Chapter 1 - Springer LINK

Notes

Chapter 1 1. Trinidad and Tobago are constitutionally joined as a Republic. The

early history of Tobago differs from that of Trinidad until the year 1889 when both islands were administratively linked. Despite its proximity to Trinidad, Tobago was never a recipient of indentured In­dian migrants, nor did it ever attract a large Indian population in the post-indenture period. For this reason this book does not make refer­ence to the Indians who moved and settled in Tobago.

2. Among the 'Creole' population could also be found mixtures of dif­ferent racial groups, although Table 1.1 does not reflect these mix­tures. When this section of the population increased in relation to the rest of the population, the 'mixed' population also began to be re­flected in census statistics.

3. In his evidence to the Royal Commission to the West Indies on behalf of the Government of India, John Dawson Tyson's observations as late as 1931 show these statements to still be relevant. He observed that

... the East Indian population is predominantly rural in character. In fact it would appear that in 1931, there were more East Indians engaged in ag­ricultural pursuits than all the other races put together. Not only do the East Indians, male and female, provide the bulk of the agricultural la­bourers on the sugar and cocoa estates, but they supply more than two-thirds of the sugar-cane farmers. (Tyson Report, New Delhi, 1939. Sec­tion 111, Trinidad, p. 39)

4. Taken from the Education Abstract of the Census Report of the Col­ony of Trinidad, 1921. In a paper entitled 'The Vanguard of Indian Nationalism in Trinidad: The East Indian Weekly, 1928-1932', Brinsley Samaroo qualifies this finding on illiteracy. While as late as 1946, just over 50 per cent of Indians were illiterate in English, most

270

Notes 271

of the Indians 'knew at least one of the languages brought from India (Hindi, Urdu or Arabic).' (Paper presented at the Association of Car­ibbean Historians Conference, Barbados, 1977)

Caribbean definitions of race and ethnicity need clarification here. In the Caribbean in general and in Trinidad in particular, race is used both colloquially and in academic circles to distinguish the different groups of migrants that populated the region. Before the 1960s, race was used to signify physical differences as well as cultural dissimilari­ties. The use of ethnicity was introduced through academic discourse while race continues to retain its colloquial usage. Ethnicity where it was and is used was brought in through debates on pluralism, integra­tion and assimilation, and to my understanding is the more polite word to use to get away from the connotations of biological essential-ism attached to the word 'race'. Ethnicity is also viewed as the cul­turally shared values which bind a group together. Nonetheless, the biological aspect of race, i.e. visible physical differences, continues to pervade the idiom of the society.

I have chosen in this book not to enter these debates but to em­ploy the direct usage of these terms in the historical context in which they were used. Thus where race or ethnicity are used in an oral or written reference I have retained this usage. My own use of ethnicity, while consistent with the contemporary academic and social discourse on this concept, is applied with the nuances of Caribbean inter­pretations and with particular reference to its contestation in Trinidad.

The term 'culture' is also another large discourse in both academic and popular terms, which I have chosen not to enter into as it distracts from other main areas of inquiry. When it is used in this book it de­scribes 'a particular way of life, which expresses certain meanings and values not only in art and learning, but also in institutions and or­dinary behaviour' (Williams 1980: 57).

Indian, as used throughout this study, refers to people who were either bom in India or whose ancestors were from India. It has been the cus­tom in the Caribbean literature to describe this group as East Indians to distinguish them from other racial groups in the West Indies. I have used Indians throughout the study, except where the literature refers to this group specifically as East Indians.

The large majority of Indian migrants who were brought to Trinidad came from the United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh) in North India. WTiere India is referred to in this book, unless otherwise specified, it

272 Notes

refers to North India and more directly to those regions from which the migrants originated.

9. Research for Trinidad focused on the political and administrative problems encountered in implementing a system of indentured labour, and the dislocation experienced by Indian migrants from recruitment in India to employment on the sugar plantations in Trinidad. Among these have been studies by K.O. Laurence (1958), J.C. Jha (1976, 1985), Judith Ann Weller (1968), Marianne Ramesar (1973), Bridget Brereton (1972) and more specifically from the position of Indian women, Rhoda Reddock (1984). Other studies have looked at the ad­justment and impact of Indians in Trinidad society during and after the period of indentureship. Among these are Bridget Brereton (1979, 1981), Marianne Ramesar (1975, 1976) and Gerad Tikasingh (1973). A few studies have concentrated on labour organization and constitu­tional reform in so far as Indians were involved, these being Brinsley Samaroo (1969), W.R. Jacobs (1969), Sahadeo Basdeo (1972) and Kelvin Singh (1975). A collection of historical essays on Indians in Trinidad, with appended interviews of indentured men and women, edited by John la Guerre (1985) makes a valuable addition to the lit­erature.

Within recent years there have been two contributions of another genre. The first is that of a presentation, in original prose form, of the personal accounts of five indentured Indians who came to Trinidad during the period 1845-1917, collected by Noor Kumar Mahabir (1985). The second is a compilation of the life stories of eight Indian immigrants (Anthony de Verteuil 1989).

The history of Indians in Trinidad after 1917 is generally under-researched. Since the 1950s, the cultural impact of the (East) Indian in the West Indies has been a popular subject among anthropologists. There has been a plethora of anthropological studies on the Indian community in Trinidad, most of which focus on cultural retentions or dissolution of 'Indian' culture in the host society. Among these are Arthur and Juanita Niehoff (1960), Morris Freilich (1961), Morton Klass (1961), Barton Schwartz (1966) and Robert Jack Smith (1963). More recently, Richard Forbes's (1984) work on the development of the Arya Samaj in Trinidad and Steven Vertovec (1992) researched the Hindu population in general, challenging some of the former an­thropological research and suggesting that categories such as the In­dian family, the caste system and Hinduism itself have often been seriously misunderstood.

Notes 273

10. A handful of studies have attempted to analyse changes in the com­munity of Indians at large after they had completed indentureship, and of these, only a few have examined the ways in which men and women were affected differently. Among these studies, a doctoral dis­sertation by Rhoda Reddock (1984) considers Indian women and the sexual division of labour both during and after indentureship, Kim Johnson (1984) has written an insightful and controversial essay on Indian sexuality in Trinidad, and Jeremy Poynting's (1987) paper, based on a review of sociological and literary material on Indian women in the Caribbean, also offers new and comparative informa­tion on the situation of Indian women in Trinidad and Guyana. Two of my essays look at different aspects of the adjustment and change in the lives of Indian women from the post-indentureship period to the present: the first deals with the notion of'creolization' (1987) and the second (1993) records and analyses the life stories of two Indian women.

11. The Oxford Dictionary definition of community implies yet another dimension of what constitutes community - moving from the notion of legal status alone to the notion of feeling. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese agrees, 'most of us use "community" heuristically to designate a group based on merging, on shared attributes in contrast to atomized individuals, but we rarely if ever establish its precise boundaries. To the contrary, we tend to think of community, if anything, as resulting from the personal commitment of members rather than from the im­position of external legal and political limits. Yet historically, com­munity has derived much more from imposed external boundaries than from internal commitments.' She concludes that community 'means a group of people who may be bound together by anything from legal obligation to mutual sympathies' (Fox-Genovese 1990: 33-34).

Chapter 2

1. This information was supplied to me orally by Ranjit Dwivedi, a Ph.D. (Indian) scholar at the Institute of Social Studies, The Nether­lands. The application of the term, kalapani, in the Indian Penal code was illustrated in an essay by Kapil Kumar, 'Rural Women in Oudh 1917-47: Baba Ramachandra and the Women's Question' in Recast­ing Women: Essays in Colonial History, Kumkum Sangari and Su-desh Vaid (eds), Kali for women, New Delhi, 1989. Kumar noted that under the Indian Penal Code, the punishments for the crimes of ab-

274 Notes

ducting a woman, abducting a woman for prostitution, and raping a woman was that of kalapani or penal transportation.

2. David Dabydeen and Brinsley Samaroo (eds) Across the Dark Wa­ters: Ethnicity and Indian Identity in the Caribbean, Macmillan Car­ibbean, London and Basingstoke, 1996.

3. Among these classic texts would be found for The Laws of Manu, The Pur anas and the Vedas, The Ramayana and The Mahabharat. Among Muslims, the Holy Quran was the main authoritative source.

4. The scheduled castes are the ex-untouchables who were covered by a provision 'schedule' in the post-Independence Constitution in India for purposes of positive discrimination, reserving for them a quota of jobs in government, educational institutions and some welfare bene­fits.

5. M. Krishnaraj points out that the occupational-caste nexus is not so much with varna as with jati. Indian sociologists make a distinction between varna, which is notional and abstract, and jati, which refers to the numerous subcastes running into thousands. Varna refers more to the ancient Indian period, while jati to subsequent centuries.

6. Writing on this point Agrosino notes:

Despite the refinements which the Hindus have long added to the arts of sex, the sex act, per se, even when sanctioned by marriage, was believed to be a deeply disgusting and polluting activity, particularly for a 'good' woman. The 'good' woman, then became a 'wife' whose sole duty was to engage in sex, and yet, who, by the very performance of that duty, be­came a degraded and despised individual. (Agrosino 1976: 46)

7. Cited in Desai and Krishnaraj but taken from G. Buhler, The Laws of Manu: Sacred Books of the East. Trans, Vol. 25, Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi, 1964: 195-97 & 327-30.

8. Cited in Desai and Krishnaraj, p. 33. The author is Veena Das, 'Indian Women: Work, Power and Status', in Indian Women, ed. by B.R. Nanda, Vikas Publishing House, 1976: 135.

9. It must be emphasized that the system of gift exchanges for marriages varied between regions and during various historical periods, and in some ways was a recognition of women's rights despite the overall cultural subordination that they suffered. A brideprice was paid by the intended groom to the girl's parents as a recognition of her worth as a worker, while bridewealth or streedhan was given to the woman her­self, sometimes in the form of cooking utensils or jewellery, for her

Notes 275

own protection against destitution if the marriage failed. The recogni­tion of the status of woman in Indian society was never completely one-sided, as general claims suggest.

