Abstract
In Guyana persons and objects are considered as ‘essentially’ Indian or may become Indian through specific performances such as wearing ‘Indian Wear.’ Chapter 2 elaborates that Guyanese Indian ethnic identity was consolidated particularly from the 1960s, influenced by processes such as ethnopoliticization. In this context, the category ‘Indian Wear’ was (re)invented to define particular styles of clothing that create ‘Indianness.’ Indianness refers to Indian ethnic identity, which is constructed through othering processes and in relation to ‘Africans.’ The constitutive others in the North American diaspora are South Asian Indians, face-to-face encounters with whom result in the definition of ‘Indian Others’ and the perception of different ways of being Indian. Sartorial practices here are applied to create or contest another group’s Indianness and authenticity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Annie: Indian Wear covers everything. Because this, those kinds of clothes are related to Indians. So you’re going to have the big heading, Indian Wear, and then they will have shalwar…
Deomati: Uh-huh.
Annie: … sari, kurta and so on. In the Author’s proof pdf the dialogues in endnotes do not display the line breaks, which are visible here, and the lack of line breaks makes the reading of the translations hard.
- 2.
A head wrap made from Madras cloth. Peasant women used to wear this in the past, but today only few elderly women can be seen wearing it.
- 3.
Round neckline with a split in the center creating a ‘V.’
- 4.
Sinah: Sometimes I saw people at the mandir, wearing a long skirt and a blouse or something. … But sometimes people say that this is an “Indian skirt.” Have you ever heard people say that?
Indumati: The long skirt, sometimes that is not Indian Wear, you understand? That is the ordinary, like how you’ve worn one skirt and have come there the other day? That is not the Indian Wear! You know? That is a skirt and a top. You understand?
Sinah: If it looked like they’ve made it from a sari or something? Sometimes they have the beads, and the embroidery, and it looks similar to the shalwar or something, you know?
Indumati: Yes, right. Well, there are some! Some are sold like that! The skirt has beads on it, and things like that, it looks like… you know… like this here now [points at Sinah’s long skirt]. This is no shalwar! Or lahenge, you understand?
Sinah: If this [long skirt] had a lot of embroidery…
Indumati: If it had a lot of beads in the front and so on!
Sinah: Then it would be like an Indian skirt?
Indumati: Yes! It could be like an Indian thing!
- 5.
‘Title’ also refers to surnames.
- 6.
With regard to female slave dress he describes: ‘On some plantations the women wore their skirts pulled over a cord tied around the hips, exposing their legs as high as the knee (…). This style provided greater freedom of movement, enabling women to more easily carry out their daily tasks’ (Buckridge 2004, 47).
- 7.
Deomati: A long time ago, if you were about to leave for church, they would wear their saris. And the older people wore that jula and coat at home. And if they wanted to, they wore that, not the new ones, [when] they went to church, all of them wore saris. That was their wear.
Sinah: Ah, okay! I thought that they wore the…
Deomati: And we, for example I, my mother’s age, they would wear their coat and jacket to go backdam.
- 8.
The term ‘Sunday best (clothes)’ is usually connoted to Christian dress customs due to its reference to the holy Sunday that is emphasized in Christian traditions. In Guyana, this emphasis applies to Hindu traditions as well, and Sunday services have developed in all Guyanese Hindu traditions as a result of Hindu-Christian syncretism and the working conditions on the plantations (Vertovec 1992). In Berbice, these services are usually carried out on Sunday mornings and in some cases additionally on Friday evenings. The frequency of Friday evening services is decreasing, interpreted as a consequence of the increasing ‘lack of pandits,’ resulting from extensive outward migration.
- 9.
The composition of the Trinidadian population with regard to ethnic groups is similar to that of Guyana due to a comparable colonial history of British domination, slavery, and indentureship. Particularly since the Trinidadian oil boom in the 1970s and a greater affluence of the Trinidadian population, the economic and political development of the two countries has resulted in different cultural and social practices such as the conspicuous consumption of Indian Wear, which commenced earlier in Trinidad. Therefore, the cultural context of both Trinidad and Guyana cannot be considered as interchangeable. I reflect on this potential bias throughout this study when using examples and references referring to Trinidadian Indians and Indian culture, which are more widely available than studies on Guyanese culture. I argue that particular developments with regard to Indian culture are similar, although certainly not identical. Cultural flows and migration have fostered cultural exchange processes between the two countries.
