From the beginning of ships
there was always someone who wept when sails were lost
Martin Carter.

They came in ships
Across the sea they came...
Some came with dreams of milk-and-honey riches,
fleeing famine and death:
dancing girls...
Brahmin, Chamar, alike
hearts brimful of hope.
Mahadai Das.

1Indian women in the Caribbean have almost always been perceived and portrayed as docile, placid and subservient, limited by notions of victimhood and subjugation. Represented often as voiceless, their story, beginning with their journey to the Caribbean and elsewhere, has been one of misrepresentation and distortion. Almost from the beginning of their indentureship, there has been the erroneous assumption that these women were kidnapped en masse, or duped into ‘this new system of slavery’ by unscrupulous arkatis or recruiters. Closer examination of the history has shown that these women who crossed the kala pani or ‘black waters’ were among the most resilient of human beings. Desperate women, in great acts of defiance, resistance and independence, demonstrated their resourcefulness by choosing to travel, unaccompanied by relatives, to places like Fiji, Mauritius and parts of the Caribbean, as indentured labourers.

2Clem Seecharan in Tiger in the Stars1 and Brij Lal in Girmitiyas: The Origins of the Fiji Indians2 have recorded the social and economic reasons which compelled a minority of enterprising men and women to flee India in the middle of the nineteenth century and enter a life of servitude in the Caribbean and elsewhere as ‘bound coolies’. Both argue that many of these were fleeing disease, poverty, family debts and an early grave. These men and women were contracted to work on plantations in these territories as replacement for the labour shortage left vacant by Africans after emancipation.

3Between 1838 and 1917 more than half a million Indians were taken to the Caribbean as indentured labourers to work on the sugar plantations, and of this number, just under a quarter of a million arrived in British Guiana and Trinidad. Seecharan has calculated that about 85 per cent of these immigrants to Guyana from India came from the eastern United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh) and western Bihar. ‘The impoverished eastern districts of UP alone contributed 70.3 per cent; while 15.3 per cent were from contiguous western districts of Bihar; only 5 or 6 per cent were south Indians, from Madras Presidency primarily (contemporary Tamil Nadu)’.3

4The reasons for leaving India were numerous and the attraction to indentured labour seemed to offer many not only a regular wage, but a possible opportunity to return, financially better off, after their contract of five years had expired. The promise, too, of land after their contract terminated was an added incentive. This latter was an inducement far too good to be missed, for the land hunger in the UP region and western Bihar was entrenched. According to Seecharan:

Chronic debt, passed on from one generation to the next, perpetuated penury and killed ambition among large sections of a potentially enterprising people. Weakened bodies were a ready haven of virulent epidemics, such as cholera and smallpox... In Gonda, for instance, the source of many migrants to Guyana, cholera accounted for 11.5 per cent of deaths between 1872 and 1881.... Early death was taken for granted in these districts in the late 19th century.4
Young men seeking escape from the perennial yoke of acquired family debts, or the macabre spectre of an early grave, because of famine and disease were especially vulnerable. Many must have left wives and children behind whom they would never see again. Many young girls and women were in the same boat.5

5 These were some of the situations which a significant number of the population were seeking to flee. A small but significant proportion of those who chose to leave this dire state of affairs were women. However, the women who opted for migration, until recently, have not been given credit for their strength and fortitude or as agents in their own right, shapers of their own destiny. Their courage has never really been acknowledged. Brij Lal has paid tribute to these women by recognising that although there was indeed an element of duplicity on the part of the recruiters, the women themselves were far from being ‘helpless victims’. He argues:

The fact that women were prepared to part with a life of drudgery and unhappiness for the largely unknown would seem to me to suggest that many of them must have been individuals of remarkable independence, enterprise and self-respect. These were certainly the values they nurtured and lived by in the colonies.6

6Using the ship as a metaphor for freedom, this paper seeks to correct some misconceptions about these women. It will attempt to redress some of the erroneous assumptions that abound about the women who sold themselves into a life of temporary bondage in the Caribbean. The paper will also pay tribute to these women who chose to travel alone to a new life to potentially unsafe spaces in unknown destinations; it will examine how they attempted to construct safe spaces for themselves in places like Guyana and Trinidad where the largest number of East Indians settled.