10. While the varna categorization of the caste system retains a certain in­flexibility in hierarchical shifting, it must be recalled that the constant creation of castes and sub-castes in the Sanskritization model rein­forces the 'continuity and change' by which Mandelbaum (1970) aptly describes the movement of Indian history and society. In the pre-Independence period (1800-1947) we continue to see signs of change in gender relations. At the same time, British rule created sub­stantive changes in the mode of production, initiating capitalist rela­tions of production in many spheres. They did not, however, tamper with the caste system and other socio-religious practices, though the influences of a western-dominated culture did create a climate for change in notions of gender, despite rigid caste and religious prescrip­tions.

11. Maithreyi Krishnaraj, in discussion with myself, qualifies this obser­vation further. She explains that garbhadana is the ritual performed for a married girl who gets her first menstrual period. South India has a tradition of puberty rituals regardless of marriage, which celebrate the coming of age. The girl is given gifts by the maternal uncle, rela­tives gather, and some rituals are performed. Anthropologists argue that this gives 'status' to girls in Indian society. This ritual is inter­preted as Pre-Aryan and as retaining shades of a previous, more woman-centred society.

12. Maria Mies explains that purdah was by no means an innovation that came to India through Mughal rule. She notes that the principle of sex segregation and seclusion of women goes far back beyond the Mughal era and belongs to the same tradition as discrimination against wid­ows, child-marriage and the patidevrata ideal. Through the Moham­medan invasion, these existing tendencies were further strengthened (Mies 1980: 66)

13. Meera Kosambi, 'The Meeting of the Twain: The Cultural Confronta­tion of Three Women in Nineteenth Century Maharashtra', Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 1:1 (1994), Sage Publications, New Delhi and London, pp. 1-2.

14. During 1917-18 Baba Ram Chandra came to the Oudh countryside, where he organized and led one of the most militant peasant move­ments against the British colonial regime. He had had experience of

Notes

indentured labour in Fiji from 1905 and his political activity had be­gun on this island. He was imprisoned on charges of negligence. A Maharashtrian Brahmin by birth, his relationships and exposure to women, earlier in his family and later in Fiji, are very checkered and contradictory, and possibly accounted for his knowledge of the issues related to women and his capacity to raise these issues in the rigid and feudal society of Oudh in 1917. He is cited as one of the avid male supporters of women's issues in the anti-colonial struggles (Kumar 1989).

Entries on Stella Abidh are to be located in various columns of the 'Indian News and Views' edited by Seepersad Naipaul and published in the Trinidad and Sunday Guardian between 1926 and 1934. This recognition of Abidh's work is also evident from a taped interview with Abidh herself shortly before her death, carried out by Dr Rosa-belle Seesaran of Trinidad.

A mark of this progressiveness can be seen in the range of activities in which C.B. Mathura, Editor of the East Indian Weekly, participated. Bom on 28 February 1894, son of Lai Mathura Pundit and Sirtajee Devi, he was educated at the Canadian missionary school in Chagua­nas. He championed the rights of the workingman all through his po­litical career and was associated with the Labour party between 1928 and 1945. He is credited with assisting with the introduction of the Trade Union Movement in Barbados and was a delegate on the Major Woods Commission. He served as the secretary for the Young Indian Party and as Vice President of the St James Literary Club. He was also elected to the Port of Spain Municipal Council in 1944. Among his other publishing efforts he was also proprietor of another maga­zine, the Indian.

Transferred into the setting of Trinidad, the dominance of Hindu cul­ture was conspicuous. Brereton observes, for instance, for the period 1870-1900 that '...the Indians were regarded as an exotic group, marginal to the rest of Trinidad society' (Brereton 1979: 177). This element of the exotic and the distinctive difference of the 'East' from the 'West' was more readily observed through the religious practices of Hinduism, which was by far the more ritualistic of the two relig­ions - Hinduism and Islam. It also pervaded the dominant Creole atti­tude to Indians in Trinidad.

Sixty-five oral history interviews were carried out primarily with In­dian men and women of Trinidad above the age of 50 as another valu-

Notes 277

able source for this study. Information gleaned from these interviews provides integral data drawn on throughout this this study. The infor­mation was shared confidentially and to preserve this, pseudonyms are assigned to each respondent The pseudonyms correspond to the age and religion of the respondent so that Muslim respondents are as­signed a Muslim name, those bom before the 1930s or India-bom as­signed the kind of names generally associated with the original migrant population. A full collection of these oral history tapes are lodged with the Oral History Project collection of the Library, Uni­versity of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad.

19. Several Caribbean studies theses carried out by undergraduates at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, were useful in illuminat­ing this development of Islam. These were Safiya Baksh (1966) 'Mus­lim Culture and its development in Trinidad and Tobago,' Acklima Ali (1979) 'The growth of Islam in the village of Debe' and another by Saadia Ali, the title which was not recorded, but which introduced the information on the various schisms which took place in Islam it­self, the subdivision of the Shias from the Sunnis. The Sunnis be­lieved that the Prophet Mohammed was the last prophet and prayers are directed through him to Allah (God), while the Shias view the son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed as the successor. There are some differences with respect to gender practices. From my knowl­edge of these two sects as practised in Trinidad, the Shias were more liberal in some of their practices toward women than the more ortho­dox Sunnis.

20. HMSO Report of the Committee on Emigration from India to the Crown Colonies and Protectorates, June 1910 (Sanderson Commit­tee), Evidence on the fourth day, Friday 26th March of Mr Oliver William Warner.

21. The importance of cattle to the peasant population of India, and later Trinidad, is often not appreciated, the assumption being that if one is starving then cattle surely provided relief. One must appreciate that in India, certainly among Hindus, the cattle could not be eaten even if one was starving, and while this may have represented a drain on meagre resources and supplies when such animals also had to be fed, the pragmatic importance of the cattle was that, if kept alive, they provided milk and dung, the latter which was used as fuel and build­ing material for houses. It was not simply superstition that kept these practices alive. In Trinidad, where the conditions of a tropical semi-equatorial region did not lend itself to famines, it was again possible

278 Notes

for Indians to tend cattle and supplement food supply and income where necessary.

22. Whether fact or fiction created by the reshaping of memory, the same story told to me was also related to Kumar Mahabir, and recorded in his book, The Still Cry, in prose/verse form.

23. The Reports of Protector of Immigrants each year provided a list of estates and a breakdown of wages earned by men and women on each estate each year. These reports consistently supported the fact that for the entire period of indenture and employment on estates women were reported as working fewer hours and paid far less than men. See, for example, CO 298/106 and CO 298/114, which compare the years of 1916 and 1919.

24. Brereton observes, for instance, that it is clear that many Indian women came as single adults rather than as wives and daughters and that, despite the harshness of this labour system, it offered an escape route since these women entered into indentureship contracts inde­pendently, worked on estates and earned their own wages. 'Like fe­male slaves, they were workers and producers, alongside the male labour force' (Brereton 1988: 132).

25. The conditions and economic status of peasant women in India also suffered as a result of the way in which middle men extracted the sur­plus from their labour. This is clearly illustrated by Kapil Kumar's ar­ticle on the rural women of Oudh between 1917 and 1947 (Kumar 1989).

26. The roots of this apparent indifference were perhaps many and one can surmise what a few of these were. Indian men were the last group of male migrants introduced into the society at this time. The Indian population was by and large segregated from the rest of the popula­tion of Trinidad, thus there would have been ignorance of the males as a group of available men. Secondly, as I have argued in the theoretical chapter of this study, they filled the lowest rung of the patriarchal lad­der and, earning low wages, would have hardly represented attractive alternatives as partners for African women, who were themselves struggling to earn a living. The question of colour has always been an important one for Indians in choosing partners and it was likely that black women were not seen as physically attractive by the Indian men. Finally, African-descended women, as a result of the history of slavery, were already perceived as having an independence which In-

Notes 279

dian men would not have been accustomed to in the gender system from which they had come.

27. Cited in Weller, 1968: 66, but she takes the quote from the following document: Trinidad Royal Gazette, LV, No. 23 (9 June 1886), CP 47, Prison Report for 1885, p. 618.

28. This anecdote was cited in Weller (1968: 67) from its original source Charles Kingsley, At Last a Christmas in the West Indies, Macmillan Company, London, 1892: 191.

29. Union is used here to refer to a sexual liaison that may have been ei­ther temporary or permanent, but involving co-habitation and was more than likely unsanctioned by religious or civil law. This reference to unions is found in Brereton (1979: 183). Hearsay evidence for this period suggests that, if liaisons did take place between Indians and Africans, it was usually between Indian women and African men and these were in any event surreptitious ones. At the level of conjecture, one can propose that there was limited contact between African women and Indian men and that the gender stereotypes each had of the other prevented greater levels of intimacy.

30. For instance, food to be eaten by Brahmins could only be cooked by a member of the Brahmin caste, but they were allowed to accept un­cooked food from all other castes except the lowest caste. This prac­tice clearly broke down quickly in Trinidad during indentureship.

31. While the dowry system comprised a major ritual of the gender sys­tem from India, I have not been able to follow through the shifts in this and possibly some other important ritual aspects. The method of data collection, and insights which I had in the field were not suffi­ciently sharpened to allow the detailed collection of this kind of data. Where and when such material is important for illustrating an ar­gument I have drawn on the data that I uncovered in the area. My knowledge of the shifts in this system leads me to believe that the dowry systems which operated in Trinidad were contingent on the importance of females in the population during indentureship, later this shifted to the exchange of property and resources among the propertied class, and an exchange of gifts and what one could afford to give to each among poorer peoples.

32. The term 'Mussulmen' here refers to Indian men who were of the Islamic faith.

280 Notes

33. The indentureship system relied on the functions of these two posts. A Protector of Emigrants stationed in India who would liase with the Protector of Immigrants in Trinidad.

