Since men greatly outnumbered women throughout the Indentureship period, the joint family system could not be maintained and began to fade. Indian culture was one in which age meant experience and experience meant wisdom. The community regarded elders as pillars of strength and knowledge. This regard was a direct result of the pervading culture of the Indians. The religions, Hinduism and Islam stressed utter respect and regard for the wishes of elders in the society. This respect for elders was manifested in the form of the extended family system. The father was at the helm of the household and would be so until his death.
As indicated by J.C Jha, the Indian immigrants in Trinidad revived the Panchayat system in their new village settlements from around 1870. The Panchayat resurfaced not only because other facets of the culture were emerging but because of basic need. The shift of the Indian in terms of economic status was paralleled by a shift in social status, the appearance and adoption of their social institutions, an awakening of consciousness in themselves and a redefinition of their role in society. Indians emerged as an identifiable community in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. They had established themselves in villages far removed from any colonial administrative or civil body.
Hence, they had to resurrect their own methods of dispute resolution and community organization. It was the great myth of Crown Colony Government that governors and officials were impartial administrators and at the same time special protectors of the poor. The poor had no access to the policy makers, while propertied interests could lobby effectively. During the ‘1917- 1940’ period, colonial authorities had nothing tangible in place to ensure the proper care and well- being of poor Indian rural folk. If any institutions did exist, the Indians displayed a certain degree of suspicion as the colonial institutions often proved disadvantageous to them. The East Indian villagers were said to have been very cautious about the courthouse and its trappings so they implemented their familiar, speedy court of the Panchayat.
The Panchayat in Trinidad was more a process than a single event. It was a series of meetings or consultations with different members, with different degrees of privacy and different leadership. In the Trinidadian Panchayat, justice was described as fulfilling ones duty to others as defined by man. Through the speech of the elders, the ideals of East Indian men were stated as “customary law”, which defined appropriate behaviour, powers in marriage and divorce, control over children, property ownership and inheritance. The term Panchayat should not be thought of in the context of some ancient democratic or egalitarian tradition. It probably originated in that format and later developed into a forum controlled by the village elite, the wealthy, the educated and the powerful The meetings, discussions, groupings and re-groupings did not only include heavy issues such as dispute resolution but also the sharing of tea, stories, jokes, light banter and prayers. Via the Panchayat, the values of the community were presented, confirmed, rejected or remodelled to fit the particular circumstances. There were no written rules to follow and only rarely was there a written document to evidence a settlement. This was an oral tradition.
The Panchayat was usually initiated when an aggrieved party garnered the attention of some concerned elders. The elders were usually related to the aggrieved or were approached by someone whom they held in high regard. If the disputants were from the same village, the elders immediately gathered in an agreed spot. Usually many Panchayats had fixed residences where they carried on their meetings. For example, in the Fyzabad Panchayat, for as long as anyone could remember the members met in the Avocat Kutya which is today known as the Avocat Mandir. In the Phoenix Park Panchayat, the members often met under a ‘Lazinette’ tree. For the National Panchayat of 1899, an old government school building was used. If the disputants were from different villages, one party would send a message setting the time and place for a Panchayat. The Panchayat would have met in the village of anyone of the parties. Invitations were sent any time before the meeting, from a full week to only a few hours ahead.
The meetings were held after work, in the late afternoons often moving into the night. There was no formal process for assuring everyone’s attendance; the witness, the accused or the elder. If someone’s presence was essential to the Panchayat, the villagers may have exerted pressure through social boycott, or the aggrieved party may threaten to file a state court case. Most often the disputants did not speak for himself or herself but chose an influential or better spoken relative to voice their complaints. It was not necessary for the speaker to take a formal oath before he spoke. There was a village saying that ‘if you lie to the Panchayat, you are a fool, and if you do not lie to the state court you are a fool’. This may have either stemmed from respect for the traditional forum and or paralleled contempt for state institutions. Alternatively, it may have been the result of local familiarity with the courts and cases and the general unfair representation and treatment in which the persons received.
