Ramcharan-Crowley

Read at the XIth International Congress of Folk Narrative Research, Mysore, India, Jan. 6-12, 1995.

MEMORATS OF MIGRATION: STORIES OF AN EAST
INDIAN FAMILY IN TRINIDAD

By Pearl Ramcharan-Crowley and Daniel J. Crowley, to
be read at the XIth International Congress of Folk
Narrative Research, Mysore, India, Jan. 6-12, 1995.

In contrast to fairy tales or marchen which are told as
fiction, memorats are a separate sub-category of narrative
told as truth --although they may actually be as fantastic
and untrue as any fairy tale. However, the memorats that are
the subject of this paper represent serious attempts at oral
history on the part of their original tellers, to inform
their descendants about past family happenings and life
experiences of the generation of North Indians who immigrated
to Trinidad in the Southern Caribbean in the last Century.
Since all we have are the memories of living hearers of these
tales --no recordings or written texts exist of the original
oft-repeated tales in the words they were told by the now-
long-dead immigrants --we can be sure inaccuracies will have
crept in, not only from the tellers, but even more from the
flagging memories of the hearers who were our informants.
Even so, the material has the ring of truth, and to the
extent still capable of being checked here in India, accords
well with historical fact and modern realities. Whatever
else, it is all we will ever know of these crucial events in
our family history.

INDENTURE

After the African slaves were freed in British
territories in 1838 (1848 in French islands, 1863 in the
U.S., 1880 in Cuba, 1888 in Brazil), the Caribbean was in
ferment. With at least the possibility of getting land by
purchase or by squatting, the Africans resisted further
fulltime work on the huge and profitable sugar estates, so
the planters, desperate for cheap labor, experimented with
Chinese indentures, but these proved to be small in stature,
weak and unhealthy, introducing leprosy to the islands. Even
worse, rather than reindenturing themselves, they began
market gardening or small businesses even before their first
indenture was over. Some Portuguese were brought from
Madeira, but they too left indenture as soon as possible to
found corner groceries. Even a few Fon from what is now
Benin, West Africa were brought as indentures.

Finally in 1844, a ship named the Fatel Rozack brought
the first indentures from India, followed a few years later
by demobilized soldiers from the 1957 Sepoy Mutiny, plus
other landless rural people seeking more opportunity than

India offered. They signed on for five years, with the
understanding that they would then have a choice either of
returning to India or of reindenturing for another five years
to obtain a half-acre of land in Trinidad. Although the
details of the indenture differed slightly through time, this
pattern of migration continued from 1844 until 1917, when the
Indian Government caused it to be abolished. An estimated
145,000 Indians were brought to Trinidad, and 70,000 returned
to India, so that the present population of at least 650,000
descends from about 75,000 people, roughly 70% Hindus, 15%
Muslims, and 15% now converted to Christianity. Since each
religion tends to endogamy, inbreeding is serious, and blamed
for the abnormally high incidence of diabetes among Trinidad
Indians. British Guiana also received large numbers of
Indian indentures, and smaller numbers were brought to most
of the other islands, even those under French control. In
Trinidad, only 5%, the so-called Madrasis, came from South
India, the rest from the crowded Gangetic Plain of Uttar
Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal.

Who were these people? What respectable caste Hindu
would leave his/her country knowing that "crossing the water"
would make one forever unclean? Obviously, extreme poverty
combined with lack of hope of improvement produced some
desperate people, mostly young, mostly male, mostly lower
caste. In this most delicate of issues, suffice it to say
that today castelessness (i.e. Harijan or "pariah" in India,
chamar or dom in Trinidad) is never admitted in contemporary
Trinidad. If an outsider is gauche enough to ask one's
caste, people either "do not know" or name one of the eight
or ten locally-known respectable subcastes: Lohar (potter),
Sonar (goldsmith), Lai a (scribe), or Ahir (cattle-herd)
among the Shudra ("Sood") or fourth or Laborer caste; Baniya
(grocer) from the Vaisya ("Baish") or third or Merchant
caste; "Chutri" for the Kshatriya or Warrior/ Landowner caste
identified by -singh after their family name; and an
astonishing number who simply claim "Brahmin," the priestly
and top caste.

