This year marks 149 yrs since my great,great maternal grandfather and his family arrived in British Guiana.Suh me gat nuff,nuff rights in the homeland.

Great.  After meeting with HE Granger and Nagamootoo, he needs to meet with Ravi Dev and Reyhaan Shah.  

I hope some trade deals are made and India funds some infrastructure projects.   They can pay with rice and dal!

Those two young ladies in the sculpture look like sexy Bollywood actresses, not like agricultural labourers. Dem bhai and da picknee look arright.

I like Modi and what he is doing for India. He was featured a few times in Time Magazine. 

Leonora posted:

I like Modi and what he is doing for India. He was featured a few times in Time Magazine. 

And you bettah wach out, Trump like he and he likes Trump. 

Diss guh gi D_G moo shittin’s.  

All the Indentured East Indian names should be inscribed on a plaque at Indian Indentureship Monument.

What alyuh think ?

Django posted:

All the Indentured East Indian names should be inscribed on a plaque at Indian Indentureship Monument.

What alyuh think ?

Who will fund it?

Santa coming bearing gifts, more debt on the Guyanese backs.

Django posted:

All the Indentured East Indian names should be inscribed on a plaque at Indian Indentureship Monument.

What alyuh think ?

238,909 Indians arrived between 1838-1917. That's a lot of names to inscribe on plaque.

This link has a photo showing immigrants. Compare the women to those in the sculpture.

http://guyanachronicle.com/201...mmigration-1838-1917

All dem coming to Guyana - American congressman, Hindu man, Arab man, Chinee man. By de time dem done foolin' we schupidee teefmen in PPP, PNC and AFC we gon be paying dem fuh tek we aile.

Baseman posted:

Leonora posted:

I like Modi and what he is doing for India. He was featured a few times in Time Magazine. 

And you bettah wach out, Trump like he and he likes Trump. 

Diss guh gi D_G moo shittin’s.  

Modi is a right wing politician. Looks like the right is taking over the world while the left whines and complains all day long. 

Anyway. Congrats to the PNC for having another Indian leader visiting Guyana. The PNC also hosted Indira G. 

Granger can add another feather to his cap.

The PPP is asleep at the switch once again. 

Gilbakka posted:

Django posted:

All the Indentured East Indian names should be inscribed on a plaque at Indian Indentureship Monument.

What alyuh think ?

238,909 Indians arrived between 1838-1917. That's a lot of names to inscribe on plaque.

This link has a photo showing immigrants. Compare the women to those in the sculpture.

http://guyanachronicle.com/201...mmigration-1838-1917

Inscription can be done,info at the archives in GY.

Regarding the women,the sculpture should have the looks of the Immigrants.

yuji22 posted:

Baseman posted:

Leonora posted:

I like Modi and what he is doing for India. He was featured a few times in Time Magazine. 

And you bettah wach out, Trump like he and he likes Trump. 

Diss guh gi D_G moo shittin’s.  

Modi is a right wing politician. Looks like the right is taking over the world while the left whines and complains all day long. 

Anyway. Congrats to the PNC for having another Indian leader visiting Guyana. The PNC also hosted Indira G. 

Granger can add another feather to his cap.

The PPP is asleep at the switch once again. 

Modi's trip to Guyana was planned since President Donald Ramotar visited India in January 2015. Read this:

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/gu...na-and-suriname/amp/

Leonora posted:

Django posted:

All the Indentured East Indian names should be inscribed on a plaque at Indian Indentureship Monument.

What alyuh think ?

Who will fund it?

That's easy,we can contribute.

Iguana posted:

All dem coming to Guyana - American congressman, Hindu man, Arab man, Chinee man. By de time dem done foolin' we schupidee teefmen in PPP, PNC and AFC we gon be paying dem fuh tek we aile.

Gwana, yuh like wan sour puss lizard.  Yuh seh yuh gatt lil Madrassi blood in yuh. So wag yuh tail and perk up yuh spine lil nuh!

Gilbakka posted:

yuji22 posted:

Baseman posted:

Leonora posted:

I like Modi and what he is doing for India. He was featured a few times in Time Magazine. 

And you bettah wach out, Trump like he and he likes Trump. 

Diss guh gi D_G moo shittin’s.  

Modi is a right wing politician. Looks like the right is taking over the world while the left whines and complains all day long. 