The justice of the Panchayat, however, was a justice of male ideology codified as village law. When the ‘man’ spoke it was the voice of the Panchayat. The Panchayat could be harsh on an offending woman or equally harsh on an offending man. When women spoke there was no institutional tradition to sanctify and unify their words like that of the Panchayat. For instance, if a woman was involved in a dispute, a close male relative represented her if her father was dead. Rarely, were women even allowed to appear before the Panchayat, rather, the nearest male relative represented them. There were some instances where women sat on the Panchayat but this was very unusual and women had to really earn their place. For example, there was one case in the 1940's where a woman sat on the Panchayat in the Avocat Village, she was seventy years old, a retired schoolmistress and she had three sons. The Panchayat delineated the proper social responsibilities of parents, spouses and siblings. These norms were not debated but quickly assimilated into village life.
Most villagers were usually privy to or were quickly familiarized with the reasons for calling the Panchayat. It was up to the aggrieved parties to investigate and to present the case. Villagers with information were ideally expected to come to the elders in private. The purpose of the Panchayat was usually not to elicit new information but to design a solution that would satisfy the parties and the community. Parties were first given the opportunity to work out their own solutions. When this proved unsuccessful, a decision would be made for them. The Elders acted as mediators, helping the disputing parties to reach their own decisions and sometimes as arbitrators, providing a binding decision.
Dumont (1980 page 399) surveying the Panchayat literature, notes that the very nature of the Panchayat authority lay in its conciliatory rather than its coercive character. To this end, rules of law or prior Panchayat decisions may be brought into the discussion as guides but they are not binding. Ideally, the emphasis was placed on compromises that would preserve the peaceful continuity of relationships. It was up to the elders and the villagers to ensure that the decisions were enforced. The Panchayat was a system and a process, not a one-time thing. It depended greatly on the continuity of tradition and certain cultural facts in order to work. The Panchayat was never formally recognized by colonial law and therefore the decision may not have been supported by the state courts or the police. Once decisions were finalized, there was immediate action. It was witnessed by Mr Noor, that immediately following the Elders decision in a land dispute the villagers went to pace off the new boundary. If one party was unhappy with the Panchayat decision, depending on the nature of the dispute, they had the option of calling a new Panchayat with a larger representation of elders, resorting to another meeting with the other party or filing a case in the state courts on the merits of the original dispute. Technically, the state judge should have ignored the Panchayat decision and heard the case from its inception, but this was not usually done. In an appeal from a Panchayat on domestic issues, the judge often returned the case to the community. During the 1930's and 1940’s, there was an English magistrate by the name of Mr Andre. He had been a judge for some time in India and was transferred to the colony of Trinidad to work. Usually, when the disputes of the Indians from Dow Village and Esperanza came to the courts. Mr Andre asked if the Panchayat mediated and what was the outcome. Many times he sent the disputants back to the community and the Panchayat. Even when the judge hears the case, a decision in favour of the aggrieved party may be an empty victory. The elders can still seek revenge by initiating a social boycott within the village or the caste. In an out casting, all social relations are curtailed, fellow village members refuse to share companionship, accept food, drink or help and refuse to marry their children to the outcast.
In choosing a leader or even a member of the Panchayat, the criterion was village respect and regional or village recognition. Village respect was derived from a combination of age, wealth, high caste, intelligence, education and a large family of strong sons. The early (1870’s) Panchayats comprised of a group of five men who were chosen from those who had also established moral authority through religion; Imams and Pundits were the leading figures within the community. As time passed by and the Presbyterians made inroads within the community, they too were regarded as morally and spiritually powerful figures. In the 1899 Indian National Panchayat, Reverend John Morton was invited. In the Biography of the Late Reverend Charles David Lalla, his son C.D Lalla Jr. recalls the Panchayat at Balmain, Couva consisted of his father, a Presbyterian minister, Messrs Mohammed Hussein, a Muslim, Parmananad Pundit, Ramjattan Pundit, Pundit Ajodha Persad, (the three latter being Hindus) Babu Lalsingh and Saran Teelucksingh who was an Anglican. This displayed the fact that the Panchayat in Trinidad was not limited to caste or religion but operated for the communal good.
