Organizer: Paula Richman, Oberlin College
Chair and Discussant: Frederick M. Asher, University of Minnesota
Discussant: Aisha Khan, New York University
Carnival celebrations in Trinidad are famous, but
far less is known about the festive arts of the Indo-Trinidadian community,
although it comprises nearly half of the island's population. The Indian diaspora
has received much attention recently, but most attention focuses on 20th-century
immigration; instead, this panel examines the consequences of 19th-century
immigration to the Caribbean. This border-crossing panel investigates cultural
practices that reveal how Indo-Trinidadians imagine, transform, and contest
notions of "Indianness". Singh examines
rituals involving the 16th-century Hindi Ramcharitmanas, Richman analyzes
theatrical productions of Ram's story, and Harlan investigates commemorations
of the arrival of Indian indentured laborers. Each paper presents new ethnographic
and historical research to shed light on the multiple and debated ways in which
Indianness is represented in Trinidad.
Analyzing movements of peoples, texts, and theater
from India to Trinidad illuminates how notions of "homeland" and "diaspora" shape
ritual, dramatic, and commemorative forms. The discussants have worked in South
Asia and diaspora locations. Asher studies South Asian visual culture in the
subcontinent as well as the diaspora (Singapore, South Africa, North America).
Khan has two decades of research on South Asian diaspora religion, history,
and culture in Trinidad. By drawing on both South Asian and Caribbean area studies,
the panel puts scholars of religion, history, anthropology, and art history
into conversation about how identities, religious affiliations, and "mixing" are
enacted, redacted, and performed in diasporic sites today.
Sherry-Ann Singh, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine
This paper examines the multiple ritual contexts of Ramcharitmanas, a sixteenth-century
Hindi text by Tulsidas that arrived in Trinidad with indentured laborers
in the second half of the nineteenth century. Based upon research for her completed
Ph.D. at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, "The Ramayana
Tradition and Socio-Religious Change in Trinidad, 1917-1990", the paper
explores how themes in the Ramcharitmanas narrative have provided metaphors
for historical changes undergone by Hindus in Trinidad, notions of exile
during indenture, discourse of family dharma during post-indenture settlement,
and ideas of Ramraj after independence from colonial rule.
The paper focuses in particular upon changes in the role played by Ramcharitmanas
in yagnas, sessions of chanting and exegesis, and samskaras, rites of passage.
Until the 1960s, most yagnas concentrated primarily on a Sanskrit text known
primarily to Hindu priests, Bhagavad-Purana. By the 1970s, the Hindi Ramcharitmanas,
which had unchallenged popularity within the general Hindu population, began
to eclipse the Bhagavad-Purana. By the 1980s, non-Brahmin Ramayana readers were
officiating at yagnas. In a different kind of change, before the 1960s, birth,
marriage, and death rituals all included chanting of extensive portions of Ramcharitmanas,
but by the 1970s, a number of factors (such as, for example, hospital rather
than home births) began changing the situation. Looking at historical reasons
for such shifts reveals how Ramcharitmanas usage continues to change over time
in Trinidad.
Paula Richman, Oberlin College
Historical documents attest that Ramlilas, enactments of the story of Ram
and Sita, date back to at least the 1880s in Trinidad; some villages have maintained
a nearly unbroken lineage of annual productions since then. Between the 1960s
and 1980s, however, audiences for the Hindi drama decreased, especially among
the younger generation that used English (rather than Hindi) for everyday conversation.
In contrast, between 1995 and the present, ten new Ramlila troupes have formed.
These groups build upon core Ramlila elements but introduce novel performance
practices. This paper analyzes as case studies four troupes (Palmiste, Lopinot,
Enterprise, and Knox Street) looking at the origins of troupes, their novel
features, and reception of productions. The sites range from rural to urban,
north to south, and one-time event to annual drama.
This paper examines theatrical innovations that have drawn audiences back
to Ramlilas: the introduction of English translation of Ramcharitmanas verses,
English narration and exegesis, inclusion of women into formerly all-male troupes,
intensive Ramcharitmanas study groups, improvised topical references incorporated
into dialogue, training camps during school holidays for scriptwriters, and
the design of more spectacular costumes, props, and effigies. The conclusions
consider how Indo-Trinidadians have worked to incorporate Ramlila into national
representations of festive arts in the nation of Trinidad .
Lindsey B. Harlan, Connecticut College
In Trinidad, Hindus, Christians, and Muslims with Indian ancestry celebrate
Indian Arrival Day, a national holiday commemorating the arrival of the first
group of indentured servants from India in 1845. In public venues including
schools, places of worship, and community centers, people tell the story
of arrival and reflect on the ancestral lines that lead from an India of the
past to present-day Trinidad. This paper reflects on ways in which the holiday
serves as encompassing metaphor; it condenses, conjoins, admixes, and sorts
cultural experiences and religious identities that represent, in various and
complex ways, “Indianness”. It evokes and images a shifting community
that is contrasted with others, identified variously but, again in various and
complex ways, delimited by non-Indianness.
Ironically and ambiguously, the metaphor of Indian arrival--at once a moment
in 1845, a repetitive historical phenomenon, and a continuing source of nostalgia
and sacredness--is often deployed to signify diversity, with Hindu-Muslim-Christian
diversity modeling national diversity. So while “Indian arrival” delimits,
through synecdoche, it also encompasses the whole--the nation with its territory.
This identification is balanced by the careful mapping of Hindu identity in
the form of Divali Nagar, an enormous “Divali Town” in which thousands
of Hindus celebrate this festival of good fortune. Organized by booths with
displays on Hindusim and India and containing a stage for Ramlila, Divali
Nagar represents Hindu India as being at the territorial and metaphorical center
of its ongoing, and annually recurring, arrival from India.
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