Download or read book India and the Shaping of the Indo Guyanese Imagination 1890s 1920s written by Clem Seecharan and published by Peepal Tree Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the first East Indian intellectuals emerged in British Guiana at the end of the nineteenth century, most of their compatriots were still working as indentured or free labourers on the colony's sugar estates. Indians were conscious that they were looked down on as barbarous 'coolies' by other sections of the population. In response, the intellectual elite constructed a view of India, drawn from the writings of Max Muller and Tagore, which provided the Indo-Guyanese community with a sustaining sense of self-esteem and the sources of its resistance to colonialism. Focusing on individuals such as Joseph and Peter Ruhomon, JA Luckhoo and WH Wharton, the study looks at the way the beginnings of the nationalist movement in India stimulated such individuals to start defining the nature of their presence in the New World. Seecharan argues that while the vision of 'Mother India' stimulated the community's cultural revival, it constrained the way it thought about Guyana. "Dr. Seecharan's research is meticulous and his analysis penetrating. This is why, despite its specific Indian focus and slender look, India offers much insight into the broader history of Guyanese society as a whole." Frank Birbalsingh Clem Seecharan was born in Guyana. He currently teaches on the Caribbean Studies programme at the University of North London.
Download or read book Joseph Ruhomon s India written by and published by University of the West Indies Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reissue of an 1894 pamphlet celebrates Joseph Ruhomon as the first Indian intellectual in British Guiana, now Guyana. He wrote at a time, Seecharan notes, when self-deprecation was an instinct...and the construction of this essay was an admirable accomplishment.
Download or read book Contradictory Indianness written by Atreyee Phukan and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-15 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Contradictory Indianness shows, a postcolonial Caribbean aesthetics that has from its inception privileged inclusivity, interraciality, and resistance against Old World colonial orders requires taking into account Indo-Caribbean writers and their reimagining of Indianness in the region. Whereas, for instance, forms of Indo-Caribbean cultural expression in music, cuisine, or religion are more readily accepted as creolizing (thus, Caribbeanizing) processes, an Indo-Caribbean literary imaginary has rarely been studied as such. Discussing the work of Ismith Khan, Harold Sonny Ladoo, Totaram Sanadhya, LalBihari Sharma, and Shani Mootoo, Contradictory Indianness maintains that the writers' engagement with the regional and transnational poetics of the Caribbean underscores symbolic bridges between cultural worlds conventionally set apart—the Africanized and Indianized—and distinguishes between cultural worlds assumed to be the same—indenture and South Asian Indianness. This book privileges Indo-Caribbean fiction as a creolizing literary imaginary to broaden its study beyond a narrow canon that has, inadvertently or not, enabled monolithic and unidimensional perceptions of Indian cultural identity and evolution in the Caribbean, and continued to impose a fragmentary and disconnected study of (post)indenture aesthetics within indenture’s own transnational cartography.
Download or read book A Powerful Indian Voice Alice Bhagwandai Singh Reflections on Her Work in Guyana written by Baytoram Ramharack and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2023-03-02 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Baytoram Ramharack was born in Berbice, Guyana. He teaches history and political science at Nassau Community College. His previous publications include Against the Grain: Balram Singh Rai and the Politics of Guyana (2005); and Jung Bahadur Singh of Guyana (1886-1956): Politician, ship doctor, labor leader and protector of Indians (2019). He remains a strong advocate and supporter of stable democracy in Guyana. Dr. Ramharack is working on a forthcoming book examining Cheddi Jagan’s relationship with Indians in Guyana.
Download or read book Bechu written by Clem Seecharan and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clem Seecharan has written a useful documentary history of Bechu, the first Indian to testify before the Royal Commission in 1897. Now who was this Bechu? He was, in Seecharan's words, "an indefatigable gadfly," who in letters to the local press revealed the conditions of Indian indentureship: poor wages, sexual exploitation of women by overseers and managers, and the virtual impossibility for Indians to obtain justice because of the collusion between colonial authorities and the planters. This knowledge we owe to economic historian Alan Adamson who "discovered" Bechu in the 1960s. Yet the man himself remained somewhat of a mystery, something Bechu himself seems to have cultivated. Seecharan has now filled a number of lacunae in our understanding with this two-part volume. The first section focuses on Bechu and the British Guianese environment in the late nineteenth century, while the second part includes letters and memoranda by Bechu (and reactions to them by local opponents).