7 Emphasis has often been placed on the fact that the women recruited were simply prostitutes, dancers and women of low caste. A blanket categorization and denigration of these women has served to add to the overall notion that they were marginal people, thus attempting to justify their oppressors’ inhumane treatment of them. Indeed, some were prostitutes and dancers and women of low caste, but a significant number were widows, and in this community there was no possibility for a woman to reconstruct her life if she were a widow. Widows were deemed to be contaminated, and if life for women in this environment was bleak, for widows it was doubly so. ‘Widowhood’ argues Brinda Mehta, ‘reflected the ultimate devaluing of the Hindu woman, made the victim of several social taboos’.7 These women were indeed all marginalised, powerless and desperate, and their only alternative was to attempt to reconstruct new lives in new environments.

8Many women were treated as virtual slaves in the homes of their in-laws: to say they were treated very badly indeed, would be an understatement. Many sought to escape abusive or violent relationships, in child marriages. Some of them chose to flee arranged marriages as well as ostracism from their own or their husbands’ families. Some indeed were pregnant and abandoned wives. The social reality for these women was that remaining in their own communities would have been a form of social death. They had no future in their communities. But whoever they were and whatever was their status in India, their strength of will cannot be underestimated. These were spirited women whose actions were nothing short of courageous and unimaginable.

9 Before their migration to the Caribbean and other plantation colonies in the nineteenth century, Indian women had begun to escape these hard and difficult spaces and were looking for new spaces for growth. The railroad in India began to make this escape possible. In the middle of the 19th century the railways built by the British colonial government revolutionised travel within India, and offered considerable opportunities and possibilities for those who wanted to flee their environment. This major revolution in the transport system gave many enterprising women the chance of escape to places like the Assam tea plantations and to cities like Calcutta. The railway linked almost all corners of India, all the way out to Burma, and because of the vastness of the country, one could in this way seek to escape the taint of caste.

10One of the most important factors here is the fact that a significant number of these women were single. Rhoda Reddock estimates that about two thirds of the women who indented were single.8 ‘Single’ in this context took on a range of meanings, thus Clem Seecharan emphasises the point of ‘reportedly single’, and explains that

Many girls and young women were in the same boat. About 82 per cent of the women taken to Guyana were between 10 and 30 years with 30 per cent between 10 and 20 and 52 per cent between 20 and 30... surprisingly, 63 per cent of the adult females were reportedly single. Moreover, of the 36.1 per cent of women reportedly not single only 73 per cent were accompanied by their husbands.9

11 We can see from this then, that many who were recruited classed themselves as single, or were classed as single, because they were unaccompanied by a husband. Many of these women had been either deserted by their husbands or had committed some misdemeanour. The relief at escaping demeaning and degrading lives must have been considerable.

12Relieved of the dominating and exploitative relationship with males in their communities, the ship therefore for these women represented the chance of freedom; an instrument of salvation. For many, the ship taking them to their new places of refuge was considerably more than a means of transport, it represented flight—both physically and psychologically. In this single, simple act of defiance, these women were able to subvert ancient notions of women’s role in Indian society.

13Clem Seecharan again explains the position of these women:

Because 90 per cent of girls were married between 10 and 14 according to the UP census of 1891, it is highly likely that most of the women indentured labourers who declared themselves ‘single’ were, in fact, widowed because of the high mortality of child-husbands in the late 19^th century; others had probably been deserted by husbands who went to Assam and Bengal to work and never kept in touch. Some women, driven by penury and sexual deprivation, succumbed to sexual advances by villagers; others had probably sought refuge in prostitution in provincial towns. There was no future for such women in India. Even in her parents’ village, a widowed girl was socially dead. Many such women succumbed to despair. A minority did not—flight resurrected hope. (Seecharan 1997: 5)

14In a sense, there was very little difference between the women who were dancers and prostitutes and those who had refused to submit to suttee (this is the act of a widow sacrificing herself on her husband’s pyre); all had been made desperate by the traditions of their country. These women therefore made the choice, however uninformed it may have been, of going into bondage in far off places, rather than remain in a desperate situation in India. For the Indian woman who made this choice, it was indeed a bold, adventurous decision which ultimately worked to their advantage.

