readings

OCTOBER 4, 2013

OCTOBER 4, 2013

readings
metaphor for creativity, agency, and the empowerment of subordinate peoples. Khan emphasises however that the relationship between a rubric and its instance is always an issue in the social sciences, and this is what is examined in Callaloo Nation. That is, how does the creolization concept play out in the specific instance of Trinidad, where it is both race (AfroCaribbean and Indo-Caribbean) and religion (hybridised forms of Hinduism and Islam) interacting and constituting each other. There are two types of syncretism within the religious space that Khan explores in the book. The first is the interplay of correct and superstitious forms. The second is the syncretic mixing between Hinduism and Islam, and the practitioners concerns about such mixing. The superstitious forms are usually referred to as simi-dimi in Trinidadian vernacular. Khan posits that this word may have been derived from Arabic (dhimmi) via Urdu. Regardless of the roots, the key aspect of simi-dimi is that it is a classification of a set of beliefs that the indentured Indian immigrants carried with them, but which were considered superstition in the new context of Trinidad. In what Khan describes as a hegemonically Christian society, some of these beliefs, coming from both Hinduism and Islam, were negatively associated with obeah (magic, folk religion). This framing reflects the authorising power of canonical forces, which could define one subset of practices as religion and another one as superstition, or even worse, mumbo jumbo. Trinidad saw ways of knowing the world, through the Indo-Caribbean experience as being divided between simi-dimi on the one hand, and religion and religious correctives on the other hand. All of these were co-located in the domain of the natural, within the same plausibility structure. What is crucial here is that there is always a tension between these competing practices, and Khan
NEW AGE Xtra 35

Searching for Callaloo Nation

BY Naeem Mohaiemen
Standing in the midst of the ruins of Bangladeshs religious and ethnic mosaic, does the callaloo nation of Trinidad offer any useful lessons? The situations are not comparable by any means colonial history, migration paths, and neo-liberal present are all radically divergent. As has also been noted in Aisha Khans book, there is a recent hardening of categories even in Trinidad. The rainbow has teeth, but can its ideas still offer a way out of the separate and unequal culde-sac? Aisha Khans book Callaloo Nation: Metaphors of Race and Religious Identity among South Asians in Trinidad (Duke University Press, 2004) rotates off the concept of creolization, in theory and practice. In this book, she looks at the East Indian community of Trinidad, where her anthropological fieldwork was carried out for over a decade. The creolization example is through two axes: the relationship between Indo-Caribbeans and Afro-Caribbeans, and the adjacent coexistence of Hindu and Muslim Indo-Caribbeans. The latter concept is the focus of this review, especially Indo Caribbeans concerns with three aspects of identity formation. First, their concerns with an authentic Indian origin position in the Trinidad context; second, how they position themselves vis--vis simi dimi (superstitions); and finally, their visibility as regards their mainstream practices. Khan begins her book with an explanation of the concept of mixing or creolization. This is the metaphoric, and also literal, term for experiences where bio-genetic, social, or cultural boundaries are challenged, and transgressed. This is a prevailing cultural
34 NEW AGE Xtra

concern in Caribbean and Latin American countries, and Khan gives various examples. In Martinique, it is the contemporary creolite movement, made famous by references in Franz Fanons Black Skin White Masks and Edouard Glissants Poetics of Relation. Although Khan does not delve into Glissant in this work, he provided a fitting descriptor for the concept: We are not prompted solely by the defining of our identities but by their relation to everything possible as well the mutual mutations generated in this interplay of relations. (Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 1990, p 89). In Trinidad, subject of her study, it is the callaloo nation, also referred to as the tossed salad and in tourist brochures as rainbow. However, as Khan indicates in a chapter title the rainbow has teeth, because there are challenges to the idea of creolization. This can be understood also from two examples she gives outside Trinidad. One is Brazil, with its concept of embranquecimento, that is whitening or gradual progression toward European appearance and cultural practices. This concept is shared also by Colombia, Argentina, and Costa Rica. On the other hand, Mexican nationalist movements embodied mestizaje, but this was undone by hispanidad (hispanicisation), a concept championed by the Dominican dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. With so many examples of creolization, why did Khan choose Trinidad as the site for her study? The answer appears to be twofold. First, as per a central thesis of this book, there is a unique, mutually constitutive form of Hindu and Muslim practices in Trinidad. While these communities also live side by