There is no record of caste Panchayats having functioned but inter-caste Panchayats of elders were found in villages to settle local disputes in an ad hoc fashion. In many cases the sardars, maits, overseers and even drivers of the estates had become prominent in the society on the strength of their newly acquired wealth. The Panchayat also included persons who held important positions on the plantations such as watchmen, headmasters, pundits, mulvis, moneylenders and ministers. With the emergence of the larger landowners, proprietors and those who became the educated (elite in the community, the catchments of council members also widened. The most fundamental concept on which the Panchayat was built was that of a shared morality to which all village members should respond.
Members were originally between the ages of sixty years to eighty years of age. However, as time wore on and traditional customs wore out, the age limit dropped and members as young as thirty-eight were evidenced. Occupation of people on the Panchayat, the zamindar, locally called the jamindar was a large landowner. The headman was usually called the Mukhiya or the jamindar. The members were known as panchas or panches. In Trinidad, the Panchayat comprised of men from all three religions and not from the Hindu religion alone. Due to the communising experience of Indentureship, caste was eroded. However, upon the settlement of the Indian population in the post Indentureship period there seemed to be the resurgence of caste but as a deviation of its original form. For example, shopkeepers cared little about caste in the true sense but rather for economic gain and social position. There was an ideology of equality in the Panchayat (among the members) that was demonstrated by the panchas deference to others, by the discourse of the Panchayat and by the physical arrangement of the meeting. Everyone sat on the same level, crowded in a circle on chairs or on cloths spread on the floor. The disputants however were not welcomed in the circle but rather placed so that all members could look at them. The principal spokesmen were part of the general mass of silent, listening members, it was not unusual to see two disputants sitting together in silence as if disconnected from the issue. Panchayat rhetoric was rather poetic and polite because the members utilized a great deal of sayings and alluded to stories from various religious texts. As Pundit Outam Maharaj said, “Hindu, Muslim, big and small are elders. This is our village; we are all brothers and sisters.
The concept of community among the East Indian population in Trinidad often implied familial and kinship ties and as a result, Panchayat audiences were always large. The Panchayat audience usually included many concerned friends and relatives of the plaintiff and the defendant. According to Mr Noor Panchayat audiences were usually very quiet and respected the ruling of the panchas. There were some cases, however, as in the Indian National Panchayat of 1899, where some men were very angry and disruptive. The Panchayat functioned like a civil court and it was to be expected that tempers would flare and passions arise. Women were generally not invited as members or as the audience. However depending on the nature of the case, for example in marriage disputes the mother-in-law and her array of daughters and daughter-in-laws usually accompanied her. According to Mr Noor, men of all households in the village attended.
The Panchayats functioned as civil and social courts maintaining the order within the village system. They therefore arbitrated on matters affecting the lives of the villagers. The Panchayats usually organized marriages for persons of marriageable age and widowers. A regional agwah or marriage maker arranged village exogamous marriages. This person usually consulted with the Panchayat on a regular basis. In the Bonne Aventure region in the 1920s, Sancharia’s husband Bandi died, however, Sancharia was a young woman capable of having children. Therefore, the Panchayat met and ruled that Sancharia should get married to a recent widower, Mr Punit This organization of nuptials on the part of the elders maintained ethnic and moral idioms within the village community. In order to prevent Sancharia from having illicit relations with men, the Panchayat organised a way in which both parties were satisfied.
Ever since the granting of land to Indians in the nineteenth century, there have been disputes concerning inheritances, boundaries and deeds. Land disputes were very common among families and neighbours. In Dow Village, in the 1940s, Ramcharitar left five acres of land to be divided among his five sons. However, there were contentions among the boys because the eldest believed that because he supplied the most labour on the land, he should have received more. The youngest son Krishendath, was a civil servant and did not want any land. The Panchayat met with all the sons and came to the decision that the eldest son should receive Krishendath’s share. This decision may appear to be simple to us but the fact of the matter remains that the sons could not solve the issues themselves and they needed an external opinion.