15The ship too can be viewed as a metaphor for liberation through the destruction of old customs which were based on oppression. All castes, upper, middle and lower as well as Muslims, were placed in the limited space in the depots as well as on the same ship. Therefore, important rituals which sustained these hierarchies in India could not be sustained in the context of the depots, on the ship or on the plantations. Neither could they stick with these rituals on the ship bound for new destinations or indeed, on the plantations. From the highest caste— Brahmans, to the lowest, Chamars—their presence together in the depots and on the ship managed to destroy some of the beliefs of sacred spaces, because members of all castes were holed up in a single confined space. This went a great way to breaking down old barriers, destroying traditional boundaries of caste, a system which, in India, had venerated some and degraded many. In this restricted space which would have entailed acts of sharing, of not only physical space, but of resources and experiences, barriers of religion and caste which once strangled notions of freedom were effectively removed.

16This bonding of different castes on board ship is explained by Brinsley Samaroo:

On board ship the castes and regions of India were mixed as in the depots, and the common tasks, assigned with little respect to persons, served as a great leveller. The only separation on board was by gender and marital status... [r] eplacing the previous ties of caste and region was a new form of bonding which was started in the depots and strengthened on the ship. This bonding became greater on those ships which underwent difficult passages, for example in the churning, swirling waters of the Pagal Samundar (Mad Sea) so often encountered off the Cape of Good Hope. This cemented when the immigrants joined together to resist ill-usage by European seamen. For this reason, the Indians resented being separated into different colony batches when they arrived in the Caribbean.10

17There was no space within this structure for the recognition of primordial bases of identity; it was here that notions of caste and religious barriers were subverted. It was here, also, in this restricted space that relationships and the idea of ship-mates were born through these shared experiences. Relationships which began simply as ship-mates blossomed into close friendships so that the idea of jahaji bhais (ship brothers) and jahaji bahins (ship sisters) were created and cemented in these unlikeliest of places. Here, indeed, new categories of kinship were created, so much so that in their new environment these ship brothers and sisters became virtual blood relatives. In this environment began also the reconstruction of the notion of family and family-ties. Indeed, such was the closeness of these bonds, that any form of conjugal relationship between the offspring of these ship brothers and sisters were frowned upon or forbidden. The strength of the bond of these ship brothers and sisters was not to be overestimated, for notions of caste were severely diminished and even friendships between religious rivals, Hindus and Muslims, flourished.

18The ship, therefore, was far more than a vessel taking them to an unknown destination. For these women, it must have represented a break, a severing of old ties and a looking forward to possible opportunities which would be opening up for them. Thus the ship, too, must have been a metaphor for hope. Hope meant looking forward to new opportunities: expectation, excitement even. Any opportunity would have been perceived as a vast improvement on the lives they had left behind. For those women who had their children with them on this journey, recurring dreams they would have cherished for progress and a deepening awareness, must have been a cause for hope. Crossing the kala pani for the Indian woman, was an inherently subversive act, simply because received opinions of them had never ascribed to them any agency.

19The plantation, too, as a physical entity as well as a social organization forced those who lived there to break down borders which had hitherto divided them. As a system geared to a western plantation capitalist economy, it could not sustain a hierarchical structure based on caste or religion, as in India, if it were to function effectively. Like the ship, it was a self-contained world and so the space in the context of the plantation meant that everyone, regardless of their former status or identity, was figuratively in the same boat.