Anyway. Congrats to the PNC for having another Indian leader visiting Guyana. The PNC also hosted Indira G. 

Granger can add another feather to his cap.

The PPP is asleep at the switch once again. 

Modi's trip to Guyana was planned since President Donald Ramotar visited India in January 2015. Read this:

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/gu...na-and-suriname/amp/

If he had visited under the PPP, dem pan-Afro racists like Caribj and Ronan would be pounding dem chest with battle cries!

Baseman posted:

Great.  After meeting with HE Granger and Nagamootoo, he needs to meet with Ravi Dev and Reyhaan Shah.  

I hope some trade deals are made and India funds some infrastructure projects.   They can pay with rice and dal!

Infrastructure !! that will be great. It must be built in Berbice  and not Durban back land.

Berbice have all races anyway. 

You all remember National Culture Center.. 

Dave posted:

Baseman posted:

Great.  After meeting with HE Granger and Nagamootoo, he needs to meet with Ravi Dev and Reyhaan Shah.  

I hope some trade deals are made and India funds some infrastructure projects.   They can pay with rice and dal!

Infrastructure !! that will be great. It must be built in Berbice  and not Durban back land.

Berbice have all races anyway. 

You all remember National Culture Center.. 

I’m talking real stuff. Like funding projects like hydro power and bridges for companies like Larsen & Tubro.  

Baseman posted:

Iguana posted:

All dem coming to Guyana - American congressman, Hindu man, Arab man, Chinee man. By de time dem done foolin' we schupidee teefmen in PPP, PNC and AFC we gon be paying dem fuh tek we aile.

Gwana, yuh like wan sour puss lizard.  Yuh seh yuh gatt lil Madrassi blood in yuh. So wag yuh tail and perk up yuh spine lil nuh!

Iz whey side I seh I gat madrassi blood in me? Like yuh start drink early today. No Indian blood that I know of.

Gilbakka posted:

Those two young ladies in the sculpture look like sexy Bollywood actresses, not like agricultural labourers. Dem bhai and da picknee look arright.

LOL...Gilly, you looking at the top part of dep 2 people...look at the whole picture  

Dave posted:

 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Guyana in December, Minister of State Joseph Harmon confirmed Monday morning.

The exact date of the visit is not known at this time.

The commissioning of the Indian Indentureship Monument at Palmyra is expected to be a highlight of the visit.

Monday morning, Harmon announced a $38 million contract to build a visitors gallery and security hut at the area.

The 12’ by 12’ bronze monument was designed and constructed in India and cost US$150, 000.

The monument describes the lives of ordinary Indian people in their routine everyday life with each carrying something of importance – their jahaji bhandal (ship bundle) loaded with food, spices, herbs, clothing, jewellery, their gods, religious texts, drum, karaahi (cooking pan) tawa (flat circular metal for cooking roti), grass knives (scythe), cutlass and rice plants. The figures are presented in a straightforward realism with the human factor ever present.

 

Guyana had agreed to construct the base upon which it will rest but in an embarrassing turn, the structure, for which $97 million was allocated, collapsed and is now being rebuilt.

Under the new project, which is being managed by the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, the works entail construction of the monument base and podium, as well as peripheral components such as the walkway, landscaping details, internal drainage, roadway, lighting, visitor’s gallery, security hut, and fencing.

All of the works are expected to be complete in time for Modi’s visit.

This year marks 180 years since the arrival of the first Indian indentured workers to Guyana.

 https://newsroom.gy/2018/09/24...o-visit-in-december/

One ting about Granger and Modi...they both dress and carry about themselves respectfully.....not like dis banna here

Is Guyana getting out of this visit....except this monument thing?

Dave posted:

Baseman posted:

Great.  After meeting with HE Granger and Nagamootoo, he needs to meet with Ravi Dev and Reyhaan Shah.  

I hope some trade deals are made and India funds some infrastructure projects.   They can pay with rice and dal!

Infrastructure !! that will be great. It must be built in Berbice  and not Durban back land.

Berbice have all races anyway. 

You all remember National Culture Center.. 

Whats with the National Cultural Center?

Just askin...

Dave posted:

Berbice have all races anyway. 

and Georgetown . . .?

Is Modi coming to endorse the PPP candidate for President in December?

Bibi Haniffa posted:

Is Modi coming to endorse the PPP candidate for President in December?

perhaps . . . 