A family feud was yet another matter in which Panchayats arbitrated. The Panchayat need not have solved the dispute; rather they maintained the peace between the families and tried to show them right from wrong. In Fyzabad, a man by the name of Goberdhan Lalla wanted to become a pundit but he was not of the right caste or skin colour. He did the closest thing he could do to become a Pundit, he eloped with a pundit’s daughter, Chandra Maharaj. This elopement rubbed both families raw and resulted in unnecessary name-calling and the destruction of family gardens. The Panchayat decided that Chandra's family should ordain Lalla as a Pundit, so he would instantly attain Brahmin status and advised that a big wedding celebration be held to commemorate the marriage.
Marital problems and adultery were apparently most probably the most popular issue the Panchayat had to debate. In 1944, Kismat Ali, a Mulvi in the Phoenix Park Jamaat, was caught having intimate relations with the neighbour’s wife. The woman eventually bore him a son. It is interesting to note is that Ali was on the village Panchayat and that his punishments were somewhat lenient. He was forced to cook food for beggars and fast for few weeks. At the end of the punishment, he resumed his duties as Mulvi and some speculated he resumed relations with the woman. The son, Taiab Ali also became a Mulvi.
The ceremony of the community Kali Puja was sponsored by the Panchayat. Each of the sponsoring families contributed fifty cents. Kali Puja was supposed to protect the village against disease. While the men were nominally the members, the women did most of the work and arrangements. In many villages, the local pundit performed ‘katha’ each month on the day of the full moon (purnima). This would take place in the village ‘kutiya’ or at the pundit’s residence. All villagers gave donations of food and the meal was cooked at random by the village women. An even more important group activity was found in a weekly or fortnightly, ‘satsang’ (meaning true company) was held among various families in areas of rural settlement. A ‘satsang’ was a gathering at which, in the absence of a pundit, Tulsidas’s Ramayana was sung and the moral and spiritual values discussed (chowpai). The Panchayat also acted as agents of social control and tried cases involving incest, drunkenness, wife beating and rape.
The major contributing factor to the decline of the Panchayat system in Trinidad was the destruction of the village as a structure. Traditional values have altered over time so Indo Trinidadian people of the village system no longer needed the institution of the Panchayat. The Panchayat required specific conditions for its conservation and existence, the most important one being the preservation of village life. Several factors were responsible for the destruction of the village system and those can be regarded as the secondary grounds for the decline of the influence of the Panchayat. The isolated and often independent village functioned as a sort of incubator to the cultural and religious traditions of India. As villagers left the village, they created an illusionary fissure whereby outside influences could seep into the village and more people from the inside of the village could abscond. By the 1940s, there was marked decline in the number and frequency of Panchayats called in the villages of Trinidad.
The Presbyterian missionaries realized that the only effective means of converting Indians to Christianity was by the use of education. Early attempts at conversion produced poor results, in 1952 out of an East Indian population of 70000 only 514 had taken communion. According to Samaroo (1996), in 1970 the missionaries were still finding difficulties in getting Muslim children to attend schools in Trinidad. By 1950, this great mass of conversions had not taken place nor had Christian Indians produced thinkers of eminence. The Canadian Mission School was not only a place for teaching children but played a more vital role. It was the place of worship and became the centre of literary, recreational, social and cultural activities in the village. Educational advances and success in primary school education led to a clamour for secondary school education. In 1912, Naparima Girls High School was established and by the 1950, Hill View College and Iere High School were built. The mission had made direct economic contribution to the Indian by education him and facilitating his entrance in the professional field on equal terms with other races. Education had the effect of bringing East Indians into contact with the professional largely African, middle class.
Closely intertwined with the educational process had been the westernisation of Indians. The majority of Indians (second generation) regarded Trinidad as their homeland. Trinidad was a country that had been shaped and patterned after Western cultural standards. The use of English became more widespread and Hindi less important. This was definitely unfortunate as many Panchayats were conducted in Hindi. Education allowed Indian women the opportunity to liberate themselves. Education allowed women to playa more prominent role in society Education influenced changes in their living and social conditions, it even led some of them to affluence. Women were prepared socially and psychologically to assume leadership roles in the wider community. Western Education totally altered the lifestyle and aspiration of the Indians. They looked upon many aspects of their former religious (Hindu, Muslim) lives with derision. Many converts ignored all aspects of their former lives, even the cultural institution of the Panchayat. This was ironic because the Presbyterians assimilated facets of the Panchayat into their social agenda. The Panchayat of the Presbyterians operated along the same principles as that of the Indians. The Presbyterians incorporated the Panchayat as a means of communicating and gaining the trust of the Indians. Little did they know that the Indians would merely cast aside the tradition after adopting western values and religions.