20V. S. Naipaul has made mention in his work, Finding the Centre,11 of his paternal great grandmother who travelled to Trinidad in the 1880s accompanied only by a young son. The former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Sir Shridath Ramphal, has also spoken movingly about his paternal great-grandmother who made a similar journey, first to Surinam and then to British Guiana, with only her young son for company. Clem Seecharan, too, has written at great length about his maternal great-grandmother, Kaila, who also travelled to British Guiana alone as a young, single woman with great hopes of making a new life. For these women, the ship must have held a deeper significance of their journey. First, there was the act of leaving and the consequences of leaving.

21Martin Carter’s poem, Fragment of Memory, seems to embody this journey, with its themes of separation and loss. In Carter’s words

From the beginning of ships
there was always someone who wept when sails were lost... ... on life the ocean stained with memory
where are the ships?12

22And although he was referring specifically to the horrors of the transportation of enslaved Africans, his poem applies no less to the transportation of Indians. For it is not only about leaving and the consequences of leaving, there is also the memory of those who are left behind and the resultant sense of loss on both sides. Nevertheless, for the women leaving on their unknown voyage to the Caribbean, it would have been all of those ambivalent feelings including a great sense of relief.

23 The metaphorical significance of the ship in many cases would also have been that of regret and this sense of loss, but it could also have been a projection into the future. Fleeing their unsafe spaces did not only mean leaving their hostile environments, it also meant the physical reconstruction of new and safe spaces in a new world; this spiritual journey also meant the reconstruction of themselves as well as their view of themselves.

24Some of the thoughts going through their minds must have been, ‘how do I recreate myself in a new environment with different materials or resources?’ So the ship could be viewed as a metaphor for the reinvention of a new persona, the forging of a new identity. In the forging of this new identity, selective memory or, indeed, imposed amnesia must have been imperative. One of the most important things for these women was the reconstructing of new identities, and this would have meant suppressing the memory of their former lives, in an attempt to put the past behind them. Clem Seecharan’s recollection of his great-grandmother, Kaila, was that she could never be persuaded to speak of the past or of the India she had left behind; the memories were too painful. This was the reality for many; nothing is known about their individual lives before their indentureship because of a refusal to acknowledge a former life in another space.

25All that remained with many was this fragment of memory which was fuelled by devotion to, and duty to family. But with this imposed amnesia came a reconstruction of the past—an imagined past because for them, India eventually became a romantic construction: the India of the imagination. ‘... [T] he amnesia’, as Seecharan argues, was ‘essential to the re-invention of the self’.13 But he also explains other reasons for the deliberate blotting out of past lives:

Men and women... had a lot to hide. The guilt festered. Because that recent past evoked pain and concealed much that would necessarily have jeopardized the assumption of a new persona, a reflexive collective amnesia cohered quickly—an instinct to forget. People have a remarkable capacity to unlearn. The past in India had to be re-imagined in Guyana.14

26The re-imagining of India in British Guiana and elsewhere could only be successful or indeed possible by not totally forgetting India. Memories of former lives cannot be completely erased and no one can totally cut themselves off from their past. This is also evident in Seecharan’s portrayal of Kaila. One important and constant reminder of her former life would have been the Ramayana, the Hindu holy book which she had chosen to take with her on her journey. This suggests that the country and memories which she attempted to blot out on the one hand, must have been very much in her mind on the other. Her attempt to construct a new and safe space could not always have been completely successful. How could Kaila completely unlearn the past when, in the Ramayana, there was so powerful a reminder? Apart from devotion and duty to family, was it also in this book that she managed to find and construct for herself a safe space?

27It is important to note that the Ramayana performed a significant function in the imagination of these indentured Indian people, for it allowed them in their exile to hark back to a golden age, Ram Raj, the benevolent rule of Lord Ram. It was a constructed India, an India of the imagination. In a sense it compensated for the dark memories of home, a kind of imaginary homeland, an idyllic India, one that could be preserved by their descendents. In terms of exile, the Ramayana answered specific needs for these women in the diaspora, for most of them would not have wished to return to those spaces they had knowingly escaped. There was, for them, no going back. Therefore notions of India had to be reconstructed; it had to be an India of the imagination which would contribute to the construction of a new identity. In this recreated model they somehow managed to create a notion of the ‘motherland’ that was important to their survival.