Certainly a few Brahmins did actually come as
indentures, and a few others on their own, but "improving"
one's caste while away from home is far from unknown both in
India and abroad. A few older local people specialize in
knowing the true facts of caste (and of color and race
mixture,) Even today, visiting high-caste Hindus from India
usually manage not to eat with their Trinidadian hosts, and
overseas Indians are universally shunned throughout India by
strict high-caste Hindus, often kept from entering temples on
the assumption that they are indeed casteless. Sometimes
even beggars refuse to accept alms from them, the ultimate

rejection! A mixed-caste Trinidadian professional woman, who
married a high caste "real" Indian and returned to India to
live, was called mlecha (unclean) by his associates, I will
never forget my Kshatriya mother-in-law's delight when my
teenage "Brahmin" driver was willing to accept and drink the
cool water she offered him, thus accepting her caste as
satisfactory. Although caste is not much discussed in
public, and cross/caste marriages have long been common,
virtually every Hindu and Christian East Indian in Trinidad
knows his/her own and most other people's castes. Kinship
terms of address like Aji, Nana, Beti, and Bop are still
used, even by non-Hindi speakers, but caste honorifics such
as Tukrine and Sauji are known but not much used today.
Finally, let it be said that caste and the cruelties and
injustices it engenders are the central reason for the
ambivalence of overseas Indians to India, and their rapid and
enthusiastic Westernization, including the majority that
remain Hindu. Needless to say, many of these are "neo-Hindu"
followers of Sai Baba and other trendy pundits who downplay
caste .

THE MEMORAT

The first and most basic memorat is that of the two
young men who meet in a village or city street or in a
railway station or on a dock, discover that they have both
signed up for indenture and been assigned to the same ship.
They then swear a kind of blood-brotherhood, to help and
support each other on the long and perilous voyage. They
become Jehaji-bhai, "journey-brothers " in Hindi/Urdu, from
the Arabic term haj for the Pilgrimage to Mecca. They then
have a series of adventures, get separated in a foreign port
only to find each other soon after; lose some money through
trickery, gambling, or downright robbery; meet a girl with
whom both fall in love, or two girls who later become their
wives; arrive safely and stay close friends for the rest of
their lives even though assigned to different plantations.
They prosper after indenture, and sometimes their children
intermarry.

THE PATERNAL MEMORAT

Our family version concerns my wife's grandfather, a
Baniya named Hari Govind Lal, born at Naya Dumka, on the
Bihar/West Bengal border, about 1870. After a fight with his
siblings over family lands, and hearing about "the streets
paved with gold" in Trinidad, he decided to change his name
to non-caste-specific Ramcharan to hide his caste, because
Baniyas were not welcome as indentures--too likely to start
businesses--and signed on for indenture. After meeting a

Sonar (goldsmith) named Ramkallop, they became jehaji-bhai ,
sailing from the Port of Calcutta around Africa to Trinidad.
Although he "was selling cloth out the barracks window"
before his first indenture was over, he later specialized in
importing Indian products, metal and ceramic cooking
equipment, Hindu ritual paraphernalia, foods, and spices, and
soon became a very wealthy man, with several shops in and
around Princes' Town (12 miles east of San Fernando in
Southern Trinidad.) A profitable innovation was providing a
covered area near his shops for people to camp overnight,
when they had traveled far from their plantations. Ramkallop
also became a successful jeweler for Indian women using gold
and silver bracelets (bera and churi) both to amass and to
display wealth. Both men converted to the United Church of
Canada, and their children became relatively well educated.

Ramcharan married another indenture whom he apparently
met after his arrival in Trinidad, a widow with two girl
children, one named Bhutan who died a few years later at age
10--a particularly bright girl who was remembered with
sadness by her half-siblings. His wife supported his
specializing in rare and much-desired Indian products. In
her own right a clever trader, she was deeply religious, read
the Ramayana in "an unknown tongue," wore a nathuni in her
nose, arranged for Indian musicians, dancers, and pandits for
Hindu ceremonies, during which she played the drum with her
notably short fingers. She remains a mysterious woman, a
remarried Hindu widow whose "unknown tongue" was probably
Bengali rather than the local Bhojpuri Hindi, but could she
have been a Santal, the tribal group from near Dumka? Why
did they marry? Had they known each other before? Later in
life, she separated from her husband (by now Miriam and Peter
Ramcharan, having first converted to the United Church of
Canada, then he apostasized back to Hinduism) and with their
daughter Edith Meighoo, set up a profitable mercantile
business next door to her husband's. She sent him food, and
stayed on good terms with him and their two sons who worked
for him, my father-in-law Baba and his brother Piti.

Like nearly half the indentures, Aja decided to return
to India, although long after his indenture was over. He
turned the business over to my father-in-law, having skimmed
off most of its resources and converted them into gold coins
in a money belt, and returned to Calcutta about 1924.
Somewhere enroute, he was robbed, and instead of being able to
display his wealth to his relatives, he had to live on their
none-too-generous bounty. Needless to say, he returned to
Trinidad as soon as he could. Some years later in 1934, he
was found bludgeoned to death in his shop, with telltale
human feces wrapped in paper on a nearby shelf, suggesting

protective magic by the murderer, who was never found.