Django posted:

This year marks 149 yrs since my great,great maternal grandfather and his family arrived in British Guiana.Suh me gat nuff,nuff rights in the homeland.

Didn’t the African slave trade end long before that?

In The Diaspora : Why I will never celebrate Indian Arrival Day in Guyana  By   Rajiv Mohabir.

Rajiv Mohabir, author of The Taxidermist’s Cut, is an award winning poet and translator who currently teaches poetry and composition at the University of Hawai’i where he is pursuing his PhD in English. Read more of his work at www.rajivmohabir.com. An earlier version of this piece was first published on The Margins, a publication of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. The longer and original version can be found online at http://aaww.org/indian-arrival-day/

Each year on May 5 Guyana celebrates “Indian Arrival Day,” commemorating the arrival of Indian indentured laborers to the Caribbean. On May 5, 1838, the S.S. Hesperus and the S.S. Whitby arrived along the shores of Berbice and Demerara. Together they carried 396 Indians, referred to as “coolies,” from Chota Nagpur, then Bihar, 300 miles from Kolkata. Since slavery had recently ended and African-descended people had been emancipated in the British colonies in 1833, the British were in need of cheap labor. They looked to India, the jewel in the Empire’s crown — a jewel that became a sugar crystal.

Each coolie was bound by a renewable contract to serve on the British sugar plantations for a period of five years. Lured away from their homes by the promise of riches, their passage across the sea at the hands of the British was brutal, followed by the degrading dehumanization that occurred on the plantations. Even though they were “paid” a wage, it was seldom enough to buy any kind of freedom from the plantation economy, except for rum that dulled the pain of its hellish conditions.

My family story might sound like it began with agency, but this narrative devolves into one of dispossession and terror, with the lingering effects of colonization haunting us today. This familial haunting, this legacy leads me to ask myself and my community, why should we commemorate the beginnings of our oppression in Guyana and even in diaspora while we still feel the effects of violent colonization?


Ajaaj :  Aja and Aji

I recorded my Aji telling the story of how her father’s father was tricked into crossing the Kalapani to Guyana and how this pain birthed us. I quote her in Newtown Literary:

“Beta, India mein dis side ke people say, ‘Leh abi go Guyana. A-you go get job an’ a-you go de good.’… So dey fool dem people an’ bring ‘em come. How dey catch ‘em? Dey been tell dem that abi go nuddah country an’ a-you go get plenty job, a-you go get ‘nuff money from cut cane, a-you go live happy. An’ India mein dem been a-punish. Wuk tiday you get food tiday, an’ you know tomorrow dem starve. So dem been a-haunted ti come away. An’ when dem bring ‘em dem na get house, dem na get nutin’, dem a-cut cane. Dem a-punish bad.”

Translation : Son, India is this side the people say. Let us go to Guyana. You will get job and you will live a good life.  So they fool the people and bring them. How they catch them like fools. They were told to go to another country and you will get plenty jobs and make lots of money by cutting sugar cane and you will live happy lives.  India men punished. They will work today and get food today, but tomorrow they will starve. So many wanted to return to India.  When they arrived in Guyana, there were no houses for them and they did not get anything. The cut sugar cane and punished bad.

*
We have touched the flame of Empire and have been scarred. Looking at us, what can anyone tell of the ills of having our bodies exploited for Empire’s gain? How does the body hold psychic devastation? Global economics at the time created an illusion of choice: some people were forced into migration because of starvation; some were kidnapped and shipped to the colonies; some Indians agreed to take the journey without actually understanding what it meant; some went willingly looking to make money.

Indian arrival into the Caribbean marked the beginnings of my family’s origin story, but it was also the beginning of serious disease, dependencies, prejudices, and ills that plague us still today. I present a list of ills — a postcolonial fallout — that I see as a legacy of indenture, erased by the celebration of Indian Arrival Day. Together, these ills informed my decision this year to not celebrate this holiday.

Domestic violence

Written about at length by Gaiutra Bahadur in her ground-breaking book Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture, Bahadur says this violence is a legacy from colonial times. When the British began the coolie trade, gender proportion was imbalanced. With fewer women there was greater competition among men for their affections. This included plantation owners and magistrates who preyed on the vulnerability of Indian women in their colonies. Indian men retaliated against women’s
“infidelity” with machetes — that tool of indenture.