34. Letters from the Emigration Agent of Calcutta (1916-22).

35. Letters from Emigration Agent of Calcutta (1916-22), Folio No. 477, Item 366 of 1922, 6 February 1922.

36. Letters from Emigration Agent of Calcutta, Folio No. 796, Item 695 of 1922.

37. Letters from the Emigration Agent of Calcutta (1916-22).

38. Letters from Emigration Agent of Calcutta, 19 January 1922, Folio No. 85, No. 80 of 1922.

39. Letters from Emigration Agent of Calcutta, Folio 383, No. 300 of 1922.

40. Letters from Emigration Agent, Calcutta 1932, Folio 63, No. 62 of 1929, dated 23 January 1929.

Chapter 3

1. While some educated Indians, from Rammohun Roy onwards, had supported the British in reforming certain aspects of Hindu society, others sought to exclude the colonial government from what it consid­ered to be its domestic and religious affairs, largely with a view of carving out autonomous arena which they could claim as their own. (Metcalf 1994: 106).

2. This supports Foucault's (1980) notion that in the construction of a Victorian sexuality in Britain, there emerged a Victorian puritanism, absorbing elements of the Christian pastoral but also geared towards serving the 'Queen' and work ethic of the country. Hence the cliche 'lie back and think of England' which middle-class and bourgeois women were supposed to do when they were to engage in the sexual act.

3. Percival Spear in A History of India: Volume 2 cites the specific year of Mughal entry as 1517, when the Turkish chief Babur appeared on the scene. His son Ackbar was to later extend and deepen the Persian presence in India (Spear 1978: 21-39).

4. Ram Mohan Roy was bom in 1772 and ended his career as the am­bassador of the pensioner Mughal emperor to Britain. He is described

Notes 281

as a Brahmin who went into the service of the British, but eventually spent his life advocating and promoting reforms in India in all direc­tions, many of which included reforms for women (Spear 1978).

5. Bayly, for instance, demonstrates through an analysis of 'cloth' or the origins of swadeshi in India how deeply rooted concepts of cultural identity were retained by Indians despite the monetarized economy which colonization brought. Cloth had great symbolic value in many rituals and ceremonies, a crucial one being the act of marriage where in some parts of North India for example, the gift of cloth from the man to the woman, was the act of marriage itself. In the period before British occupation, the loose coarse-textured cotton was deemed the most porous, and therefore the most polluting. It was interesting that the same porous homespun cotton (khadi) became the symbol of the nationalist movement, 'it seemed almost to be able to capture and re­tain the spirit of the land itself Gandhi himself went beyond the use of homespun as a mere symbol to penetrate even deeper levels of meaning about the nature of weaving as a creative act, about the ca­pacity of cloth to retain the luminosity of place and people. It must be recalled that cloth was important to the livelihood of Indians, India was one of the great producers and certainly the greatest exporter of cloth in the 17th century. Even where state revenue was paid in cash, and a sophisticated market system operated, food and cloth - direct transactions of gifted commodities, bonded a vast number of social re­lationships (cf. Bayly 1986: 287-321).

6. This may or may not explain the attitudes that older Indians express about the British whom they felt treated them much kinder than the local population. This has to be treated guardedly, as the ideology of racial superiority and the notions of foreign over local have always tainted perceptions of the other.

7. I am not certain whether the term 'free paper bum' originated during slavery but it is an idiom that has common usage in Trinidad up to contemporary time to refer to a situation in which liberation has been curtailed. What is interesting, though, is that my respondents who had themselves experienced indentureship, or the early post-indenture pe­riod, told me that if they were caught outside of the estate they would be asked by others where was the 'free paper,' a question which was perhaps posed to in such a way to embarrass them in the wider society where it was thought they had no place to be.

282 Notes

8. Governor Chancellor, 23 November 1917/61917, CO 295-513, Vol. 3.

9. Creole has several meanings, some of which co-exist in the same so­ciety at the same time. For the purposes of the book, as it is used here I refer simultaneously to two meanings - first, Creole as meaning bom in and native to this society. This refers in this instance to the populations of all races who were second and third generation Trini-dadians, and who possibly looked at the newcomers with the disdain in which new migrant groups are treated before they fit into or are ac­cepted into the new setting. The second meaning is the more collo­quial one, which was used by Indians to refer to the African descend­ed people they encountered in the villages and towns, who were, of course, by this time native bom. For Indians, the term 'Creole' be­came synonymous with a racial definition of Africans, although my understanding of its usage is that it was descriptive rather than a ma­ligning epithet.

10. The majority of Indians interviewed for this study insisted that previ­ous to 1956, there was little overt antagonism between Indians and Africans in the towns and villages.

11. Brinsley Samaroo notes that The Statesman was a weekly started in 1884 incorporating the British India paper The Friend of India. It was a paper for English residents in India, native officials and supporters of the Imperial Government and was strongly anti-nationalist in its sentiments (Samaroo 1977: 11).

12. It must be stated though that some migrants had become quite suc­cessful and had the means to return to their homeland as visitors. Among these were examples like Pundit Capildeo who had come to Trinidad in 1894 (East Indian Weekly, 1 April 1928) and Mrs Baseran Ramjohn, bom in 1856 in the village of St Madeline, Trinidad, to In­dian-bom parents Mr and Mrs Asdaillie Meah. Baseran visited British India as a girl of 12 with her parents, returning shortly afterwards to marry Mr Ramjohn, a shopkeeper of Cipero Street, San Fernando (Trinidad Guardian, 16 July 1929).

13. When these lepers were returned to India though they had problems of settling in. For instance, Shamshu Deen notes that in the Letters from the Emigration Agent at Calcutta 1928-32, 38 lepers were listed as returned to India over this period. The relatives of 28 of these could not be traced, and of the ten traced, one relative was not willing to come for the leper (Deen 1994: 300).

Notes 283

14. Data extracted from the Protector of Immigrant's Reports in the Council Papers of Trinidad for the years cited.

15. Census of the Colony of Trinidad and Tobago, 1921, Trinidad, Port of Spain Government Printing Office, 1923.

16. The calypso is the oral song tradition of Trinidad and has its roots in the period of African slavery. The calypso was used as an instrument of verbal retaliation against the plantation owners and overseers in a situation where the slaves or ex-slaves were powerless to retaliate in other ways. Thus calypsoes have always been important as commen­taries on social phenomena. This feature of the calypso persists to to­day in this society.

17. Cited in Gordon Rohlehr, 'Images of Men and Women in the 1930's Calypsoes' in P. Mohammed and C. Shepherd, Gender in Caribbean Development, UWI, 1988.

18. This information was given to the researcher by the granddaughter of this property owner. She was herself one of the interviewees for this study.

19. Journals, Letters and Papers edited by Sarah E. Morton, of John Mor­ton, Missionary of the Presbyterian Church in Canada to the East In­dians in the British West Indies, Westminster Co. Toronto, 1916, Journal entry February 1868, Letter of Sarah E. Morton to a friend.

20. A paper by Jamaican scholar Faith Smith entitled argues this point very convincingly.

21. A very useful study by Savitri Rambissoon 'From Indians to Trinida-dians: A study of the Relationships between language, behaviour, socio-economic and cultural factors in a Trinidad village' (M.Phil. Thesis, University of York, 1980) discusses both the value and de­valuation of speaking Hindi among the villagers. When one villager spoke to his brother in English, the latter would say in Hindi, 'He has become a white man.'

22. J.D. Tyson, Report on the Condition of Indian immigrants in the Brit­ish Colonies: Trinidad, Br. Guiana, Jamaica and Fiji, and in the Dutch Colony of Suriname or Dutch Guiana, Part 1, Simla Government Cen­tral Press, 1914. Tyson reminds us that interpreters were necessary at first as intermediaries between the Indians and the colonial state.

23. This point is also reinforced by Shamshu Deen. 'In my study of survi­vors of the indentureship system I have found that those who came af-

284 Notes

ter about ages ten to fifteen had a definite reluctance and difficulty to leam English'(1994: 18).

24. Although there was an unusually rapid loss of spoken Hindi during our period, the importance of language to their culture did not go un­noticed in the context of community and identity building. 'When a people lose their language, you lose your power, then you lose your religion. When you lose your religion you lose everything and you craving for something' was a sentiment reiterated by many Indians throughout this period.

25. Evidence of the Sanatan Dharma Board to the West India Royal Com­mission, CO 950/No. 873, §63, 1938.

26. In general I have used pseudonyms when I draw on the material culled from interviews with respondents. I also interviewed Mr Narsa­loo Ramaya, who agreed that his name could be quoted in the text, therefore explaining my identification of this source of data by the person who volunteered it.

27. This information was gleaned from researcher Dr Rosabelle Seesaran who interviewed F.E.M. Hosein's sisters.

28. Dropatie Naipaul's views on Indian women are recorded in an inter­view which I carried out with her in 1988. This is published in Kevin Yelvington's Trinidad Ethnicity, in my essay entitled 'Structures of Experience: Gender Race and Class in the Lives of Two Indian wom­en' 1993, Knoxville, Tennessee Press.

29. It is reported that Mr Rienzi was married to a white English woman, which, one can surmise, understandably might have influenced his point of view on the subject.

30. This skewedness of male and female representation is a logical one according to Simone de Beauvoire's proposition on the differences in the way in which a male identity is constructed to that of the female. For Simone de Beauvoir, 'women are the negative of men the lack against which masculine identity differentiates itself (Butler 1990: 10). John Berger makes a similar argument when in his view 'Men act, women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The sur­veyor of woman in herself is male' (Berger 1974: 47).

Notes 285

Chapter 4 1. Cited in Prabhu Mohapatra, 1995 from Robert Guppy's report, 16th

Meeting of the Royal Commission in Proceedings of the Royal Com­mission to Consider and Report as to the Proposed Franchise and Di­vision of the Colony into Electoral Districts, Trinidad, Port of Spain, 1888, p. 27.

