Caribbean Matters is a weekly series from Daily Kos. Hope you’ll join us here every Saturday. If you are unfamiliar with the region, check out Caribbean Matters: Getting to know the countries of the Caribbean.
The Caribbean region is a rich and fascinating melange of cultures, ethnicities, racial ancestries, and religions. We recently covered the arrival of a large migration of people from India/South Asia to the region and to here in the U.S., however the focus was on Hindus. There is a second part to that story, because along with those who were Hindu, came a much smaller group of Muslims. They brought with them religious practices and ceremonies which were changed when they came into close contact with Black Caribbean culture.
Karimah Rahman, writing for Brown Gyal Diary, gives us some demographic data history:
The approximately half a million South Asian/ Indian indentured labourers displaced to the Caribbean were predominantly Hindu at 85% with Muslim indentured labourers forming a large minority (some reports of 14% and 16%, (80,000)) and were composed of many intersectional identities.
She points out that this group of Muslims was diverse in their Islamic faith, practice, and caste:
A majority of Muslim indentured labourers were predominantly Sunni of the Hanafi madhab of fiqh (school of jurisprudence) with a small Shiite, Sufi and Ahmadiyyah minority. The largest caste represented among Hindu indentured labourers in the Caribbean are low castes/ dalits. The same can be said among Muslims (and Christans) but the caste breakdown on the Emigration Passes was only provided for Hindus, thus making low castes/ dalits the majority represented overall across religions if Muslim and Christian caste breakdowns are included. Muslims are not included in the caste breakdown since there is a perception that there is no caste system among Muslims (and Christians) in South Asia/ India.
So when they arrived they brought rituals with them and celebrated festivals from their homeland. One of those is now known and celebrated as “Hosay,” most currently in Trinidad & Tobago and Jamaica. It is being celebrated this week.
Ken Chitwood, author of “The Muslims of Latin America and the Caribbean,” wrote for UF News Archive how Hosay became uniquely Caribbean:
In Trinidad, the 100,000 Muslims who make up 5 percent of the island’s total population, celebrate the day of Ashura, as Hosay – the name derived from “Hussein.”
The first Hosay festival was held in 1854, just over a decade after the first Indian Muslims began to arrive from India to work on the island’s sugar plantations.
But Trinidad at the time was under British colonial rule and large public gatherings were not permitted. In 1884, the British authorities issued a prohibition against Hosay commemorations. Approximately 30,000 people took to the streets, in Mon Repos, in the south, to protest against the ordinance. Shots fired to disperse the crowd killed 22 and injured over 100. The ordinance was later overturned.
The “Hosay Massacre” or “Muharram Massacre,” however, lives in people’s memories.
YouTuber CalypsotoZess from Trinidad and Tobago produced a short video on the Hosay Massacre of 1884:
The video notes:
[The Hosay massacre] left an indelible mark on our nation’s history, highlighting the resilience and unity of the Indian community.
In the mid-19th century, Indian indentured laborers brought their rich cultural traditions to Trinidad, including the Hosay festival. By the 1880s, the British colonial government grew wary of these gatherings and issued a prohibition. Defying the ban, participants proceeded with their processions, resulting in a tragic confrontation with colonial forces that left many dead and injured.
This massacre sparked outrage and solidarity among the Indian community, highlighting the oppressive nature of the colonial regime. Despite the tragedy, the Hosay festival evolved and continues to be celebrated as a symbol of cultural perseverance and unity.Join us on this journey through a pivotal moment in Trinidad’s history, where the spirit of freedom and community triumphs over oppression.
Modern-day celebrations and commemorations have taken on a blending of old and new, including the construction of floats called “tadjahs.”
Chitwood explains more about the tadjahs:
These days, Hosay celebrations in St. James and Cedros not only recall Hussein, but also those killed during the 1884 Hosay riots. Rather than recreate the events through self-flagellation or other forms of suffering, however, people in Trinidad create bright and beautiful floats, called “tadjahs,” that parade through the streets to the sea.
Each tadjah is constructed of wood, paper, bamboo and tinsel. Ranging from a height of 10 to 30 feet, the floats are accompanied by people parading along and others playing drums, just as is the practice in India’s northern city of Lucknow. Meant to reflect the resting place of Shiite martyrs, the tadjahs resemble mausoleums in India. To many, their domes might be a reminder of the Taj Mahal.
Walking ahead of the tadjahs are two men bearing crescent moon shapes, one in red and the other in green. These symbolize the deaths of Hussein and his brother Hassan – the red being Hussein’s blood and the green symbolizing the supposed poisoning of Hassan.
