Hosay: a Performance in Defiance

Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.8.Issue 1. 2020 Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (January-March) Email:[email protected] ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O)

RESEARCH ARTICLE

HOSAY: A PERFORMANCE IN DEFIANCE

SAHID AFRIDI MONDAL M.A., Jadavpur University, Jadavpur, Kolkata- 700032 Email:[email protected]

Abstract During the nineteenth century, Indians, indentured as plantation labourers on the British sugar estates in the Caribbean — Trinidad, Guyana, and Jamaica, transported with them many rituals and customs. Among these Muharram, the Shi'a Muslim’s ritual observances commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussain travelled to the New World, and eventually became “Hussay” (or “Hosay”). Hindus and Muslims and workers of different religious and ethnic groups became involved in the parades Article Received: 09/1/2020 which assumed political overtones since it was viewed as an Indian day of defiance, Article Accepted: 04/02/2020 and which led to riots in Trinidad, Guyana, and Suriname. Following the Bakhtinian Published online: 10/02/2020 literary mode of unification through subversion, this paper will look into the DOI: 10.33329/rjelal.8.1.201 gathering of these unlikeliest of people in a celebration which encouraged the dialogue of free expression through artistic and creative participation and thus how it eventually defied colonialism and its effort at suppressing Hosay’s unique voice by all workers, free and bonded. Keywords: Bakhtin, Carnival, Caribbean, Colonial, Hosay, Muharram.

In 680 CE, on the 10th day of the month of play of the events by drawing blood from the self- Muharram, Ḥusayn ibn Ali (also known as Imam inflicted wounds on the surface of their body and Hussain), a grandson of Islamic prophet thus symbolize the suffering of their leader. Muhammad, was ambushed along with his family The Caribbean observes the occasion with a (including his infant son Ali) and companions on the distinct touch. They coalesce the traditional Shia way to Kufa because he refused to pledge allegiance practices (corresponding to the Iranian traditions) to Yazid, the second son of Umayyad who took over with the surrounding communities. In 1838 the first the caliphate after the Prophet as the Commander group of Indian indentured labourers arrived in of the Faith1. Although the Abbasid Revolution Guyana and subsequently, in 1845 the farmworkers ultimately overthrew the Umayyad caliphate's arrived in Trinidad and Jamaica. Thus, when the legitimacy as the ruler, the martyrdom of their Indian Muslim indentured labourers populated the leader still kept alive in the memory of the Muslim Caribbean plantations in the 1850s and the Shia community in the form of a mournful community began to take an active part in the commemoration. Throughout the world, its society, they introduced their cultural practice of memorialization varies according to regional observing Muharram. This ultimately took a new practices and rituals. In the Indo-Shia communities name as “Hussay” or “Hosay” – an outcome of of countries like Iran, Oman, Yemen and the other creolization of the name of the martyr Hussein. The Arab Emirates the participants display a passionate