But this violence is enduring. In 2009, Jahajee Sisters worked with Sakhi for South Asian Women (two Queens, New York-based organizations) to create a safe space for survivors of domestic violence. They conducted poetry workshops and published Bolo Behen! Speak Sister!, a collection of poems by Indo-Caribbean women protesting the violence of a male-dominated society, now in a second diaspora.

Diabetes

To me, chronically ill with diabetes — me get sugah — the greatest irony is that my ancestors were contracted to cultivate sugar on another people’s indigenous land for the British and their Empire, and what we are left with is diabetes — a disease that disproportionately affects South Asians and other people of color, making it so we cannot eat sugar, or that sugar imbalance will eventually kill us. Diabetes has claimed limbs on both sides of my family. It is so commonplace that when I told my friend that I was diagnosed at 32 he wasn’t shocked by the fact, but rather replied, “Already?”

Racism

Anti-black racism in East Indian spaces is rampant. I understand this as a colonial haunting. When the British brought Indians to work the plantations, slavery was recently abolished and the British gave Indians work that would have gone to Afro-Guyanese, shaping the relationship between the newly freed people and the newly imported labor. Members of my own family like to say things like “we were never slaves” when the truth is we absolutely were; we have more cultural commonalities and values with Afro-Guyanese than we do with anyone from the Indian subcontinent. India is not “home”—it is a mythological homeland.

In her essay, “The Indo-Caribbean Experience: Now and Then,” Elizabeth Jaikaran writes about this racism as a way for the British to keep two major ethnic groups divided, so that they would not unite against their common oppressor:

“Do not speak to the Indians,” said the British to the Africans. “They are vile and carry diseases.”

 “Do not speak to the Africans,” said the British to the Indians. “They are vile and carry diseases.”

Alcoholism

It’s not a family event without rum. Friends and family will chuckle in agreement. They laugh knowing we dance on a demon’s mouth. Rum claims lives through addiction and has its roots in the plantation economy: it allowed workers some psychic relief from the trauma of labor, all the while re-investing the money earned by the laborer in the same system that kept them poor. Toil, drink. Punish bad bad, suck rum steady.

In his hit “Rum is Meh Lovah,” singer songwriter Ravi B sings about deadly dispossession:

Rum kill me muddah, rum kill me faddah

rum kill me whole family; rum kill me bruddah,

rum kill me sistah now it want to come an’ kill me

It would be joyous if it weren’t so personally harrowing. I have an uncle who died from complications from alcohol, and other family members of all generations who suffer/have suffered from

Homophobia

Documented in ship records made public by Gaiutra Bahadur from the 1898 voyage of the S.S. Mersey, a ship surgeon caught two men, Mohungu and Nabi Baksh, having sex. As punishment Mohungu had to holystone the deck from 6 am to 6 pm and then have his penis scalded as a preventative cure for this variety of homosexual intercourse.

The Criminal Law (Offenses) Act of Guyana and Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code inherit their oppressive homophobic language — almost word for word — from Britain, illustrating how this homophobia, touted as one of the worst in the world, originated in white, colonizing minds and religion.

Last night I dreamt of my mother. She too lives by the sea, in Florida — far from Chennai, Bihar, Georgetown, or Lusignan. Since her divorce she has become a painter and is drawn to the poetry of the waves. Without her work, she feels as though she would fall into a dark space — a holding space. This anxiety, of constantly needing to work, is part of the mythology that makes my family human. She is drawn to the sea: that original place of trauma — hoping, longing, for the return of wholeness. A return “home” wherever that may be.

We are haunted by the specter of this unfulfilled promise. Would my ancestors have left if they knew what would become of their progeny?

Like my mother, I am drawn to the sea. It can hold complexity and paradox in its blue throat. As a poet, I like to believe it is because I have a deep, abiding connection with history and motion. That my own rooted place in this world is to journey. I like to believe that I inherited not only the damage of being enslaved but also the seafarer’s heart, sturdy and craving motion. I want this motion to be what unmoors me from the damage, to use it as one would fertilizer, something breaking down and inspiring new life.

May 5th 1838

briks ke dole par hamar potiya jhulai

abse ham toke bulawe jahaaj-bhai


Ash applied evenly fertilizes the field.

On those first ships did they know they would seed the earth?

We are wreckage, broken planks, history’s skipping

record — repeating the migrant strain again

and against kalapani ke twist-up face while

the rakshas of erasure licks its lips. What’s born of death —

here we grow wild. In Queens, see clumps of bora

long beans twist feral by fire hydrants.

