Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

I could be mis­tak­en, but it seems that the High­way Re-Route Move­ment ac­tivists are us­ing their protests as a medi­um to de­ploy a Hin­du-cen­tric protest lan­guage to ad­dress the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, and (pre­sum­ably) the Gov­ern­ment. Since, look­ing at the vi­su­al state­ments, a new ver­nac­u­lar is mak­ing its de­but in the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion/cus­sout, it might be im­por­tant to point out that we're not re­al­ly sure what they're say­ing.

From the "sit-down" protest at the Di­vali Na­gar site, which fea­tured chant­i­ng du­lahins ac­cost­ing the Prime Min­is­ter a few weeks ago, to the jack­ing-up of Jack Warn­er with shouts of "Ra­van" at the Debe high­way site, to the "Oc­cu­py Side­walk" at the PM's of­fice, to im­ages of Hin­du gods at the camp, it seems ob­vi­ous that the ver­nac­u­lar in­cor­po­rates the vi­su­al rhetoric and lex­is of Hin­duism, and is us­ing the pho­to ops to an­nounce it­self. (A pho­to of a Mus­lim woman in cos­tume ap­peared in last Fri­day's pa­pers, but Hin­du sym­bol­ism dom­i­nates.)

This strange­ness of this el­e­ment of the protests might not be im­me­di­ate­ly ev­i­dent since the av­er­age (low-vi­su­al-lit­er­a­cy) view­er will see just a few fa­mil­iar sig­ni­fiers of In­do-Trinidad, if with an un­fa­mil­iar emo­tion­al ur­gency. But the vi­su­al con­sis­ten­cy and flu­en­cy of the TV im­ages, fused to a po­lit­i­cal event, sig­nal that this is more than that.

The prob­lem is (to re­peat) that many peo­ple (like me) don't un­der­stand the lan­guage, and I'm won­der­ing what its wield­ers in­tend for on­look­ers to un­der­stand. The vi­su­al lan­guage of pub­lic protest we're fa­mil­iar with in­cludes the rhetor­i­cal and vi­su­al tropes of ur­ban/Afro-Trinidad, be­cause they've per­vad­ed the "na­tion­al" me­dia for decades. We know how to in­ter­pret the lan­guage be­cause it's been ap­pro­pri­at­ed from US transna­tion­al me­dia, movies and pop cul­ture.

So we know what the Beetham-ites are "say­ing" when they block the high­way, and when Nel­son Street dis­ad­van­taged youth bawl how the "re­sources mov­ing to cen­tral" hence their set­ting fire and block­ing roads and so on. And we al­so un­der­stand the eth­nic log­ic and the po­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions-so we know/hope they'll re­spond to Shaquille O'Neal.

But there's no such in­ter­pre­tive flu­en­cy in de­cod­ing cos­tumed, lo­tus-posed men and women, at one mo­ment pros­trat­ing them­selves in prayer while the bull­doz­ers de­mol­ish their camp, and at the oth­er mo­ment, cussing and scream­ing that the PM say she is a moth­er, but she is re­al­ly a "mud­der," and the Ho­n­ourable Min­is­ter of Works is a "Ra­van."

But a few things can be in­ferred. The con­ven­tion­al and emo­tion­al log­ic(s) which gen­er­ate these protest per­for­mances are to be found in Hin­du prac­tices, fes­ti­vals, and pub­lic cer­e­monies (wed­dings, sat sanghs and fes­ti­val ob­ser­vances, like Kar­tic or Di­vali) which see many peo­ple gath­ered in one place for the pur­pose.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the peo­ple at the events would be aware of their world­view's low val­ue in the na­tion­al po­lit­i­cal econ­o­my, and have strong feel­ings about it. When they meet and min­gle, their ideas co­a­lesce, and de­vel­op a group id­i­olect, an ar­got, and even­tu­al­ly a shared po­lit­i­cal po­si­tion. (Some­thing sim­i­lar hap­pened in ca­lyp­so tents and talk ra­dio from 1996-2001.)