1 http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/hosayn-b-ali-i

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first occasion of Hosay might have occurred at the structure resembling the tomb of the martyrs. Here, Philippine Estate near Couva (Thasis 41). But there beginning from the materials of ritual a celebratory was no official permission for the commemoration makeover is evident. Frank J. Korom in his study of Hosay until 1863 when Queen Victoria granted focuses on local expressions of the Muharram rituals permission as long as there were Indian residents in Trinidad and notes that “they have departed quite (Carmichael 274). After that other estates2 picked up significantly from tradition in the scheme of color, the ritual. shape, and external decor, making the tadjahs more colorful and glitzy, like the costumes and floats of The labourer's long voyage across the black Carnival” (126). Therefore, a carnivalesque aesthetic waters, the tormenting thoughts of their homeland, sensibility is visibly present in the creative aspect of their former brotherhood and unknown Muharram. Moreover, the unofficial competition apprehensions about their future in an alien space surrounding the tazia-making creates a space for inevitably served to result in “the instant interaction among families of different ethnicities. development of an indelible bond of ethnic kinship This invites to discard the fundamental refusal to any in which religion became secondary to ethnic dialogue and creativity by the monologism of the emotions and home sickness” and thus during colonial authority. When the assembly of the Hosay, the “Muslims were the main actors while the structure is finished, it was set up for public display Hindus provided material, logistic and moral support where every community would pay their respect. and participated in tazia-making, dancing, gutka Several tazias from the surrounding neighbourhood (stick) or sword-fighting and vending of sweets and would join in an organized central procession and drinks along the way and at the immersion grounds parade towards the immersion grounds. Here, what at the river banks of sea coasts” (Mansingh & Ajai Mansingh and Laxmi Mansingh observe in their Mansingh 28). Hereafter, Hosay generally came to study of creolization of Hosay can be very aptly read be known as the ‘East Indian Carnival’ or the ‘Coolie in terms of the Bakhtinian concept of the Carnival’. But this multi-ethnic solidarity carnivalesque: surrounding festivity was a foreboding for the colonial representatives in the Caribbean. Situating The routes of individual and joint processions the observance of Hosay in a historical framework would be lined with onlookers, - both Indo- and basing on these elements of multi-ethnicity this and Afro-Caribbean. While the Indians felt paper seeks to apply Bakhtinian concepts and tropes proud and elated by the audio-visual display to understand how the performance of religious of their culture in alien surroundings, the rites is “carnivalized” by celebrating unification in Afro-Jamaicans shared the sentiments of defiance of the European colonialism. Popular as a their colleagues in the non-European theorist of human interactions Bakhtin’s concepts of religious and cultural traditions with an aura ‘Carnivalesque’, ‘Polyphony’, ‘Dialogism’ permeates of ecstatic Afro-drumming, animism and beyond novelistic criticism and a cultural text like mysticism (30). Hosay is a suitable site to be analysed upon. First, it This certainly underscores “the structural will be seen how the distinct observance of Hosay in characteristics of the carnival image” where the Caribbean is emulated into a model of Carnival; “opposites come together, look at one another, are simultaneously the integrative elements of the reflected in one another, know and understand one observance will be contended with antagonistic another” (Bakhtin 176). The Tazias become a mobile discourses; finally, it will be seen how Hosay museum of integrative creativity. emerges as a defying cultural performance. To explore furthermore how the atmosphere From the first day of Muharram, both of carnival produces performative defiance the Muslims and Hindus would venture jointly in the Bakhtinian concept must be conjoined with the painstaking task of building the Tazia, a three-tier