2. References to the immorality of Indian women and men are rife in the various colonial reports and documents both for Trinidad and else­where.

3. The Government of India must itself be problematized here. While the Government of India clearly was directed by the British Crown, au­thorities who functioned from India were more intimately aware of the situations of Indians having lived and worked in the sub-continent. In addition, Indian civil servants also comprised part of this govern­ment. The ambivalent positions taken must be seen in the light of the contradictions brought on by colonization itself.

4. The remark of the Protector of Immigrants specifically in relation to the habits of Indian men is deliberate in this instance and does not only reflect the patriarchal bias that men are allowed sexual freedoms where women are not. While there was the imbalance in the sex ratio of Indian males to females, the colonial authorities hoped that the problems arising from the shortage of women in that group would be counteracted by Indian men marrying or having sexual relationships with women from other ethnic groups. They were profoundly dis­turbed that the violence in the relations between Indian men and In­dian women was not ameliorated by their liaisons with black or other women in this society.

5. This categorical assertion about miscegenation quoted from this source should be stated more cautiously. Sexual unions (maybe mostly casual or even paid) between Indian men and Creole women were probably commoner, even before 1900, than it suggests. Actual incidents of sexual relations between the races were so little docu­mented it is difficult to back up any of these statements with hard em­pirical examples, but conjecture in this matter throughout this chapter is based on the views expressed by many of my oral history particip­ants, that relations between Indian men and black women were rare and it was more often the case that it was Indian women who co­habited or had sexual relationships, forced or otherwise, with black men.

286 Notes

6. This is not spurious theorizing. It must be recalled that I am myself of Indian descent, bom in the decade of the 1950s and my experience of my grandmothers's and mother's lives, and the lives of the women I saw around me in my childhood, and some of them to this day, con­firm this idea.

7. Mohammed Orfy on behalf of the destitute Indian men of Trinidad, CO 571/4 WI 22518 (1916)

8. CO 950/932, Vol 1. West India Royal Commission, 1938/9, Oral Evi­dence of Sugar Manufacturers Association, and T14, Joint Deputation of British West Indies, British Guiana and Trinidad and Tobago Teachers Association.

9. CO 298/106, Report of the Protector of Immigrants for the year 1916.

10. Census of the Colony of Trinidad and Tobago, 1921.

11. Map of sections of Trinidad, Sheet 64D, showing the ward of Na­parima in County Victoria and including the Bronte Estate, Lands and Surveys Division, Trinidad and Tobago Government, 1970.

12. This referred to the informal system in many villages where villages would lend a hand to each other reciprocally, especially at such times as harvesting when crops needed immediate and greater amounts of labour.

13. While this kind of information was gleaned time and time again from various oral history respondents who were themselves brought up un­der such conditions, in my own childhood in village Trinidad the pat­tern continued. Any family in the village who owned land and/or animals, depended on the various members of the family to carry out the various tasks.

14. CO 950 Evidence to the West India Royal Commission, op cit.

15. CO 950, Cmd. 6607 Evidence to West India Royal Commission 1938-39. Joint Deputation of the British West Indies, British Guiana and Trinidad and Tobago Teachers Union.

16. In addition to paid estate work, child labour both on and off the es­tates was also important as a means of helping parents complete their task work.

17. Evidence to the West India Royal Commission, CO 950, CMD 6607, op cit.

Notes 287

18. The sou sou is an informal system of banking and saving based on trust between a group of people. It functions in the following way. Ev­ery month an agreed sum will be paid by each person in the sou sou to the leader of the sou sou. The full sum will be given to one of the per­sons each month, with a gift made to the leader. But it only functioned on the basis that, even after receipt of their hand (the total sum) peo­ple would continue to make their monthly contributions. The system was also referred to as 'chitty' by the Indians. Its derivative is African and the majority of sou sou leaders were African-descended women, although in this case the sou sou which Moonie speaks about was ob­viously run by an Indian woman, a Muslim one, as the respectful title 'chachi' suggests. This suggests that already Indian women had adopted the entrepreneurial practices of the rest of the population.

19. The currency in Trinidad at the time varied between the local cur­rency which was also tied to the British pound. Thus it would be nor­mal to find wages calculated in both Trinidad dollars and cents and/or sometimes stated in British pounds, shillings and pence.

20. From the Report of the Protector of Immigrants for the relevant year.

Chapter 5

1. In The Sexual Metaphor, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts, 1994, Helen Haste argues that the basis of gender construction is through metaphor and real change only occurs when there is profound change in the underlying metaphors of gender.

2. I am grateful to a Hindu gentleman in Felicity Village, Chaguanas for allowing me to photograph this image and discussing some of these ideas with me. I was simply passing by and he was extremely ac­commodating. During the entire period of my formal research for this study (1989-92) when I questioned and approached Indian men and women in Trinidad about their lives and histories, I almost always found openness and willingness to share intimate details. I found my­self an anthropologist in my own land and found Trinidadians some of the easiest people to talk to, and get along with, as other anthropolo­gists who studied various aspects of culture in Trinidad had often told me.

3. Reverend John Morton relates the story of Bhukhan who was bom in India in 1856 and had learnt to read and write in school there. He came to Trinidad as a young man and recalls:

288 Notes

I was sent to a sugar estate called Ben Lomond, under the indenture for five years. There I met a man whose name was Balaram. He was the only one who could read and write on the estate. I asked him if he had any Hindi books. He said, 'Yes I got some from an Indian minister who lives at Iere Village.' (Morton 1916: 81)

4. From Sarah Morton, John Morton of Trinidad, Toronto, 1916: 53, also cited in Brinsley Samaroo, 1996: 208.

5. Kelvin Singh, in The Bloodstained Tombs, has discussed the festival of Hosay as a site for resistance and as a festival which attracted non-Muslims in an urban setting.

6. I recall the fascination I felt as a child and adolescent in the 1950s and 1960s when we would drive pass the grounds in Cedar Hill village where the Ramleela festival was annually staged. The play was per­formed in a natural sunken amphitheatre - a small flat plain sur­rounded by gently sloping hills on two sides. It was a time of great joy and merriment, an opportunity to buy and sell traditional Indian sweets and savouries, offering another sphere in which women could socialize outside their homes. Kumar Mahabir (1988) notes that along with the Ram Lila, the Krishna Lila was also an annual affair. I have not come across this festival in my research thus far.

7. Ramleela is the more contemporary spelling of the festival referred to as Ramlilla in the historical sources found in Trinidad.

8. A similar case can be made for another major deity, Krishna, the wor­ship of whom has created another principle in Hinduism, that known as bhakti, 'which signifies the self-surrender of human beings to a personal god of love' (Chaudhuri 1979: 256). Krishna's escapades, as related in mythology, are beyond reproach: one famous episode has him conducting simultaneous affairs with milkmaids or the wives of milkmen. Later, this same Krishna becomes a heroic figure in portions of the Mahabharata, through the epic poem becoming the personal su­preme deity of a monotheistic cult, and given an additional identifica­tion as the incarnation of the god Vishnu from the triad of Brahma, Siva and Vishnu from the Vedic religion, and generally worshipped as another supreme god, an ideal for all men to emulate.

9. Information gleaned from an informal discussion with Dr Rosabelle Seesaran, who was also one of my oral history interviewees.

Notes 289

10. Many of these songs had their origins in India, as evidenced by the references in the lyrics made to such features as elephants and the river Ganges (Maharaj 1974).

11. The ritual anointing of the groom and the bride with mixture of tur­meric and dahi or yoghurt - tumeric was the same colour and perhaps general taste of saffron, the original spice used in this ritual which was both expensive and perhaps not available. The ritual was referred to as 'saffron night'.

12. I have chosen here only to deal with folk tales, or kissas. Kumar Ma­habir notes that among the oral tradition could be found chants, rid­dles, games, and proverbs (kahawats or kahanis) (Kumar Mahabir, 'The Indo-Caribbean Oral Tradition', The Oral and Pictorial Records Programme, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, De­cember 1988, No. 4).

13. In the folk-tale 'The Fisherman and the Conchshell', a fisherman finds a conchshell which speaks to him and grants him all of his wishes. Every time he is granted a wish, the same thing is also granted to his neighbor twice over. His jealousy forces him to wish for misfor­tune to himself and therefore double misfortunes for his neighbour, eventually leading to the stage where he is both incapacitated and half blinded. The moral of the story is, of course, that his own jealousy of the good fortunes of others has led to his unhappiness (Maharaj, 1990).

14. 'Saga boy' is the colloquial term used in Trinidad to refer to a man who dresses smartly and is generally known as a charmer of ladies. I am not aware of the derivation of the term.

15. Datwan refers to a piece of strong vine used as a toothbrush.

16. It is instructive to note as well while reading this passage the idioms pertaining to caste, race and religion liberally sprinkled in the every­day language among Indians.

17. Notes on the early Indian films were collected from an older Indian man in Trinidad who has an interest in film and who kept advertise­ments for old films which he had seen. I am grateful to my father, Ayoob Mohammed, who has continuously been a source of informa­tion for this and other sections of this book. He avidly carried out some research on films on my behalf. He located and transcribed some of the texts of these films from this informant.

290 Notes

18. It was no coincidence that Ranjit Kumar who became the first presi­dent of the Maha Sabha in Trinidad was also responsible for import­ing these films.

19. In my own childhood experience in the late fifties and into the sixties, Indian films were still the ones which my parents would go to and the ones to which we would be taken because it was safer to show chil­dren, i.e. they alluded to sex rather than were explicit about it, and secondly they always had a moral point to convey. While by this time a certain amount of distance from India would have been developed by my generation, the impact of such powerful images on femininity and masculinity were tremendous, and no doubt continued to influ­ence and confuse us when we were being challenged with numerous other symbols from the West.

20. This discussion, cited from Desai and Krishnaraj, is originally taken from Uma Chakravarti, 'The Sita Myth' in Samya Shakti, Vol. 1, No. l,July 1983, p. 70.

