SUNDAY 7TH JUNE, 2015 – UWI TODAY
21
CULTURE
Seepersad & Sons
September 6-8, 2015
The debunking of myths
B y V i j a y M a h a r a j
In Jahaji: An Anthology of
Indo-Caribbean Fiction Frank
Birbalsingh provides us with a useful note on which to begin
this month’s engagement with the upcoming conference,
Seepersad & Sons: Naipaulian Creative Synergies,
which is being hosted by The Friends of Mr Biswas in
conjunction with the Department of Literary, Cultural and
Communication Studies of the St Augustine campus of The
UWI from September 6-8, 2015.
Birbalsingh reminds us that “Indo-Caribbean
imaginative writing… [began] with Seepersad Naipaul in
1943.” In addition, as I have argued, his stories “are set in
the period of settlement and adjustment, the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries and allow for the investigation
of the earliest pre-independence self-perceptions of post-
indenture being and belonging” (A Caribbean Katha).
This is no minor accomplishment. The study of
narrative, as Ulric Neisser and Robyn Fivush argue in The
Remembering Self, has been “one of the more prominent
currents in late 20th-century intellectual life.” As a result
we now know without a doubt that self-awareness, self-
understanding, self-knowledge, self-assertion and so much
more are dependent on the ability to narrate our lives and
this ability is formed by the kinds of narratives to which we
are exposed. In the hands of the creative artist, narratives
can be powerful tools for social transformation.
The transformation that Seepersad Naipaul’s work
accomplishes is vividly depicted in the covers that V. S.
Naipaul chose for the reproduction of his father’s 1943
collection (1976 edition). Putting paid to the idea of the
helpless coolie peasant, the front cover depicts a young
couple with a single girl child, whose postures, expressions
and juxtaposition belie stereotypes of women’s passivity,
rejection of girl children and patriarchal male violence.
Reinforcing the image at the front, the image on the back
cover of Seepersad with members of his family including
his two young daughters shows a family in whom the
same proud hauteur and self-confidence are immediately
apparent. The third picture from the Guyana Gallery
selected for reproduction in this article similarly reiterates
the debunking of common stereotypes associated with the
Indo-Caribbean, not only during the ‘coolie’ past but also
in the present.
In the stories moreover, “oppressed women, or girls
really, are at the centre of Seepersad Naipaul’s concerns,
and they serve in a sense as signifiers of the value of the
community’s cultural patterns” (A Caribbean Katha).
Perhaps for this very reason, in the foreword to the 1976
edition, V. S. Naipaul remarks that the original publication
in 1943 “drew one or two letters of abuse from people who
thought my father had written damagingly of our Indian
community.” As many events marking the 170th year since
the first arrival of the Indian indentured labourers this
year indicate, the dominant discourse remains celebratory
of the accomplishments of their descendants against the
background of indentureship.
In keeping with the ethos of our times, this generally
translates into recognition of social status and fiscal well-
being rather than less easily discernible albeit perhaps
more important qualities such as honesty, perseverance and
resistance to the valuing of status and money as the sole
purpose of life. Seepersad Naipaul’s work asserts the latter.
In fact in the depiction of the titular character, Gurudeva,
Seepersad Naipaul exhibits severe reservations about the
liberties that a certain amount of money and community
status affords Gurudeva. Seepersad’s sons have written in a
similar vein and their work, perhaps not surprisingly, has
drawn similar if more widespread opprobrium.
Despite this, in the preface to Frantz Fanon’s The
Wretched of the Earth, Jean Paul Sartre claims that “The
European elite undertook tomanufacture a native elite.They
picked out promising adolescents; they branded them, as
with a red-hot iron, with the principles of western culture;
they stuffed their mouth full with high-sounding phrases,
grand glutinous words that stuck to the teeth. After a short
stay in the mother country they were sent home, white-
washed.” In their portrayal of such characters, the Naipauls’
work stood then and continues to stand now as a bulwark
against the possibility of such characters lasting very long
in the Caribbean.
Moreover, as the recently concluded Indian Diaspora
Conference on the UWI St Augustine campus highlighted,
myths about the indentured labourers have proliferated
abundantly. One of the most important tasks that the
Naipauls’ work achieves is the debunking of myths. In this
vein, one of the objectives of the conference ‘Seepersad and
Sons’ is to distinguish between myth and reality in relation
to the three Naipauls’ works and their contexts as Brinsley
Samaroo has done in the article “The World of Seepersad
Naipaul” for The ARTS Journal in March 2008, including
the prominent myth which conflates the real life Seepersad
Naipaul with the fictional Mohun Biswas.
One of the most important tasks that the Naipauls’ work achieves is the debunking of myths.
In this vein, one of the objectives of the conference ‘Seepersad and Sons’ is to distinguish
between myth and reality in relation to the three Naipauls’ works and their contexts