Structural and cultural factors such as Americanisation gave rise to changes in the Indo Trinidadian family. The gradual decline of the arranged marriage was a case in point. During the early indenture period arranged marriages were probably the cultural ideal and the statistical norm. Nevadomsky (1984) claimed that increasing educational opportunities and wide scale urbanization led to changes or attitudes towards marriages. From the 1940’s, marriages were not parentally arranged and many Indo Trinidadian women opted for their own selection of a spouse. By the 1950’s most Indo Trinidadian parents, including village parents, conceded to personal choice as the best method of mate selection. Marriages were no longer elaborate three-day festivities under bamboo. They had adopted influences from the Christians, the bride wore a white dress and the wedding was preformed on a table.
Family structure was changed from an extended to a nuclear family unit. Nuclear families comprised of a mother, father and children. Changes in income structures and the rise of a significant Indo-Trinidadian middle class may have been responsible for its emergence. The value system of the nuclear family is different from the extended family. Whereas the former is based on individual autonomy the latter is based on collected principles of organization. People involved in modern jobs outside of the sugar industry tended to establish local, nuclear family residences while maintaining ties to the wide family. Traditional Hindu thought was definitely against divorce. During the 1870's and 1940's Hindu women in Trinidad could not request a divorce. Divorce simply uprooted the functions of the Panchayat. They could no longer be agents of social control because no one paid only heed to them. People became independent and the role of the elders became null and void.
Cocoa and sugar in Trinidad were no longer kings in the global agricultural world. By the 1930's, cocoa was devastated by the witch broom disease and by foreign competition. World sugar prices had plummeted after their First World War heights. Prices reached their lowest point in 1929-1930 and many estates were abandoned. Labourers were laid off, wages reduced and by 1934, conditions were desperate for the majority of sugar workers. In order to survive many Indians began to drift away from the land and settle in the urban centres of San Fernando, Port-of- Spain and Arima in the hope of acquiring jobs. The 1946 census revealed that the number of Indians in urban areas had doubled since 1931. Many of the Indians were engaged in commerce, government and auxiliary jobs. The mobility of the Indians was measured by their occupational status. For instance, in 1931 there were over two thousand five hundred and fifty (2550) Indian mechanics in Trinidad. These mechanics would not have found much work in the rural areas so they would naturally settle in the towns. The rapid expansion of the economy in the post Second World War produced high rates of urbanization and sub-urbanization which may have to some extent, outmoded the traditional settlement pattern of the Indian. Indians who lived in Port of Spain or San Fernando usually fared much better that their rural counterparts, especially in terms of education and commerce. A large number of town-dwelling Indians were successful businessmen or shopkeepers. Most of these businessmen were Muslim, as a higher proportion of urban Muslims existed in comparison to the Hindu dominated rural areas. San Fernando was a major centre for the settlement of well-educated Presbyterian Indians. These Indians who had advanced themselves in terms of education and economic position either saw the need to move or simply desired to move away from the villages. This movement away from the villages destroyed the extended family and hampered the functions and purposes of the Panchayat. The Panchayat did not die but its importance as an institution of authority diminished significantly. All factors culminating in the Panchayat's decline were connected to each other. For example, the movement from the villages to the urban areas reduced the number of young people present in the village. This meant that the younger generation knew little or nothing about this system of social regulation. This lack of knowledge guaranteed the decline, since the younger generation could not have hosted and continued with the Panchayat tradition.