21. The influences of Christianity and the differentiation between women and gender expectations and roles in the various religions has been al­luded to from time to time in this book. It has not been possible to qualify these differences or deal with them in great detail as this de­tracts from the main purpose of this particular study. Nonetheless, there were differences among women and men of these religions emerging during the period of this study, but I would argue that these manifested themselves much more in the latter half of the 20th cen­tury. This clearly remains an area for further investigation and devel­opment.

22. The problem of alcoholism among the Indian population, especially the male Indian population, has been studied and discussed by many writers. It also features as a theme in fiction which deals with Indians in Trinidad, for instance in Harold Sonny Ladoo's gripping novel, No Pain like this Body, 1987, Toronto.

23. Taken from an interview with Mrs Narick of San Fernando carried out by Dr Rosabelle Seesaran for her PhD research on Indians in Trini­dad.

Chapter 6

1. It is also likely that crimes on the estates were more reported than those in the villages. There is evidence certain crimes in the villages

Notes 291

were covered up, or were taken up through the reconstituted pan­chayat rather than through the colonial court of law.

2. One of the unwritten but binding rules regarding the conversion of Indians to Christianity was that they had to change their Indian names to Christian ones. My father told me that after he had successfully completed his teacher training at the Government Training College in the early fifties, in order get a teaching post through the Presbyterian Board in one of their primary schools, both he and my mother had to become baptized and change their names. He refused to compromise his name. At the same time the Muslims had begun organizing their own schools with Muslim boards of control and he chose this option instead, although, with the greater proportion of Presbyterian schools in existence, his career as a teacher would have been far better served if he had had more flexibility of choice.

3. The usage of the term 'Creole' is in reference to the African-descended population.

4. A similar pattern emerged in gender relations in India where village women bom into the tribal and lower castes were able to exercise greater freedom in the expression of their sexuality than women in the Brahmin caste who were more tightly controlled by their caste posi­tion.

5. Ganja or marijuana was smoked in the chillum and was not initially illegal in Trinidad. Men smoked ganja grown in their gardens. Alco­hol had to be bought or taken on credit from shopkeepers so that drinking alcohol was to prove a greater burden to women whose hus­bands ran up huge bills.

6. The gathering of women before festive occasions to ritually prepare food or other items for the ceremonies is still a crucial part of Hindu practice today. My sister (bom a Muslim) attended her brother-in-law's Hindu wedding in August 1998. She described to me afterwards the way in which the women of different ages met on several occa­sions before the wedding to make the sweetmeats, condiments and carry out other ceremonies associated with the wedding. Her descrip­tions of the mood, the female space which this provided, as well as the enjoyment they had of being together and sharing knowledge as well as time, is as relevant to today's Hindu culture as it was during the period which this study focuses on. This is not the practice of Muslim weddings, which lack the pre-wedding preparation and the symbolic ritualism of the Hindu ceremony.

292 Notes

7. The persistence of this aspect of female culture is again evident if we consider Chaudhuri's childhood observations on this same ritual in India.

I have seen my aunts and other elderly women relatives make the linga themselves with clay for daily worship at home and worship it with a devotion unconnected with the image. They never thought of its mate­rial character, though they always used the word linga. ... Young girls in Bengal also worshipped Siva in his linga, so that they might deserve to have husbands who would be like Siva. (Chaudhuri 1979: 230)

8. Dorothy Dinnerstein's argument in a book called The Mermaid and the Minotaur makes an interesting suggestion as to why both women and men have continued to challenge the notion of the pair bond, mated for life. She argues that given the chance, it is probably a 'natu­ral' impulse 'to break loose from our existing gender arrangements, to free ourselves from the fixed symbiotic patterns that have so far pre­vailed between men and women' (Dinnerstein 1976: 10).

9. The term 'under bamboo' was the expression used by Indians as well as non-Indians to describe marriages which were carried out under the religious rites of Hinduism and Islam, more specifically Hinduism. Bamboo poles covered by canvas were used to construct tents which could accommodate the large number of invited guests and under which the ceremony was carried out by the pundit or imam. This may explain the origin of the expression 'under bamboo'.

10. At the same time I must add here that I have not thoroughly re­searched village culture in India at this same time to categorically state that the practice of men having more than one relationship or se­rial relationships was not also observed in India. Given that patriarchy appears to offer more freedoms to men in sexual relationships, this may very likely be the case, especially where financial circumstances allowed.

11. Colloquial expression for impregnating a woman.

12. One must not restrict this type of behaviour to Indian men alone as there is evidence that other men also were driven to violence. In the southern district of Fyzabad another cutlass tragedy took place in 1931 and here it was stated that a jealousy drama was revealed. 'Au­gustus Griffith, a powerfully built negro of about 36 years, was ac­cused of murder of Sarah Antoine of Fyzabad' (Trinidad Guardian, 27 January 1931).

Notes 293

Chapter 7

1. My interpretation of the concepts of love and respect in this chapter and study is linked very closely to the ideas which have emerged both from an understanding of these ideas as perceived by Indians them­selves, especially those interviewed for this study, and from my own lived experience and observations as an Indian woman in Trinidad so­ciety.

2. Vertovec, who has carried out extensive research on Indians and Hin­duism in Trinidad, has commented that: 'In Trinidad, the family has received perhaps more social scientific attention than any other di­mension of society and culture among Indians' (Vertovec 1992: 101). I myself found that while much of it was relevant and useful, they gave limited insights into why Indians and Indian society possesses a continuity despite transplantation and disruption.

3. Jehaji translates into English as ship, jehaji bhai refers to ship brother or, collectively, the group of men and women who came over on the same journey. The migrants would refer initially to each other asjehaj or jehajin, the latter being the female title. This was not only respect but an acknowledgement of a tie as close as the kinship ones which re-emerged in the later decades.

4. Mamoo is the respectful form of address, and kinship title for the brother of one's mother in Indian families.

5. The strictness of these kin relations was evident in strict definitions of forms of address. Hamza bom in Trinidad to India bom Muslim par­ents reminds us of this: Today your father brother is your uncle, your mother brother is your uncle, if you have an aunt the husband is your uncle, but in urdu it eh so, your father brother is your chacha, your mother brother is a mamoo, your aunt husband is your poopha, that way you know exactly what is the relationship.'. There was an overlap though between Hindu and Muslim kinship titles, for some terms were used synonymously. For instance in both religions, the bride was referred to as dulahin, the term bhowji referring to sister-in-law and and bhai to brother were used for both Hindus and Muslims.

6. Yakoob recalls that families based on considered relations or jehaji ties were far more encompassing than the later notion of the family which included only blood relations. Again, the pragmatics of their early situation determined much of this. Yakoob suggested: 'I think one of the things which encouraged it was that people always believed

Notes

they needed each other. They needed each other because of the lack of roads and development. They were all confined to a certain area.'

I have drawn on information about individuals who were alive in my youth in village Trinidad here and have disguised their names.

In addition to the concerns about sexuality, and linked to this as well, Basham's (1967) quotation on child marriage raises another crucial point regarding the marriage of girls which I have not explored suffi­ciently. The disgrace to parents of having an unmarried girl in the home, the even worse disgrace should the unmarried girl become pregnant, added to the economic liability which she continued to be, (despite her continued contributions to the household in domestic and possibly garden labour), were terribly oppressive burdens placed on the backs of Indian girls from childhood. Thus their acquiescence to early marriage, even though this may have signified other oppressive features, was at least a relief from the burden of being an unmarried girl and a liability in one's parents' household. This point was never openly expressed by my respondents, nor does it appear in any of the literature. But the unconscious processes which inform these deci­sions of women are hardly ever rationalised in terms of such pressures which they are victims to from birth. The benefits of education as a redefinition of a feminine identity which was not only justified through marriage and child-bearing, was equally important to Indian women in Trinidad as it has been for women in other parts of the world.

She is referring here to the beginning of her menstrual periods.

It was generally held though unspoken that

Indian females were considered more impure than males, more easily polluted, and their purification a difficult process. ... So low were women considered that one of the important duties of their parents was to persuade with humble suppliance and bribery other families with prospective husbands to take them off their hands. (Johnson 1984: 7)

I have also surmised that due to the early mortality of many parents, it was safer to leave their girls well protected although this appears to equally apply to boys. In my own family my paternal grandmother en­sured that her son, my father's marriage was arranged shortly before she died at age 50. She had had a continuous ailment for years and possibly knew that she was mortally ill.

Notes 295

11. I have not discussed here other factors which possibly played an equal part in the choice of partner - that the families were respectable, and in some cases exchange of property and economic reasons were also important. If a girl married into better circumstances then it was less likely that she would have to work hard for a living all her life.

12. Children were not assumed to have rights in the modem sense of the word.

13. Administration Report of the Director of Education for the year 1939. Trinidad Despatch No 232 of 14.8.41.

14. Speech given by Nabab Ali at his retirement as headmaster of the El Socorro Islamia School (n.d. but circa 1950s).

15. The idiomatic expression for taking public transportation as opposed to having one's own vehicle.

16. Also referred to as La Pique High School as the school compound was set on a hill called La Pique.

17. The school's major source of funding was Seereeram Panday, and later Seereeram Maharaj, cane farmer of Chaguanas and founder of the Arya Samaj Movement in Trinidad. In 1934, the Acting Director of Education, Captain J.O. Cutteridge inadvertently led to the demise of the Hindu/Muslim school by asking for a joint Hindu/Muslim Edu­cation Board. At the same time, Government representatives were meeting separately with Muslim leaders to build a separate Govern­ment-assisted school. This joint venture did continue for a while, as the column 'Bird's Eye View' in the East Indian Weekly reported on 17 January 1931 the reopening of the Hindu and Muslim school at Chaguanas with F. Bearcaux, retired headmaster of Chaguanas Gov­ernment school, and Jutilal, late of the CM. School, Chandernagore, as teachers.

