historical, demographic and socio-economic developments in Guyana have in turn impacted, influenced and diffused the "Indian" in this culture, and have given to it a distinct Guyanese flavour?.

When I was in Delhi some years ago I encountered certain ‘happenings’ that led me to believe that I could share racial affinity at one and the same time as I experienced cultural differences.

In Delhi, right there inside the Palika Bazaar with a thousand others, I was "Indian" all right. I mirrored the same facial and ethnic characteristics as the rest of men at whom I looked with brotherly curiosity. They returned my with commercial interest. I dressed and I spoke differently to most of them. However, even though that I was a foreigner I was treated with respect, and attracted great attention, I felt that I was a foreigner.

"Where you from, Sah?" an Indian shopkeeper asked. Guyana, was my reply

I saw that encounter posed a problem. I said, "West Indies". "Why, yes. Alvin Kallicharran. Yes, he always shopped here!" I felt betrayed. Here, in India, I wanted to be Indian; I wanted to feel Indian. But I was something else. Perhaps, West Indian,

Then someone told me that my name was incorrect. It was, more appropriately pronounced, "Naagar Muthu",

"Look at his eyes, " he said to another colleague. "He is from Andhra."

There was no doubt that the onlooker was trying to cast me correctly. He is definitely from Andhra, he added.

I was not surprised that when my turn came to meet him, the Chief Minister from Uttar Pradesh, he didn't feel obliged to shake hands with me.

Later, at the Taj Palace Hotel, I found myself, at a buffet dinner, navigating the tables for food, not red-hot with pepper. A colleague in sari saw my dilemma, and commented sarcastically,

Monday, February 27, 2012 

"Oh, my. We should have ordered some English foods!"

So, I was English? No doubt by accident of my birth in that part of the world called British Guiana.

Later a friendly waiter invited me to the kitchen. He offered me a dish of dhol and rice, which he had brought from his house that day. The dhol was dark, but I ate with relish. I felt was back in Guyana, and that I was ‘Indian’ again.

The point I seek to illustrate is that being Indian by birth or origin does not make all Indians the same. We have peculiarities fashioned by history, geography and nationality.

Some years ago I met a group of old Indian women with madras rhumals on their heads in the island of Guadeloupe. They were smoking unfiltered cigarettes and drinking white rum. I spoke English, and they replied in French.

Woman with madras rhumal (head wear)

 We looked the same, but were distinguished by our history and local conditioning. However, even in this difference we could identify a cultural affinity: When I shared their massala crabs and byghaan curry , I knew who we were -Indians. Perhaps madrasis, too. I did not doubt that the women would prefer to describe themselves Guadeloupean, and that I would rather introduce myself as Guyanese, if we could have understood each other.

I am Guyanese", there could be no contradiction in that. My ‘lndian-ness’ has been woven into a distinct identity -a personality that is Guyanese. It is for ethnic identification perhaps that we coin the appellation,

This notion of our ‘lndian-ness’ and ‘Guyanese-ness’ is raised precisely to show that as an ethnic grouping while there are many influences that help to shape our identity , there are cultural traits that are inherent in us. We cannot rid ourselves of these and still remain the same. So, if I say, "I am Indian, and I am Guyanese", there could be no contradiction in that. My ‘lndian-ness’ has been woven into a distinct identity -a personality that is Guyanese. It is for ethnic identification perhaps that we coin the appellation, Guyanese Indian or Indo-Guyanese.

This identity difference has raised a polemical issue between what is Indian from what is Guyanese Indian or West Indian. The Stabroek Newspaper puts it rather bluntly: " For a Guyanese Indian to describe himself as Indian is in an important sense false, as he is in fact far more West Indian or Caribbean in views and outlook than he is Indian."

That newspaper feels that .after well over a century of living here we (the six races of Guyana) are far more Guyanese or Caribbean in identity than anything else.

The culture of Guyanese Indians is what makes up our total way of life. It is everything that is inherited and acquired that is passed on from generation to generation. Unmistakably, the root of Indian culture in Guyana is in India. Most of it is religious in background as India, (where Buddhism and Hinduism were born) art, sculptures and architecture had served religion.

In Guyana, Indian culture is visible in tradition of music, dance, symbols and even gestures. People say they can tell who is a Guyanese Indian from others, by the way the person moves his/her head or hands. Indian culture is reflected in our cuisines --the peppery hot food of Andhra Pradesh and the coconut-based curries of Kerala; the marriage customs, death rites, modes of rearing children, and treatment of elders.

There is also the culture of thrift and of resistance. This influence of India in Guyana and the Caribbean struck me when I read a beautiful account about the observance of Ramleela in Trinidad and Tobago. The play or epic captures a piece of India, and replicates its oral traditions through the generations in our region. Walcott shows how the epic has grown inside our Caribbean personality.

It is well known that throughout the period of indentureship and thererafter, Indians lived under appalling poverty. However, historians have shown that through calculated withdrawal into their culture, Indians survived. Part of that culture were thrift and labour, and investment on their children as economic future. This was a reproduction of themselves at a qualitatively higher plane.

The preservation of Indian culture, however, was a saga of courage. It is recorded how difficult the work of Canadian missionaries was to convert Indians in the early part of this century. In a report from one Rev. E. H. Johnson who had shown deep understanding of Indian response states:

"Christian work on the colony has never been easy, and one of the major difficulties has been the opposition of the East Indians to anything that appeared to draw their children away from their customs...Isolated among strangers, they seem to feel the need of vigorously preserving their national identity.”

That reference to "national identity" showed the affinity between the early Indians in the Diaspora and the "Motherland". It was not spontaneous. It was a form of resistance by Indians everywhere to the subjugation of India by the British imperialist, and of the descendants of Indians in the Diaspora by alien cultures That resistance is still within our being. It has become the Indian influence on our Guyanese personality .For we can never discount or

discard the emotional/cultural ties between our ancestors and their motherland even while we recognise that the centre of our being lies here in this Guyana mudflat.

Indentured Indians were once despised because they brought with them, and fought to keep, a culture alien to western customs and values. That was met with resistance. Culture, of course, does not by itself explain why Indians stood up to oppression of all types. But we must recognise resistance as part of the Indian culture.

Some today speak derisively about the culture of Indian thrift and attempt to make out that Indians in Guyana are the oppressors, or the cause of oppression inflicted upon other races. This is a red herring, a smokescreen for political mischief and opportunism. Sections of the British ruling classes had tried to malign Indian indentured labour in the colony by pointing to their acquisition of money.

The story of Indian survival is largely that of a culture and the various and productive, and progressive. This is not meant as a commentary on any other race or group. In Guyana, Africans, Chinese, Portuguese and Amerindians also have rich traditions from which they must draw spiritual strength, self -esteem and ethnic .pride. They too have resourceful cultures here and elsewhere where Guyanese reside.

While the Indian origin of our forefathers explains cultural peculiarity, it is our Guyanese nationality that gives us a distinct identity and confers on us legal rights and freedoms. It also beckons us to patriotic duty, and imposes on us

civic responsibility. In many ways, in our spheres of labour, business acumen, family values, education and leadership potentials, the cultural influences on Guyanese Indians have been a driving force in our Nation's development.