With­out un­der­stand­ing the vi­su­al and ver­bal rhetoric of those pri­ma­ry Hin­du events, their sto­ries and modes of in­ter­pre­ta­tion, we de­rive a very lim­it­ed un­der­stand­ing of the protests. It would be easy to as­sign a lo­calised trib­al in­ter­pre­ta­tion to this, but that doesn't help much.

One ob­vi­ous thing is that the tac­tics and vi­su­al gram­mar de­ployed here re­sem­ble Hin­dut­va-In­di­an-Hin­du na­tion­al­ism-ac­tivism, em­bod­ied in In­di­an or­gan­i­sa­tions like the RSS (Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sangh) and BJP (Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty) po­lit­i­cal par­ty, which are as­so­ci­at­ed with right-wing In­di­an pol­i­tics. (A re­port in the NY Times on Nov 29, 2008, by So­mi­ni Sen­gup­ta, de­scribed the BJP as con­tain­ing "rad­i­cal" el­e­ments, which might have been im­pli­cat­ed in the Mum­bai bomb­ings of that year.)

What seems al­so clear is that Hin­du-Tri­ni cul­ture "south of the Ca­roni" is some­thing a lit­tle more elab­o­rate and force­ful than a "mar­gin­al cul­ture," as PNM hacks pos­ing as aca­d­e­mics have pro­posed. It's more of a pari pas­su cul­ture, which was de­vel­op­ing rapid­ly from the 1950s, along­side "Cre­ole" cul­ture, as a re­sult of "south of the Ca­roni's" iso­la­tion from the na­tion­al dis­course.

The iso­lat­ed cul­ture has now evolved and ac­quired enough con­fi­dence to make it­self ag­gres­sive­ly pub­lic. And thanks to UWI's, and the na­tion­al me­dia's lack of, uhm, con­scious­ness, there's no pub­lic knowl­edge of it. That said, whether this is an ir­rup­tion from a uni­fied move­ment or an anom­alous tessera of the "south of the Ca­roni" mo­sa­ic re­mains to be seen. We can on­ly say with cer­tain­ty that it de­rives much of its vi­su­al vo­cab­u­lary from transna­tion­al In­di­an ex­ports-pop-cul­ture, tech­nol­o­gy, com­merce and re­li­gious, po­lit­i­cal, or qua­si-re­li­gious pros­e­lytis­ing fig­ures who vis­it Trinidad from time to time.

As to what the pro­test­ers are say­ing, it might be that the UNC el­e­ments of the PP are savvy to what's go­ing on. The rest of us, how­ev­er, don't, which is wor­ry­ing. Even less com­fort­ing is that there should be some con­tact points, or ar­eas of com­mon­al­i­ty, be­tween this cul­ture and the rest of Trinidad cul­ture, but I can't see any.

This all says that the reroute move­ment's mo­tives, meth­ods, and its ap­par­ent dis­tance from the un­der­stand­ing of "north of the Ca­roni" cul­ture re­veal yet an­oth­er fault line in an al­ready too-frac­tured so­ci­ety. The lev­el of di­vi­sion and frac­tious­ness do not make one hope­ful that the thing Trinidad needs the most will emerge from all this "ac­tivism": a shared set of val­ues and a com­mon lan­guage.

The blame for this must go the usu­al sus­pects: the UWI, whose cul­tur­al stud­ies and so­cial-sci­ences de­part­ments have pro­duced noth­ing to help any­one un­der­stand any­thing said above; and the man­agers of state cul­tur­al pol­i­cy, who, as I've not­ed many times be­fore, have hand­ed the au­thor­i­ty over "na­tion­al" cul­ture and the re­sources of the State to a set of fright­en­ing­ly un­qual­i­fied peo­ple for their own pur­pos­es. And so it goes.