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The Hosay massacre (also known as the Hosay riots or the Jahaji massacre) took place on 30 October 1884 in San Fernando, Trinidad when the British colonial authorities fired on participants in the annual Hosay procession (the local name for the Shi'a Festival of Muharram) who had been banned from entering the town.
After the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire, the plantation owners of Trinidad were desperate for new sources of labour. In 1839 the British government began a programme of recruiting Indian labourers in Calcutta to be sent to Trinidad. They bound themselves to work as indentured labourers for a set number of years on the plantations. The mostly Hindu and Muslim labourers were required to work seven and a half hours a day, six days a week for three years, receiving about 13 cents[ clarification needed ] a day for their work. At first, half of the recruits were women but, in 1840, the proportion was reduced to a third of the number of men. In 1844, the period of indenture was extended to five years with a guarantee that, if they wished, they would get a free passage home at the end of their service. In 1853 the law was again amended to allow the indentured labourers to re-indenture themselves for a second five-year term or, if they wished, to commute any portion of their contract by repayment of a proportionate part of their indenture fee.
Industrial unrest on the plantations was gaining momentum to be followed by a deepening depression in the sugar industry in 1884. This atmosphere was also fuelled by frequent strikes. In the previous year, met with restrictions on the use of torches the African community celebrating ‘Canboulay’ reacted and this resulted in violence.
The decision by the authorities to prohibit the Indians from entering the towns with their processions, which began, on the estates ‘were regarded by the Indians as an arbitrary and unjust measure’. The Indians protested with a petition led by the Hindu Sookhoo and 31 others.
On 26 October Administrator John Bushe consulted the Executive Council on "the final arrangements to be made for preserving order during the Hosea." Acting Colonial Secretary, Mr. Pyne informed the Inspector Commandant of Police, Captain Baker instructing him on the "deployment of police, marines, from the HMS Dido, and a volunteer force." 27 October – Captain Baker personally monitors the situation. The next day Baker reports that the Indians would make no attempt to enter San Fernando. In a series of telegrams Baker attempts to avoid an armed confrontation with the Indians, however Mr. Pyne appeared bent on such a confrontation to show the Indians who was in charge. (Shantal Ramnarine)
At midday the first procession of 6,000 was sighted approaching San Fernando reaching Cross Crossing about 2:30 pm and proceeded along to the entrance of Cipero Street. There the crowd was met by British troops under Major Bowles of the First North Staffordshire Regiment. The local magistrate, a Mr. Child, read the Riot Act and when the crowd failed to disperse, Child ordered the police to fire upon them. Two volleys were fired into the crowd.[ citation needed ]
At the Mon Repos Junction of the Princes Town and Circular roads the Indian crowd was also fired upon.[ clarification needed ] The procession was in sight about 3:30 pm. Captain Baker gave the order to fire a single volley of bullets after the Riot Act was read.[ citation needed ]
Historian Michael Anthony [1] reports that nine people were killed and 100 wounded at Toll Gate (on the south side of the town), while others were injured at Mon Repos (on the eastern side of the town) and at Pointe-à-Pierre Road on the north. Indian historian Prabhu P. Mohapatra [2] suggests a higher figure of 22 dead, and over a hundred injured.
The history of Trinidad and Tobago begins with the settlements of the islands by Indigenous First Peoples. Trinidad was visited by Christopher Columbus on his third voyage in 1498,, and claimed in the name of Spain. Trinidad was administered by Spanish hands until 1797, but it was largely settled by French colonists. Tobago changed hands between the British, French, Dutch, and Courlanders, but eventually ended up in British hands following the second Treaty of Paris (1814). In 1889, the two islands were incorporated into a single political entity. Trinidad and Tobago obtained its independence from the British Empire in 1962 and became a republic in 1976.
Coolie is a pejorative term used for low-wage labourers, typically those of Indian or Chinese descent.
Indian Arrival Day is a holiday celebrated on various days in the nations of the Caribbean, Fiji, South Africa and Mauritius, commemorating the arrival of people from the Indian subcontinent to their respective nations as indentured labours brought by European colonial authorities and their agents. In Guyana, Mauritius, Fiji and Trinidad and Tobago, where it started, it is an official public holiday.
Indo-Caribbeans or Indian-Caribbeans are people in the Caribbean who are descendants of the Jahaji indentured laborers from India and the wider subcontinent, who were brought by the British, Dutch, and French during the colonial era from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. A minority of them are descendants from people who immigrated as entrepreneurs, businesspeople, merchants, engineers, doctors, religious leaders and other professional occupations beginning in the mid-20th century.
Indo-Trinidadians and Tobagonians or Indian-Trinidadians and Tobagonians are people of Indian origin who are nationals of Trinidad and Tobago, whose ancestors came from India and the wider subcontinent beginning in 1845 during the period of colonization.
The Canboulay riots were a series of disturbances in the British colony of Trinidad in 1881. The riots came about in response to efforts by the colonial police to restrict aspects of the island's annual Carnival festival. In Port of Spain, San Fernando and Princes Town, angered Trinidadians rioted in response to the actions of the police; several people were killed as a result of the riots. Canboulay music forms an important part the musical traditions of Trinidad. The "chantwell" or chantuelle who was also an integral part of the celebrations was the forerunner of the calypsonian and later soca music.
The culture of Trinidad and Tobago reflects the influence of Indian-South Asian, African, Indigenous, European, Chinese, North American, Latino, and Arab cultures. The histories of Trinidad and Tobago are different. There are differences in the cultural influences which have shaped each island. Trinidad and Tobago is an English-speaking country with strong links to the United Kingdom.
