Shaped over a period of twenty years, this is an elegantly written,
scholarly but highly accessible, collection of essays that are
essentially a map of how one of the Caribbean's most distinguished
historians has sought to discover himself through practise of his
craft. It covers new ground in Indo-Caribbean history primarily,
but it also explores innovatively aspects of the intellectual
legacy of four eminent Caribbean writers and thinkers: Guyanese
poet, Martin Carter, Guyanese historian, Walter Rodney, Nobel
laureate, V.S. Naipaul, and C.L.R. James, author of one of the
great books of the 20th century, Beyond a Boundary (1963). Several
of the pieces by Professor Seecharan, author of many books,
including Sweetening 'Bitter Sugar': Jock Campbell, the Booker
Reformer in British Guiana, 1934-66 (awarded the prestigious Elsa
Goveia Prize in 2005 by the Association of Caribbean Historians),
adopt a revisionist approach in revisiting the migration of
indentured labourers from India to the Caribbean, between 1838 and
1917.He challenges many of the received assumptions on the subject;
and he rejects that it was 'a new system of slavery'; that all the
people were duped or kidnapped into indentureship; indeed, that the
migrants had no agency in the process. He counters that the reverse
was invariably the case, documenting that most women and men dared
to travel alone, fleeing a life of utter despair in Uttar Pradesh
and Bihar in India to greater social freedom and a modicum of
material success - flight to Guyana and Trinidad could therefore be
considered, in most cases, an escape to freedom. Seecharan's essays
demonstrate that the struggles on the plantations notwithstanding,
Indians in Guyana gradually shaped a new persona of hope, rising
quietly but confidently from the death of caste prejudice; thriving
on the fruits of their new, vastly more open, environment with the
making of communities rooted in rice, cattle and retail trade;
maximizing the benefits of education while claiming the legacy of
'many Indias', part fact, part fiction, in advancing their civil
and political rights in Guyana.Within this complex mix are located
several Indo-Guyanese personalities, such as Joseph Ruhomon, a
pioneer intellectual; Cheddi Jagan and Balram Singh Rai,
politicians of contrasting visions; and the unsung cricketer, Ivan
Madray. In the process, Seecharan finds not only himself, but he
locates a rich narrative vein, illuminating a vital aspect of
Caribbean life.
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