- 10.
To go ‘up/in front’ denotes the act of approaching Mudda (Mother), goddess Kali, during manifestation, standing in front of her, and directly asking her for help.
- 11.
Indumati: But you see, in my case, what Mother tells me, I do it every week. Every time I go there, I wear my garment. I wear my garment. Because she says, she wants the garment. And Mother has told me one thing, that any time I go there, I have to go in front of her. Says, she wants to see me in front of her. So any time I go there, I go to bathe and … let her see me. You understand? Right. So I go in front of her, like, “Look at me.”
…
Sinah: Yes. So what she … what happens if you do not wear the garment and you go in front? Will she tell you?
Indumati: Yes. She will tell you.
…
Sinah: Did it ever happen to you? Did you ever wear something different?
Indumati: Yes, once I was wearing different clothes and she said: “Where is your garment?” … So you just have to say: “Alright, Mother, the next time I will wear it.”
- 12.
“Mommy, she wants to ask you: a long time ago, when you were a little girl, did we coolie people, the Hindus dress with Hindu kinds of clothes? Sari, shalwar and so on?”
- 13.
Bhavani: You dress according to your culture. If it is a Hindu culture you are going to attend, you wear your Hindu stuff! Your Hindu Wear!
Sinah: What would you say is Hindu stuff, then?
Bhavani: Because, what shall I say? For example, pants and top is English Wear! But we follow Hindu Wear! … Hindu Wear is shalwar, gharara, like if you got a sari, that is Hindu Wear. So I can’t picture myself going to a church, and I wear pants or I wear a short skirt, to go there!
- 14.
Deomati: Uh-huh. And the shalwar too, they say: ‘That’s Indian Wear.’
Sinah: But … a long time ago, did you use to call that ‘Indian Wear’ or did you say sari or anything else?
Deomati: Sari, we used to say, we didn’t use Indian Wear. Mostly the old people. … You know, they put down that name.
- 15.
Orientalism is a concept developed and defined by Edward Said, addressing ‘a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between “the Orient” and (most of the time) “the Occident”’ (Said 2003, 2).
- 16.
I refer to the terms ‘ethnicity’ and ‘ethnic identity’ by drawing on Steve Garner’s definitions, which he discussed concerning the Guyanese context. He defines ethnicity as ‘the invention, improvization and ongoing manipulation of a shared cultural heritage by a group of people acting so as to distinguish themselves from other groups, in a framework of unequal power relations’ (2008, 35). Ethnic identity he defines as ‘the translation of ethnicity into the form of a practical identity at a given moment’ (ibid.).
- 17.
The official Guyanese census refers to ‘East Indian’ to denote an Indian ethnic group. Although some Guyanese declare their ethnic identity as ‘East Indian,’ the vast majority of my informants define themselves as ‘Indian.’
- 18.
Amerindian: 9.2 %; Chinese: 0.2 %; Mixed: 16.7 %; Portuguese: 0.2 %; White: 0.1 % (Benjamin 2002, 25).
- 19.
And this [Madras] church doesn’t tell you, ‘Leave your church!,’ you know. They don’t advise you to do that, to leave your nation. No! But for example Christians, if you are going to a Christian church, these people tell you that you can’t turn Hindu. You have to cut it out, leave it! And bare/pure Christian! But that is not right!
- 20.
For a reflection on the hegemonic and colonial development of ‘ethnicity’ and its relation to the concept of ‘nation,’ see Williams (1991).
- 21.
‘Escapees Still at Large.’ Stabroek News, March 3, 2002, np; ‘Search for Gang of Five Goes On.’ Stabroek News, April 18, 2002, np.
- 22.
