An Outline of the Imaginative Literature of Guyanese of Indian Ancestry, Part Three

Jun 20, 2010 Features / Columnists, Guyanese Literature

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(Extract of a lecture delivered on Friday May 28, 2010, in the Conference Room of the National Library by yours truly under the auspices of GOPIO [Guyana chapter] to commemorate the arrival of Indians to Guyana.)

In the 1970s, Sheik Sadeek, a poet, novelist, and playwright became a one-man publishing industry. As a publisher, Sadeek holds a record that is unmatched even unto today in a fast-paced electronic world. Many of his publications including his three novels totalling some six hundred pages were rolled off of duplicating machines.
With the mention of Sadeek’s name, other names come to mind like Basil Balgobin, Rooplall Monar, and Churaumanie Bissundyal. Bissundyal is versatile in three genres of writing – poetry, fiction and drama. Balgobin was known as a playwright in the British Guiana Dramatic Society but he also published about twelve short stories in the Chronicle Christmas Annual and the Christmas Tide. One of his stories was broadcast on Caribbean Voices.
Monar wrote a number of novels and collections of short fiction and poems; his Backdam People which is his first major work of fiction is also a watershed work employing ‘raw-renk’ vernacular to portray the real taste of rural Guyana. Backdam People was published by Peepal Tree Press, UK, in 1986, and was incidentally the first book to be published by that press. Peepal Tree is responsible in a big way for advancing the career of many Guyanese writers, thereby enhancing Guyanese literature on the whole.
Let’s look at some enabling factors to the literature of Guyanese of Indian ancestry. Going back to the early 20th century, we may include organisations that enhanced the development of the Indian’s cause, organisations like the British Guiana East Indian Association, started 1916, The East Indian Young Men’s Society (EIYMS), started 1919, The Corentyne Literary & Debating Society, started 1937, The British Guiana Dramatic Society, started 1936.
Coming out of the British Guiana East Indian Association was the journal Indian Opinion which was a platform for the Indian voice. There were other platforms for the Indian voice like the column called ‘Indian Intelligence’ in the Sunday Chronicle edited by Peter Ruhomon during the 1930s and a newspaper called The People, edited Joseph Ruhomon. The People was a Berbice newspaper founded by Rev. H. J. Shirley who was a radical English Congregational Minister.
In the later part of the 20th century we find ‘The Messenger Group’ with Rajkumari Singh, Rooplall Monar and others drawing attention to the slighted ‘coolie art forms’.
This group came out of the Guyana National Service and published a few volumes of the journal Heritage. The publication was important in many ways but acted mainly as an extension of the voice of that particular group.
Later, Monar was to continue making his contribution to Guyanese literature by teaming up with Randall Butisingh and others to form the ‘Annadale Writers’ Group’ that produced a few issues of the journal Dawn.
In the new millennium, we find anthologists like Roopnandan Singh and Kampta Karran giving impetus to the writings by Guyanese of Indian ancestry. Both offered literary competitions and both were involved in publishing; Singh also published works by other Guyanese. Singh’s Sky dance: An anthology of Poems of Guyanese of Indian Ancestry and Karran’s An Introduction to the Poetry of the East Indian Diaspora are important additions to our discourse.
We must not diminish the national magazines and journals like Kyk, Kaie, New World and others that published writings by Guyanese of Indian ancestry.
Now there are many significant writers from the Indian community adding to the potpourri of Guyanese literature, some prolific, others versed in many genres of writing, some internationally recognised and there are scores of emerging writers still unknown.
A few names to be mentioned in a long and growing list of writers of Indian Ancestry include David Dabydeen, winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Poetry and three-time winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature, Sasenarine Persaud, Cyril Dabydeen, Gokarran Sukhdeo, Harischandra Khemraj, Harry Naraine, winner of the Casa de las Americas literary prize, Janice Lo Shinebourne, Narmala Shewcharan, Oonya Kempadoo, Elly Niland, and Ryhaan Shah.
Most of the writers mentioned except for Shah are living abroad. This is interesting in that it is the writers in the Diaspora (more than the local writers who are few in number) who are keeping this thing we call Guyanese literature alive.
‘They came in ships…hearts brimful of hope’ wrote the poet, Mahadai Das, one of the first Guyanese women writers of Indian Ancestry. Some 172 years have elapsed since the first batches of Indian indentured labourers arrived in British Guiana from India. They came to El Dorado with ‘hearts brimful of hope’. For many El Dorado is an ongoing journey. That ongoing journey (extending to other lands called the Diaspora) is being captured in the literature produced by this community.
In closing I’d like to revisit Joseph Ruhomon’s lecture mentioned earlier. Only twenty-one then, Ruhomon was concerned about the intellectual progress and development of East Indians in the colony. And their ‘slow progress’ he lamented, ‘they do not know what it is to cultivate the barren wilderness of their minds and the great good that would accrue… they do not know what it is to acquire knowledge…which would give them power…’.
He made a call for the formation of a society with its own library and its own newspaper to deal with those issues, saying: ‘Books are one of the greatest blessings in life, and the educated mind which dives into literature, enjoys a pleasure which a rude uncultured mind knows nothing…’. To buttress this we turn to the life of Clem Seecharan where it is said that he came from a ‘bookless world’ to become a writer of books, making a name and fortune in the writing of books.
Guyanese literature is still young but is getting better each day, thanks to each member of the Guyanese family, especially the writers from the Indian community who are making a significant impact on the literature of this country.

Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@ yahoo.com
What’s Happening
• The Guyana Annual 2010 issue is now available at Guyenterprise Ltd. on Lance Gibbs and Irving Streets, Queenstown.
• The new closing date for the Ministry of Culture, Youth & Sport literary competition for school is July 9, 2010. Please contact me for more information. This competition includes three follow-up components via a writers’ workshop using entries submitted, performances of shortlisted entries and a publication of the outstanding works.

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