2 Tobago, Surinam etc.

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framework of indentureship and colonialism. space. This performance in defiance was reiterative According to Bakhtin, one of the most important action as every year the Tazias were paraded aspects of the carnival sense is: through main roads. Hosay, therefore, was a robust medium to articulate the labourer's ambition of The laws, prohibitions, and restrictions that unification. The coolie labourers could also speak of determine the structure and order of their collective grievances by representing ordinary, that is noncarnival, life are themselves as a “fully fledged moral and cultural suspended during carnival: what is community” (Mohapatra 186) through the suspended first of all is hierarchical structure procession. and all the forms of terror, reverence, piety, and etiquette connected with it —that is, The observance of Hosay presents the everything resulting from socio-hierarchical Caribbean with a ceremony of incorporation, an inequality or any other form of inequality intersecting ground to “shine through one another” among people (including age). All distance (Bakhtin 162) - the indentured labourers, Blacks, between people is suspended, and a special Chinese, the Afro-Creoles. Remembering the carnival category goes into effect: free and martyrs, participants would parade the streets and familiar contact among people (122-23). mourn loudly. Although, in the wailing of Hai Hasan- Hai Hosain3 lies a sombre mood but the outward So, the Caribbean society otherwise highly gives away to a mirthful festivity. The cacophony of stratified on the bases of colour, class, and religion Nagara, drum, Tassa and throwing scent on the that existed among the Indians, Chinese and the audience, singing and dancing, all of these turns the Afro-Creole people – breaks into a ‘free familiar mournful religious occasion into a carnivalesque contact’ on the special way the mass procession of atmosphere. Like the Hindu Ramleela, Hosay Hosay is organised. Consequently, “all things that transforms into nothing less than a theatre on the were once self-enclosed, disunified, distanced from street, a bodily enactment of history but in their time one another by a noncarnivalistic hierarchical and place (Cudjoe 230). The procession continues worldview are drawn into carnivalistic contacts and toward the immersion ground which itself becomes combinations” (Bakhtin 123). This flouting of laws a site for revelry. The landscape resembles a mela and restrictions on the carnival square can be where activities take a festive turn: configured further into the structural elements of Hosay. Mohapatra builds an important argument The immersion ground had all the regarding Hosay procession. Investigating in context atmosphere of an Indian fairground. Vendors of spatial immobility of the community generated by had their stalls on three sides of the ground the indentured labour system, he underscores how while Tazias from different communities the articulation of multiple identities in a were parked or rested in the river bank. By performative manner became a ground for fear to rotation, drummers of each group would play the colonial authority - “through the Hosay the martial music for the sword - and stick- procession, the community manipulated already fighters to dance...a display of dazzling existing spaces and places but gave them a new, movement of arms, body and feet. Katghora albeit temporary, meaning” (186). The procession dancers would then dance to the Tasa music worked as an integrative element of the festival as and sing songs narrating the battle of Karbela. the route physically linked the isolated plantation Often Indian wrestlers would compete in communities. Spatial immobility imposed on the friendly matches (Mansingh & Mansingh 30- immigrants was flouted by a carnivalesque discourse 31). of freedom that laid claims to the prohibited public

3 “In some versions of the Karbala myth, Hussein’s brother Islam” (Shankar, Guha. “Imagining India(Ns): Cultural Hassan, is incorporated into the story and also dies in the same Performances and Diaspora Politics in Jamaica.” 2003, pp. 112.) battle so that both brothers are rendered martyrs in the cause of

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In the final night of the celebration, the subversion from their prescribed role as a member excitement of the crowd becomes unimaginable and of a particular sect. The boundary of the other gets it comes to an end with fierce drumming by the blurred. The matter of cultural communion participants and ultimate sinking of the tazias in the overshadows and downplays the religious aspect, river. Finally joining in a dinner, drinking and ultimately giving away to a hedonistic dimension. To revelling with everyone the celebration erases all dispense with the bohemian understanding of the pain. So, the plaintive meaning embedded in the carnival Bakhtin explains, rites are reversed, the religiosity turns into an Carnival is past millennia’s way of sensing the expression of unsanctified freedom. The contention world as one great communal performance. between observance and the celebration of This sense of the world, liberating one from Muharram amalgamates into the emergence of free fear, bringing the world maximally close to a discourse. Analogous to a carnival Hosay brings person and bringing one person maximally together, unifies, weds, and combines the sacred close to another (everything is drawn into the with the profane; the solemn, thereby, turn into a zone of free familiar contact), with its joy at frenzy for as the participants emphatically state, change and its joyful relativity, is opposed to “The tadjahs must be taken out. The building of the that one-sided and gloomy official tadjah is not enough” (Korom 193). In countries like seriousness which is dogmatic and hostile to Iran, Oman and Yemen this carnivalesque element evolution and change, which seeks to of the mournful event is absent. While describing absolutize a given condition of existence or a the artistic value of Hosay, Nunley and Bettelheim given social order. From precisely that sort of portray the religiosity and carnivalistic creativity in seriousness did the carnival sense of the wonderful terms: world liberate man (160). In degree of beauty, the aesthetics of Hosay During Hosay the confluence of people from equal the horror of the decapitation of different communities to participate in the Husain, the poisoning of his brother, and the observance is precisely the exercise of this massacre at Karbala; it is the wonder of that “communal performance” that brings “one person heroic sacrifice that translates into the maximally close to another”. The Bakhtinian “joyful beautiful. The vigor of this aesthetic has relativity” of free participation in the Hosay is further enlivened the memories of its opposed by many influential and authority figures. devoted followers so that shouts of Hosay! Hosay! Triumphantly echo in the realm where Now, an investigation into the antagonistic the imagined sacrifices of the brothers and powers is needed to understand Hosay as cultural those of all participants converge in the arts performance defiance. Korom notes that in 1991 a of Hosay (135). spokesperson of ASJA4 (Anjuman Sunnat-ul-Jamaat Association) spoke out objecting the event’s festivity But, beyond that “we can also see it as the as Hosay “undermines the true nature and concepts inevitable convergence of religious, sectarian, and the moral, social and religious values of the political, and economic interests” (Korom 84). Later Islamic religion” because it is “a bacchanalian event on, this aspect of secular convergence will be and the revelry and anti-Islamic practices connected investigated in depth. with it are against the tenets and fundamental When an individual of a community exercises principles of Islam” (204). The Sunni leaders attempt his right to engage in an activity that is different from to ‘monologise’ the occasion by imposing rigid his religious tradition, he takes himself beyond his religious doctrines. Bakhtin’s discussion of carnival ethnic affiliation. For the Caribbean people this and the grotesque body in Rabelais and His World willful participation, therefore, creates a dialectic of can be used in the investigation of the contradictions