18. It must be noted that this proviso of conversion in order to get teach­ing appointments with the Canadian Missionary Schools was still op­erating well into the twentieth century. My father told me the story of how he and my mother agreed to convert to Presbyterianism around 1953 or so, but with the availability of the Islamic Schools he did not have to actually follow through with this conversion, and retained his religion of Islam which he practises to this day.

19. The coyness expected of a woman in displaying affection and of the man in reciprocating openly is explained by some writers as deriving from the joint family system. Since all members of the family are ex-

296 Notes

pected to jointly own and share all earned property and live under one roof, it is threatening to the whole system if a man takes his wife's side in arguments.

20. Bridget Brereton comments on an earlier draft to this chapter that

The lack of displays of affection seems to be typical of all traditional societies where 'romantic love' was not strong. Evidence clearly shows similar patterns in Europe before the 19th century, especially that of not calling your husband by his first name. (French peasants were always said to show more affection to cows than to wives.) (Brereton 1992, Notes of the author)

In a very interesting study of Love and Power in the Peasant Family: Rural France in the Nineteenth Century (1983) Martine Segalen ar­gues that there has always existed a 'deep and abiding love within the French rural family' which incorporated love and respect between man and wife, and parent and child.

She believes that the peasant wife was not, and had never been sub­jected to the superior force of her husband or under his absolute com­mand. As maitresse de la maison, she was a co-equal, a partner almost in the contemporary business sense with her spouse, even if sexually submissive and culturally recessive. (P. Laslett in the foreword to Se­galen 1983)

This approach is more consistent with some of the notions I am at­tempting to develop in the Indian family setting in Trinidad as well.

21. Colloquial expression for sweets of all kinds.

22. In 1998 Yakoob and Zalayhar celebrated their 47th wedding anniver­sary together. Despite the many problems which they confronted over the years, duty to parents first and later their own family was a major factor in the continuity of their relationship.

Chapter 8

1. The influence and ideas of individuals such as Karl Marx in the 19th century, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King in the 20th century cannot be discounted in terms of the impact that they have had on thinking on the class, caste system and race respectively. In the sphere of gender, the contributions of Mary Wollstonecraft in the 18th cen­tury, Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan in the 20th century must be counted as written texts which informed and changed ideas of gen­der.

Notes 297

Some of the ideas in this chapter are based on the impressive work of many feminist historians/theoreticians whose analyses and methods I have drawn on in the collection of data for this study, and in its ana­lytical presentation. Crucial among these have been Elizabeth Fox Genovese (1982) 'Placing Women's History in History', New Left Review, 133: 5-29; Joan Kelly (1983), 'The Double Vision of Femi­nist Theory' in J. L. Newton, M.P. Ryan and J.R. Walkowitz (eds) Sex and Class in Women's History, History Workshop series, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Joan Scott (1988), Gender and the Poli­tics of History, New York: Columbia University Press; Bridget Brere­ton (1988), 'General Problems and Issues in the Studying the History of Women" in P. Mohammed and C. Shepherd (eds) Gender in Car­ibbean Development, Women and Development Studies, Trinidad, Barbados, Jamaica; The University of the West Indies and Teresa de Lauretis (1987) Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film and Fiction, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

The original idea of patriarchy suggests benevolence and the creation of order and continuity, for example the rule of the father over his sons, older men over younger men, the father or patriarch as provider of his family and household which may have included slaves or ser­vants, and patriarchy as protection.

In a recent discussion, Norbert Ortmayr, Lecturer in the University of Salzburg, Austria, who was visiting Jamaica on a research fellowship, and who has carried out extensive work on demographic and com­parative family history in Trinidad, confirms that the most significant demographic change he has observed in family history in this society is that of the increased age of marriage among Indian females in Trinidad, moving from the ages of 7-10, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to between 22 to 24 by the 1960s.

Half a century ahead. Migration continues as Indians, men and wom­en like myself, third, fourth and fifth generation Trinidadians, travel or migrate in and out of the Caribbean diaspora, rarely back to India to settle, even if they travel to India as not indifferent tourists. Gender relations in what is still constituted in Trinidad as an Indian commu­nity is consistently being modified, charting new terrain, inextricably locked into a gender system which is Trinidadian and Caribbean, if not 'western', as the 20th century has rapidly accelerated the images and ideas through which gender is sifted. Indian women are well rep­resented among the professions and occupations while an Indian prime minister now heads the government of Trinidad and Tobago.

298 Notes

Indian patriarchy and masculinity have found numerous spaces in this society to compete evenly with men of other ethnic groups, while In­dian femininity continued along the trajectory I described in the vari­ous chapters of this study.

Many traditions of gender persist, transformed in actual practice, but retaining symbolic meanings. One of the customs of the Hindu marriage ceremony when child marriages were arranged was that the bride would return to her parents three days after the wedding cere­mony, and remain in her parents home for one week, until being for­mally collected by the groom and his family to live permanently in his parent's home. This custom clearly made allowances for the fact that the girl and boy would have been virtual strangers at the time of mar­riage. Furthermore, when the bride was of a tender age, the brief re­turn and sojourn in her parents' home allowed a period for adjustment of the young girl into a new household and a interim for her parents to assess her comfort or discomfort with the early contact with her new husband and in-laws. This year, on a visit to Trinidad, I came across a newly-wed bride and groom married under traditional Hindu rites. She was a secondary school teacher, he a medical doctor, they were both of the same age and over 24. They had known each other well and in fact had been in the custom of western society, 'dating' for a period of a few years. Three days after the wedding, as dictated by old custom, she returned to her parents' home. When they were invited out as a couple during this time, he picked her up from her parents home and delivered her back to their home. This was a breech of the original custom where there should have been no contact between them, but it was allowed by both sets of parents. The young couple observed their duty to their parents and tradition, openly and enjoya-bly subverting the original custom. In such ways have ideas of Indian femininity and masculinity persisted over generations. Despite our fulminations against aspects that are limiting and oppressive, the con­tinuity of gender symbolism in any culture is integral to the endurance of culture itself. This is something I have myself recognized and come to terms with in the years of my own struggle with the boundaries which circumscribed the femininity of Indian women bom into the society of Trinidad by the middle of the 20th century.

6. During the last U\-.> decades I have met and come to know many India bom women of my age and found that while there are differences be­tween us of attitudes to sexuality, 'western' norms etc, there have also been profound similarities, one of which is that pertaining to marriage and family traditions.

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Index

Abidh, Stella 28, 89, 158, 244-5, 276n Africans 1,3,4, 11,74,98

interracial liaisons 46, 68-9, 83-5, 191-2,194-6, 206-7, 278-9n

role models 171 sexual relations 208, 209 slavery 30, 42, 59, 67, 69, 97, 98,

264-5, 278n,281n women 97, 206, 278-9n

Age Of Consent Act (1891) 18, 26, 57 alcohol 13,31,45, 169-70, 197, 198,

212-13, 290n, 291n All-lndia Womens' Conference (1927) 27 Amritsar 58 Andaman Islands 17 Andhra Pradesh 34 Andrews, CF. 29, 139-40, 239 Anglicans 182 arranged marriages 11,44,187,216-17,

224,231-8,248,254,259-60 child marriage 12, 18, 22, 26, 27, 90,

179, 226-^7, 252-3, 275n, 294n, 298n

education and 216, 238-47, 253 Arya Samaj Movement 26, 86, 140-1,

151,162,295n

Barbados 3,276n Bengal 30,31,34,40,56,68 Besant, Annie 29 Bhojpuri 34-5,78 Bible Women 184-5,256-7 Bihar 31,34,140 Blacks 66-8, 98, 195 Brahmin Caste

and indentureship 34, 46-7, 142-3, 279n

ideals of 19,22,24, 153, 155-7 views of women 24, 26-8, 89-90,

155-7

Britain rule in India 10, 18, 32, 35-6, 55-8,

275n rule in Trinidad 1,3,4,58,63-4 see also colonial order

British Guiana 5, 9-10, 70, 71, 73, 93, 96, 100, 106, 178, 182

Burkett, Algernon 66-7

Calcutta 17, 27, 31, 38, 40, 50, 52, 54, 70, 71,72

calypsos 75,83-4, 195-6, 283n Canadian Mission to Indians 62, 89, 113,

241-2, 244, 295n caste 8, 10, 19-23,35-6, 142

endogamy 20-2, 35, 47, 154, 186, 193, 216,227-9,256

pollution 40-2, 47, 68 see also specific castes

cattle 116-17,277-8n Central Provinces 31 Chaguanas 110, 144, 188 child labour 59, 101-2, 105, 118-21,

125 child marriage 12, 18, 22, 26, 27, 90,

179,275n, 294n, 298n age of 227-8, 229-31, 238, 240-1,

252-3, 297n breakdown in 233-4 education and 229-30, 238-47, 253 legislation regarding 27, 230-1 negotiating intimacy and gender relations

in 231-8 origins of 226-7 successful arrangements 234-8

Child Marriage Prevention Act (1928) 27 Child Marriage Restraint Act 230 Chinese 1,3,59,61,74,84,206 Christianity 15, 29-30, 61, 66, 78-9, 81,

168,291n

312

Index 313

Christianity - continued missionaries attitudes to the sexuality of

Indians 179,182-6 mythology 137, 139 women and 168, 225-6, 243, 244,

256-7 Cipriani, Captain 3-4, 239 clothing 73, 75-7, 85-6, 87, 98, 139, 168,

263, 28In veils 135-6,138

cocoa 3, 108,112,115,116,117, 119, 120-1, 124, 128, 131

coconut 3, 108,124 Code of Laws for Immigrants 44, 59-62,

105,119 coffee 3,112,117 colonial order in Trinidad 55-8

anti colonial discourse 62-3 attitude to the sexuality of Indians

177-82, 185-6 Indo-Trinidadian nationalist struggle

27-8,29,62-9,81 statutory definition of difference within

59^62 Comins, D.W. 29,93-5, 104 community building

child labour 59, 101-2, 105, 118-21, 125

concept of 6-9 cost of living 113-14 employment outside agriculture 113-15 estate labour 104-6, 111-12 family life 92-8, 126 family strategies 115-25 gender system 10-12 land acquisition 104-25,127,186 male wages 105-6, 119, 124-5, 131-3 permanent settlement 11-12,104-18 ratio of men to women 93, 96-7 relocating community 104-15 reproduction 99-103, 125 savings 106-8, 122, 287n steady labour force 92-104 urban areas 108, 109, 113-14, 121, 126 villages 92,97-8, 107, 110, 111,