Thus, a newspaper article on violent crime states: ‘Although it is evident that the current crime wave started on February 23, 2002 with the Mashramani breakout of the ‘gang of five’ from the Georgetown prison, the reasons for the subsequent scale, scope and size of the criminal enterprise are not so clear’ (‘Guyana’s Gangs.’ Stabroek News, December 10, 2008, np).
- 23.
The term ‘Hindutva’ was promoted first in the ideological pamphlet ‘Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?’ published by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923, promoting essential ‘Hinduness’ and the concept of a united ‘Hindu Rashtra’ (Hindu nation).
- 24.
During my fieldwork, no movie theater in the Canje and New Amsterdam areas was still open; the wooden buildings of former theaters were in varying stages of decay.
- 25.
Shanti: Now with all the fancy things that are coming from the Indian people, I see, I notice this kind of dressing now, which means that people want to change. They want to have the latest what they see in the movies!
Krishnadatt: So what they see in the movies, that is what they prefer.
- 26.
They say, if Indians can do it, then why can’t they wear it? You understand? So, India sets an example to Indians! And Indians are following whatever they do in [the movies] now. You find that the people want to do it. I think that it is a modern country, and the country should be in a way that everybody can look at the country. … And I think, India is above! And India is supposed to set the example, that the people from other countries could follow it!
- 27.
The term ‘Indian migrants from South Asia’ is often applied to differentiate Indian migrants who have lived outside the Indian subcontinent as a result of indentured labor from so-called direct migrants. The term was coined by Parminder Bhachu in 1985, who refers to Sikhs in Great Britain as ‘Indian migrants from South Asia,’ for they have migrated from the Punjab to British East African colonies as indentured laborers and since the 1960s to Great Britain (Bhachu 1985). Bhachu opposes Indian migrants from South Asia to ‘direct migrants,’ those migrants who migrated directly from India to Great Britain. Numerous scholars use the terms ‘Indian migrants from South Asia’ and ‘second diaspora’ to describe the international migration of Indians, whose ancestors had already migrated as indentured laborers (e.g. Baumann 2003). I argue that such a distinction presupposes a perception of India as ‘motherland’ and that it is necessary to carefully reflect the social construction of the category Indian and twice migrant in the context of Guyanese Indianness.
- 28.
Depending on personal appreciation of Indo-Guyanese, Indian Indians in New York City refer to Indo-Guyanese as ‘Guyanese Indians’ or ‘Guyanese.’ The latter is often applied in cases in which the Indianness of Guyanese is questioned.
- 29.
Pt. Sandeep: What happened. In India, our foreparents who left India, it’s over 150 years ago, what they were doing 150 years ago had changed several times [there]. The tradition changed. But what happened in Guyana, the tradition remained the same, for 150 years. But in the meantime in India they are not doing the same any more! So the tradition changed in India, but has never changed in Guyana, because that’s how it was handed down to them.
Sinah: I see. Have you ever done a puja, even if Indians don’t do it, have you ever done it for an Indian person?
Pt. Sandeep: Yes, I have. And it’s very impressive when you do a puja like this for the Indians. They feel that what you’re doing is so old! They know about it! It’s like they have never seen it before! But most of them would tell you, “It is so ancient!”
- 30.
Here there is more culture than in India now. In India you have a lot of, most of hip hop over there now … like they lost the culture. Especially when they come to America. The people from India, when they come to America lose their culture. They turn to American fashions/turn American. One Indian guy was telling me, he said: ‘You Guyanese, and Trinidadians, are more cultured. You all find a temple. But for example the Punjabis …. You don’t find them in temples.’
References
Allahar, Anton. 2004. Ethnic Entrepreneurship and Nationalism in Trinidad: Afrocentrism and ‘Hindutva’. Social and Economic Studies 53(2): 117–154.
Allsopp, Richard, and Jeannette Allsopp. 2003. Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press.
Banerjee, Mukulika, and Daniel Miller. 2008. The Sari. Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers.
Banks, Marcus. 1996. Ethnicity: Anthropological Constructions. London, New York: Routledge.
Barth, Fredrik, ed. 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Bergen, Oslo, Tromsö: Scandinavian University Books.
