Anyone who is truly interested in indentureship and the general history of how Indians came to Trinidad would have read this book, which may be why Keith Ormiston Laurence, a Trinidadian historian who taught for most of his career at UWI’s St Augustine campus, is hardly ever cited by Trini indocentrists.
It may also be because Laurence’s book, which, 23 years after its first publication, remains the authoritative text on Indian indentureship in the Caribbean, does not embrace the Indo narrative of oppression and triumph (unlike, for example, Canadian academic Dennison Moore’s Origins and Development of Racial Ideology in Trinidad). Laurence, who died in 2014 at age 81, was an old-fashioned scholar who used statistics and, for the most part, went where the data led.
A Question of Labour has answers about all major questions that anyone might ask about indentureship in Trinidad and in British Guiana (as Guyana was then called). How many Indians came to Trinidad between 1845 and 1918? The total was 129,251. What were their religions? Between 1874 and 1917, Laurence notes that 85 per cent of immigrants to Trinidad were Hindus, 14 per cent Muslims, and 0.07 per cent Christians. And what about the caste breakdown? Of the Hindus, 13 per cent were classified as high castes and the largest percentage, 38 per cent, as low castes.
Laurence also notes that “An early consequence of emigration for the Hindu Indians was the partial disintegration of caste values...Hindus in the West Indies mixed easily across caste lines and cross-caste marriages soon began and became common by the 1880s...High caste men continued to have influence among the Indians and Brahmans could get others to do their tasks for them, while it is alleged that some tried to ‘pass’ as of higher caste...Indians of relatively low caste were even able to function as Hindu priests.” (This kind of fact is another reason that Indocentrists, most of whom claim a high-caste lineage, don’t cite Laurence.)
Laurence’s book also contains information about tangential issues of indentureship. For example, what was the status of the Indian women who came to the region? “In view of the difficulty of recruiting women, it is not surprising that many of those who reached the West Indies were alleged to be prostitutes, picked up in city streets, or women seeking to escape their husbands....” he wrote. “The former charge was at least hotly denied by successive emigration agents over a period of years, though they agreed that the women were often promiscuous.” Laurence notes, too, that between 1872 and 1880, 21 of 22 Indian murders in Trinidad involved wives or reputed wives.
And what about the stereotype of Indians as rum drinkers? This, it turns out, wasn’t part of Indian culture but became part of Indo-Caribbean culture because of sugar-cane. If you are really interested in the history of Trinidad, Laurence’s book, still in print and available in bookstores, must be on your bookshelf
REVIEW BY KEVIN BALDEOSINGH
A Question of Labour
Author: KO Laurence
Ian Randle Publishers, 1994