112-13, 121, 123, 125-6, 127, 129-30, 188

women and 92-8, 103, 105-7, 109, 111, 122-5, 131-3

Constantine, Learie 171 Contagious Diseases Act (1864) 178 cost of living 123-4,131-3

Creoles 1, 4, 11, 44-5, 54, 63, 65, 66, 68, 78, 79, 83-4, 132, 186-8, 206-7, 270n, 276n,282n

Crowley, Dame Rachel 102, 118, 119-21 Cuba 69

David, Cyrus Proudhomrne 64, 65 debating clubs 142,154-9 Delhi 39 depot marriages 40-2 divorce 13, 15, 23, 26, 28, 61, 139 Dravidians 68, 146,206 Durani, Karim Khan 31

East Indian Ladies' Friendly Society 88 East Indian National Association (EINA)

66, 140 East Indian National Congress (EINC) 66 East Indian Weekly 27-8, 84-5, 89-90,

139,154, 238, 276n education

arranged marriages and 216,238^17, 253

children 59, 119-21, 238-47, 253 girls 240,242-8 Hindu 244,247, 295n Islam 244, 247, 295n Presbyterian missionaries 239, 241, 242,

243-7, 295-6n social mobility 77-9 women 22, 26-8, 77, 85, 89-90,

239,294n effeminacy 55-6, 58, 68, 180-1 ethnic differences, markers of

clothing 75-7 cultural stereotypes 79-80 Indian attitudes to the new society 73-5 language and identity 77-9 migration and repatriation 69-75

family life and community building 92-8,126 compromises between parents and

children 258-60 extended 217-18,224-5 indentureship and 92-3, 97, 193—7,

217 middle class 225-6 nuclear family 92, 217-18, 223, 225 recreation of family and kinship systems

217-26 female infanticide 22, 27, 35, 47

314 Index

female labour 35^6, 39-40, 43, 46, 59, 103, 105-6, 122-3, 265, 278n

female reproduction 12,31, 42-3, 92-3, 99-103, 125, 136, 180, 193-4, 199, 223,238,265

female sexuality and indentureship 37-8, 92-5 Christian missionaries' attitude to 183-6 control of 26,31, 146, 180, 185,

190-202, 202-4, 208-13, 221, 226, 265

freedom 11,23-4,97 Hinduism and 146-7

female subservience 11, 26, 28, 48, 186, 250-1

femininity 14, 135-6, 138, 164-74, 262-9 fertility 100-2, 193-4 festivals 141, 143-6, 154 Fiji 58,67, 178, 276n films 159-64, 256, 289-90n Fitzpatrick, George 66 folktales 151-4,289n food 41,73,75, 139, 145, 291n Foucault, Michel 176, 178, 185, 226, 280n freedom

after indentureship 60-1 female sexuality 11, 23-4, 97 of women 97-8, 103, 146

French 1,3,66 Fyzabad 31,75,113

Gaizapur 31 Ganges plains 31 ganja 212, 29In gender ideology

debating clubs 142,154-9 festivals 144-6 films 159-64, 256, 289-90n folktales 151-4,289n Hinduism 15, 137-51, 156-7, 168 Islam 15,23, 137, 143, 149-51, 168 newspapers 142, 154-9 oral transmission 149-54 religious ritual 142-9 symbolic references 134-42 symbols of patriarchy 165-74 transmitters of 142-64 weddings 149-51, 156-7, 168

gender negotiation concept and first negotiations 12-16,

40-53 Germany 13

Gordon, Governor Sir Arthur H. 108 Grant, Kenneth 113 Grieg, Beatrice 29, 89, 239

Hassan, Peer 30 health 28,59 Hindi language 35, 78-9, 156, 284n Hindu Marriage and Divorce Bill 61 Hindu Widow Remarriage Act (1856) 18 Hinduism

and Indian migrants 8,29-31 development of 142-3 distribution of male and female

population 197-8 divorce 28,139 education 139, 244, 247, 295n female sexuality 146-7 festivals 144-6, 154 gender ideology 15,137-51,156-7,

168 marriage 28, 30, 61, 224, 227, 229, 259 mythology and symbols of \31-49, 168 pundits 29, 47, 50, 78-9, 86, 87, 139,

140, 142-3, 146, 148, 157, 165, 208 Sanskritization 137-9 weddings 30, 156-7, 168, 199, 208,

228-9, 237-8, 248, 291n, 298n women 10,31,181,197-201, 248-50

Hosein, F.E.M. 84-5,86, 107, 111, 154 housing 11,44,93, 100, 118, 181 Hydal, Mrs Jaleel 28

illiteracy 2, 142, 154, 270-1 n imams 29, 78, 143-4, 146, 208 imbalance of the sexes 11-12, 37, 38-40,

44-8, 60, 93, 96-7, 186-7, 188, 208-9, 226, 262, 263, 266, 285n

Immigration Ordinances 43, 44, 59-62, 105, 119

immorality 39, 40, 49, 95-6, 100, 177-80, 186,285n

indentureship and family life 92-3, 97, 193-7, 217 Brahmin Caste and 34, 142-3, 279n children 59,119-20 depot marriages 40-1 deserters 60 end of 4,6,69, 188 establishment of 5-7, 59-61, 74 free status 60-1 housing 11,44,93, 100, 181 Indian officials and 58

Index 315

indentureship - continued sexual relations and 168-70,175,

181-2, 190-6,200-2 women and 37-44, 49, 90, 92-5, 143,

181-2, 190-6, 200-2, 278n India

anti-colonial and anti-patriarchal struggles in 25-9

British rule 10, 18, 32, 35-6, 55-8, 275n

castes 10, 19-23 ideological hegemonies of gender in

19-25 independence 6 middle class 10,27,29 nationalism in 9-10, 17-18, 25, 29,

56-7 women in 18-27

Indian, The 63 Indian Mutiny 58 Indian News And Views 81, 89, 140, 156,

160, 230, 245,276n Indian Penal Code 17, 273-4n inheritance 21,24-5,60 International Aryan League 140 interracial liaisons 44-6, 68-9, 83-5,

98-100, 191-2, 194-6, 206-7, 216, 278-9n, 285n

interreligious marriage 153-4, 216, 255-7 Islam

and Indian migrants 29-31,36 child marriage 227, 229 development of 29-31,143 divorce 28 education 244, 247, 295n festivals 144, 154 gender ideology 15, 23, 137, 143, 146,

149-51, 168 imams 29,78, 143-4, 146,208 marriage 28,30,61,224,259 mythology and symbols of 137, 146,

168 weddings 30, 168, 199, 208, 229, 291n women 21, 28, 31, 168, 197-9, 249

Islamic Guardian Association 140

Jamaica 3,5,67, 178

Kerala 34 kinship states, recreation of 217-26

labour movement 3-4

Laltoo, Jacob 62 land acquisition 104-25,127,186

women and 107, 109, 111, 121-3 Land Commutation Scheme 107, 109-10,

111, 121-2 language

and identity 77-9 and Indian migrants 2, 8, 34—5 Bhojpuri 34-5,78 differences 2, 8, 34-5, 54, 271n English 2,78-9 French patois 2 Hindi 35,78-9, 156, 284n

Lebanese 1 lectures 154-9 Legislative Council 25, 54, 58, 65-6, 69,

171 lepers 52, 71, 282n lighter skin colour 67-8, 206-7 love

and respect 220, 238-9 concept of 215-16,249-51 dimensions of 233 displays of affection 251-2, 295-6n individualism in 217 sexual 238-9,251 shift from respect to romantic love

247-58, 296n Lucknow 31

Madras 17,31,34,54,206 Mahabir, Frank 140, 154 Maharashtra 26 Mahatma Gandhi 27, 140, 141, 162, 28In,

296n Mahatma Jaimini 89-90 male sexuality

and control of female sexuality 186-8 Black 195 discussion of 238 Hinduism and 146-8 new freedoms 208-13 responses to a subverted patriarchy

202-8 shiva lingam 134-5, 200, 292n suicide and 204-5 violence 202-4,209-14

marriage arranged 11,44, 187,216-17,224,

231-8,248,254,259-60 child 12, 18,22,26,27,90, 179,

226-47, 252-3, 275n, 294n, 298n

316 Index

marriage - continued fidelity and monogamy 168-9,177-8,

208-10,216-17,231-2,253 gift exchanges and 22-3, 274—5n Hinduism and 28, 30, 61, 224, 227, 229,

259 individualism in 216-17 interracial 83-5, 98-100, 206-7, 216 interreligious 153-4, 216, 255-7 Islam and 28,30,61,224,259 laws on 60-1,139 negotiations in the Indian community

226-47 Presbyterian Church and 256-8 romantic love and 253-8 violence in 202-4,209-14 virginity 216,228,229

Martinique 223 Mathura, C.B. 27, 84-5, 146, 154, 276n Mauritius 58,96 men

clothing 75-7, 98 effeminacy 55-6, 58, 68, 180-1 imbalance of the sexes 11-12, 37,

38-40, 44-8, 60, 93, 96-7, 186-7, 188, 208-9, 226, 262, 263, 266, 285n

masculinity 14, 168-74, 187-8, 262-9 murder of women 45-6,99,103-4,155,

169,175,181,185, 186-7, 188-90, 192,203-4, 210-11, 292n

suicide 46, 69, 177-8, 184, 204-5, 266-7

violence 188-90, 202-4, 209-14 wages 43, 105-6, 119, 124-5, 131-3

middle class 10, 25, 27, 29, 42, 64, 66, 67, 225-6

Middle East 30-1 migrants

Code of Laws for 59-62 geographical distribution of 1-2 origins and differences 2, 4-6, 8, 29-37,