28Clem Seecharan’s great grandmother remained a mystery all her life; her past in India a closed book; she volunteered no information and this sparked off a natural curiosity in him about India. But many women used this opportunity to attempt to obliterate the past, and carve out new lives for themselves, disavowing everything connected with a former life. The anecdotes of the courage of these women are legion. There are also tales of women who returned to India once their contract had terminated only to re-indenture themselves and return to the Caribbean. And there is evidence too, which suggests that some of the men and women who returned to India found they could not escape again. Re-indenture was not possible because they were rejected by the recruiters; they ended up in poverty in parts of Calcutta which had become virtual ghettos. Having crossed the kala pani they were perceived by relatives as having been contaminated or defiled. And it was back in India they were given dramatic reminders of how hostile the world they had left behind could be. Attitudes they had fled still persisted; these unsafe spaces still existed, so they were faced with only one alternative: that of fleeing the hostile space that India had (re) confirmed itself to be and returning to the life they had constructed for themselves in the new space in the Caribbean.

29Having escaped their unsafe spaces, the task of Indian women was to begin the construction of new and safe spaces and this was founded on their independence. In this new environment they began to earn their own living by working on the plantations, they became wage earners in their own right. This enterprising spirit brought with it a new attitude. The breaking down of caste taboos meant that women were now able to marry men of known higher castes, especially if the financial rewards were considered advantageous. Also, for the first time, many of them were able to choose their own sexual or marital partners. There are a number of stories of women who abandoned their husbands to take another partner, if their husbands no longer pleased them, and of those who had multiple sexual partners. This behaviour on the part of the women can partly be attributed to the disparity in the numbers of men to women but also perhaps, more importantly, to their new-found independence. There was indeed a shortage of women. Basdeo Mangru states that in British Guiana, for example, there was, ‘ [i] n 1857 the ratio of 35 women to 100 men, rising progressively to the high level of 50 to 100 in 1860’.15

30There are many reasons for this obvious gender imbalance, but one of the reasons, according to Mangru, was that there were few unattached women because of the Indian custom of child betrothal and marriage at puberty.16 Whatever the reasons, this gender disparity caused many problems between Indian men and women on the plantations. The constraints of family life that many had fled and the freedom that women had sought in migration empowered them to the point where they were able to choose or reject as they desired. Perhaps it was this sense of the power they now had which enabled them to act in ways contrary to tradition, for evidence also exists of women having more than one sexual partner at the same time.

31Audra Diptee quotes Henry Kirke, a former sheriff of British Guiana during the nineteenth century who noted that ‘polyandry is often practised, three or four men living with one woman in apparent contentment’.17 This unusual behaviour undoubtedly caused some jealousy among the men and stories of wife-murders abound. Diptee also quotes from David Trotman’s Crime in Trinidad: Conflict and Control in a Plantation Society 1838-1900 thus:

In Trinidad alone, between 1872 and 1880 out of twenty-two murders among Indians all the victims were not only women but also wives. Between 1881 and 1889, of the forty-five reported murders in the community, twenty-seven of the victims were women and twenty-four of these were wives. (Ditee 2003: 3)

32She also cites Brian Moore who highlighted that, ‘the situation was similar in British Guiana where between 1872 and 1890 seventy-nine women died at the hands of men’. (Ditee 2003: 3) However, Rhoda Reddock gives a clear reason for the acts of violence meted out against these independent women. She basically argues that Indian men found themselves in an unaccustomed situation where they were unable to handle or control their women. These women were too independent and this behaviour was deemed an affront to their manhood. Quite simply, these women were a source of shame. She contends that:

The relative independence of Indian women was perceived as a source of shame by Indian men and, in addition, their inability to have one woman on whom to exercise power and authority in this colonial situation, only added to their frustration. (Reddock 1994: 30-31)

