From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Indo-caribbeans/Frank Birbalsingh
The primary concern of Indo-Caribbean Canadians has been survival. As a thrifty, energetic, industrious people, they have prospered in Canada and achieved a material standard of living that is much higher than the one they left behind in the Caribbean. In Toronto, for instance, they have excelled in their traditional professions of law and medicine. Most of all they have shown an aptitude for retail business that is evident in the many Indo-Caribbean groceries, restaurants, and roti shops that can now be found all over Toronto. While most of these establishments are patronized chiefly by Indo-Caribbean customers, the roti shop, with its menu of spicy, exotic dishes and its organization as a fast-food outlet, has made the strongest impact on the wider Canadian community. Indo-Caribbean real-estate agencies are another successful business enterprise. Evidence of Indo-Caribbean activities in business and the professions may be found in numerous advertisements in Indo-Caribbean newspapers in Canada.
One of the continuing frustrations of Indo-Caribbean Canadians is the uncertain perception of their identity by other Canadians, who generally consider them either as West Indian, that is to say, black or Afro-Caribbean, or as South Asian, which implies familiarity with South Asian languages and customs. Both classifications erase or distort Indo-Caribbean identity. Caribbean people of Asian Indian origin are not Afro-Caribbean because they are not African; neither are they South Asian (except by race and ethnicity) because their culture derives from the Caribbean. Their main difference from South Asians is that they generally speak no South Asian languages: their language is standard English or Caribbean varieties of English.
There is cultural dualism in other aspects of Indo-Caribbean culture as well. The foods and eating habits of the Indo-Caribbeans, for example, reflect styles of cookery associated with those regions of India from which indentured immigrants first came, in particular Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in north India and, to a smaller extent, Madras in south India. The rotis, dhals, curries, and other dishes that were brought from these regions of India underwent some adaptation depending on what ingredients – vegetables, fruits, and spices – were available in the Caribbean. Thus, although Indo-Caribbean Canadians have retained the food preferences, taboos, and general style of Indian or South Asian cookery, there are significant differences in their choice, preparation, and presentation of various recipes and dishes. Vegetarianism, for instance, is less strictly observed among Indo-Caribbeans, many of whom are partial vegetarians, with a diet that includes meat but not beef or pork. This suggests greater flexibility in Indo-Caribbean eating habits. The differences between Indo-Caribbean and South Asian cookery are evident in the menus of the Indian restaurants and Indo-Caribbean roti shops which have appeared in Toronto, mostly within the last fifteen years. The roti shops tend to be more informal in presentation and carry a more limited or specialized selection of foods.
In other areas of everyday life – in dress, housekeeping, social activity, musical entertainment, sport, and even in sexual habits and marriage customs – Indo-Caribbean patterns of behaviour reflect the same flexibility that derives from dual loyalty to India (South Asia) on the one hand and to the Caribbean on the other. Indo-Caribbeans have a deep appreciation for Indian films and film music yet participate actively in Caribbean musical forms such as the calypso and in festivals such as carnival. They also tend to depart from more puritanical Indian attitudes towards sexual and marriage customs. Divorce, for example, is now as common among Indo-Caribbean (Hindu or Muslim) couples as among couples from any other group. Intermarriage with other ethnic groups has also increased. Generally, Indo-Caribbean Hindus are less bound by general taboos and caste restrictions than South Asian Hindus, whose more coherent religious practices were not subjected to the cultural mixing and fragmenting influences caused by indenture.
In the post-colonial period, Indo-Caribbeans, in Canada as elsewhere, have made outstanding contributions in the field of literature. The works of V.S. Naipaul, who was born in Trinidad in 1932, although he has lived in England since 1950, are internationally acclaimed. His nephew, Neil Bissoondath, is the major Indo-Caribbean writer in Canada today. Bissoondath, who was born in 1955, first came to Canada as a student in 1973 and has stayed in Canada. He has already published two collections of short stories, Digging up the Mountains (1986) and On the Eve of Uncertain Tomorrows (1990), and two novels, A Casual Brutality (1988) and The Innocence of Age (1992). In two of the stories in particular – ‘Insecurity’ from Digging up the Mountains and ‘Security’ from On the Eve of Uncertain Tomorrows – Bissoondath illustrates a fundamental irony of Indo-Caribbean experience: while Indo-Caribbean immigrants have escaped from the psychological insecurity caused by political instability, social marginalization, and interethnic tension at home, coming to Canada has brought its own insecurity caused by urban-industrial alienation, race and colour prejudice, the impersonal secular mores of the new society, and the pressures of modern city living.
As the most prolific Indo-Caribbean writer in Canada, Cyril Dabydeen, who was born in Guyana in 1945, corroborates Bissoondath’s insights. Dabydeen has written several volumes of poems and stories and two novels; he has also edited two anthologies of immigrant Canadian writing. His titles include Goatsong (poems, 1977), Elephants Make Good Stepladders (poems, 1982), To Monkey Jungle (short stories, 1988), Dark Swirl (a novel, 1989), and the anthology A Shapely Fire (1987). Like Bissoondath, Dabydeen portrays the feelings of displacement and alienation that affect most Indo-Caribbean Canadians. In particular, he provides a frank appraisal of racism encountered by “coloured” or nonwhite immigrants in Canada. According to Dabydeen, South Asians (including Indo-Caribbeans) have responded only in subdued ways to the racial discrimination and outbreaks of so-called Paki-bashing to which they have been subjected in Canada. He suggests that the Indo-Caribbean experience of racism in Canada has, so far at any rate, tended to be more psychological than physical.
Other Indo-Caribbean Canadian writers, such as Arnold Itwaru and Ramabai Espinet, also see the Indo-Caribbean Canadian experience as largely one of increased material well-being coupled with inward unease that is the result of many factors including racism. Itwaru, who was born in Guyana in 1943, has written fiction, poetry, and criticism; his books include Entombed Survivals (poems, 1987), and Shanti (a novel, 1990). Writing with a fresh feminist outlook, Espinet, who was born in Trinidad in 1948, asserts the toughness and resilience of Indo-Caribbean women as homemakers, and suggests that the disadvantages that women suffered under patriarchal structures in the Caribbean may be reduced in Canada. News reports, in fact, support this view and discuss issues of wife abuse, child care, and employment equity in a more explicit way than they would in the Caribbean. In this respect, at least, immigration to Canada has brought distinct benefits to Indo-Caribbean women.