54-5, 67-8 ratio of men to women 11-12,29-37,

54-5, 67-8, 93, 96-7,186-7,188, 208-9,226, 262, 263, 266, 285n

Morton, John and Sarah 75-6, 135-6, 183-4, 194

Mother India (Katherine Mayo 1927) 29 murder of women 45-6,99,103-4,155,

169, 175,181, 185, 186-7, 188-90, 192, 203-4, 210-11, 292n

Muslim Marriage and Divorce Bill 28, 61

myths and symbols and gender ideology 134-42 changes in femininity 168-74 changes in masculinity 168-74 Christianity 137, 139 continuities and correspondence 137-42 debating clubs and 142, 154-9 festivals 144-6, 154 films 159-64 folktales 151-4 Hinduism 137-51, 156-7, 168 Islam 137, 143, 146, 149-51, 168 lectures and 154-9 newspapers and 142,154—9 of patriarchy 165-74 oral transmitters 149-54 patidevrata 135, 136, 275n ritual religious occasions 142-9 Sanskritization 137-8 shim lingam 134-5, 200, 292n transmitters of 142-64 veils 135-6,138 weddings 149-51, 156-7, 168

Naidu, Sarojini 28-9, 140 Naipaul, Seepersad 27, 81, 84-7, 154, 157,

167, 276n Nariva 1-2 nationalism

coloured and African-descended population in Trinidad 4

in India 9-10, 17-18, 25-6, 27, 29, 56-7

Indian nationalism in Trinidad 27-8, 29, 62-9,81

women and 62,81-2,85-91 negritude 4 negroes from USA 59, 64 newspapers 142, 154-9

see also specific newspapers North West Provinces 31

occupational castes 8, 19, 274n oil wells 3 oral transmission

of gender ideology 149-54 Orange Grove Estate 46, 54, 82, 121, 142 Orissa 31,34 Oudh 25, 35-6, 275-6n

panchayat 7, 20, 45, 46, 171-4, 188, 192, 226,269, 29In

Index 317

pa tide vrata 13 5, 13 6, 27 5 n patriarchy

anti-patriarchal struggles in India 25-9 male responses to a subverted 202-8 negotiating with symbols of 168-74

petroleum 3, 108 pollution, caste 19-20, 40-2, 47, 68 polyandry 165, 177, 194 polygamy 22, 23, 27, 57 population 1-4, 37, 38, 101, 102, 197,

198,206 Port of Spain 2, 50-1, 52, 73, 76, 80, 84,

109, 113-14, 163, 189,207,256 Portuguese 1, 3 Presbyterian missionaries

and Indian marriages 256-8 Bible Women 184-5, 256-7 converts to 78-9, 94, 113, 184-5, 256-7 Report on Industrial and Social Problems

118-19 schools 78-9, 239, 241, 242, 243-7,

295-6n views of Indians 75-6,182-5 women and 94, 197-8, 201, 243-4, 256

prostitution 18, 95, 177, 178-9, 197, 274n Protector of Immigrants 52, 58, 72, 98,

114-15, 123-4, 178, 203, 278n, 280n pundits 29, 47, 50, 78-9, 86, 87, 139, 140,

142-3, 146, 148, 157, 165,208 Punjab 35,67 purdah 23-4, 26, 27, 35,90, 275n purity

of race 82,83-91,244 ritual 19-22

race definition of 27In purity of 82,83-91,244

Rajasthan 67 Ramabai, Pandita 25, 26, 27 Ramayana 24, 144-9, 153, 166-7 Ramleela Festival 144-6 rape 41,44,68, 165-6, 274n religion 8, 15-16, 29-31, 36, 75, 142-9

interreligious marriages 153-4,216, 255-7

remarriage 18, 23, 26-7, 34, 57, 148-9 repatriation 4, 42-3, 50-3, 69-75, 93-4,

109-10, 186 rice 3, 110, 111-12, 118 Rienzi, Adrian Cola 63, 84, 86-7, 171 ritual religious occasions 142-9

Roman Catholicism 80, 141, 241 romantic love 247-58, 296n Royal Commission to The West Indies

118-20, 270n

sale of brides 35-6,47 San Fernando 2, 28, 67, 75, 87, 89, 140,

143, 164, 189,243,245-6,258 San Rafael 131-2 Sanderson Committee 64-5, 103 Sangre Grande Estate 132, 169 savings 106-8, 122, 287n scheduled castes 19, 274n sea voyage 41-2, 72-3 settlement, permanent 11-12, 104-18 sexual relations

amongst Africans 208, 209 and indentureship 168-70, 175, 181-2,

190-6,200-2 sexuality

attitude in Creole Trinidad 186-8 Christian missionaries' attitude to 179,

182-6 colonial attitude to 177-82,185-6 immorality 39, 40, 49, 95-6, 177-80,

186 interracial liaisons 44-6, 68-9, 83-5,

98-100, 191-2, 194-6, 206-7, 216, 278-9n, 285n

male responses to a subverted patriarchy 202-8

negotiation of sexuality among Indians 187-202

prostitution 95, 177, 178-9, 197, 274n study of 175-7 under indentureship 168-70,175,

181-2, 190-6,200-2 village sanctions and control of

190-202, 221 see also female sexuality; male sexuality

shiva lingam 134-5, 200, 292n slavery 30, 42, 59, 67, 69, 97, 98, 264-5,

278n,2281n social mobility

education and 77-9 South Africa 58,67 Spanish 1,63 sport 171 St Andrew, County of 2 St David, County of 2 St George, County of 1-2 St Patrick, County of 1-2

318 Index

Straits Settlements 58 strikes 54 Suffragette Movement 15 sugar 3,64,67, 101, 108, 111-12, 116,

128 suicide 46, 169, 177-8, 188, 204-5, 266-7 Sumatra 123 Sunnis 31,61 Suriname 96, 182,201 suttee 19,22,25,27, 57

Tackveeyatul Islam Anjuman (association) 31, 140

Tagore, Rabindranath 140 Teelucksingh, Hon. Seeran 70, 139, 154,

172 temple prostitution 18 Tikasingh, Gerad 5-6, 98 Tobago l,3,270n transmitters

of gender ideology 142-64 Trinidad Guardian 27, 28, 70, 71, 79-80,

81,84, 107-8, 192,239 Trinidad Indian League 88 Trinidad Workingmens' Association (TWA)

4,66

United Provinces 31 United States of America 15, 59, 64,

264-5 untouchables 19, 47, 274n urban areas 108, 109, 113-14, 121, 126 Uttar Pradesh 25,34, 27In

veils 135-6,138 Venezuelans 3 Victoria, County of 1-2, 108 village endogamy 47,186 villages

and community building 92, 97-8,107, 110, 111,112-13,121, 123, 125-6, 127,129-30, 188

and control of female sexuality 190-202,221

endogamy 47, 186 forms of support in 205-6, 219, 220,

225 in the 19th and early 20th centuries

129-30 violence

and control of female sexuality 202-4, 209-14

after indentureship 188-90 see also murder

virginity 23, 100, 216, 228, 229

wages men 43,105-6,119, 124-5, 131-3 women 11,43, 105-6, 122-5, 131-3,

278n weddings

and gender ideology 149-51, 156-7, 168

Hindu 30, 156-7, 168, 199, 208, 228-9, 237-8, 248, 291n,298n

Islam 30, 168, 199, 208, 229, 291n women and 149-51, 168, 198-9, 236-8,

248 West India Club 256 West India Royal Commission 118-20 widows

celibacy 22 immolation {suttee) 19, 22, 25, 27, 57 remarriage 18, 23, 26-7, 34, 57, 148-9

women and Indian nationalism 62, 81-2, 85-91 Brahmin Caste and 24, 26-8, 89-90,

155-7 Christianity and 168, 225-6, 243, 244,

256-7 community building and 92-8, 103,

105-7, 109, 111, 122-5, 131-3 control of 21-3 depot marriages 40-1 education 22, 26-8, 77, 85, 89-90, 239,

294n femininity 14, 135-6, 138, 164-74,

262-9 freedom of 97-8,103,146 Hinduism and 10, 31, 181, 197-201,

248-50 immorality 39, 40, 49, 95-6, 100,

177-80, 186,285n indentureship 37-44, 49, 90, 92-5, 103,

181-2, 190-6, 200-2, 278n Islam and 23, 28, 31, 168, 197-9, 249 land acquisition 107, 109, 111, 121-3 liasions with African men 83-4 murder of 45-6, 99, 103-4, 155, 169,

175,181, 185, 186-7, 188-90, 192, 203-4, 210-11, 292n

Presbyterian Church and 94, 197-8, 201,243-4,256

purdah 23-4, 26, 27, 35, 90, 275n

Index 319

women - continued ratio of men to women 11-12,37,

38-40, 44-8, 60, 93, 96-7, 186-7, 188, 208-9, 226, 262, 263, 266, 285n

reforms 18-19,25-9 remarriage 18, 23, 26-7, 34, 57, 148-9 repatriation 50-3 reproduction 12,31, 42-3, 92-3,

99-103, 125, 136, 180, 193-4, 199, 223,238, 265

sale of brides 35-6, 47 savings 106-8, 122, 287n subservience 11, 26, 28, 48, 186, 250-1 successful career women 158-9

wages 11,43, 105-6, 122-5, 131-3, 278n

weddings 149-51,168,198-9, 236-8, 248

widows 18,19, 22, 23, 25-7, 34, 57, 148-9

work 35-6, 39-40, 43, 46, 59, 103, 105-6, 122-3, 265, 278n

see also female sexuality Womens'Liberation Movement 15

Young Indian Party In Trinidad 27 Young Men's Muslim Association of Princes

Town 28