DR ERROL NARINE BENJAMIN
THE INSPIRATION for this letter is what Mahatma Gandhi would have once said, that "India lives in her seven hundred thousand village' (National Geographic, July 2015), meaning, I think, that the country derives its character from the way of life in the villages, giving it its collective identity.
The cities, of course, contributed to the country's rich diversity, but Gandhi's leadership focus was on the welfare of the millions in the rural communities across the land pulsating with life.
We here in TT are not India by any means in terms of size and population, but it is fascinating how we as indentures from India, especially in the rural areas, continue to replicate the overall domestication of the average Indian village, in the cuisine, in the use of the bilna and chowkee, the jharoo (cocoyea broom), the lohra and seal in many places, planting rice, minding cows, fishing in the rivers, inter alia (YouTube).
These are authentic, material elements of our roots and we should hold on to them, for they help to make us what we are as a people and shape our ethnic identity. The great Dr Eric Williams would have said in his Independence Day message that there is no Mother Africa, no Mother India, but I beg, respectfully, to disagree.
For even as we cherish the natural assimilation which is taking place with our African brothers and sisters and other groups, in the chutney soca, callaloo, the doubles and the unique physicality arising from our relationships, we are no different from the 'fat soup' on a Saturday morning with a taste knowing no equal, yet with eddoes clearly identifiable from the green fig and the sweet potato from the cassava, each with its own individual identity but contributing to the beautiful collectivity that is our Saturday morning delicacy.
Our African brothers and sisters also have their own ethnic identity, drawing on their own roots from the villages of Africa, for which we should thank the likes of Makandal Daaga and Kafra Kambon and others in the Emancipation Support Committee who, as in the invitation of renowned African leaders to this country, inter alia, make a sterling effort to bring back 'memory' so sadly obliterated by the brutality of the slave experience.
Which, perhaps, could help to explain the direction of the freed slaves in the pre-independence era, looking for some form of identity in turning to the civil service and to the urban centres, while East Indians, remembering India, would turn to the 'fields' and rural communities as their own form of sustenance.
Not that many Africans would not themselves turn to the rurality of the villages in TT, for one look at communities like Moruga and the peripherals of Princes Town, Couva, San Juan and Sangre Grande, inter alia, would illustrate the mix of African and Indian there is in the villages of this country.
So, when Gandhi spoke of the villages in India being the lifeblood of the country, he may well have been pointing to our own rurality in this country with a unique blend of A