33Once established in the Caribbean, the Indian woman went through various phases in her attempt to construct a sense of freedom as well as creating a sense of family. The inherent love of family and home for which there must have always been an overpowering urge resurfaced. The assertions of independence where these women once used their sexual power soon became curtailed once they settled down into traditional family life, simply because the family model was always patriarchal. There were reasons for this: increasingly, the sexual disparity between men and women began to be addressed, thus the competitive edge was considerably reduced. Seecharan asserts that:

Sexual freedom was a tenuous and ambiguous one for Indian women on the plantation, for it was subversive of the Brahminic patriarchal ideal, which had reasserted itself in the context of resistance to evangelical Christianity, after the 1870s. The Sita construct, fed by the Ramayana, of loyalty to mothers-in-law, husbands and sons so permeates the Indian imagination that most women could not elude its web.18

34 This demonstrated that the patriarchal ideal, an important aspect of the Indian family structure, had never really diminished. Once the notion of family began to be re-established or renewed, the structure would invariably and unquestionably revert to the patriarchal.

35However, rituals and rites were important and women became interpreters of culture. Thus they began to redefine themselves in both the social and religious sphere and because most barriers had effectively been broken down, they now began to be involved in the organization of some of the religious spaces regardless of their caste. Brahmans, in their role as sole interpreters of the texts, began to minister to members of lower castes in a bid to counter Christian proselytising and with the emergence of village communities, the role of the Brahmans began to be redefined in the context of these societies. This began with the inclusion of groups which would otherwise have been on the margins of their community. This meant that Brahmans not only entered the homes of the lowest castes, but they even partook of meals prepared in the homes of these individuals; an act unheard of in India.

36With their deeply-rooted patriarchal notions of the extended family, Brahmans’ reconstruction of family included making sacrifices for freedom within the extended family in village circumstances. This meant that women were included and became important in the control and production of the extended family. In the rice industry, for example, where control over extended family labour was crucial, women had an important hold. Rituals like the jajnas, for example, became community affairs, and this meant that women had an important role to play within this structure. In fact, Hinduism and Brahmanism became creolised in that they both began to adapt to the new spaces within a Caribbean context.

37 In the villages of both British Guiana and Trinidad where Indians were comparative late comers to the community, the ownership of land became paramount during and after the period of indentureship. This meant they could move away from the plantations and begin to establish the old notions of family life. Thus the acquisition of land became the ideal. In reconstructing this patriarchal residence, families became once more patrilocal where daughters-in-law moved into the home or compound of their husbands’ parents. This is where the Indian woman could command her own little world. For although some of her freedom and power had diminished she could now extend her power as matriarch over the extended family, that is, over her daughters and daughters-in-law. The extended family became important for, as matriarch, this was the context in which she could now wield some authority.

38By the 1920s, with the abolition of indentureship, an Indian middle class had emerged through a rapidly rising commercial sector and a burgeoning class of professionals such as doctors and lawyers. By this time too, the Indian community was beginning to move away from the plantations and was becoming more and more creolised; a small but significant number even converted to Christianity. And although it was uncommon, girls began to be educated with the encouragement and support of their mothers. The Compulsory Education Ordinance of 1876 in British Guiana made education compulsory for all children up to the age of 14 in towns and the age of 12 in the countryside. A significant number of Indians, however, were sceptical about the need for their children to be educated for, as Clem Seecharan points out, many parents ‘were indifferent to education for economic and religious reasons, combined with a perceived irrelevance of the curriculum for anything practical’. (Seecharan 1997: 266). The role of children it seemed, was simply to help augment the family economy and continue to enrich the colonial power. Allowing them access to an education would deprive the sugar estates of much needed child labourers. Furthermore, educating young girls would be the greatest irrelevance, because a significant number were still married off very young; exposing them to education was therefore deemed a waste of time. Naipaul parodies this view of education of young women in A House for Mr. Biswas, when Biswas goes to ask for the hand of Shama:

Seth said: ‘She’s a good child. A little bit of reading and writing even.’
‘A little bit of reading and writing—’ Mr. Biswas echoed, trying to gain time.
‘Just a little bit. So much. Nothing to worry about. In two or three years she might even forget’.19