4 http://www.asjatrinidad.com/

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between the abstract religious rite and the mass meaning of the observance. Death, certainly, is not aspiration of carnivalizing the Hosay - “The essential acknowledged by anyone having an essence of principle of grotesque realism is degradation, that is, happiness. But, as Sahir Ali5 interprets the event as the lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, contributory to the protection of Islam from the abstract; it is a transfer to the material level, to the Yazidis: “He died to protect Islam and his death sphere of earth and body in their indissoluble unity” should be marked both by sorrow and happiness…So (19). The material principles of carnival debase such the atmosphere of elation which is generated by abstractions, brings them back to the material, those Muslims who participate in the Hosain festival human level, and so counters “official” truth and is definitely justifiable” (qtd. in Thaiss 49). Tragic structures and rites (Zepp 389). This totalitarian commemorative interpretation is thus redefined to sense of unity basing on an orthodox religious accommodate the inclusion of the ‘other’ attitude defies the carnivalesque image of Hosay. communities. The multiple perspectives of Hosay as Yet, the bleak authoritarian dogma on the part of the a carnival nonetheless “challenges God, authority, Sunni Muslims of Indian descent fails to suppress and social law; insofar as it is dialogical, it is and silence the ‘polyphonic’ voices of the Caribbean. rebellious” (Kristeva 79). Hosay rightly becomes a For the member of other religious and ethnic performance of the Bakhtinian ‘dialogism’. Single community Hosay provides a platform where they consciousness is thereby replaced by multiple willfully participate to exercise their fluid identities. consciousnesses which leads to the emergence of a At the site of the event, the individual self cannot lived heterogeneous collective body. For Bakhtin, accept any imposition of fixity upon them. Hosay, ...consciousness never gravitates toward then as a carnival can be called “the apotheosis of itself but is always found in intense unfinalizability” using Morson’s and Emerson’s relationship with another consciousness. observation of Bakhtin (89). Every experience, every thought of a Returning to the concept of ‘polyphony’ by character is internally dialogic, adorned with Bakhtin, it can surely be understood that the voices polemic, filled with struggle, or is on the of the multiple communities speak for themselves contrary open to inspiration from outside and among themselves by free interaction between itself—but it is not in any case concentrated their distinct perspectives and even against the simply on its own object; it is accompanied by extreme authoritarian ‘homophony’ of religious a continual sideways glance at another rigour. The religious tries to dismantle their person (32). independent discourse by the enforcement of what This ‘polyphony’ directly refers to the Bakhtin calls the ‘power to mean’ (64). For the Sunni polyethnic citizenry. Describing Trinidad during leaders carnivalizing the Muhharam was bid’ah or a Hosay what Harndoo Emamali says in the sort of disgraceful innovation. But incorporating and documentary film Hosay Trinidad is pertinent to the co-opting various carnivalesque ethos into the core: event, the Caribbean community eradicate the plane of ‘monologism’ and create a discourse of Those who are directly connected with ‘dialogism’, a Bakhtinian term that permeates all building our taziahs...will not make it a performances and cultural texts. When the carnivaish or bacchanalish affair because we Caribbean society emulates a carnivalistic model of know the significance of it, and we know the Hosay by instantiating a dialogue, it destabilizes and reason for doing it, right? ... In Trinidad, subverts the traditional interpretation; rather the especially, people will get frenzied the mixture of multiple dialogues inflects and imbues moment you start beating tassa drumming. the observance with ‘local’ and ‘personal’ And so they start dancing right away and interpretations. Many Shia Muslims redefine the whatnot. And so you really cannot contain

