Lines in Water: Religious Boundaries in South Asia

13. Indian Arrival Day: Shifting Boundaries in the Celebration of a National Holiday in Trinidad

≈ 356 13 Indian Arrival Day Shifting Boundaries in the Celebration of a National Holiday in Trinidad Lindsey Harlan In Trinidad, Hindus, Muslims, and Christians with Indian ancestry celebrate Indian Arrival Day, a national holiday commemorating the arrival of the first group of indentured servants from India on May 30, 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 have led from an India of the past to the present-day nation of Trinidad and Tobago. This essay explores ways in which commemorations of Indian Arrival Day have not only distinguished Indo-Trinidadians from others in this cosmopolitan nation but also utilized the trope of arrival as a metonym that relates the experience of Indian arrival to the broader project of nation building.1 In various discourses, Indian arrival refers to the first For generous guidance throughout my research in Trinidad, I am grateful to Brinsley Samaroo. I am also indebted to Funso Aiyejina, Kusha Haraksingh, Aisha Khan, Sherry Ann Singh, Sais Bagnola, Kumar Mahabir, Stephen Harris, Paula Richman, and Rick Asher. For help on my larger research project, I am deeply thankful for the help provided by many others, who will be acknowledged in future publications. 1. Most people of Indian descent live on the island of Trinidad and are typically referred to as “Indo-Trinidadians” or “East Indians.” Viranjini Munasinghe notes that “East Indian” is more common than “Indo-Trinidadian” in popular parlance and that it connotes Indian Arrival Day | 357 Indian arrival, more broadly to the first and subsequent arrivals of Indian indentured laborers, and finally to the continuation of “arriving,” in the sense of succeeding, by contemporary Indo-Trinidadians who enjoy relative prosperity. Indo-Trinidadians and others have strategically deployed this multivalent trope of arrival as a metonym linking the Indian presence to the citizenry. Identification of the arrival of Indians with the formation of the citizenry has been both useful and troublesome according to the agenda of those making it. In political rhetoric, arrival has frequently served as a cipher for Indian integration, one that indexes nation and nationalism while preserving a distinctive and undiluted Indian ethnic identity. The distinction of Indianness has been linked to a secondary or underling metonymic relation in which the separate religions of Hinduism and Islam (or emblems of them) have operated individually to express the distinctiveness of shared ethnicity––-one common not only to Indo-Trinidadian Muslims and Hindus, but also to Christians. Prominent among the contexts for this expression is the celebration of Indian Arrival Day. In the discourse of many Afro-Trinidadians and others who are not of Indian descent, however, arrival of people from many places in India who together forged an ethnic identity has often served as a cipher for mixing or dilution that accords with a hegemonic ideology promoting cultural blending or fusion.2 What follows considers the twofold notion of arrival as something that has (1) served to associate linkage of Indian (Hindu and Muslim) arrival with arrivals of others and (2) bonded together many religiously diverse Indo-Trinidadians as a distinct ethnic community, one resisting marginalization. She also treats various valences of alternate terms for Afro-Trinidadians (2001b, 30 n. 3). The hyphenated term should not be understood to distinguish Trinidad from Tobago, but to refer to (the far less frequently used name) “Trinbagonians.” Although indentured servants were recruited from various places in South Asia, the majority came from what are now Bihar and Uttar Pradesh; the major “reconstruction” or reimagining of community draws heavily from traditions of this region. See Samaroo 2004, 45. 2. For analysis of blending and distinctiveness or purity, see Munasinghe 2002 and 2006. On cultural tropes, see also Khan 2004 and Munasinghe 2001a. Compare these works with Bauman 2004 and Thomas 2006. 358 | Transcending Boundaries blending or fusion with other ethnic groups. Because this essay appears in a volume constituted primarily of essays on India and presumably will be read by those sharing a common interest in and familiarity with India, it begins by providing relevant historical context. It then turns to its twofold agenda by focusing first on the controversial, initial recognition of Indian Arrival Day as a national holiday and by considering key arguments in the strenuous debates about the appropriateness of celebrating the arrival of Indians rather than the arrival of all peoples in the nation. Next...