GUYANA JUNCTION 89 ISBN: 90 3610 058 5 2 GUYANA JUNCTION GLOBALISATION, LOCALISATION, AND THE PRODUCTION OF EAST INDIANNESS Kruispunt Guyana MONDIALISERING, LOKALISERING, EN DE PRODUKTIE VAN ‘HINDOESTANITEIT’ (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands) Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit Utrecht op gezag van de rector magnificus, prof.dr. W.H. Gispen, ingevolge het besluit van het college voor promoties in het openbaar te verdedigen op dinsdag 29 augustus 2006 des ochtends te 10.30 uur door Johannes Gerrit de Kruijf geboren op 22 juni 1974 te Oldebroek 3 Promotor: Prof. Dr. A.C.G.M. Robben Co-promotor: Dr. F.I. Jara Gómez This research was funded by the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO). 4 to Naleane, and Life Life Life 5 CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 17 INVESTIGATING THE PRODUCTION OF EAST INDIANNESS IN GUYANA 20 1.1 East-Indians in a multifarious society 21 1.1.1 Ethnicity 23 1.1.2 Religion 25 1.2 Towards a better understanding of culture, meaning and practice 25 1.2.1 Practice Theory 28 1.2.2 Cultural models and Connectionism 32 1.3 Reaping grains of knowledge in the fields of distinction: setting & methodology 32 1.3.1 In the fields of distinction: the setting 37 1.3.2 Reaping grains… methodology 41 1.4 Spawn of the village, spy of the West: fieldwork and multiple identities 41 1.4.1 Spawn of the village 44 1.4.2 Spy of the West 45 1.5 Design of the book 49 1.6 Writing style and presentation PART I: INTERCONNECTING CONDITIONS 2. THE PAST 55 ON THE ORIGINS OF ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCE 57 2.1 Bharatvarsha: the motherland 57 2.1.2 Origin 58 2.1.2 Conditions 60 2.1.3 Heterogeneity 62 2.1.4 Amalgamation 63 2.2 Plantation life: the première of East Indianness 64 2.2.1 Circumstances 65 2.2.2 Sex imbalance 66 2.2.3 Early antipathies 68 2.2.4 Religion 69 2.2.5 Caste 70 2.3 Beyond bondage: postindenture East Indians before independence 71 2.3.1 Village people 73 2.3.2 Further reconstruction 76 2.4 Cooperativism and conflict: East Indianness in postcolonial Guyana 77 2.4.1 The rise of institutionalised rivalry 79 2.4.2 The (first) PPP age 83 2.4.3 The PNC era 86 2.4.4 As it lingers on 6 3. PRESENT-DAY CONTEXTS 89 EAST INDIANNESS, INTERETHNIC STRUGGLE AND GLOBALISATION 90 3.1 The anatomy of control 92 3.1.1 Ethnopolitics: the cultivation of antagonism 95 3.1.2 Power structures 97 3.1.3 Collaborative Quests 100 3.1.4 Conducive Conditions 105 3.2 The omnipresence of transnationality: Indians in an interconnected society 106 3.2.1 The diaspora 112 3.2.2 Secular nuclei 115 3.2.3 Religious nuclei 121 3.3 Stagnation with change: the paradox of contemporary uncertainty 4. RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS 127 THE LOCALISATION AND GLOBALISATION OF INDIAN RELIGION IN GUYANA 128 4.1 The localisation of Hinduism 129 4.1.1 New base, new borders: the effect of altered margins on the establishment of religious systems 131 4.1.2 Localisation I: the question of circumstances 136 4.1.3 Localisation II: the question of power 140 4.1.4 Localisation III: the answer of alternatives 144 4.2 The globalisation of Islam 147 4.2.1 Subcontinental Muslimism: early localisation 148 4.2.2 The deculturalisation of a faith: processes of homogenisation 155 4.2.3 The reculturalisation of a faith: neotraditionalist counterforce 157 4.2.4 The dynamics of change 164 4.3 Neverlasting truths: the inevitability of flux PART II: CONDITIONING INTERCONNECTIONS 5. EAST INDIAN SUBJECTIVITIES 171 LOCATING THE ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS SELF IN THE WORLD 171 5.1 Impressions of ‘the East’: notions of India and Indian culture 174 5.1.1 India and classicality 176 5.1.2 The provocative power of classicality 179 5.1.3 The India experience: shared conceptions of the Motherland 182 5.2 Witnessing ‘the West’: notions of North America and its culture 184 5.2.1 North America and modernity 185 5.2.2 Modernity’s motivational muscle 188 5.2.3 The America experience: shared conceptions of the ‘land of promises’ 193 5.3 Images of the near-sited: notions of ethnic and religious selves and neighbours 195 5.3.1 The hostile home 196 5.3.2 Imagining its inhabitants 205 5.4 Shifting boundaries: multiple identities and situational variance 7 6. FOCI OF FRIENDSHIP, PRINCIPLES OF PARENTING 213 TRADITION & MODIFICATION IN UNDERSTANDINGS OF CAMARADERIE & CARE 214 6.1 Kin creations: friends, fellows, foes and the family metaphor 215 6.1.1 Social relations and the family metaphor 219 6.1.2 Replication and modification 229 6.2 On family ties and parenting: ideology, reality, and the art of negotiation 230 6.2.1 The family doctrine 233 6.2.2 Principles of parenting 239 6.2.3 Perspectives on pedagogy 246 6.3 Schemas as networks of exchange 7. CONSTELLATIONS OF AFFECTION 249 LOVE, SEXUALITY, LIFE PARTNERSHIP, AND THE CONFIGURATION OF CULTURAL UNDERSTANDINGS 252 7.1 Dissecting partnership: expressions of companionship and sexuality 255 7.1.1 Processes of partner choice 261 7.1.2 Gender roles, relations and hierarchy 272 7.1.3 The actuality of sexuality. 