The emergence of the East Indian middle class highlighted the differences between Indians who lived in the rural areas and Indians who benefited modern education and western values. The middle classes were perceived by social scientists as a very self-contained class with no particular identity who they usually mimicked the upper classes. The East Indian National Association was founded by the middle classes. They organized mass meetings, circulated petitions and sent deputations to the governor. They pressured for Indian employment in government service and legal recognition of Hindu and Muslim marriages and for participation of these religions in the colonies ecclesiastical grant. In 1909, a rival organization of middle class Indians, the East Indian National Congress was established. Both groups were dominated by urban, westernised, well-educated Christian convert Indians; who probably had no real desire to keep such traditional institution like the Panchayat alive. The middle classes fostered their own interest and they had moved away from the villages to the urban centres in a bid to escape their perceived degradation and poverty. However, the rural Indian community kept the Panchayat alive.
The emergence of friendly societies and trade unions somewhat undermined the importance and functions of the Panchayat. For most of the period of Indentured Immigration plantation residence, Indians in Trinidad enjoyed little formal leadership or political organization. Imams and pundits were the leading figures with the community and their aims were rarely secular. The Panchayat functioned as pressure group in 1899. However, formal associations eventually took the form of friendly societies, founded in the 1920s to provide villagers with death benefits, sick relief and medical costs. At the end of World War I, East Indians in Trinidad began to participate more fully and actively in the colonial campaign for social, economic and political reform, and within a few years were able to join various groups in the society, in a collective struggle. Individuals such as Adrian Cola Rienzi emerged as leaders within the Indian Community. The Panchayat had diminished in importance, for people of education and social rank, had no dealings with it. In 1930, a meeting was organized in Port of Spain to give moral and political support to the All India National Congress. Prominent Indians such as Roodal, Adrian Cola Rienzi and Al Jamadar. These persons had no place for the Panchayat in their lives. They belonged to a legal institution, not to an unrecognised village institution. The East Indians were moving out of the isolated community. They saw that the only ways to advance themselves was to utilize and manipulate colonialist policies. They had to master the law to fight for the rights of the Indian. The Panchayat as an institution had served its purpose. Its demise as a social institution of rank, importance and sway was inevitable.
ENDNOTES
Conflict, according to the World Book Encyclopaedia Dictionary 1990 p. 436 is a long fight or struggle, a contention, a dispute or quarrel, a difference in thought and action.
Merwyn S. Garbarino. World Book Encyclopedia 1990 Volume I p.146. American Indian
Sociologically, the term Dispora refers to the migration and settlement of a group pf people that carry with them socio-cultural baggage.
N. Jayaram. The Social Construction of the ‘Other’ Indian:Encounters Between Indian Nationals and Diasporic Indians. University of the West Indies 1995 p 4.
J.C.Jha Indian heritage in Trinidad Caribbean Quarterly 19 (2) 1985 p 15
Maheshwarie Shririram. Local Government in India. Orient Longman. 1971 page 3.
Morton Klass East Indians In Trinidad: A study in Cultural persistence. Columbia University Press. 1961 page 173
Brotherhood or sisterhood formed on the journey to Trinidad by boat.
Dhanpaul Narine Children of the Ganges page 2
Patricia Narine A social History of Post Migrant Indians University of the West Indies. 1994 page 153
Colonial administration granted land lieu of return passage to India. Ramesar 1976
Gerald Tikasingh The establishment of Indians in Trinidad. University of the West Indies 1976 page 12.
Donald Wood Trinidad in Transition Oxford 1968 page 275
Gerald Tikasingh The establishment of Indians in Trinidad University of the West Indies Post Graduate Thesis 1976 page 8.
Judith Ann Weller East Indian Indenture in Trinidad. Puerto Rico 1968 page 51.
Marianne Ramesar Patterns of regional settlements and economic activity by Immigrant groups in Trinidad 1921-1940 1976.
Nevadomsky J Economic Organisation, Social mobility and changing social status among the East Indians in rural Trinidad. 1984 page 3.
Patriarch in the sense of the person who makes all final decision and who enjoys absolute authority in the home.
J.H. Adhin The joint family of Indians In Suriname 1960 pages 17-22.
