T&T: What will it take for Indians to have a sense of belonging?

As the 159th Anniversary of Indian Arrival to Trinidad and Tobago fast approaches, there were two events over this past weekend that serve to highlight the continued shortcomings of Indians in the media. These two events continue to support the hypothesis that Indians do not want to participate in institutions of civil society because they feel they do not fully belong to that society. Two recent examples highlight best the shortcomings of Indians in the media. Firstly on Friday April 16 2004 at the Learning Resource Centre, the Hindi Nidhi Foundation, the University of the West Indies and the High Commission of India formally inaugurated an International Hindi Language conference. This conference saw the arrival of international scholars of Hindi attending the weekend long event.

There are five Indian radio stations operating successful and economically viable Indian formatted stations yet not a single one saw it fit to cover this event. Ironically the medium of entertainment of all these Indian radio stations is Hindi.... The common thread of these two examples is that the Indian media failure to cover these events with live or delayed broadcast of the events. Interestingly, these very Indian radio stations often carry religious functions such as Ramayana. This however, cannot be seen  solely as service to the Indian community.
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Secondly on Saturday April 17, 2004 the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago held its Bi-Annual  General Meeting at the Crowne Plaza. At this meeting the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Geoffrey Henderson, called for a code of ethics for the media in this country. Yet the majority of Indians in the media will have failed to hear the call of the DPP as they refused to attend the MATT AGM. Of the approximate 40 media persons who attended this MATT’s AGM the only Indians who attended this meeting could be counted easily....

For many years the masses of Indians have accused the media of being Port-of-Spain centric and as such not reflective of the Indian ethos and hubris in the nation. Yet Indians in the media from their actions have appeared to show that their employment in the media is merely that — employment — and nothing more. The failure of Indians to participate in MATT in a meaningful manner sadly is not unique to MATT alone. There are significant numbers of Indo-Trinidadians who are teachers, public servants, etc yet the representation of Indo-Trinidadians in the TTUTTA (the teachers union) and PSA (the public services association) does not reflect their membership. Over the years Indians have failed to be interested in running for office in these institutions that form an important part of our civil society.... There is an apparent failure by Indians to fully engage in civil society where Indians are forced to deal face to face with other ethnic groups.

The recently launched Gayelle the Channel by Christopher Laird and company have many in the Indo-Trinidadian community claiming that they have been ignored in this new media house. Why should Indians be expected to be represented in the programming of Gayelle? The motive of Gayelle appears to be designed to address a particular aspect of Trinidadian culture. Why is it that some Indians continue to beg for a small space in a medium created by others? If Indians are economically secure so as to encourage kidnappings, why have not any consortium of Indian business people joined to open a similar television station on cable television as Gayelle?

Lord Bhikhu Parekh’s What is Multiculturalism?  perhaps offers a possible answer for the non-participation in civil society when he observed, “Although equal citizenship is essential to fostering a common sense of belonging, it is not enough. Citizenship is about status and rights; belonging is about acceptance, feeling welcome, a sense of identification. The two do not necessarily coincide. One might enjoy all the rights of citizenship but feel that one does not quite belong to the community and is a relative outsider. This feeling of being fully a citizen and yet an outsider is difficult to analyse and explain, but it can be deep and real and seriously damage the quality of one’s citizenship as well as one’s sense of commitment to the political community.”

I posit that the Indian sense of other-ness is a mental artifact which can be traced back to the manner of their arrival in T&T. Moreover, I contend that the psychology of the indentured laborer differed from that of the slave, and that the Indian sense of other-ness has its genesis in a world-view which shaped by the experience of indentureship. Let me explain.

The slave knew that he had not a snowball in hell's chance of returning to the land from which he was stolen; even if he ran away, he knew that the opportunity to earn money for passage back to Africa would be slim to non-existent. Even if he did manage to amass the funds and did find a vessel that would take him, there was always the risk of being re-taken, re-enslaved, and re-sold. Thus, though the slave yearned for home and freedom, he quickly learnt to channel that into a yearning for a heavenly home in which existed none of the terrors of his earthly reality. Thus, though the slave did not have citizenship, he learnt to belong because all the aspects of culture which bound him to a different place were rent from him. Thus, the slave, even within the perpetual middle passage of slavery, had to forge himself a new community and culture in the new land. Perhaps, in this way, he was able to develop a sense of Trinité, of belonging, for without it he would be totally adrift and could not survive.

The indentured laborer, in contrast, belonged to a different set of circumstances. His indentureship was voluntary. He came with his family, his language, and the trappings of his culture. Moreover, unlike the slave, the indentured laborer was not bound for life. Once the period of his indentureship was over, he was free to work towards returning whence he came, without the fears of re-capture and renewed bondage that plagued the slave. Thus, though the indentured laborer lived in the land, he had no thought of belonging or identifying because he knew where he belonged and with whom he identified. He dreamt of returning home fully aware that once he got there he would fit in because he had retained the trappings of his own culture. Thus, the indentured unwittingly developed a sense of other-ness, living in the land but not identifying with it; eventually becoming a citizen, but remaining an outsider. The indentured laborer lived, like many Caribbean immigrants in the U.S. do, with the dream of returning home. That dream inhibits full assimilation into and identification with the new country.

So, for Indians to transcend the indentured psychology of other-ness and to have a sense of belonging, of Trinité, they may need to let go of the idea of India, in the sense of Mother India as locus of full belonging, and look inward, to T&T.