Download or read book Sanatana Dharma and Plantation Hinduism Second Edition Volume 2 written by Ramesh Gampat and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2020-01-06 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christian Missionaries worked hard to convert immigrants. Their first order of business was to denigrate Hinduism, designate Hindus as heathen, and disparage their culture, food and even attire. Immigrants stubbornly resisted, led by the tiny educated elite, including Brhmaas whom we call Brahmins. Conversion was a failure at least up to the end of the 19th century but picked up a self-generating momentum thereafter. The result is that the share of Hindus in Guyana’s Indian population declined from 83.5 percent in 1880 to 62.8 percent in 2012. The largest portion of the contraction was lost to Christianity. The loss notwithstanding, even a casual observer would conclude that Guyanese Hindus, at home and in the Diaspora, are a very religious people. Many of us do a jhandi or havan once annually; others do the more elaborate and costlier yajña, where everyone is welcome, once or twice in their lifetime. Most of us do a short daily puja – prayers, offerings, reading the stras and listening to bhajan – in our homes. An important, but perhaps unintended, way immigrants countered conversion to Christianity was an unplanned movement towards a “synthesis” that brought Hindus, regardless of caste or sect, under a “unitary form of Hinduism.” The “synthesis” began around the 1870s and was completed by the 1930s to the 1950s. Guyanese Hindus call the unified corpus of religious beliefs and practices that emerged from the “synthesis” Sanatana Dharma. Ramesh Gampat labels it Plantation Hinduism in this path-breaking book. The book argues that the brand of Hinduism practiced is inconsistent with Sanatana Dharma, called Vednta by the more philosophically inclined. Plantation Hinduism features an extraordinary dependence upon purohits (pandits), which has anaesthetized the Hindu mind and render him unable to think, question and inquire when it comes to Dharma. Rituals and bhakti have been degraded and turned into desire-motivated worship; devats have been misconstrued as Brahman rather than as limited manifestation of the one non-dual pure Consciousness; belief in the multiplicity of gods encourages image worship; and superstitions anchor Guyanese Hindus to tradition and mere belief. Plantation Hinduism is little more than desire-motivated actions, dogmas and superstitions. Absent is the idea that Sanatana Dharma is a spiritual science no less scientific than hard sciences, such as physics and astronomy. The central message of Vednta is the innate divinity of every person and the freedom to realize that divinity through anubhava, direct personal experience of Supreme Reality.
Download or read book Tiger in the Stars written by Clem Seecharan and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Global Indian Diaspora written by Brinsley Samaroo and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-22 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indian Diaspora World Convention was held in Trinidad in 2017 to commemorate the 1917 decision of the Indian Legislature to end further recruitment of Indians for overseas indentured service. This part is volume I of the two volume work Global Indian Diaspora. It is a significant addition to current research on India’s cultural expansion into the Atlantic and Pacific worlds. In this volume, the former indentured Empire speaks back, giving its side of the narrative, not in an apologetic accounting but rather on the positive side in diverse ways. The Girmitiyas (lit. agreement signers) maintained their core values using these to gain anchorage in the new places. At the same time, they prudently took advantage of agencies, such as the Canadian Mission to gain admission to the wider westernized community. They maintained ties with India through frequent visits of Indian scholars and missionaries. They equally preserved their cultural observances derived from Indian antiquity adding diversity to the colonial society. All of these elements combine to give a refreshing perspective on the globalization of the world, which started long before all the time. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Download or read book Mother India s Shadow Over El Dorado written by Clem Seecharan and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Multiple constructions of India, as homeland, have been central to the shaping of Indo-Guyanese identity. An imagined India part fact, part fantasy has continually woven into the Indo-Guyanese consciousness a rich, elevating perception of self: an antidote to the deflating image of the coolie that lingered when the last Indian indentures were cancelled in 1920. In Mother India s Shadow over El Dorado: Indo-Guyanese Politics and Identity, 1890s-1930s, Clem Seecharan reconstructs the circumstances surrounding the development of Indo-Guyanese nationalism. He assesses the impact of the Golden Age of the Ramayana; the glories of ancient India unearthed by British scholars/administrators (Indologists); and Gandhi s virtual deification in his campaign for India s freedom. An India seen to be in revolt against imperial rule inspired several Indo-Guyanese intellectuals, such as Joseph Ruhomon, Peter Ruhomon and J.I. Ramphal, to popularise an image of Mother India that bolstered Indo-Guyanese self-esteem. Drawing on a range of primary sources, the book presents a comprehensive picture of the many Indias Indo-Guyanese (Hindus, Muslims and Christians) embraced in countering the coolie stain, while seeking to belong in creole society. On the flip side, the consuming El Dorado syndrome in Guyana bred a discernible triumphalism among Indo-Guyanese, manifested in the Colonisation Scheme of the 1920s and the associated ideas of creating an Indian colony or a Greater India in Guyana. This kindled a resilient fear, among African-Guyanese, of Indian economic and political domination which still haunts the country. Seecharan handles these complex issues lucidly and authoritatively. Mother India s Shadow is indispensable in comprehending the smouldering ethnic insecurities of contemporary Guyana. " "
Download or read book Lines Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book From Pillar to Post written by Frank Birbalsingh and published by Tsar Publications. This book was released on 1997 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a comprehensive look at the history and culture of the Indo-Caribbean people in the West Indies, where they have lived for more than a century and a half, and in Canada, Britain and the United States to which larger numbers of them have emigrated. Encompassing detailed considerations of literary works and extensive interviews with people of different backgrounds - writers, politicians, a sportsman, educators and communtiy workers - and from several generations, it produces a composite multifaceted picture of the ongoing search by a people for definition and voice, for recognition and ultimately a home.