5 Ali, Shair (1990) ‘Hosay: Symbols of Martyrdom’, in Trinidad Guardian, 17 July 1990.

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them, you cannot prevent them. The police is News of actual riots during Hosay celebration helpless to prevent anyone from dancing, or cannot be dismissed totally but they were jumping, or drinking. You couldn't very well infrequent. During the 1880s the colonial go and tell people, “Don't drink beer tonight,” administration started to lengthen working hours or to have them lock up their liquor shops and and at the same time reduce wage for the workers; whatnot and so. No, it would be impossible to inevitably they feared riots of the labourers. do something like that because we live in a Moreover, as “Colonial government authorities, cosmopolitan population! This is not an whether in India or the Caribbean, also retained for Islamic state. We are not only Indians, you themselves the right to demarcate boundaries see. This is a small United Nations. Trinidad is between ‘us’ and ‘them’” (Thaiss 42). Breton likened to a small United Nations (Bishop & investigates this colonial superimposition of Korom “Hosay Trinidad”). bifurcative order: “The Hamilton Report on the 1881 Carnival riots had made the point that Hosein should Hosay is, therefore, unquestionably religious also be regulated to prevent it from developing into and reverent on the esoteric level but it also is a a disorderly affair like Canboulay. Hamilton thought responding national element from the cultural that it would be a grievance if any privilege, such as perspective. the right to carry torches on a public street, was Apart from the edict (fatwa) by the religious given to the Indians but withheld from the Creoles” authority what posed challenges to the celebration (184). of Hosay was the British colonial authority. Hosay This sort of divide-and-rule policy was further contains elements of transculturalism. As the extended in the ordinance of 1884. The Governor representative of working-class people in an alien Keates viewed Hosay as a festival of debauchery land survival was an imminent question. Inevitably where Hindus and Creoles turned “an orderly the inviting carnivalesque nature of Hosay proved to meeting of Muhammadans for a religious purpose” be a cultural strategy of survival in a hostile into a “mob of exited and wildly noisy and environment (Shuayb). Moreover, the Islamic quarrelsome rowdies” engaging in the decadent religious story itself stood parallel as a democratic lifestyle - using opium, smoking ganja and drinking historical significance for the other indentured (Comins 42). It must be noted that “nervousness labourers because the martyrdom of Imam Hussain over moral contamination masks a more real fear” symbolised a sense of suffering that they too had to (Shankar123) that contributed opportunities to undergo as a result of the colonial subjugation. But, interact and communicate among Indian labourer for the colonial administrators this inclusion of populations and the ‘others’. The 1884 regulation members from different ethnic and religious mandated by the authority tried to confine this identity, gathering in a single whole had robust dramatic display of emotional affiliation in the form hostile associations. In the colonial discourse, this of processions only to the plantation areas, performative observance represented only images preventing Indians from celebrating Hosay at the of chaos and disorder. To the authority, the howling town of San Fernando, a major location. This cry of the martyr's name was translated as ordinance also prohibited all ‘others. The full text of sloganeering disruptive of peace and order. The the decree was published in the San Fernando procession which culminated different ethnicities Gazette on August 23, 1884 (Korom 114). The into a fraternity on the streets converted into a section 6 of the Ordinance 9 reads as follows: “No space of riot for the colonial administrators. Is that other than an immigrant or the descendants of simply incomprehension of the performative and immigrants shall take part in any procession or in any carnivalesque aspect of the observance on the part way interfere with such processions” (Korom 114). of the colonial administration? Or is there any real The intention is not hard to notice. It was clearly apprehension of hazard for the empire in the aimed at insulating the Muslims, Hindus, and Afro- Caribbean space? Creoles from each other. By segregating multiple