The elaborateness of the tadjahs continues to increase each year and has become somewhat of a status symbol among the families that sponsor them.
This video gives you a look at one of these processions from 2022, the Port of Spain-Big Tadjah and Moon Procession by Devashish Ramdath:
Nigerian Vlogger Baba Kii Sun takes a look at tadjah manufacturing:
Accompanying the tadjah floats are Tassa drummers, shown here in this TTT public broadcasting news video:
Anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker Frank J. Korom has spent years documenting Hosay and Islam in the Caribbean and Latin America. Here’s an extended trailer from his film on the observance of Shi’ite Muharram rites on the island of Trinidad:
Journalist Abigail Barrett covered the practice in Jamaica for Our Today:
Hussay or Hosay is an annual Muslim-predominant Indo-Caribbean festival still going strong in southern Clarendon. Behind the shadow of Christianity, however, folks in the other thirteen parishes seem oblivious to the tradition’s existence or significance.
The Clarendon communities of Gimme-Me-Bit, Race Course and Kemps Hill are the only places you can find Hussays being held.
[…]
Though the festival’s origins are spiritual, in Jamaica the focus is not entirely on those aspects since the proper Islamic celebration would not include rum, the beating of goatskin drums, and parading on the street with the tadjah. One would think of a mini-carnival when you think of the Jamaican Hussay.
The male who builds the Tadjah cannot eat meat, or dairy or engage in sexual intercourse for 10 days while the Hussay is being observed. Folks from the community and all over Jamaica gather wherever the Tadjah is being displayed (usually at the maker’s residence) for typically nine days, taking part in the drinking of rum, enjoying the rhythmic beating of the drums and tassas with the chiming of symbols. On the final day of the celebration, this is amplified as the Tadjah is paraded along the streets for hours, while the participants dance, cheer and shout “Bolo Bolo” which has no literal meaning, but in the context of Hussay we can say it means “The people are drunk”.
In 2022,Cecelia Campbell-Livingston, a reporter for The Jamaica Gleaner, wrote about the festival’s uncertain future:
Leroy Jagasar and his two nephews Suresh and Sanjay are doing everything they can to keep the Hosay Festival tradition going in Clarendon.
[…]
The Jagasars said the local tradition dates back to the 1800s when their foreparents came to Jamaica to work on sugar estates.
The festival, which used to be a staple in other parishes such as Westmoreland and St Mary, is now only celebrated in Clarendon.
[…]
The jury is still out on whether the event will return as Leroy’s nephews said that work demands would not allow them to dedicate the months of work and commitment to build the Hosay or engage in the three months of practice with players before the festival.
They have also been unsuccessful in numerous attempts to get funding to keep that part of the island’s culture alive.
According to Leroy, only the councillor for the division, Pauline Reynolds, a few friends in Kingston and a handful of local bar operators have been willing to give support.
Here’s the video that accompanies the article:
In Guyana (formerly British Guiana) the commemoration was called “Tadjah” where it wound up being banned.
The festival will continue in Trinidad and Tobago and the memory of the Hosay Massacre is being kept alive. Dr. Satnarine Balkaransingh, recently published the book “Hosay Caribbean: Tadjahs on Wheels”:
Dr Balkaransingh reveals in the book how Ordinance 9 of 1882 restricted Hosay processions to rural areas, segregated participants by religion and ethnicity, and sought to erode unity within the Indian community. Despite these measures, the “processionists” marched on October 30, 1884, carrying tadjahs and chanting marsīyas, dirges mourning Imam Hussein’s martyrdom at Karbala.
The book vividly recounts this tragic day, “The spectacle—thundering tassa drumming, with clashing brass cymbals, frenzied fencing of sticks and goatskin shields—was reliving the passion of Hussein in that battle of long ago in that ancient, distant land of Arabia. A section within the procession would have been chanting the highly emotive, dirge-like poetic verses, marsīyas. This was the annual norm of Muharram processions brought from the motherland, India. To the unfamiliar, it was mayhem.”
At Cipero Street, Major Bowles and his detachment confronted the first procession. The Riot Act was read in English—unheard and unintelligible to many marchers. Bowles ordered his men to fire.
“Guns already cocked, now levelled, they shot into the on-coming mass from a distance of as close as 25 feet. Two volleys of buckshot-loaded ammunition tore through the advancing crowd. The tadjahs, symbols of grief and defiance, lay toppled on the bloodstained ground.”
Here’s another example from calypso storyteller George Rapersand performing “The Hosay Massacre”:
A question for readers: Is this your first time learning about Hosay? If not, where did you learn?
Please join me in the comments section below to respond, and for the weekly Caribbean News Roundup.