Interview with eighty-one year old woman, Phoolbassia Khadoo of Old Southern Main Road, Rousillac.
Shameen Ali. Indian Women and the Retention of Social Institutions in Trinidad 1870s to 1940s University of West Indies. 1995.
J.C. Jha Indian heritage in Trinidad Caribbean Quarterly 19 (2) 1985 page 15
Bridget Bereton. A History of Modern Trinidad. Heinemann New Hampshire 1981 page 139
Interview with Sundar Pantin on the 23rd June 2002. Mr. Pantin is seventy years old and resides in Mayo, Williamsville. He worked as a cane farmer and as a dairy farmer for most of his life.
Interview with Mr. Nazir Noor. Mr Noor was born in 1922 in the Dow Village region but he moved when he was married at the age of 16. He moved to Phoenix Park where he became an active member of the Phoenix Park Panchayat. May 18th 2002.
Interview with Pundit Outam Maharaj. Pundit Outam’s family had always been religiously inclined. His father and grandfather were pundits/shadus in the Rousillac area. He was born in 1932. July 31st 2002.
Interview with Mr. Noor. May 18th 2002.
Elder in the context suggestive of someone old, wise and full of experience.
A small dirt walled temple or place of worship.
The tree is still standing today and it is community policy never to cut it down.
J.C.Jha An Indian National Panchayat of Trinidad 1899 page 136.
Interview with Dit Sookhoo. Mr Sookhoo was born in 1927 in the Dow Village Area. He was usually asked to share his opinion in matters pertaining to communal order. May 25th 2002.
Interview with Mr Dit Sookhoo. May 25th 2002.
According to Morton Klass, Page 197 Indian relations with state institutions such as that of the police were very strained. There existed total distrust coupled with blatant racial practice.
Interview with Madam Mungroo also called “Fat Daddy”, she was born in 1932 in Avocat Village, St John’s Road. Madame Mungroo is locally known as a healer. July 17th 2002.
Due to the size of the village and kinship ties which existed, it was not strange that information circulated quickly.
Interview with Mr Nazir Noor. May 18th 2002.
Louis Dumont Essays in Individualism Modern Idealogy in Anthropological Perspective 1980 page 399
The Panchayat did not use force as a means of punishment but rather ethical atonement. The troublemakers had to recognise his wrongs. If these kinds of systems were not in place then the Panchayat could not have functioned.
In my research I did not come across anyone who remembered any person being made an outcaste. It was just the standard by which things would have been done. This of course does not mean that it did not occur at all.
Recognition in the sense of a headmaster – everyone acknowledges that fact that he is important.
There were old men – old age implying wisdom and experience through the teaching of life.
Patricia Mohammed. A Social History of Post Migrant Indians in Trinidad 1917-1947 (1994).
Panchayat operated by members of one caste for that caste alone.
Judith Ann Weller The East Indian Indenture in Trinidad 1968 page 52.
Islamic equivalent to a Christian Priest or Pastor, representative of Allah.
Interview with Laxmi Pundit on July 26th 2002 in Arouca. Pundit is 75 years of age.
The jamindar in all likelihood is the degrogatory of zimindar which was a large landowner.
Caste not in the traditional sense of the word but as social status.
Caste became affiliated with financial status, social status and physical features rather than birth.
J.C.Jha. The Indian National Panchayat of 1899. Page 2.
Interview with Sundar Pantin on 1st June 2002.
Interview with Pundit Outam Maharaj
Interview with Nazir Noor. July 18th 2002
Interview with Madam Mungroo. July 17th 2002
Interview with Mr. Harold Phekoo. July 20th 2002.
Interview with Dit Sookhoo. May 25th 2002.
Interview with Maharajin on August 3rd 2002 in Fyzabad. This woman is appropriately called Maharajin because of her deep involvement and influence in the religious development of Fyzabad and Avocat. She is 85 years of age.
Interview with Nazir Noor.
Hindu Prayers in which obeisance is made to Mother Kali
One of the two epic poems of India, written in the Vedic period.
Steven Vertovec Hindu Trinidad-Religion, Ethnicity and Socio-Economic Change 1992. Page 160.