Baumann, Gerd. 1996. Contesting Culture: Ethnicity and Community in West London. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baumann, Martin. 2003. Alte Götter in neuer Heimat: Religionswissenschaftliche Analysen zum Phänomen der Diaspora am Beispiel von Hindus auf Trinidad. Marburg: Diagonal-Verlag.
Benjamin, Lennox, ed. 2002. Guyana Population and Housing Census. Government of Guyana.
Bhachu, Parminder. 1985. Twice Migrants: East African Sikh Settlers in Britain. London, New York: Tavistock Publications.
Brosius, Christiane. 2005. The Scattered Homelands of the Migrant: Bollyworld Through the Diasporic Lens. In Bollyworld: Popular Indian Cinema Through a Transactional Lens, eds. Raminder Kaur, and Ajay J. Sinha, 207–238. New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London: Sage Publications.
Buckridge, Steeve O. 2004. The Language of Dress: Resistance and Accommodation in Jamaica, 1760–1890. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press.
Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff. 2009. Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Eicher, Joanne B. and Barbara Sumberg. 1995. World Fashion, Ethnic, and National Dress. In Dress and Ethnicity: Change Across Space and Time, ed. Joanne Bubolz Eicher, 295–306. Oxford, Washington, DC: Berg Publishers.
Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 1993. Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives. London, Boulder: Pluto Press.
Garner, Steve. 2008. Guyana 1838–1985: Ethnicity, Class and Gender. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers.
Hall, Stuart. 1996. New Ethnicities. In Stuart Hall. Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, eds. Stuart Hall, David Morley, and Kuan-Hsing Chen, 442–451. London, New York: Routledge.
Hall, Stuart. 2000. Cultural Identity and Diaspora. In Dispora and Visual Culture: Representing Africans and Jews, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff, 21–33. London, New York: Routledge.
Halstead, Narmala. 2000. Switching Identities: Movements between ‘Indian’ and ‘Non-Indian’ in Guyana. Anthropology in Action 7: 22–32.
———. 2005. Belonging and Respect Notions vis-à-vis Modern East Indians: Hindi Movies in the Guyanese East Indian Diaspora. In Bollyworld: Popular Indian Cinema Through a Transactional Lens, eds. Raminder Kaur, and Ajay J. Sinha, 261–283. New Delhi, Thousand Oaks, London: Sage Publications.
Heyse-Moore, Dominique. 2010. Trinidad in the Nineteenth Century. In Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, eds. Joanne Bubolz Eicher, Doran H. Ross, Margot Schevill, Phyllis G. Tortora, Jasleen Dhamija, and Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, 277–284. Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Hinds, David. 2011. Ethno-Politics and Power Sharing in Guyana: History and Discourse. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing.
Horowitz, Donald L. 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Indo-Caribbean Alliance 2013a. Frequently Asked Questions. Last access: April 16, 2014. http://www.indocaribbean.org/faqs.html.
——— 2013b. Get to know us! Last access: April 16, 2014. http//www.indocaribbean.org/about-us.html.
Jayaram, N. 1998. Social Construction of the Other Indian. Encounters between Indian Nationals and Diasporic Indians. Journal of Social and Economic Development 1(1): 43–63.
Khan, Aisha. 1994. Juthaa in Trinidad: Food, Pollution and Hierarchy in a Caribbean Diaspora Community. American Ethnologist 21(2): 245–269.
Khan, Aisha. 2004. Callaloo Nation: Metaphors of Race and Religious Identity among South Asians in Trinidad. Durham: Duke University Press.
———. 2007. Good to Think? Creolization, Optimism, and Agency. Current Anthropology 48(5): 653–673.
Lynnebakke, Brit. 2007. Contested Equality: Social Relations between Indian and Surinamese Hindus in Amsterdam. In Global Indian Diasporas: Exploring Trajectories of Migration and Theory, ed. Gijsbert Oonk, 235–262. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
McLoughlin, S. 2005. Migration, Diaspora and Transnationalism: Transformations of Religion and Culture in a Globalising Age. In The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, ed. John R. Hinnells, 526–549. London, New York: Routledge.