Download or read book The Guyana Story written by Odeen Ishmael and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2013-02-28 with total page 691 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Guyana StoryFrom Earliest Times to Independence traces the countrys history from thousands of years ago when the first Amerindian groups began to settle on the Guyana territory. It examines the period of early European exploration leading to Dutch colonization, the forcible introduction of African slaves to work on cotton and sugar plantations, the effects of European wars, and the final ceding of the territory to the British who ruled it as their colony until they finally granted it independence in 1966. The book also tells of Indian, Chinese, and Portuguese indentured immigration and shows how the cultural interrelationships among the various ethnic groups introduced newer forms of conflict, but also brought about cooperation in the struggles of the workers for better working and living conditions. The final part describes the roles of the political leaders who arose from among these ethnic groups from the late 1940s and began the political struggle against colonialism and the demand for independence. This struggle led to political turbulence in the 1950s and early 1960s when the country was caught in the crosshairs of the cold war resulting in joint British-American devious actions that undermined a democratically elected pro-socialist government and deliberately delayed independence for the country until a government friendly to their international interests came to power.
Download or read book Fabrics of Indianness written by Sinah Theres Kloß and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-29 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes how Guyanese Hindus recreate Indian ethnic identity in contemporary Guyana and examines how Hindu traditions have been transformed in this multi-religious and multi-ethnic society. By illustrating the exchange and consumption of clothing, the book demonstrates that the practices of wearing and gifting clothes materialize and visualize relationships. The significant outward migration of Guyanese to North America has resulted in substantial international gift exchange and transnational rituals. Applying the concept of translocality, this book demonstrates that different localities continue to influence transnational networks and socio-cultural practices. It provides a study of migration that emphasizes various aspects of material and visual closeness, conceptualizing the notion of touch.
Download or read book Mobilizing India written by Tejaswini Niranjana and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2006-10-12 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative analysis of how ideas of Indian identity negotiated within the Indian diaspora in Trinidad affect cultural identities "back home" in India.
Download or read book The Subaltern Indian Woman written by Prem Misir and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-11-16 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on subjugated indentured Indian women, who are constantly faced with race, gender, caste, and class oppression and inequality on overseas European-owned plantations, but who are also armed with latent links to the women’s abolition movements in the homeland. Also examining their post-indenture life, it employs a paradigm of male-dominated Indian women in India at the margins of an enduringly patriarchal society, a persisting backdrop to the huge 19th century post-slavery movement of the agricultural indentured workforce drawn largely from India. This book depicts the antithetical and contradictory explanations for the indentured Indian women’s cries, degradation and dehumanization and how the politics of change and control impacted their social organization and its legacy. The book owes its origins to the 2017 centennial commemorative event celebrating 100 years of the abolition of the indenture system of Indian labor that victimized and dehumanized Indians from 1834 through 1917.
Download or read book Tiger in the Stars written by Clem Seecharan and published by . This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book They Came in Ships written by Lloyd Searwar and published by Peepal Tree Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1838 until 1917, Indians arrived to work as indentured labourers in Guyana. The majority never returned to India and today over 50% of the Guyanese population is of Indian origin. This anthology of prose and poetry shows how the Indians changed the character of Guyana and the Caribbean and how, over 150 years of settlement, Indians became Indo-Guyanese. Ranging from the earliest attempts at cultural self-definition in the 19th century (and early narrative images of the Indian presence in non-Indian writing), to the creative writing of the 1990s, this anthology provides a fascinating insight into the transformation of an ancient culture in the New World. Extracts from novels, short stories, essays and poems explore the experience of plantation life, of relationships with other ethnic groups, issues of gender within Indo-Guyanese culture and the adjustments in cultural practices which separation from India and involvement with the new environment required. Brief introductory essays by Jeremy Poynting set historical contexts, and there is an invaluable bibliography of Indo-Guyanese writing. This is the only anthology of its kind.