39It is to these parents that the introduction of the Swettenham Circular must have seemed a godsend. Perceived by progressive Indians as a retrograde step, the Swettenham Circular was introduced in 1902 and endorsed, surprisingly, by the Education Commission; it was enforced from 1904 to 1933 in British Guiana. The introduction of this Circular simply encouraged child labour and in this, the colonial authorities managed to exploit the ignorance of Indians. The Swettenham Circular was aimed specifically at young Indian girls, where Government authorities simply stated that the Compulsory Education Ordinance of 1876 should not apply to girls, if their parents objected to their attending school on religious grounds. Thus, in taking advantage of this, many Indian parents colluded with the colonial authorities in depriving their daughters, in particular, of valuable educational possibilities. Clem Seecharan’s opinion is that the Circular ‘institution-alised official abdication of any responsibility for the education of Indian children; it also legalised the delinquency of Indian parents... [i] t was a backward measure, which was retained long enough to do considerable damage’ (Seecharan 1997: 266).

40The Swettenham Circular was eventually withdrawn in 1933 through a sustained campaign by J.I. Ramphal and a few other Indian leaders. Its withdrawal impacted greatly on Indian women, for it paved the way for the education of young girls. Compulsory education for all children now meant that daughters were sent to both primary and secondary school. Moreover, as the most recent comers to this society, and with their increasing creolization, Indians began to view education as a valuable commodity. As early as the 1920s many middle class women began to pioneer new spaces of freedom more in keeping with a creole sensibility. This helped to perpetuate a new sense of freedom, opening up possibilities for families, especially girls. This in a sense opened up a new concept of freedom for women, for gradually a small minority would excel at school and continue into further education. Not informed by tradition, this was the possibility for women to seek professional advancement. The 1920s therefore was a key decade in terms of Indian advancement, and women were beginning to make a valuable contribution to this upward mobility.

41In this, the Canadian Presbyterian Mission played a major role both in Trinidad and British Guiana, for they helped to establish schools for Indians in rural areas, which contributed considerably to their social advancement. Undoubtedly, proselytising was the main aim of the Mission, and indeed, there were some conversions from Hinduism to Christianity. Some of the teachers would also have been of Indian origin who had converted to the Christian religion; this fostered a more liberal attitude among Indians to the education of girls. With the establishment of the Berbice High School for Girls in 1920, the Canadian Presbyterian Mission encouraged the education of girls, and this later led to a small minority being sent overseas to further their education and secure professions. This latter step was rare and unusual, but it was by no means unheard of. Gladys Sarran, for example, was one of the first Indian females to graduate as a lawyer in the mid- 1930s, and the Ramdeholl family in British Guiana is often quoted as one of the earliest families to take a positive view of further education for girls by seeking to provide a profession for their daughters. In fact, one of the daughters, Clara Ramdeholl was sent to England to train as a lawyer during the early 1940s; she, however, tragically met her death on the return voyage.

42The emergence of the reformist Hindu religious movement, the Arya Samaj, played a great part too in the education of women. Of this religious movement, Steven Vertovec states: ‘ [f] ounded in the Punjab in 1875 by Swami Dayananda Saraswati (1824-83), the Arya Samaj stresses, among other things, solidarity and equality among all Hindus by repudiating the caste system and advocating a strictly monotheistic faith...’20 They also opposed child marriage, but the Arya Samaj as part of its espousal of equality also supported the notion that women should play an important role, not only in religious life, but also in secular society. Thus they helped to shape new attitudes towards women and the education of women. The cross currents of the challenge and perceived threat by Christianity and Reformist Hinduism on both the Hindu and Muslim religions helped considerably to bring about change in attitudes to the education of women in the Indian community as a whole.

