Caring, funny Prof Samaroo

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

WITH Professor Emeritus Brinsley Samaroo, it wasn’t just his singular expertise on indenture history and the Caribbean or his endless generosity with a transnational array of students and scholars. It wasn’t his decades in politics, which continued even after he left the machinations of elections to advise from the background, help campaign or write speeches.

In my memories over nearly 30 years, from first meeting him, as I helped with the Indian diaspora conference in 1995, to liming with him at his usual spot in the West Indiana section of the UWI library on a Monday morning three weeks ago, it’s his deeply caring and slightly curmudgeonly personality that I most affectionately remember, value and will miss.

Prof Samaroo was extremely funny. His delivery was dry and you could catch yourself wondering if he was being hilarious or serious, but his humour was mischievous, and he’d heap satire into his stories, explaining how corrupt politicians bought up the land around highways yet to be built and revealing old talk he heard while drinking expensive whisky with his Muslim friends.

Conversation with him was like reading Naipaul’s Suffrage of Elvira: he had a handle on the society, both from behind doors and from paying close attention to what played out across the newspapers. If you asked, he would tell you what he really thought of all kinds of people to whom he was deferential in public. His would be an astute, ethical and honest point of view.

He could confide all that wasn’t in history books: scandal from across the 20th century, from Adrian Cola Rienzi to Eric Williams to today; plantations that fell apart because of their drunken white owners and then were revived by the grit of their Indian child brides; brothels hidden in plain sight along the east coast; and land stolen by French Creoles from Indian women after their husbands died.

He proudly told the story of women, whether protesters or entrepreneurs, and would remind anyone interested about Phoolbassie, also known as Naidoo, and Josephine Charles, who spent a year in jail for her participation in the 1937 workers’ unrest. He believed women in the labour movement were “side by side” with men, “not one behind the other.”

He took history to people and would speak anywhere he was asked, writing his notes with sharpened pencils at that very desk in West Indiana. However, more than that, he was an adventurer. He’d corral everyone on some hill, coastline or past estate to lecture
in situ, pointing at one thing or another, marvelling with you as if he too was seeing with fresh eyes. He was deep in archival records, diaries and newspapers, but also saw landscape as an archive.

To travel with him was to see places as he did – named after plantation owners, sites of riots and protests, built up by women’s survival spirit, marked by the legacy of indenture. A natural storyteller, he made history come to life.

Time spent with him was a gift. Today, I think there is no one else who knows all that he did.

He had just returned from commemorating the 150th anniversary of indenture in Suriname, where he had a marvellous time. He was like that wherever he went: at home in India, beloved in the UK, welcomed in Suriname and Guyana, and embraced in Fiji and Mauritius.

He was always inviting someone to his beach house in Mayaro. He loved the sea and "making a cook." Long ago, when I was a researcher in Nariva Swamp, he was insistent that to get to know village life, and be trusted by folk, you had to drink with them. I was young and studious, and looked askance at this, but over time I understood that he valued being a man of the people.

An educator at heart, in almost every conversation he would unspool the roots of Indo-Caribbean words, surnames and place names. One of the last times I saw him, he explained how the Sanskrit roots of the word "industry" come from Indian women’s labour in the Indus valley.

"Prof" lived many lives, from his beginnings in Rio Claro to his university days in India, his stint in politics and his decades at UWI, where students, staff and scholars adored him. He was a father figure, and I had tremendous love and fondness for him and his encyclopaedic mind.

I’m not ready for him to be gone, though, my heart full of appreciation, I know it’s time to say goodbye.

Diary of a mothering worker

Entry 510

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