The Hosay Massacre and colonial police

If we thought hard enough this event might well indicate how racism and race were created here in Trinidad. Hosay, one of those magnificent festivals I have grown up with, was one year marked with blood. Some say 72, some say less, some say more were killed. Colonial police headed by their British Commissioner and reinforced by units from outside of San Fernando, fired on an unarmed crowd celebrating Hosay.

The colonial police would have been African. Indentured plantation labour was principally Indian. Police were African. The higher level of police officers were white. The Commissioner was British.

On October 30, 1884 the Colonial Police refused permission for Hosay to be celebrated within San Fernando. It is doubtful that the Hosay processions, made up of both Muslims and Hindus, marching from the various plantations knew this. As they entered San Fernando they were massacred.

It is not unusual for police, working in an area where conflict may emerge, to be drawn from outside of the area. This is true of Paris’ riot police: they are drawn from rural areas. It was colonial policy in many colonies. The Black and Tans in Ireland is a well known example of the use of strangers in keeping Colonial law and order. A number of factors however made the African policing of Indian areas and the virtual exclusion of Indians from the Trinidad Colonial Police Force different.

The major pre-occupation of the Planters was the question of labour: it was not building a country or even society. Over the period of slavery, Trinidad slaves could not reproduce their population. In every year until Emancipation there were more deaths than births in the African slave population. This was different to both Barbados and the United States, where the slave population’s birthrate was consistently higher than the death rate.

The Root of Conflict

The ending of the slave trade hardly helped the problem of slave labour in spite of the measures taken to transfer many household slaves, including female household slaves, to the plantation. It is the high death rate on the plantations which triggered the demand at Emancipation that their women and children – many of these already on the fields at seven years old – should either not work on the plantation or should work shorter hours.

Keith Laurence, in his Doctoral Thesis, mentions several reasons given by Planters for the need for indentured labour. According to the Planters, after 1833 women and children withdrew from the labour force. “Negroes” began to indulge a preference for certain localities and types of work. Some bought land in one case put together to buy a large estate. Of particular importance in understanding the roots of African – Indian conflict, was the arguments of some Planters that immigrant labour was needed not only for remedying a labour shortage, but also for producing competition in employment which would induce Africans to accept what the Planters felt were “reasonable wages” when, with the end of the period of apprenticeship (which followed slavery). the “negroes” would be free to demand “unlimited wages.” It is not surprising that former African slaves saw indentured labour as scab labour.

That identity card

Indentured labour had no more love for plantation work than had African slaves before them. Portuguese, Chinese, West African quit the Plantations often before the end of their contract and made for the towns. So did the first wave of Indians. Stories of Indian skeletons found in the forest to which they had escaped were much like the stories of escaping slaves.

At the end of 1847, a report into the conditions of indentured labour noted a high degree of desertion particularly from Indians imported from Madras. It is because of this desertion that laws were passed making it compulsory that indentured labourers should carry what was a “Pass” or ID. This indicated the plantation to which they belonged and if absence from the plantation had been granted. If it had not, then the labourer was punished. The verification of whether or not the labourer had his identity card, and if leave had been granted, was the job of the police. These, as we have seen, were Africans. It was reported that the police would sometimes jeer at the Indian indentured labourer about his being part of the only group in the island which had to carry a Pass or Identity Card. This power of the Police over the Indian indentured labourer was one of the principal reasons for the conflict between African and Indian on the plantation. That African police were only a small segment of the African population, that in Port-of-Spain resentment of the poorer African population was turned against the Bajan policy recruits, could hardly be expected to be known by rural Indians. That the Pass regulations were conceived of by the Planters, and benefited the Planters, would not be evident to the Indian labourer. Nor was it likely to be considered relevant. What remained was the personal humiliation.

That question of history

I doubt that our Police today know this history. The question of history is essential in ending racial conflict. This has been stated by Jean Paul II particularly as it concerns Catholic — Jewish conflict. Cardinal Lustiger, himself a Catholic and a Jew whose mother was murdered at Belsen, insisted that at Belsen, insisted that the history of French Catholic dealings with Jews had to be academically examined and honestly faced.

This has not been the position here either of state or of religions. Rather we are left to the propagandists of all sorts for whom the purpose of history is group mobilisation. Next to this is some strange belief that as my Bajan great aunt would say “what you don’t know don’t harm you.” Add to this the Caribbean superstition that all the islands have the same history and that therefore it is as good for Trinis to learn of slavery in Jamaica as it would be for them to learn of slavery, emancipation and indentureship here. It is however, the manner in which ethnic groups were slotted into our society which explains the creation of and the continuation of racism and racial conflict.

Stereotypes

In this slotting in, the period of the emergence of the Plantation, slavery, emancipation and indentureship is crucial. It is within this period that differing rights are accorded to various groups. It is, particularly with apprenticeship and emancipation, that the major stereotypes of Africans are elaborated in contradiction to far more complex facts. It is during Indentureship that the “Pagan” Hindu stereotype is erected as is the transmission of the idea of Brahminical Aryans as part of the Indo-European Aryan Race. It is also during this period that the Educational structure we now have was elaborated. One of its principal features was that Indians and Africans were not to be educated in the same schools. This separation was as much about race as it was to facilitate the conversion of Indians to Presbyterianism.

Cannes Brul?s

There is another reason to recall that Muharram or Hosay Massacre. It was not a single and unique affair. It was the time of severe economic depression triggered by the fall of sugar prices. Labour conditions had sharply declined.

Planters and missionaries were jittery before the emergence of Hindu organisation. Both planters and the Colonial Authorities shared the fear of political revolts. It was Rostant who expressed what those fears really were.