THE MATERNAL MEMORAT

The memorat of the maternal side of the family is
earlier, hence less detailed, but just as adventuresome. A
Kshatriya who was probably named Ramdialsingh came very early
as an indenture, between 1845 and 1848. The piece of land he
received after indenture was at Sumsum Hill in the east
center of the island, and it proved to have oil on it, so
much that one of his heirs, lighting a cigar, was blown up by
the escaping gases. He apparently married a Kshatriya woman
and in 1863 she bore him an important figure in our family
history, Jumni Ramdialsingh, my wife's great-grandmother. As
a child, Jumni was married to a Kshatriya indenture named
Teelucksingh, from Arrah, west of Patna and north of
Varanasi, an eldest son who had chosen indenture for the
adventure of seeing "the golden streets" of Trinidad. He was
astute in business, and so was she, so they soon prospered,
and decided to return to India with their two young children.
But in India they were unhappy because his family considered
his overseas-born wife "outcast," especially when the non-
vegetarian little girl kept calling for chicken to eat, so
they returned to Trinidad.

This decision committed them to Trinidad. They now
broadened their scope, dealing in many other things such as
groceries, hardware, and imported goods. But what is rare1y
mentioned is that they also ran a rumshop, or that they were
money-lenders, and often foreclosed on property on which they
had lent money. Soon they owned substantial cacao, coconut,
and sugar estates, and had their own barges to bring imported
products from the Port-of-Spain wharves to Monkey Point,
where their teams of horses transported the goods to their
general merchandise store in the village of California south
of Chaguanas. They had a fine home, lived well but worked
hard, and had seven children. Then in 1897 at age 52,
Teelucksingh died.

His widow Jumni, then age 28, soon discovered that, as a
Hindu widow, she had no legal rights to the wealth she had
helped earn, and no power to control her life. Her teenage
sons, already given to Scotch whiskey, gambling, and wild
women in the distinguished Trinidad tradition, were totally
in charge. Jumni bided her time for a few years, secreting
gold coins in the flounces of her long qanghri skirts or
petticoats ( worn with jhulna blouse and long orhni head veil,)
then ran off with "a Frenchman" named Sellier, her
sons in hot pursuit. She was 34, Sellier (a Martinique
Creole of African/European ancestry) was 21, a bookkeeper in

a nearby sugar estate. He proved to be a real gentleman,
marrying her after the fourth of the six children she bore
him, at which time she became the Catholic Mrs. Christine
Sellier. She "kidnapped" her two younger daughters by
Teelucksingh, opened a very successful business, and became
famous for driving her own dashing horse and rig into town.
On her own, she invested in real estate, had a street named
after her in St. Augustine (now near the University campus),
and died a wealthy woman in 1928. Although her Indian sons
forbade their wives and children to have any contact with her
or her "Coloured" family, the women secretly kept in close
touch down to the present.

INDIAN EMIGRATION

Emigration is still a major fact of Indian life, with
over one million Indians now in the U.S., beginning with the
long-established "Canadian wetback" Sikhs and Hindus who
settled in Yuba City and Stockton, CA, at the turn of the
Century, and now control much of the walnut production in
that state. Some 60% of all Indians in the U.S. have at
least one University degree, and many are physicians,
scientists, and other highly-trained specialists, while
others follow their caste to dominate the hotel/motel
industry. Talk about brain-drain and selective migration!
Indian immigrants in Fiji are still landless, and were
recently forcibly and illegally deprived of democratically-
achieved political power by a coup led by the traditional
Melanesian chiefs. Indians still control much of the wealth
in East Africa, but have little political power there or in
South Africa. Large communities of Indians have been long
established in West Malaysia and Singapore, and others are
working in Arabian cities and sending their earnings home.
Indeed, wherever one travels today, in such widespread
locations as Seoul, South Korea, Accra, Ghana, and Santiago,
Chile, one can find Indian restaurants with Indian owners and
cooks. But the three countries today receiving the most
migrants after the U.S. are Britain, Canada, and Australia.
In the latter country, the Sikh community of Woolgoolga north
of Sydney gets its share of tourists to see its Golden
Temple, eat its curry, nan, and barfi, and buy its saris and
textiles.

And of course, the Trinidad East Indians are leading the
parade by remigrating, having behind them several generations
of good British education, plus the knowhow of their
infinitely complex, sly, snide multicultural society so
brilliantly exemplified by their unwitting spokesman, V. S.
Naipal. 0ur British cousins, a Presbyterian minister ' s
daughter married to a Trinidad Muslim long resident near

London recently sold their house and moved elsewhere because
the neighborhood was "getting too Indian," and values were
bound to drop. A retired Canadian missionary recently
complained, "Canada is no longer a Christian nation; less
than half its citizens are members of Christian churches!
Little did we think when we went to convert the Trinidad
Indians that we were training a future generation of
Canadians! In our own remigrant family on four continents,
we already have three physicians, a dentist, two computer
engineers, a female lawyer, a female diplomat, a female
anthropologist, a physicist, an Episcopal priest, and a
millionaire software-designer. Watch out, World! As the
Creoles have long said in Trinidad, "Coolie people tekin'
ovah!"