March 19, 2004 - Harvard University
INTRODUCTION:
Forbes Burnham ruled Guyana with an iron hand for an unbroken 20 years, until his death in 1985. He was the "Great Man", who was unthinking and ruthless about what he did to his own people.
I had many personal encounters with him while I was as a journalist, and as his political opponent.
I remember an event in the Coffee Room of Parliament. I was sitting and Burnham stood over me. Then I knew why Walter Rodney had nicknamed him "King Kong" - a massive and fearful thing.
He bellowed: "I will slap your arse!"
I looked him in his eyes.
He repeated his threat, his hand hanging like a guillotine over my head.
The fingers on my right hand were involuntarily folding into a fist. It arched upwards, a foot or so from Burnham's crotch. Burnham took two steps backwards, then came back at me.
He said, "Wha you woudda do me if ah slap you!"
"I woudda cuff you seed!"
I didn't think that it was I who had said that! Burnham's armed bodyguards were in hearing distance. But before I had time to take my defiance back the feared ruler, with arms spread wide, reached to embrace me in a bear-hug.
"Madras boy, you gat guts, you know!" he said.
Maybe, it was my "guts" that helped me survive Burnham's kidnapping and assassination attempts. Others, like Walter Rodney, were not so lucky.
I have grown up in Guyana hearing that Madrasis have "guts". They stood up to bullies. I have also heard it said that Madrasis were like "black people". In that sense, they were in a pejorative manner, aggressive and confrontational, and more.
I wanted to find out more about the Madrasis, and about myself. I knew that I had imitated my father on a few occasions having seen him performed "family rituals". But I needed to go beyond this in order to capture the essence of the Madrasi personality, about which very few had written. My novel therefore was an attempt at using my own ancestry to reanimate a world mostly gone.
ARRIVAL OF MADRASIS
As you know, the first East Indians were transported to Guyana in 1838. After emancipation India was hunted for cheap, disposable labour. Replacement labour was taken from Ireland, Madeira, China, and India.
The English plantation owner, John Gladstone, introduced the first East Indian labourers to the Caribbean. Gladstone had successfully recruited East Indian labourers for Mauritius.
The East Indians that came to Guyana consisted initially of three very distinct groups: Hill coolies and Bengalis from the North of India and Madrasis from the South.
The Madrasis were named after their port of embarkation but they were recruited from all over the Madras Presidency. They were called "Madrasis" regardless of the fact that they came from several ethnic groups from the Andhra area, Tamilnadu and Kerala. They spoke the Telegu and Tamil language. They were largely engaged as cultivators, farmers and fishermen.
The first batch of Madrasi immigrants arrived in British Guiana between 1844 and 1848. Immediately, planters protested that they were unsuitable for plantation work. Madrasis were considered troublesome, violent, and addicted to alcohol. Madrasis were wandering off the estates, and becoming vagrants.
It was no wonder then that Madrasi emigration to British Guiana trickled between 1855 and 1885, but a large movement took place between 1913 and 1917.
NEGATIVE STEREOTYPE
The Madrasis escaped to British Guiana from a life in India of incessant toil and shameful exploitation by their landlords. Sadly, in their "new home" they were also despised. The planters painted a negative stereotype of them concerning their unsuitability for indenture and their 'dark' religious practices.
As a large majority of Madrasis were from low castes or Untouchables, they were to also experience prejudice from their "own" - the lighter-skinned Bengali Indians. Being habitual drunkards and pork-eaters didn't commend them either to their orthodox Hindu contemporaries.
Jeremy Poynting commented that amongst the Indians, Madrasis were placed at the lowest rungs of the caste ladder probably because of their relative darkness and curly hair.
The English planters encouraged tensions between Bengalis and Madrasis. Most of the,I> sardars were Madrasis. Hostility ensued. In 1889 a riot broke out between Bengalis and Madrasis in one of the estates, similar to clashes between Bengali and Madrasi and between Tamil and Telegu in Mauritius.
The English understood and exploited the cultural differences between what they considered as Dravidians in the South and Indo-Europeans in the North of the Indian Sub-Continent.
I have noted controversies more recently expressed that distrust of Madrasis was generated from the importance to the North Indian immigrants from the Upper Provinces of the Hindu epic, the Ramayana. We are all aware that the Ramayana's plot revolves around the kidnap of Sita, wife of Lord Rama by the wicked, dark, demon king of Lanka, Ravana. But I have been unable to find documented evidence that the North Indians associated Madrasis with the 'demon race' and frowned upon them for that reason.
There must be other reasons that were associated with their defiance to either the British colonial plantation system or to attempts by North Indian to impose their cultural practices and caste customs on them.
KAIL MAI WORSHIP
There is abundant evidence though that during the indenture period and after, the Madrasis, despite their minority existence, have shown a tenacious ability to maintain their identity. The Madrasis devotion and love for their South Indian heritage is seen in the continuance of the Kali Mai Puja. Fundamental to the survival of the Kali puja in Britsh Guiana, now Guyana, was the fact that the Madrasis actively created their own communities.
Shaktism, devotion to the Mother Goddess through the acknowledgement of a female energy, has survived not only as a form of worship but a way of life in the Madrasi home. Women have a place of authority over their men, and are even feared by their husbands. The Madrasi women, like their goddesses, are mothers and mediators.
