Popular Culture and the Changing Gender Roles: A Study of Indian Diaspora in Caribbean

Abstract

Sexuality has been a subject of hierarchically positioning one’s identity by constructing a superior masculinity vis-à-vis a frail, docile and submissive feminine counterpart. Representation of sexuality and gender identity within Indian diaspora was no exception to it. The identity of ‘Jahaji’ women was more of a reworking within the Indian identity and Western Creole identity with which they constantly seem to struggle. However, the very fact that women within diasporic culture were wage earners and that they displayed a sense of solidarity or ‘sisterhood’ by virtue of their fewer number and historical location (since majority of them were deserted women, prostitutes or Brahmin widows), understanding gender within Indian diaspora stands far more complex than understanding it merely as a ‘dialectics of sex’. Poetry sung by these women thus often became a tool to capture their solitude and their struggle to construct their own spaces in a far destined and alienated land. Being an indentured labourer was newer space and experience that they were thrown open to. They do not have any relationship baggage because of the fact that their social composition explained the periphery of society they belonged to. This brought about newer dimensions with which they would associate themselves like motherhood, reworking of myths and even education towards the latter half century as modes of their emancipation.