Miller, Daniel. 1994a. Modernity, an Ethnographic Approach: Dualism and Mass Consumption in Trinidad. Oxford, Providence: Berg Publishers.
———. 1994b. Style and Ontology. In Consumption and Identity, ed. Jonathan Friedman, 71–96. Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Munasinghe, Viranjini. 2006. Dougla Logics: East Indians, Miscegenation, and the National Imaginary. In Transnational South Asians: The Making of a Neo-Diaspora, eds. S. Koshy, and R. Radhakrishnan, 181–214. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Oonk, Gijsbert. 2007. Global Indian Diasporas: Exploring Trajectories of Migration and Theory. In Global Indian Diasporas: Exploring Trajectories of Migration and Theory, ed. Gijsbert Oonk, 9–27. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Outar, Lisa. 2011. Tropical Longing: the Quest for India in the Early Twentieth-Century Caribbean. South Asian History and Culture 2(4): 464–481.
Peake, Linda, and D. Alissa Trotz. 1999. Gender, Ethnicity and Place: Women and Identities in Guyana. London, New York: Routledge.
Premdas, Ralph R. 1992. Ethnic Conflict and Development: The Case of Guyana. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development.
——— 2004. Diaspora and Its Discontents: A Caribbean Fragment in Toronto in Quest of Cultural Recognition and Political Empowerment. Ethnic and Racial Studies 27(4): 544–564.
Ramaswamy, Sumathi. 2010. The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ramey, Steven. 2011. Hindu Minorities and the Limits of Hindu Inclusiveness: Sindhi and Indo-Caribbean Hindu Communities in Atlanta. International Journal of Hindu Studies 15(2): 209–239.
Roopnarine, Lomarsh. 2006. Indo-Caribbean Social Identity. Caribbean Quarterly 52(1): 1–11.
Said, Edward W. 2003. Orientalism. London: Penguin.
Seecharan, Clem. 1993. India and the Shaping of the Indo-Guyanese Imagination, 1890s–1920s. Leeds: Peepal Tree Press.
———. 2011. India’s Awakening and the Imagination of the ‘East Indian Nation’ in British Guiana. In India and the Diasporic Imagination. L’Inde et l’Imagination Diasporique, eds. Rita Christian, Judith Misrahi-Barak, and Khaleel Torabully, 33–52. Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée.
Segal, Daniel A. 2006. Circulation, Transpositions, and the Travails of ‘Creole’. American Ethnologist 33(4): 579–581.
Sinha-Kerkhoff, Kathinka, and Ellen Bal. 2003. ‘Eternal Call of the Ganga’: Reconnecting with People of Indian Origin in Surinam. Economic and Political Weekly 38(38): 4008–4021.
Tambiah, Stanley J. 1979. A Performative Approach to Ritual. Proceedings of the British Academy 65: 113–169.
Tarlo, Emma. 2010. Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith. Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers.
van der Veer, Peter. 1996. Authenticity and Authority in Surinamese Hindu Ritual. In Across the Dark Waters: Ethnicity and Indian Identity in the Caribbean, eds. David Dabydeen, and Brinsley Samaroo, 131–146. London: Macmillan Caribbean.
Vertovec, Steven. 1992. Hindu Trinidad: Religion, Ethnicity and Socio-Economic Change. London: Macmillan Caribbean.
———. 1993. Indo-Caribbean Experience in Britain. Overlooked, Miscategorized, Misunderstood. In Inside Babylon: The Caribbean Diaspora in Britain, ed. James Winston, 165–178. London: Verso.
———. 1994a. Caught in an Ethnic Quandary: Indo-Caribbean Hindus in London. In Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain, eds. Roger Ballard, and M. Banks, 272–290. London: Hurst.
Williams, Brackette F 1991. Stains on My Name, War in My Veins: Guyana and the Politics of Cultural Struggle. Durham: Duke University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kloß, S.T. (2016). Negotiating ‘Indianness’ Through Indian Wear. In: Fabrics of Indianness. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56541-9_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56541-9_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-56540-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-56541-9
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)