Kali Mai represented a source of strength to Madrasis. The Black Mother brought sickness, death and destruction to the enemies. Her devotees, in turn, offered blood sacrifices in order to quell her rage and receive her protection.
That must have been a constant worry for the planters. They were as mystified by the perpetual sound of distant drumming on theTapus, as they were terrified by the inexplicable spectacle of the dropping of the head of a goat in a single fall of a cutlass. More ghastly for the English alien was the sight of a Kali devotee devouring the blood from the severed head of the goat. Or partaking with relish in a spicy cocktail called mulgatanee, which is made from boiling the heads of sacrificed animals in a soup of split-peas and hot peppers.
MADRASI PERSONALITY
The Madrasi population of British Guiana was the first of the East Indian population to resist the restrictions of the indenture system. Their refusal to be bound to the estates and to accept their condition pre-dates any significant North Indian resistance. From depot to plantation the Madrasi would not be bound, asserting himself against a system created to restrict and oppress him for profit. The Madrasi contribution to Indo-Guyanese resistance is therefore significant.
The Madrasi is a lively and adventurous character. He delights in fishing, drinking, gambling and romance. He didn't succumb to oppression. He found ways of bursting out of his condition. One of these was developing a personal, one-on-one relationship with his gods or deutas.
The Madrasis were not without their supporters in British Guiana, who were vociferous later on in the indenture period. The Wesleyan Missionary, H.V.P Bronkhurst, an ardent supporter of the Madrasis, quotes a Commission of Inquiry in British Guiana as concluding that the Madrasis formed 'some of the best labourers in the Colony, and a most industrious set of people.' In 1910, the Protector of Immigrants at British Guiana stated before the Sanderson Committee that despite a propensity for 'drunken habits', the Madrasis were 'better men' than the Calcutta coolies.
HENDREE'S CURE I have sought to rediscover that "better" Madrasi by exploring and re-creating his life in my novel, Hendree's Cure. My literary Madrasi moves from a superficial stereotype like the comical, vagrant character Hendree to the rebellious, heroic and, at times, a complex portrait, like Naga.
By re-living their world, I have been swept by their extraordinary dynamism, their ambition to tower above their condition, their humour and earthiness, their spirituality and goodness, their tendency to be scampish in their quest to exert a spiritual control over others, and to fabricate an easy life. Above all, the Madrasis shows openness towards the ethnicity and culture of others.
Hendree's Cure centres on Madrasis in a fishing village named Whim, situated in Berbice, Guyana's eastern county. This village community in Hendree's Cure is the result of the Madrasis' rejection of life on the sugar estates.
The atmosphere of the village comes to represent that of a South Indian village. The villagers had the unspoken leadership of Kali temple elders. One after the other they appeared as the creolised panchayat at the centre of village life. Naga, for example, as a second generation Madrasi, was, 'like pot salt in everything'. His industry and concerns in everything from horseracing to fishing show the identity-seeking of the Madrasis in the New World in which they find themselves as pioneers fighting for their survival in a 'swampy, mosquito infested mudflat'.
Hendree's dedication to taking life 'esapesay' plays an important role in Hendree's Cure. Hendree has an air of the culturally genuine. He is a professional drummer, he refuses to stop wearing his baba when the other men in the village wear shorts and he aspires to master the art of healing.
Naga's wife, Chunoo (Gangama) represents the intercessory role of the mother goddess between the pujari and the gods. Like a true mother, Chunoo intercedes on behalf of Naga's employees, and literally intercedes between Naga and the gods when the possessed 'Masta' is enraged by Naga's refusal to donate a goat for sacrifice: 'Don't mine dis man Masta, (…) You know how he stand; how he jabberjassty'.
Chunoo's beneficence extends to the Dharamsala she operates from her house and the love with which she treats all of Naga's employees: 'she would count them all before she went to her own bed. In the morning she made sure that they all got roti in equal share'.
The reflection of the endeavour and spirit of the villagers in Hendree's Cure is manifest in the spirit of Bright Steel, Naga's racehorse. 'Naga felt his own spirituality (ambition) soaring in the majesty of his beloved horse'.
I remember my Pa offering drops of white rum as a ritual every year in memory of his deceased father. As he was doing so he would silently say, "This for you, Pa!"
I wish today that by giving an insight into the 'world' into which I grew up, I could commend Hendree's Cure as a tribute to my Madrasi ancestors, who were a truly remarkable and resilient people.
TAIL PIECE
David Dabydeen was visiting in my yard. I asked him, "how could I become an author?"
He gave me a smart-arse answer: "By writing".
So, a few weeks later, as we travelled by train from London to Paris, I gave him a draft of what was to become my first novel, "Hendree's Cure".
I wanted "Hendree's Cure", to run, like my father's horse, in the big race. I entered it for the Guyana Prize for Literature. Slated also for that race was "A Harlot's Progress", with experienced, prize-winning, David Dabydeen in the saddle.
Dabydeen's "Harlot" was favoured by the judges. It took the first prize.
I want to tell you that that event and, now, your kind invitation to me, have encouraged me to go on writing. I may not win the big prizes, but I am spurred by Naga's slogan, that might have kept generations of Madrasis going on the Guyana mudflat: "Thoroughbreds don't cry; they run and die".
Thank you Professor Sharmila Sen and the Humanities Center for your kind invitation.
