Harrilal the plastic man

Plastic. The “bad boy” of world-wide pollution today, “plastic” is defined as “any one of a number of synthetic polymeric substances that can be given any required shape.”

It also means “capable of being moulded; exhibiting an adaptability to environmental changes,” (Concise Oxford). In our post-colonial existence, we are a lot like “plastic people” — capable of adaptation, but to what? From Toronto in 1971, I published an article, “Harrilal, the plastic man,” in the weekly Bomb newspaper (November 12).

That short essay sought to reflect the mixed-up commentaries on cultural identity and national loyalty in the aftermath of the 1970 Black Power uprising. Nationalism yes, asked Harrilal, the East Indian country-boy, but where and what is the nation? A little history will help.

During and just after the turbulent Black Power marches in 1970, there were intense debates about race, colour, nationalism, cultural identity, discrimination and political power across the country. Shifting from the conservatism of Martin Luther King Jr etc in the sixties, several black activists in the US (eg Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, etc), helped craft the Black Power movement which resonated in Trinidad.

At Montreal’s Sir George Williams University (Now Concordia) where I spent my first year before entering University of Toronto, I witnessed first-hand (1969) the infamous burning of the university’s computer room by a group of student activists (mainly black), protesting discrimination against West Indian students by a white zoology professor. Some activists were old friends (eg Joey Jagan, Teddy and Valerie Belgrave). All 97 were arrested by police.

The heat reached the UWI St Augustine campus. Student demonstrations and several black organisations (eg NJAC) expressed collective anger against economic marginalisation and discrimination — eventually leading to mass mobilisation, police shooting a black youth, a Karl Hudson-Phillip-driven Public Order Bill, a state of emergency, a divided media, sporadic attempts to integrate Indians into the struggle, Bhadase Sagan Maraj’s resentment, PM Dr Williams making three nation-wide tv broadcasts in response to the Black Power challenge, houses cheapened, migration by the two per cent, upper class and many Indians flowed, etc.

Black consciousness swept to an unprecedented high in the country. Shirts and dresses became proudly Africanised. Names too. Questions were noisily asked about race, culture, nationalism and equal opportunity. Harrilal was there in 1971, wrapped in plastic ambivalence. Here is a reprint of that light-hearted 1971 article, “Harrilal the plastic man.” (Part One)

“You know him very well. He is now in his early twenties. He was born in Trinidad: his passport says he is Trinidadian. His parents tell him he is an Indian and must marry a nice Indian girl.

The Black Panthers, NJAC and URO tell him he is a black man with lots of “enemies.” Within CARIFTA, he is told to conjure up a West Indian identity. The pundit tells him he is a Hindu, even though he can’t read one line of Hindi. “His ancestors came from India as culture-locked indentured labourers and who, some people say, got a raw deal. Let’s call our friend HARRILAL. In 1971 Harrilal looked around like Little Bo Peep who had lost his identity and didn’t know where to find it. But Harry has been having this problem since he was a kid. For instance, he was ashamed to eat roti in front of his friends — an old story. Bread was a better thing to eat at school. He was being moulded into the likeness of others.

“Now folks, a good many things like this happened to Harrilal on his way up, so even today you would not catch him wearing a dhoti, except to an old mas’ party. He seems content to let Mr Robinson wear it. Why Harry? Why? Why is it that the only Hindi you know is from the song Nanee and Nanna?

“Harrilal explains that it is really nobody’s fault, that his parents never taught him Hindi, and even the Maha Sabha school he attended, most of the teachers themselves did not know Hindi, far less to teach poor kids like him. But what has all this shaped Harrilal into? A plastic man?
(Reprinted in “The Deosaran Files, Two Decades of Political Commentary 1971-1991, Vol 2, 2005. Part Two next week.)