43The rise of Indian nationalism also influenced this advancement and growing educational interest for Indian women in the Caribbean. The election of the woman Sarojini Naidu as President of the Indian National Congress in 1925/6, was also a great inspiration for Indian women in the colonies. Naidu herself, a graduate of Oxford University, was indeed an anomaly at the time, her election therefore made the possibilities for other women, endless. This stimulated a rise in the political consciousness of women, many of whom became part of the anti-colonial struggle. This was assisted greatly by the Educationalist, J.I. Ramphal. Writing under the pseudonyms of Akbar Shah in The New Daily Chronicle and Lala Lajpat for The Daily Chronicle in the 1930s, Ramphal became a tireless campaigner of women’s rights. He began to use the examples of women’s involvement in the Nationalist struggle in India by encouraging Indian women in British Guiana to profit from these events and view them as an incentive for their own progress. He highlighted the work that these women were doing in India within the context of the Indian Nationalist struggle, and stressed that it was only through education that this could be achieved.

44A number of changes among Indians took place within the context of Indian nationalist fervour. Constant newspaper coverage in British Guiana of events in India for example, gave rise, albeit slow in its emergence, to a new concept of the role of women as well as what this role should be in terms of their education. Gradually, ideas of an educated womanhood in the Caribbean began to manifest themselves whereby even conservative elements in the Indian community began to embrace ideas of education for women. Another factor which affected this new attitude to the education of women was the fact that a large number of Indian men had become part of the professional and commercial middle class, and they began to realise the importance of a wife who was at the very least, literate. This was paramount because as latecomers to this society feelings of insecurity still persisted among them, for they still were disparagingly referred to and perceived by the wider community as ‘coolies’.

45By the end of the 1940s with the advent of Indian independence, India now began to focus on its own affairs as the Indian National Congress began to adapt to the new reality of independence. Thus it could not allow itself to be overly or unduly preoccupied with the affairs of its former citizens overseas. Paid return to the mother country for overseas indentured workers had long ended, thus there was no going back. A large number of Indians in the Caribbean were creole born, that is, they were born in the Caribbean and they began to think of how to adapt to their new environment. Consequently, many of the predominant agricultural, or perhaps patriarchal attitudes began to wane; old attitudes began to be replaced by new progressive ideas, particularly in their views about women, the education of women and the role of women.

46Becoming creolised, however, did not mean a severing of old ties with India. Aspects of culture and important rituals continued to be observed. The Ramayana, for example, continued to play an important role in the lives of Indian families, and as such its power cannot be overestimated. It is not surprising, then, that its most powerful or central character, Sita is the quintessential woman or the ideal of womanhood in Hinduism. ‘Sita’s self-abnegation—her subordination of personal needs, the expression of her character through loyalty and devotion to her husband— embodies what is most admirable in the Hindu woman’. (Seecharan 1997: 51). Today in both Trinidad and Guyana, the dramatization of the Ramayana, in the annual re-enactment during the Ram Lila festivals is still very popular because it continues to feed the imagination. In Guyana, in particular, the Ramayana was instructive and provided the principles by which they conducted their lives with emphasis on respect, obedience and family obligations.

47Among the needs for these women to construct safe and new spaces has been the need to write their own stories as part of their contribution to the feminist dialogue in the Caribbean. Brinda Mehta has pointed out that in recent years the emergence of Indo-Caribbean female scholars, artists and writers has seen the positioning of their enterprising foremothers as the source of their inspiration. (Mehta 2004: 74). In India, social conditions had attempted to deprive them of agency and put severe restrictions on their creative potential, whether they were daughter, wife or mother. Indian women made the transition as their own agents and have emerged from the shadows, having managed to construct new and safe spaces for themselves in the Caribbean. As Seecharan concludes, ‘These women must have been possessed by extraordinary “independence, enterprise and self respect”’ (Seecharan 1997: 36).

48The achievements of these women who came in ships are considerable and therefore need to be celebrated. Because of the received perception of the Indian woman in the Caribbean, there has always been a tendency to emphasize the duplicitous manner in which they were lured away by the infamous arkatis, their subsequent exploitation on the plantations and the notion of indentureship as a ‘new system of slavery’. As a consequence, we have never really considered what the journey really meant for these women. They liberated themselves from the restrictions of a feudal India and made worthwhile lives and valuable contributions to the Caribbean community.