283 7.2 Excavating the foundations of companionship and sexuality 284 7.2.1 Motivational foundations: on drivers of partner and partner-seekers 291 7.2.2 Love: deeper understandings and compelling motivators 8. CUSTOMISED COSMOLOGIES 297 RELIGIOUS PATHWAYS AND THE ISSUE OF REALITY MANAGEMENT 298 8.1 Insights in the unsighted: East Indian understandings of the extracorporeal 300 8.1.1 Beyond mortality: notions of afterlife 308 8.1.2 Beyond earth: images of God and the divine 315 8.1.3 Beyond injustice: investigating the laws of super nature 323 8.1.4 Beyond perception: the earthly unseen 328 8.2 Serving the servants: exploiting understandings of the extracorporeal 329 8.2.1 Hindu and Muslim notion of super reality 331 8.2.2 The interpretation and manipulation of reality 339 8.3 Towards closure 9. REFLECTIONS 341 EAST INDIANNESS AS A DYNAMIC COMPLEX OF CULTURAL CONSTELLATIONS 344 9.1 Constellations I: delineating the loci of cultural production and reproduction 348 9.2 Constellations II: the question of formation 349 9.2.1 The past 351 9.2.2 Localisation 353 9.2.3 Globalisation 356 9.2.4 Variable durability 359 9.3 Constellations III (the question of functioning) 8 359 9.3.1 Multiple flexibility 360 9.3.2 Motivational dependence 362 9.3.3 Hierarchy and layeredness 363 9.3.4 Internal inconstancies 365 9.4 Constellations IV: the ultimate question of power 369 9.5 The answer to everything? 372 Bibliography 388 Summary 395 Appendices 9 Acknowledgements It must have been February last year. I was shooting a short ethnographic film about one of the most jovial East Indian seniors of entire Guyana. I wanted to portray him as an extraordinary relic of a past that most of my informants had already seen vanish beyond their horizons. They called him Mice, I am not sure why. He was an 85-year old who realised happiness was not to be found in the false promises of contemporary consumerism. The film was meant to become a tribute to simplicity, a confrontation with the illusions of progress, and a document of something that would not much longer be. Mice generously allowed me to capture his ancient routine. We were on our way to his plot of land in the back of the village. Mice had to ‘cut grass’ to feed his two cows. It probably was around five in the morning, as it was pitch- dark. I struggled to follow the bare-foot senior, to keep pace while not stumbling on the bumpy clay road that we took. We talked, discussed life in his place and mine. The old man asked me about my remote homeland. He had heard it was even further away than neighbouring Suriname. Mice himself had only been as far as Georgetown, a mere sixty kilometres down South, across the Essequibo. “Hans,” he said, “do you people have night and day over there?” “Huh?” I replied, “what do you mean Mice?” “ Well, just like here, do you have light and dark?” I guess I laughed, and assured him Holland was not all that different from Guyana. I probably even thought it was a slightly silly question to ask. Although, in fact and retrospect, it really wasn’t. Rather, it might have been an elegant attempt to be nice and courteously show some interest in the background of a stranger. It was no evidence of a desire to learn about the alien, let alone proof of the need to know. While I had devoted precious time and resources to the endeavour of studying the exotic, Mice had lived his entire life in deliberate ignorance. Mice knew all he needed to know, even claimed to have found happiness, and had managed to survive in his bounded world. This book is the outcome of my desire to know, perhaps an indication of my pursuit of something Mice already knows is illusionary; attaining satisfaction through intellectual self-realisation. It is an account of a project that has helped only me, yet required the cooperation of countless others. I owe tremendous gratitude to all these 10 persons. I would never have been able to get anything done without their kind assistance.