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communities into fragmented groups, the colonial intelligent” (Singh 14) threatened to undo the authority tried to curb the number of participants in progress of oppression made with the Africans. The the observance. This would in effect become a major Indians were evidently trying to build an identity for hindrance in the movements of Tazias. All these themselves by breaking out of their confined role as authoritarian machinations emphasized on mere labourers. The alienness in a new world along maintaining social order than giving importance on with their constant exploitation resulted in the fear religious observance was bound to provoke a feeling of the ‘other’ among the labourers. But gathering in of unjust imposition in all communities. The defiance demonstrates the underlying struggle for confrontation was inevitable whether the elements independence from the ‘other consciousness’ i.e. were Indians or Afro-Creole. But that defiance the colonial master. This consciousness represents a erupting out of their displeasure of suppressive case of ‘deautomatization’ from the forced role of governmental actions turned into a resultant pity. the labourer as ‘inhuman’ resources for the On the evening of October 30,1884 when police coloniser to harness. By deconstructing a traditional opened fire on the crowds participating the Hosay, a cultural practice and flourishing it into a platform for major catastrophe took place. Twenty-two Indian hybridity where not only the Muslim community but labourers were shot to death and more than 100 also the Hindu majority and Afro-Creoles could were injured; when the dead were counted and the engage freely, the Indians have constituted a injuries were calculated, a startling statistic discourse of dissent. Familiarization became the first emerged: 17 of those killed were Hindus and 5 step of this discourse-making process for the Muslims, while 76 of the injured were Hindus, with labourers as Hosay facilitated “the destruction of 19 Muslims and 1 Christian (Mohapatra 182). The epic and tragic distance” between the multiple Hindu majority is certainly a reason for such ethnicities and “the transfer of all represented statistics but it also refers to their ‘pantheistic’ material to a zone of familiar contact” (Bakhtin 124). religious nature. It underscores the integrative Now, this course of familiarization among intensity of Hosay what was supposed to be a themselves created an unfamiliar expression for the minority festival. This incident epitomizes how the colonial authority. What was simply to be a religious colonial authority invaded the community space of observance among the minority took the shape of a the Caribbean and barred from any sort unification deviant cultural activity. Inevitably, for the colonial and refused the autonomy of the ‘other’ voices, authority, the frenzy of the carnival revelry suppressing ‘polyphony’ by imposing ‘law and embodied a Bakhtinian form of grotesque devoid of order’. any order. Thus, Hosay became elemental in subverting and turning the familiar into strange for Sir Henry W. Norman, the Governor of the empire. Although it parallels7 Shklovsky’s notion Jamaica equated the celebration of Hosay with the of ostranenie, this has another important structural Indian’s increasing power6. Norman himself resemblance to Bhaba’s Third Space: “though explained: “After a residence of some time in unrepresentable in itself, which constitutes the Trinidad the Coolie not only becomes a man of a discursive conditions of enunciation that ensure that more independent spirit than he was when in India, the meaning and symbols of culture have no but according to some reliable evidence, he often primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs becomes somewhat overbearing...There can be no can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and doubt that the Coolies feel their power, or rather, I read anew” (37). Therefore, the process of should say, have an exaggerated idea of that power” negotiations among the unfixed, polysemic and (qtd. In Kale 85). Moreover, as “a race crafty and multivocal posit Hosay as a microcosm of the

6 See “Account by Lieutenant H.W. Norman, Second Assistant With Maps, Plans, and Portraits. (New Delhi: Asian Educational Adjutant-General of The Army,” found in George Forrest, A Services,2006). History of the Indian Mutiny, 1857-58: Reviewed and Illustrated 7 see Mcbride, William Thomas. “Bakhtin’s Marxist Formalism.” From Original Documents: International Studies in Philosophy, vol. 23, no. 1, 1991, pp. 23– 30., doi:10.5840/intstudphil19912312.

