Diffracted Diasporas: Trinidad’s East Indians, Religio-Nationalism, and India’s Independence

In August 1947, the euphoria generated by the creation of newly independent India and Pakistan was celebrated by peoples far removed from the Subcontinent, including among the descendants of Indian indentured laborers in the British island colony of Trinidad. Trinidad’s East Indians reveled in the newfound freedom of their now-divided, overseas, ethnic compatriots. The masses of East Indians felt a surge of pride in the overthrow of colonial rule, evidenced by their attendance at parades, talks, and celebrations. In the months and weeks leading up to independence, East Indians debated the merits and disadvantages of partition. Some advocated firmly the idea of a unified ethnic “Indian” community in Trinidad, whereas others constructed clear boundaries between proponents of Pakistan versus India, thus fortifying tenuous and contingent divisions between Trinidad’s Hindus and Muslims.

This essay demonstrates that the culmination of Indian independence and partition exacerbated the diverging identities of Hindu and Muslim Trinidadians. I argue that Indian independence and the creation of Pakistan had global ramifications for the meaning of “Indian-ness” in the British colonies including Trinidad and elsewhere. East Indians’ appeal to nationalism interrogates the construction of national and cultural identity spatially and temporally distant from the source, ultimately affirming the salience of a religio-national identity. Furthermore, the networks of communication established between Indians in places such as Trinidad, England, and the United States produced “diffracted” diasporic identities that were mediated through these interactions.