 
We sow bits of ourselves in all corners:

flags on bamboo posts, milk poured into the sea.

 
My daughter will swing on the tree branch,

we will all call you Brother of the Ship.

 
Why the hell should I celebrate colonization? To celebrate Indian Arrival Day is to commemorate the beginning of our slavery sentences. To celebrate Indian Arrival Day is to celebrate the damage wreaked upon brown bodies by white systems of colonial violence. To celebrate Indian Arrival Day is to celebrate the cause of each ill: diabetes, racism, alcoholism, homophobia, and domestic violence.

In a conversation I had with Toronto-based artist and sociologist Andil Gosine who works to inscribe this history into his art, he lamented that when we celebrate Indian Arrival Day, “we are implicitly erasing the history and actual experiences of indentures.” He continued, “Indians didn’t arrive: they were merely the cargo of the system of Indentureship, and it is ridiculous that we would celebrate the beginning of bondage.”

This May I remembered my ancestor’s struggles, my parent’s struggles, and my own struggles that result from indenture ship. I celebrated the end of indenture and human trafficking on this global scale. I celebrated survival. I celebrated that I am here today writing this essay, writing my poems, that white hands did not erase me. I will not allow my ancestors’ stories — my own stories — to be disfigured by the hands of the state. We have survived colonization, slavery, and dehumanization. But surviving does not equal healing. There is yet a long open swath of sea left to cross.

Maybe did banna should celebrate emancipation day, rather than Indian Arrival Day.

Iguana posted:

All dem coming to Guyana - American congressman, Hindu man, Arab man, Chinee man. By de time dem done foolin' we schupidee teefmen in PPP, PNC and AFC we gon be paying dem fuh tek we aile.

On point!!

VishMahabir posted:

Gilbakka posted:

Those two young ladies in the sculpture look like sexy Bollywood actresses, not like agricultural labourers. Dem bhai and da picknee look arright.

LOL...Gilly, you looking at the top part of dep 2 people...look at the whole picture  

Dah banna wicked tarasss.

ronan posted:

Bibi Haniffa posted:

Is Modi coming to endorse the PPP candidate for President in December?

perhaps . . . 

Perhaps not..

Looking like Modi's rock star fame is preceding his upcoming trip to Guyana. Me hear a tassa band already wukking up a welcoming party.

Gilbakka posted:

Looking like Modi's rock star fame is preceding his upcoming trip to Guyana. Me hear a tassa band already wukking up a welcoming party.

This group will do welcoming ?

ronan posted:

Dave posted:

Berbice have all races anyway. 

and Georgetown . . .?

Choke and Rob.

ronan posted:

Bibi Haniffa posted:

Is Modi coming to endorse the PPP candidate for President in December?

perhaps . . . 

He is coming to raise concerns about the brutality the Indians suffer at the hands of the Negroes. The Chinese had their say and now it's time for the Indians.

Django posted:

Gilbakka posted:

Looking like Modi's rock star fame is preceding his upcoming trip to Guyana. Me hear a tassa band already wukking up a welcoming party.

This group will do welcoming ?

You picking me brain? I cannot tell you my source or details, okay Bai?

skeldon_man posted:

ronan posted:

Bibi Haniffa posted:

Is Modi coming to endorse the PPP candidate for President in December?

perhaps . . . 

He is coming to raise concerns about the brutality the Indians suffer at the hands of the Negroes [Afro]. The Chinese had their say and now it's time for the Indians.

You lodged your complain ?

Guyanese of East Indians descent have to understand that Guyana belongs to all of the Citizens,no one have more or less Rights and Equality,there are space for every one to exist.

Ok bossman,offense ethnic word edited.

Django posted:

skeldon_man posted:

ronan posted:

Bibi Haniffa posted:

Is Modi coming to endorse the PPP candidate for President in December?

perhaps . . . 

He is coming to raise concerns about the brutality the Indians suffer at the hands of the Negroes [Afro]. The Chinese had their say and now it's time for the Indians.

You lodged your complain ?

Guyanese of East Indians descent have to understand that Guyana belongs to all of the Citizens,no one have more or less Rights and Equality,there are space for every one to exist.

Ok bossman,offense ethnic word edited.

The English dictionary has a definition of the word Negro. Why is the word offensive? Not sure what you meant by "edited" and "offense".