side in other countries, such as Bangladesh or India, in Trinidad, the East Indians are displaced from their origins, which brings an additional valence to culture formation. Second, as Khan explicated in an earlier essay, Indo-Trinidadians are often understood as a master symbol of the Caribbean and a paradigm for the global (Khan, Journey to the Center of the Earth, 2001). She cites the theory of a world system that is replacing one diversity with another, where creolization is what Ulf Hannerz calls our most promising root metaphor (Hannerz, The World in Creolization, 1987). Thus, creolization functions as a diachronic and dynamic

readings
argues that eventually a hegemony of ideology leads to idealisations of purity which face off against the creolization that is the base of the Indo-Trinidad experience. In a book about creolization, Khan takes an interesting step when it comes to mixing up the structure of the book itself. Each communitys experience is represented in hermetically contained sections, for example in the chapter No Bhakti, only Gyan (Hindu community) and a subsequent one called You get honor for your knowledge (Muslim community). This minor book structure issue aside, the mixing up of community practices, and the resulting hybridity and purity anxieties, are explained clearly. We note that, at least in Khans retelling, the Hindu communitys anxieties of purity appear to be more about internal dissonances, while the Muslim communitys worries are about external forces (Hinduism, Trinidad, etc). The tug-of-war within Hindu practices is illustrated by the anecdote of a pandit who is lecturing on bhakti (devotion) and gyan (knowledge), only to be interrupted by the whispers of two listeners, who are recycling his words in an unlikely context. The listeners are carrying on a side conversation about a recent theft, topping it off with the sardonic comment, the tiefs have no bhakti, only gyan! Clearly the community is willing to add to the traditions they are receiving, encouraged by the callaloo nature of their hybridised lives. Even the lilting, creolized accents of English that Khan represents in transcribed quotes act as a suitable metaphor a willingness to mix and modify to your own preference starts with language and extends to religious practice. Thus, when two Hindu devotees are debating whether a pandits lecture came from the Ramayan or the Puranas, one debater heatedly responds, I know about Hinduism! We know we bit. We cant be fooled. When we turn to the Muslim experience, the motif of anxiety, about status, purity, and good teachings, are inscribed through the various stories. Khan explains that the Indo-Trinidadian Muslims are an example of what Dale Eickelman called dispersed,
36 NEW AGE Xtra

OCTOBER 4, 2013

OCTOBER 4, 2013

trans-regional, minority Islamic groups (Eickelman, The study of Islam in local contexts, 1984, p 11). Therefore, they carry an anxiety about lacking a deep cultural history of Islamic practice such as exists in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. A further perceived complication is that the Muslim heritage that developed in Trinidad came via Indianization, which existed in the habitus of both Hindu and Muslim Indian indentured labour. This concern about commingling is expressed by Khans informants, such as an Ahmadiyya Muslim (itself another small subsect of Islam) who says, customs observed by most of the Muslims were also partly that of Hindus, as well as some of the Hindu customs were taken from Muslims. These debates are embedded within manoeuvring between older and younger imams, although the conclusions are a confusing mesh a contradiction Khan does not fully resolve. For example, younger imams argue that older imams do not have the correct facts, but the older imams actually see contemporary practices as porous because long time Islam in Trinidad was more pure. Trinidad is an exemplar of creolization, and so, appropriately enough, the interpretations of proper practice are themselves mixed up. By the end of the book, Khan concludes that the mutually constitutive relationship between Hindu and Muslim communities, represented in the arguments between simidimi, creolized practice and proper practice, is a moving force. She calls it an uneasy and continuous negotiation, where identities are a source of equality, but also, contradictorily, a mechanism for inscribing hierarchies. She does however conclude, perhaps with a hint of sadness, that over time the movement has moved away from a more mutually constitutive, expansive category of Indian, towards more mutually exclusive, confined identity categories of Muslim and Hindu. In other words, the callaloo nation is gradually starting to behave like other nation states, and that is surely a loss to the possibilities of other practices. u
The author is a visual artist and a PhD student in Anthropology at Columbia University