World. An alien element integrated into a dynamic interpretive complex that guides the perceptions and actions of the people about whom I have written this dissertation. Actually, this is a book about the construction of East Indian ethnic and religious distinction in Guyana in which I endeavour to analyse the manner in which Indian 1 I prefer to use the term Indianness instead of a limited concept like Indian identity. Indianness is omnipresent and multiform. It comprises thoughts, actions, and institutions, and is both dynamic and contextual. It perfectly relates to notions like habitus and cultural understandings, notions employed throughout this dissertation. 18 Introduction ethnic/religious culture as well as Indian tainted personal meaning and practice are produced and reproduced. As such, this book is an attempt to analyse the productive interplay between the creative individual and his or her delimiting surroundings in a way that is inspired by Bourdieu’s theory of practice but seeks to develop a more sophisticated model to account for the processes of transformation and the complexity that characterise my subjects’ contemporary world. Hence, the following chapters elaborate an alternative approach to cultural change in increasingly globalised environs: an approach which allows me to investigate ethnic and religious distinction in a postcolonial diasporic community on the move. It is an investigation of a process rather than of a people. This intricate process is dissected by focusing on East Indian ways, motivations, and explanations, some of its externalisations, plus the historical and contemporary context in which these ‘marks of East Indianness’ have arisen and continue to evolve. Through a comparison of the notions and actions of East Indian Hindus and East Indian Muslims I will seek to illuminate the nature of the division of power between the creative individual on one side and forceful structures on the other. The parallels and dissimilarities in the ethnic and religious heritage, and the position and identification of Indian Hindus and Indian Muslims provide rich sources of information about the relationship between these two parties. Additionally, their temporal and situation-dependant relevance and shifting appearance enable us to perceive the transformative and flexible qualities of Indianness, Hinduness, and Muslimness in Guyana. These equalities, and the dynamics of the relationship between local Hindus and Muslims, beautifully manifest where cultural diffusion and the globalisation of religion (e.g. Arabisation of Islam) have caused existing identities and associations to become contested and new ones to emerge. As such, an exploration of the development of non-indigenous ethnic and religious systems in the small, multifarious and wide-open Guyanese society offers a superb opportunity to enhance general understanding of cultural processes in present-day diasporic settings. 19 GUYANA JUNCTION In this opening chapter, I will first position the subjects of this research project: the East Indian residents of little known Guyana. I will situate them in their plural environs and briefly touch upon ‘ethnicity’ and ‘religion’, the prime markers of their distinction. Next, I will introduce the theoretical notions that are employed to behold and make sense of the manner in which this Indian individuality is continuously constructed and reconstructed. Also, the broader scientific significance of the project will be concisely mentioned. The third section deals with the particular locale in which the fieldwork was conducted. It includes a description of the, to some extent archetypical, East Indian village where my wife and I have spent most of our days in the field. Furthermore, the latter part of the section involves a discussion of some methodological matters and choices regarding my quest for knowledge. Subsequently, I have written a segment on my social position and my identity at the site. It entails a piece on consequences and considerations regarding my peculiar twofold role as both the familiar husband of a local female and an intrusive and inquisitive researcher, as well as a part on the effects of Muslim mistrust. The penultimate section of this chapter concerns the structure of this book. And in its very last piece I will devote a few lines to my style of writing and presentation. 1.1 East Indians in a multifarious society Indians have been part of Guyanese society ever since the nineteenth century. They arrived as indentured labourers from the Indian subcontinent to work Guyana’s sugar estates after the abolition of slavery caused African labour sources to dry out. Between 1838 and 1917, nearly 240,000 Indian emigrants were brought to Guyana. Some eighty-five percent of them were Hindu, fifteen percent Muslim. Today, their descendants form the country’s largest ethnic group. From marginal cane cutters they have become an influential people well-represented in most sections of Guyanese society. East Indians, who now constitute forty-eight percent of the total population, are the mainstay of the significant plantation economy. Many are independent farmers and landowners. In addition, as a group they are now fairly well educated, have been relatively successful in business, dominate Guyana’s politics, and maintain commercial, religious and cultural ties with large diaspora communities in North America (and to a lesser extent Europe) and numerous regional and global nuclei.

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