In 1999, Nesha Haniff wrote that "Indian women's writings are only now emerging and the scholarship by Indian women on Indian women is slowly developing." Almost 20 years later, enough of that writing now exists for a new generation of scholars to look back at it and ask a number of questions. How does it enable us to think about life today? What does it contribute to the Caribbean intellectual tradition? How has it defined feminism? What are its radical elements? What does it say about sexuality, race, family, religion, empowerment and more?
Most people think Indo-Caribbean women have not produced a lot or even particularly important scholarship, and that it is now coming into voice. But, it isn't that the scholarship has been missing, it is that it has been marginal to how the region and its gender relations have been thought about.
I want researchers to know that Indians in the Caribbean can't be studied as if this scholarship doesn't exist, and neither can mixed and complex societies like Trinidad, Guyana and Suriname, and even others like Jamaica and Martinique.
This means getting to know the research about the intersections of gender, race and region along with generation and nation. It means getting to know how its concepts draw on myths and traditions, using words like "matikor," "bindi," "jahajin" and "dougla" to create theory, or ways of explaining who we have been, are becoming and should be.
It means asking how the work of those creating art or writing books, or the lives of pioneering women negotiating power relations, from family life to business to politics, can be documented using the frames that Indo-Caribbean feminist scholarship offers for reflecting on our ambitions, struggles and communities.
For these ideas to turn into the collective conversation that it should, 18 scholars are being brought together here to present their research. They are going to examine the scholarship that exists, and to show its contribution as well as how it can be advanced, nuanced or completely revised. Those scholars will be presenting at UWI on November 5-6, 2015, on everything from dance to literature, from sexuality to masculinity, from religion to family, and from visual art to violence in Indo-Caribbean life.
I am hoping that bringing them together makes T&T a leader in mentoring and producing knowledge about Indo-Caribbean, dougla and Caribbean feminisms. I am hoping that it helps us to recognise and shape how a new generation of scholars is writing about Indian womanhoods and manhoods, from the ground up rather than importing theory.
I am hoping that the publication of these papers in 2016 will shape Indo-Caribbean research on women and gender relations for the next decade. To make this happen, I've spent these last weeks asking those in business to support the flight/hotel costs of one or more of the scholars who will be presenting, supplementing funds raised through university research grants.
This way, there's a collaborative investment by a wider community in producing much needed knowledge about Indo-Caribbean contemporary life, particularly women's lives, and an investment in the intellectual leadership of our young women scholars. It's been a challenge. Most understand the importance of giving to charity, sports or even medical research.
Social science, which studies family, culture, changes to tradition, power inequalities, and how we relate to each other in contemporary life, seems less urgent. I've also surprised myself by how shy I feel about convincing those who can easily give funds why they should do so. This project is forcing my skills to grow. The scholarship I've read since beginning research on Indo-Trinidadian girlhood 15 years ago has shaped the woman and scholar that I've become.
My vision is to give back to emerging scholars documenting and explaining ideas, theories and experiences over the next 15 years. If you can connect to that vision and want to help make such contemporary, Indo-Caribbean feminist research a reality, don't hesitate to contact me.