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‘politics of cultural struggle’ (Williams 3). Along with with prayers and Tassa, sometimes local rhythms of that the growing self-confidence of the Indians in the calypso, soca and chutney music (Shuayb). As Korom years leading up to 1884 warned the colonial sees it, Hosay is a ‘double performance’: esoteric, authorities of the necessity of restrictive measures sacred, and ethnic on the inside, while exoteric, to guard the enterprise. Lest there emerges another profane, and national on the outside. However, Haiti, risk-management became a necessity for the Hosay has played a decisive part in the cultural colonial administration. Kale aptly concludes from evolution of the Caribbean society. From Hosay Norman's remark that in developing Hosay as a festival elements like the musical instrument (steel carnival of incorporation, Indian workers had pan), the skilful ornamentations transferred to the become “overbearing,” unpredictable, and creative aesthetics of the Carnival (Taylor 368). unmanageable in the eyes of the colonial authority Preserving its multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and (85-86). Hence to battle the unfamiliar cultural multi-cultural carnivalesque performance Hosay expression of Hosay, the colonial authority now draws thousands of tourists as Bakhtin vouches deliberately attacked the labourer’s ‘freedom’. Thus, this carnival sense of the world possesses “a mighty opening fire on the crowd not only was an attempt life-creating and transforming power, an to regulate the free discourse but also an attempt to indestructible vitality” (107). Hosay deconstructs the destroy the Indian immigrants’ aspiration for an local to reach a global paradigm; the local identity. consciousness now approaches to transnational consciousness. What is clear is that the keystone of Bakhtinian carnival is often criticized for its the Caribbean culture is the celebration of the temporary nature and is characterized as a safety- difference and Hosay is just another vehicle to meet, valve for maintaining balance. For however to participate, to melt, to disintegrate, to borrow momentarily the link establishes, it undoubtedly and combine the differences. contributes to the defiance. Hosay indeed responds to the Caribbean and the global crisis: it challenges As multivocality and negotiability is inscribed the common assumptions, looks at the familiar in a at the heart of the celebration, the matter of different light and finally crosses the cultural inauthenticity and by extension of ownership upon boundaries (Ahmed 3). In spite of prohibitive acts, which both the antagonists (the Sunni leaders and legislations and state perpetrated violence against it, the Colonial authority) pled their cases for an ‘un- the festival survived in many places - the immortality carnivalized’ Hosay to serve their purposes, of the collective body has to be acknowledged; the ultimately became futile as the integrative process polyglot environment must persist. Noting the space had already started and reached to such an intensity of the Mexican dance-hall in South Texas José Limon and extent that what lay ahead was an unending very aptly puts that, “collective desire is not cycle of the same defiance if confronted. articulated against a repressive domination form Works Cited beyond the dance hall. Rather, the adversarial culture is present within the dancehall; the site of Ahmed, Akbar S. Postmodernism and Islam: contestation is at the point of dance production” Predicament and Promise. 1st ed., Routledge, (164). Thus, within the very structural elements of 1992. Hosay lies the power to plot rebellion. Although the Bakhtin, Mikhail M. Problems of Dostoevskys celebration had to undergo a shift to Muslim Poetics. Ed. & trans. by Caryl Emerson, vol. 8, dominated area like St. James area, west of Port of Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2009. Spain, Credos, Vere, Jamaica after the 1884 massacre, it remains a major national cultural Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Routledge, festival. The persistence of the organizers and 1994. patrons has kept the festival open. In Trinidad and Bishop, John and Frank J Korom, directors. Hosay Tobago Shia communities observe the festival with Trinidad. Documentary Educational two major parades of colourful Tazias accompanied Resources, 1999.

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