Social unrest has shaped the development of Trinidad and Tobago since the middle of the 19th century. Attempts by the British colonial government to crack down on the celebration of Carnival sparked the Canboulay Riots in 1881 and 1884. Attempts to control the celebration of Hosay by the Indian population culminated in the Hosay Riots in 1884. In the early 20th century, the Water riots culminated in the destruction of the Red House, the seat of government, by a mob of protestors.
Indo-Guyanese or Indian-Guyanese, are Guyanese nationals of Indian origin who trace their ancestry to India and the wider subcontinent. They are the descendants of indentured servants and settlers who migrated from India beginning in 1838, and continuing during the British Raj.
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Trinidad and Tobago, officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated 11 kilometres off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and 130 kilometres south of Grenada. It shares maritime boundaries with Barbados to the east, Grenada to the northwest and Venezuela to the south and west. Trinidad and Tobago is generally considered to be part of the West Indies. The island country's capital is Port of Spain, while its largest and most populous municipality is Chaguanas.
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Hosay is a Muslim Indo-Caribbean commemoration that is popularly observed in Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica. In Trinidad and Tobago, multi-coloured model mausoleums or mosque-shaped model tombs known as tadjah are used to display the symbolic part of this commemoration. They are built and paraded, then ritually taken to the sea on last day of observance, and finally discarded into the water. The word tadjah derived from the Arabic word ta'zieh and signifies different cultural meanings depending on the region, time period, occasion, and religion. In Guyana, and Suriname, the festival is called Taziya or in Caribbean Hindustani tadjah in reference to these floats, arguably the most visible and decorative element of this festival.
The Indian indenture system was a system of indentured servitude, by which more than 1.6 million workers from British India were transported to labour in European colonies, as a substitute for slave labor, following the abolition of the trade in the early 19th century. The system expanded after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, in the French colonies in 1848, and in the Dutch Empire in 1863. British Indian indentureship lasted till the 1920s. This resulted in the development of a large South Asian diaspora in the Caribbean, Natal, East Africa, Réunion, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Fiji, as well as the growth of Indo-Caribbean, Indo-African, Indo-Mauritian, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Malaysian, and Indo-Singaporean populations.
Ta'zieh means comfort, condolence, or expression of grief. It comes from the roots aza which mean mourning. It commonly refers to passion plays about the Battle of Karbala and its prior and subsequent events. Sir Lewis Pelly began the preface of his book about Ta'ziyeh maintaining that "If the success of a drama is to be measured by the effects which it produces upon the people for whom it is composed, or upon the audiences before whom it is represented, no play has ever surpassed the tragedy known in the Mussulman world as that of Hasan and Husain." Years later Peter Chelkowski, professor of Iranian and Islamic studies at NYU, chose the same words for the beginning of his book Ta`ziyeh, Ritual and Drama in Iran.
Girmitiyas, also known as Jahajis, were indentured labourers from British India transported to work on plantations in Fiji, South Africa, Eastern Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Caribbean as part of the Indian indenture system.
Chinese Trinidadians and Tobagonians are Trinidadians and Tobagonians of Han Chinese ancestry. The group includes people from Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Overseas Chinese who have immigrated to Trinidad and Tobago and their descendants, including those who have emigrated to other countries. The term is usually applied both to people of mixed and unmixed Chinese ancestry, although the former usually appear as mixed race in census figures. Chinese settlement began in 1806. Between 1853 and 1866 2,645 Chinese immigrants arrived in Trinidad as indentured labour for the sugar and cacao plantations. Immigration peaked in the first half of the twentieth century, but was dramatically lowered after the Chinese Communist Revolution in 1949. After peaking at 8,361 in 1960, the unmixed Chinese population in Trinidad declined to 3,800 in 2000, however slightly increased to 3,984 in 2011.
George F. Fitzpatrick (1875–1920) was a prominent barrister of Indian descent and member of Trinidad & Tobago's Legislative Council. He played an early role in helping bring to light malpractices carried out under the system of Indian indentured labour. In 1909, George Fitzpatrick provided testimony before a British parliamentary investigation, led by Lord Sanderson, regarding alleged mistreatment of East Indian labourers living in Trinidad. The Sanderson Committee, however, failed to bring about the immediate abolition of the indentured system, only its postponement, which was further deferred by the onset of the First World War. It was not until January 2, 1920, that the system of indentured labour would come to an end. George F. Fitzpatrick's son, Hon. George Fitzpatrick, trained as a solicitor and served a three-year term as member of parliament, representing the district of San Fernando. Following the death of his first wife during childbirth, Hon. George Fitzpatrick married Phyllis Sinanan, sister of Mitra and Ashford Sinanan, uniting the Fitzpatrick family with another prominent political family of Trinidad (see Ashford Sinanan, Ambassador, Leader of the Opposition, Democratic Labour Party, West Indies Federation, founder of the West Indian National Party and High Commissioner to India. See also M. Sinanan, Constitution Commission of Trinidad and Tobago, presented to His Excellency Sir Ellis Clarke, Commander-in-Chief of Trinidad and Tobago, January 22, 1974.
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The Indian community in Saint Kitts and Nevis is made up of Indo-Kittitians, Indo-Nevisians, non-resident Indians and persons of Indian origin. Indo-Kittitians and Indo-Nevisians are nationals of Saint Kitts and Nevis whose ancestry lies within the country of India. The community originated from the Indian indentured workers brought to Saint Kitts and Nevis by the British in 1861 and 1874 respectively. By 1884, most of the community had emigrated to Caribbean nations with larger Indian populations such as Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname.