The Hindu Ethic and the Spirit of Neo-Liberal Capitalism: Anxieties of Failure and Moralities of Work in Hindu Trinidad

Aaron Andrew GreerDepartment of Anthropology

Pacific University2043 College Way

Forest Grove, OR 97116aaron@pacificu.edu

Abstract: This article examines the role of anxiety in the creation of moralities of work in a small community of Hindus in Trinidad, West Indies. Specifically, I focus on how anxieties of global failure inspire ascetic practices that align with contemporary work

ethics and that stand in distinction both to the nation’s “culture of the extended carnival” and the ascetic practices found in Weber’s Protestants. As Weber found, Protestants who worried about salvation found solace in devoting themselves to work in the secular world of capitalism. Among the Hindu community members discussed here, the problem is the

reverse: anxieties of capital failure inspire religious curricula that promote worldly asceticism and discipline in a country they see in moral decline.

[Keywords: Anxiety; Abjection; Work; Morality; Ethics; Hinduism; Trinidad]

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So far from there being an inevitable conflict between money-making and piety, they are natural allies, for the virtues incumbent upon the elect – diligence, thrift, sobriety, prudence – are the most reliable passport to commercial prosperity.

~ Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Introduction

The Kendra is a small Hindu temple located on a lonely stretch of road in Central

Trinidad. Surrounded by agricultural plains, the mandir (temple) is a multi-faceted space

whose remoteness belies its importance. Though its architecture is modest and its

geography in the rural margins, the Kendra, like many religious spaces, is central in the

lives of the many people who rely on it to forge strong community bonds and, most

importantly, orient the moral compasses of their children1. Throughout the many days I

spent there, cobbled together over the last seven years, I learned what the instructors of

the Kendra’s many programs are fighting for. In the early evenings, especially on the

occasions when my friend would pick me up and stop, inevitably, at a rum shop, I learned

what they were fighting against. Over the years, a vivid image of two Trinidads began to

emerge – one of drunkenness, disorder, decadence, and self-indulgence, and another of

order, productivity, sobriety, community involvement, and discipline. This binary vision

is shaped in no small measure by the vigilant efforts of Kendra leaders striving to nurture

moral youths in a country they fear is losing its way. The imagery they evoke in the daily

Ramayana lessons that juxtapose the epic’s scenes of chaos and violence with Trinidad’s

deteriorating moral order serve as harrowing reminders of what happens to communities

that give in to self-indulgent lifestyles. As I will show throughout this paper, anxieties of

national economic failure are pervasive in Trinidad and inspire public discourse, state-

level policies, and community-based programs aimed at circumventing global abjection.

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This paper is therefore framed around the contrast between a strongly promoted

national image of a country that parties on the one hand, and the anxiety experienced by

the Hindu Trinidadians I work with who see economic ruin following from moral decline

on the other. In constructing this contrast, I illustrate the urgency from which Kendra

instructors, and the parents who enroll their kids in its programs, operate. Here, I want to

describe problems in Trinidadian public life as they are identified by members of the

Kendra and that partially reveal the logics underwriting their practices and programs,

particularly their summer program called the Bal Ramdila Summer Vacation and

Heritage Course. In a reversal of Weber’s exegesis of Protestant religious anxieties

mediated through secular practices of work, I analyze how Trinidad’s litany of moral

problems articulated by the Kendra community gives rise to secular anxieties resolved

through religious practice. As Weber illustrates, the asceticism that emerged among the

early Protestants offered adherents a tangible medium by which to ensure salvation, thus

alleviating religious anxieties of failure and damnation (1963:168, 182-3; 2003:155-183,

see also Foucault 2008:85). My encounter with the Hindu community at the Kendra

revealed both a reversal of and accordance with Weber’s analysis – asceticism is equally

present within the Kendra community, but the anxiety is a secular one emerging from the

country’s precarious place in a competitive world order. As I will describe, the country’s

“raucous ebulliency” and “eudaemonism” as Lewis has colorfully phrased it (1968:197),

is a source of deep anxiety for many Trinidadians who fear the country may fail without

the requisite discipline to maintain prosperity.

Using an anthropology of the contemporary (Rabinow et al 2008) that draws on

Ferguson’s (1997) use of the term “abjection” and Weeks’ (2011) Marxist/Weberian

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analysis of work, I argue that the fashioning of moralities of work and discipline among

many Trinidadian Hindus is deeply intertwined with anxieties of local place in global

capital orders. This analysis will focus on the strange paradox of contemporary anxieties

of national failure in a Caribbean state long regarded as one of the most economically

solvent in the region.

The abundance of oil and natural gas in Trinidad and Tobago, along with their

many related industries in petrochemical production, has made the country the wealthiest

in the Caribbean. The twin island nation enjoys the region’s highest overall GDP and

second highest per capita GDP (Barbados ranks first in that category). Beyond that, the

International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization renowned for its conservative

approach to economics, awarded Trinidad and Tobago some of its most complimentary

language for their creation and maintenance of the Heritage and Stabilization Fund

(HSF). The HSF was created in 2007 in an effort to stabilize the Trinidadian economy

during times of financial duress, usually when oil and gas prices sink. Surprisingly, the

IMF criticized Trinidad for being too conservative with the Fund by failing to draw on it

to do what it is supposed to do, that is, stabilize the economy (Gold et al. 2012:8-9). It

seems strangely contradictory, improbable even, that a country reaping the benefits of oil

and natural gas production and that draws on those revenues to build a massive fund to

float the nation when times are hard, would fear being left behind.

How could feelings of abjection then, in the sense that Ferguson (1999) applies

the term as being not merely tossed out of modernity but “thrown down”, have any

traction in the Trinidadian imaginary? Isn’t Trinidad, with its comparatively robust

economy and rather high standard of living, deeply enmeshed in global modernity? With

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the reliable revenue it enjoys, doesn’t Trinidad dine at the same banquet as the global

elite? I will argue in this paper that though Trinidad maintains a relatively solvent

economy, Trinidadians at all levels of power have never really felt financially secure. As

we will see, Trinidadians feel ignored by and incidental to global powers and they do not

trust their government to manage the nation’s affairs in order to keep them stable when

oil fails them. In turn, the Trinidadian government does not trust its own populace to

work hard enough to keep the country on strong economic footing in the long run.

Furthermore, as we will see, Trinidadians tend to have little faith in their compatriots,

fearing that should oil and gas diminish, they will not have the requisite skill sets or the

desire to cultivate them in order to rebuild their economy.

The fear of abjection and the intrusion of new capital logics and practices (the

many valences of neo-liberalism) has forced Trinidadians, as it has others, to contend

with revamped notions of productivity, professionalism, consumerism, debt, prosperity,

and global competition2. While Weber regarded asceticism as a religious response to a

morally corrupt world, what Christians called a massa perditionis, or, a lost world, I

argue here that the moral instruction at the Kendra attempts to align with capital logics of

productivity by promoting the requisite asceticism to succeed in a competitive global

economy. The antidote then to secular anxieties of failure, loss, and abjection is a moral

structure founded on Hindu principles of worldly asceticism.

To advance my claim that capital anxieties blend with and shape religious

morality in much of Hindu Trinidad, I use three main lines of evidence that start from

broadly sketched contours of the problem of discipline and end with an ethnographic

focus on the Kendra community’s efforts to buoy the nation through an ethic of hard

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work and discipline. First, I will briefly outline the problem of moral disorder in Trinidad

as it is routinely articulated both to me personally by many Trinidadians and more

broadly in various avenues of popular discourse. I then turn to specific criticisms of the

problems engendered by Trinidad’s moral excesses articulated by policy makers and

community leaders, focusing specifically on the state’s first Prime Minister, Eric

Williams. Finally, I describe and analyze the Kendra’s anxieties and the programs they

create and promote to forge a more disciplined Trinidad.

Wobbly Drunks: The “Underachieving Society” and the Origins of Capital Anxiety

When we stopped at the rum shop alongside the Uriah Butler highway, I elected to stay

put and wait in the car until James returned with a Carib (one of two national beers) for

the road. I was exhausted, and the breeze blowing through the windows gently persuaded

me to hang tight. With my arm resting on the door, I gazed lazily out the windows at the

afternoon rum shop crowd. Like most Trinidadian rum shops, this one had big doors on

the front and sides that opened onto a veranda of old tables and benches fixed into the

concrete with rusting iron supports. Bottle caps and cigarette butts littered the cracked

concrete floor as patrons milled around under the corrugated tin roof that creaked and

groaned under the afternoon heat. The scene was fairly typical of rum shops throughout

the country. Happily, there wasn’t really much to study, and the idea of doing so likely

didn’t cross my mind, until one of the patrons stopped in front of the car and stood

directly in front of me, giving me a subject I could not help but study.

The man was alarmingly drunk. I wondered how he even managed to stay upright,

which was in question the entire time he wavered before me. As he stood there swaying,

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jowls sagging and eyes glassed over, I noticed he was attempting to pull up the zipper of

his pants. His intoxication was so severe it robbed him of the necessary strength to

execute a feat the sober, or only mildly drunk, take for granted. I watched, mesmerized,

as he struggled to bring his thumb and forefinger under control. Every time he pulled his

arm upward, the lever slipped from his grasp, forcing him to relocate the mechanism,

situate his hand at the proper coordinates, and try again. Each effort ended in the same,

sad result, knocking him off balance and requiring another attempt at lining everything up

for one more try. As we backed out of the lot, he was still struggling with his quest.

I found no humor in the situation. Indeed, I felt uneasy and the vision of the

incapacitated drunk visited me throughout day. The scene was deeply disturbing not only

because one man’s life appeared to be in ruins, but because it was a poignant reminder

that the forces that allow people to get into such states are all too present. As with many

other anthropologists of religious communities (e.g. Harding 2000:33-38), I unwittingly

reproduced Kendra logic by perceiving the scene through a lens carefully cultivated by

Kendra lessons. In full disclosure, as the scene of the wobbly drunk unfolded, the first

thing that went through my mind was, Who let him get this far gone? How could such a

state of self-imposed incapacitation, I wondered, become so commonplace that nobody

even seems to notice? Why are rum shops so prevalent yet social service offices so few?

Why is it easier to find a fête than critically needed mental health programs? What social

configurations allow someone to disable himself so severely? It is safe to say that even

without the Kendra’s influence I would have been unsettled by the man’s extreme

intoxication. However, the language through which I framed the questions bore an

uncanny resemblance to the very concerns voiced by Kendra instructors and parents

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every day. Within the questions, however, is also a more global inquiry about the various

means by which we structure, or fail to structure, support mechanisms for our societies’

members. To be more specific, in countries where the state plays a small role in

supporting its members, either from ideological reasons or lack of resources, those

countries’ citizens often rely on religious institutions for certain needs. Those needs range

from the basic material (Dussell 2013) to the complexly psycho-emotional-spiritual, often

combining the two while addressing others as well. In this sense, the Kendra operates as

many other religious centers might by providing resources unavailable from the state. In

an odd reversal of roles, I would even argue that the Kendra’s efforts are, in rather

circuitous ways, providing for the state of Trinidad and Tobago. As I will explore and

analyze throughout this paper, the Kendra’s efforts are not only to ensure their

community members do not end up ruined drunks, but to ensure that the nation and state

of Trinidad become more disciplined and prosperous.

The image of the wavering drunk stayed with me and touched off a series of

related images that brought the Kendra’s project into sharper focus. The all night fêtes,

the limin’ (hanging out) on streets with rum and coke, the easy access to drugs, the

overflowing bars, are all vivid signifiers of everything wrong with Trinidad as members

of the Kendra, along with countless other Trinidadian organizations and individuals,

understand it. What I saw in the man that many people I work with would consider

wrecked by alcohol is akin to what Kendra organizers and parents see happening to their

country every day.

For them, Trinidad’s “rapidly deteriorating moral economy”, as I have phrased it

elsewhere (Author: in review), indicated by precipitously high rates of crime, drug use,

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alcoholism, domestic abuse, and violent crime, is a symptom of a country enamored of

partying and opposed to discipline and moral regulation. The country’s litany of

problems, as they see it, is a natural consequence of excessive individualism, poor self-

regulation and a cultural ethos that actively encourages indulgence of any kind. That

“discipline” is a keyword at the Kendra is therefore no surprise. It has also been a

keyword of nearly every administrator, pre- and post-Independence, Trinidad has known.

Early governors of the country such as Colonel Picton (Epstein 2007) and General

Abercrombie (Look Lai 1993), members of the Crown-created Legislative Council

(Brereton 2009), Prime Ministers, from the first, Eric Williams (Ryan 2009), to the more

recent, such as Patrick Manning (Author 2012), have not only insisted on a more

disciplined Trinidad but have expressed profound frustration with its conspicuous

absence. The notion of discipline is of course a discursive relic of imperial strategies of

labor control. Thus, it is little wonder that early administrators like Picton and

Abercrombie would bemoan its absence. Yet its contemporary semiotics, as one policy

analyst’s gloss illustrates, functions similarly as a hallmark of what it takes to succeed in

a cutthroat global economy.

Discipline and Party: Moral Regulations and Post-Colonial Policy

Toward the end of his analysis of economic and development policy in Trinidad and

Tobago, Trinidadian economist Terrence Farrell (2012) outlines the barriers he believes

thwart prosperity for the state. In his prescription for surmounting those obstacles he

states that the nation must “get serious and seriously disciplined about development.

There needs to be a collective epiphany that growth and development will not just happen

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and, more particularly, will not happen only when oil and natural gas prices are

propitious. Development and transformation require hard work from a disciplined and

focused people” (2012:253, emphasis added). Farrell’s solution to what he calls the

“underachieving society”, involving liberal applications of “discipline and focus”, echoes

countless other voices, historical and contemporary, that call for a more serious,

disciplined Trinidad. The dread in the voices is palpable, and stems from an obvious

source: the end of oil and gas, they fear, will spell the end of Trinidad’s relative

prosperity. As one of Trinidad’s most influential economists, Farrell sees

“underachievement” leading inexorably to a lack of development, wherein Trinidad

accepts a fate of abjection suffered by other impoverished nations.

Farrell’s thinly veiled irritability and evident anxiety flow in an undercurrent of

sentiment driven by Trinidadians who see a country teetering on the brink of ruin. For

concerned Trinidadians, when oil and natural gas prices tumble, or worse, when

Trinidad’s supply evaporates, the country will have nothing to show for it and will thus

join the ranks of the desperately poor. Their standing as a leader among Caribbean

nations, the popular discourse goes, will falter, leaving the twin-island nation to fight for

the scraps of more prosperous states. Countless iterations of the national failure narrative

can be invoked, each expressing in its own way long-held anxieties that a nation without

discipline is a nation doomed to abjection. Though Trinidad has enjoyed a good measure

of prosperity relative to many of its West Indian neighbors3, its position both

economically-politically as a former colony and geographically within an archipelago of

developmental extremes, heightens Trinidadians’ awareness that membership in the club

of affluence is always tenuous. In the language of former Prime Minister Patrick

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Manning, whose rally I attended one evening drove home just how globally marginalized

many Trinidadians feel, the nation must develop “a disciplined workforce”, so that

“Trinidad and Tobago could reach First World status by 2020. That is our goal.”

Manning’s administration had evidently developed a program titled “Vision

2020” whose goal was to bring the twin island country into the fold of the “First World”

by the year 2020. After stating the objective of Vision 2020 Manning paused briefly,

presumably awaiting applause or some similar response, then continued, his voice

cracking as he shouted emphatically. The crowd milled about, looking desultory and

unimpressed as they sipped Stags (the other local beer) and chatted among their friends.

Though most were PNM (People’s National Movement, Manning’s party) supporters,

donning the red and yellow party colors and the signature Balisier (a local flower that is

the party’s symbol), their support for Manning’s talking points could best be described as

lackluster. They seemed weary of Manning’s administration. Or perhaps they had grown

tired of being told, as Eric Williams, founder of the PNM, had done, that the problem

with the nation’s economic profile was not the State’s haphazard approach to policy, but

the discipline of its people.

A friend of mine I had invited to the rally remarked on Manning’s “hysterical”

delivery, attributing it to his sliding poll numbers so close to election season. I read the

Prime Minister’s manic speech, accompanied by a slick PowerPoint of shiny factories

and new universities as a backdrop, somewhat differently. Under Manning’s

administration crime rose dramatically. Underemployment could no longer be ignored.

Emigration ticked up and foreign direct investment dipped. Discrepancies between the

country’s GDP and Trinidadians’ experiences of economic insecurity were glaring and

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circulated widely (as they still do) in many avenues of popular discourse. To me,

Manning voiced the same consternation and frustration heard from many Trinidadians,

historically and in the present, that seems to say, despite our best efforts, “first world”

status remains a receding mirage. James Ferguson’s term for this sentiment, borrowed

from Julia Kristeva, is “abjection”. Ferguson’s gloss of the term emerges within the

context of post-colonial Africa as the “process of being thrown aside, expelled, or

discarded. But its literal meaning also implies not just being thrown out but being thrown

down – thus expulsion but also debasement and humiliation” (1999:236, emphasis

original). Though the context of Trinidad is much different than Zambia, where affluence

came and went within in a single generation, the feeling for many Trinidadians that they

will remain relegated to “developing nation” status inspires real anxiety, frustration,

dread, and even resolve “to do better”, as one teacher told his students.

Manning’s treatment of the nation’s bright future as a member of the global elite

follows an oratorical tradition among policy makers that reached its apogee with Trinidad

and Tobago’s first Prime Minister, Eric Williams. Like Manning, Williams had a knack

for rolling out inspiring visions of a prosperous future-Trinidad then turning abruptly to

strident criticisms of the nation for its decadent public life. Williams maintained a

lifelong insistence on the dire, or even more accurately, desperate, need for a more

disciplined society. Williams’ concerns and prescriptions plainly illustrate both the

sentiments that inspired some of his policy as well as the secular voices of the nation’s

critical need for discipline.

As a kind of birthday gift for the nation, Eric Williams presented his book History

of the People of Trinidad and Tobago (undated edition) to the country on the occasion of

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Independence in 1962. He reportedly penned the two hundred and eighty-two page

history in a month (see Foreword), inspired in part by the desire to use his office not only

for policy creation but, perhaps for him at the time more importantly, to educate

Trinidadians and Tobagonians. His History, as with his other books (1971, 1994), is filled

with details of colonial labor practices, oppression, and duplicity. In his unequivocal

prose, he states that one of the primary purposes of the book is to remind people that

national unity is critical for the country’s success and that “[d]ivision of the races was the

policy of colonialism” (Foreword). As Williams saw it, imperial greed brought the people

of Trinidad and Tobago together, and imperial technologies of control kept them in

conflict.

Yet the Oxford educated Doctor Williams, in a role that seemed to combine the

paternalism found throughout Caribbean politics (Trouillot 1990) and the “double-

consciousness” (Gilroy 1993) of being a metropolitan West Indian, did not spare rebuke

for his compatriots. Echoing Naipaul (1978), Williams chastised Trinidadians for their

solipsism, stating that the “pronounced materialism and disastrous individualism have

spread to all parts of the fabric of society…political parties are riddled with

individualism. The trade unions are riddled with individualism. The professions are

riddled with individualism” (undated:281). The nation’s ethos of individualism, he says,

threatens “equality of opportunity and jeopardize[s] democracy” (undated:281). The

solution for Williams was to work more, not less, for, “if colonialism meant the

exploitation of the people of Trinidad and Tobago with others growing fat on the fruits of

their sweated labour, Independence means not that they must work less, but that they

must work more, not for others, but for themselves” (undated:282). Anti-work strategies

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of idleness and feigning sickness served the purpose of bringing a measure of power to

the powerless slaves and indentured workers, he recognizes, but that time has passed and

discipline should now be the order of the day. “The slackers and the thieves and the

confidence men in the age of Independence,” he reminds the nation, “ are the enemies of

the people of Trinidad and Tobago” (undated:282).

For Williams, who could stand inside as a Trinidadian-born citizen and outside as

a Western-educated scholar who spent years studying and teaching in British and

American universities, the nation’s problems were both imperial and indigenous.

However, after seventeen years in office as Prime Minister, having witnessed the

collapse, dissolution, and about face of many of his policies, Williams’ “disposition was

to blame the society for having betrayed him rather than to accept that his leadership style

and strategy were in large part responsible for the paralyzing [economic] crisis that the

nation faced” (Ryan 2009:419). Though an ardent detractor of Cuban communism,

Williams admitted to Castro in 1973 that Cuba was a more “disciplined society” than

Trinidad and Tobago, stating that “If we could think that in the next five or six years we

could achieve the same general mobilization of the talents of the young people of the

country for future service to the country, we could sleep much more easily at night than

we do now” (cited in Ryan 2009:419). As Ryan notes, “Williams was particularly

impressed by Cuba’s work ethic,” the Prime Minister lamenting that “…the disease of

individualism is more pronounced than ever, and such national movement as there is does

not go beyond the increased participation in Carnival and the general desire to migrate”

(2009:419). The subtext in Williams’ critique articulates the well-worn complaint that

Trinidadians really only want to fête (Carnival the grandest of all fêtes), and when

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national crises emerge from their collective disregard for the welfare of the nation, they

migrate. In this context, Carnival has become the bête noir of those Trinidadians

concerned that the nation’s adoration of revelry is what forestalls its success. The ever

controversial Sat Maraj, president of Trinidad’s largest Hindu society, the Sanatan

Dharma Maha Sabha, refers to the nation’s epicurean excesses as “the culture of the

extended Carnival,” signaling, as Williams did, that the centerpiece of public life is

Carnival and the yearlong fêting is but a protracted practice for the grand fête. “Carnival”

is thus not only a massive party, but also a contested signifier whose semiotics contain

radical polarities between joyful (and even subversive) play (Burton 1997) and feckless

hedonism.

Discipline as Dharma: The Moral Duty of Work

Of all the courses and activities at the Kendra, none are as demanding as Shrutiji’s

Ramayana kaksha (class). Designed for students between the ages of 14 and 17 (though

adept students from the younger grades may be asked to participate), the class is an

intensive study of all things Ramayana (pronounced locally, ra – mine) – its characters,

history, story arc, literary techniques, moral values, and authorship are all poured over in

countless ways. The course is a good deal more than that though. Like other religious

youth education programs such as bar/bat mitzvah (lit. son/daughter of the

commandments) in Judaism (Goldberg 2003), Confirmation in Catholicism, or Bible

study youth groups for Evangelicals (Bielo 2011), the kaksha reveals key lessons

embedded in the Ramayana that must be rigorously teased out. The interpretation of

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Ramayana requires diligence, discipline, and close, careful reading. As Shrutiji often

reminds her students, “You think you know Ramayana, but you don’t.”

Shrutiji’s intention, of course, is not to belittle her students. Rather, she wants her

class to appreciate the complexity of the text and the myriad moral lessons woven into it.

Her interpretation of the Ramayana then, and the discursive apparatus she constructs

around it, emerges from and responds to an interpretation of the broader Trinidadian

public culture she shares with other Kendra instructors and the parents who send their

children there. As Harding’s (2000) work among Christian Fundamentalists reveals, the

language of fundamentalist biblical interpretation structures believers’ practices and

narratives of belief. The language of salvation, Harding posits, thus establishes a

framework through which individuals’ experiences are interpreted and given meaning in

relation to God’s plan (2000). Though belief (orthodoxy) is not relevant for the Kendra

community in the same way that it is for members of Liberty Baptist, the fashioning of

moral praxis (orthopraxy) through secular and religious textual interpretation shares

similarities. Interpretation, either of the Bible or the Ramayana, is therefore also

discursive in that the process is determined by moral frameworks that stand in distinction

(Bourdieu 1998) to public culture and is determining of readings that emphasize

regulatory strategies for the youth.

The kaksha, always framed as developmental – “school is to teach you job skills,

what we are offering is life skills” Shrutiji reminds her class – is an exceedingly

disciplined and disciplining space. Any behavior other than total attentiveness is swiftly

reproached and corrected. The discipline begins even in the preparation for kaksha. In a

large open space of the mandir students must construct the classroom by setting up tables

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and chairs. Shrutiji is very particular about how this is to be done. Interestingly, it is not

the arrangement of tables and chairs she is terribly concerned about. Rather, it is how the

students go about setting them up that inspires her vigilance. Though instructions were

never clearly articulated, the expectation was that students carry in the tables and chairs

in a quiet, orderly fashion with the greatest economy of motion and the least noise and

carelessness. Efforts that failed to meet Shrutiji’s expectations resulted in retries. One day

I sat on the sidelines, as if watching a dissatisfied coach make her team repeat a difficult

drill, observing as Shrutiji made the students fold the chairs and tables they had just set

up, return them to the stacks, take them back off again and set them up once more five

full times before allowing the lesson to begin. By this time I had gotten to know many of

the students and their families well, and several looked to me for some kind of salvation

as they hauled tables and chairs back and forth in the muggy room. I did my best to

communicate condolences through facial expressions. “You know Shrutiji,” I said

through a silent shrug, “she won’t relent. Just do it right and be done with it.”

All of kaksha is like this. The twelve to fifteen students must sit upright and at

attention, never slouching, fidgeting, doodling, whispering to friends, or even looking

bored. When called on, students must stand at attention, face Shrutiji, and be prepared to

answer her questions in clear, Standard English4 without a trace of shyness or uncertainty.

In many cases they will be expected to recite caupais (Ramayana verses, pronounced

chow-pies) in Awadhi, the language in which Baba Tulsidas composed his version of the

Ramayana (called the Ramacaritamanasa). At the very least, students must provide some

kind of interpretation of the caupais following from one of Shrutiji’s often challenging

questions. With their peers looking on and Shrutiji waiting expectantly, the only

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acceptable way out of the situation is a meaningful answer. Silent pleas for mercy in the

form of embarrassment, not knowing the answer, or looking to classmates for guidance

will only prolong the agony. Nothing short of a confident, professional response will

suffice. As we will see below, for Kendra instructors, this confidence, and the discipline

that leads to it, are central to their approach and are the features that most attract parents

to their program.

Repetition is a key component of Bal Ramdila practice. As Shrutiji often said,

both to me and in different ways to the students, “the children learn bad habits at school

and from their friends and TV and things like that. We must teach them correct behavior

so they can be successful. If they are disciplined now, they can be self-disciplined later.”

Through the repetition of important caupais, or the acted scenes of Leela performance, or

even simply behaving “in a Hindu way” (that is, orderly), students embody the idealized

thoughts and actions of Ramayana’s exemplary models, principally Rama and Sita, and

can identify and reject those of its destructive archetypes, namely the demon king

Rawana and his minions, the Rakshasas. Thus, the demon king and his disruptive

companions are symbolic of behaviors and morals that lead to individual and community

failure, while Rama and his companions point the way to healthy and prosperous

communities.

“Professionalization,” Weeks states, “in [a] broad application is more about style,

affect, and attitude than about the content of the work” (2011:73). Learning to be a

professional then is not necessarily a matter of mastering this or that skill set. Rather, it is

often, indeed most often, a matter of mastering performative styles, affects, and attitudes

that telegraph “professional.” It is a wearing of key signifiers of “the figure of the

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professional and its codes of comportment” (Weeks 2011:72). It is within this frame of

professionalism and its codes of conduct then that we can see in Leela practice a kind of

biopolitcs of discipline (Foucault 2008) that establishes knowledge and performance of

right behavior and distinguishes the orderly from the disorderly, and the self-indulgent

from the productive. “Vishnu took avatar as Sri Ram to offer us an example of how we

are to live our lives, “ Shrutiji told her class. Through practicing the ideal actions of

Rama and his devoted companions, students of the Kendra not only learn morality in an

abstract sense, but more importantly they embody the moral instruction of discipline and

devotion found in the Ramayana. As the next section demonstrates, this is why a day of

Bal Ramdila Summer Vacation School is divided into two parts: textual instruction in the

morning, theatrical practice in the afternoon.

Performing Leela, Practicing Order

Discipline is a political anatomy of detail~ Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

The Ram Leela is a very specific type of performance. It is not exactly a musical, not

exactly an ordinary play, and not operatic. It is a bit of all those, and something else

besides. On the surface, the play is the story of Rama’s defeat of immorality (adharma)

as he restores Raja Dasharatra’s kingdom to order and rescues his wife Sita from the

troublesome demon-god Rawana. The play, however, is also exemplary and didactic. It is

intended, Kendra instructors point out, to communicate something beyond the quotidian

social politics that consume our day-to-day lives, instead articulating the ideal moral and

behavioral models God expects us to follow. Ram Leela is literally translated “the play of

God”, which Shrutiji tells me is a double entendre; it is a play demonstrating an important

19

event of God’s participation in human life (that is, Vishnu’s incarnation as Rama in Raja

Dasharatra’s kingdom Ayodhya) as well as how God plays, or acts, in our lives. The

cosmological play is what lends the Leela performance what one observer described to

Shrutiji as a “mythic” quality. Every movement and gesture is to communicate

incomprehensible stretches of space and time as God, in the form of the super human

Rama, and his companions, wage an epic battle against the destructive forces of greed,

selfishness, and chaos.

The students of the Kendra must learn how to perform the mythic qualities of the

epic through countless drills and improvisations each day. On some occasions they move

around the room together, stretching their arms gracefully as their feet do a skip-walk to

move them through time and space in epic fashion. They learn to vocalize forcefully,

making certain to face the audience while gesturing dramatically. They practice moving

around the stage in a way that “takes up space”, as Raviji puts it, in order to fill the stage

and create a sense of motion and progress. Or they might rehearse being stationary, as a

tree, but in an expressive fashion that captures the importance of Ramayana theater (see

figure 3). As Walter Benjamin has aptly illustrated in his essay What is Epic Theater? the

purpose of epic productions is not to elicit empathy from the audience but more

importantly to elicit astonishment “at the circumstances under which [the characters]

function” (1969: 150). But even more essential is that the production is not primarily for

the benefit of the audience. Benjamin’s claim that epic, didactic theater is “in every

instance...meant for the actors as much for the spectators” could not be more accurate in

this case (1969:152). The Kendra does not perform the Ram Leela in front of large

crowds of tourists dazzled by the elaborate costumes and impressive displays of

20

pyrotechnics as they do in Bali. Nor do they even perform for large local audiences. The

audience is modest and appreciative of their work, but certainly not the centerpiece of the

Leela. The production is for the actors who must live the astonishing circumstances of

Rama’s and Sita’s lives.

The astonishing circumstances that constitute the epic lives of Rama and Sita

revolve almost entirely around surmounting obstacles and the re-establishment of order.

As Rawana roves the peaceable villages with his Rakshasas, order gives way to chaos as

villagers flee in panic or give in to unrighteous forces of self-indulgence unleashed by the

destruction of dharmic discipline and devotion. Rawana’s campaign of destruction is a

well-rehearsed scene in the afternoon practice sessions. Raviji directs the students to sit in

groups of about six to eight and fashion, in a few short minutes, various roles that might

make up village life. As the students sit, some playing doddering elders, some parents

with infants, others rishis (saints) in peaceful meditation, another group takes on the roles

of Rawana and his minions who must terrorize the villagers by hissing and clawing at

them. Raviji expects vigorous, deeply embodied enactments of the characters, which he

almost unfailingly gets. Terrorized villagers must be convincingly terrified. Elders must

slowly and stiffly dodge the clutches of the villains. Mothers must fretfully protect their

children. Others must flee in real panic. And later, when it is time, Rama must be stalwart

and unflinching in the face of certain doom. Rawana and the Rakshasas must in turn be

terrifying. They must embody catastrophe, their faces contorted and voices distorted in

archetypal performances of gleeful destruction. The experiences of the villagers and of

the central characters of the Ramayana, and thus of humanity more broadly, must be

21

more than simply performed. They must be felt and made real through an epic mythos

that is every bit as astonishing as reality.

After the impromptu skits Raviji has all the students reconvene in a large circle to

discuss, reflect on, and critique their work. One by one, every student, from the youngest

to the oldest, must offer an articulate, confidently delivered assessment of how a

particular group performed. Like Shrutiji in the kaksha, Raviji has little patience for

clichéd, uncertain, or perfunctory answers. He expects confidence, creativity, and a

certain mastery of self-performance that promotes a large presence both on the stage and

in life. Raviji’s strategies for encouraging these ideal responses, however, tend toward the

humorously sarcastic. Going around the circle, Raviji will have each student stand and

offer a critique of their classmates’ performances. Students that offer vague and

meaningless feedback and employ overused adjectives such as “good’, “nice”, or

“interesting”, are playfully mocked. “It was gooooood,” Raviji repeats, drawing out the

word “good” in exaggerated mimicry. “It was very gooooood,” he repeats, eliciting

laughter. “It was very, very gooooood,” to even more laughter. As with the performances

that preceded them, the feedback sessions are multi-pronged exercises that work to bring

awareness to personal praxis, promote empowered social actors, and establish disciplined

citizens who will maintain high standards of behavior for themselves and their peers.

In Leela practice we see an embodied ritual that mimics Kendra interpretations of

Trinidad as increasingly morally bankrupt. This interpretation engenders evocative

metaphors of being “held back”, “ensnared”, “kept down”, “distracted”, “silenced”, and

“influenced”, all of which have traction in certain strands of Indo-Trinidadian discourse.

While these metaphors are deeply textured, polyvalent signifiers of race (Khan 2004) and

22

class, they are also well-rehearsed metaphors that resonate with members of many

religious traditions. Through the enactment and embodiment of metaphors that articulate

immorality, fear, and losing one’s way on the one hand and discipline, empowerment,

and success on the other, Kendra instructors not only demonstrate life’s obstacles and the

strategies to surmount them, they get the students to live those experiences in epic ways

(Benjamin 1969). They are thus embodied metaphors that simultaneously express capital

anxieties of abjection and enact strategies of achievement in the face of practices they

view as contributing to underachievement. Students learn to carry themselves more

boldly, control their bodies and minds, and resist temptations to surrender to a lax moral

economy of unfettered desire. Like Rama, they learn to be steadfast in the face of chaos.

Kendra Logics and Values

During breaks and at the day’s end I would talk with Shrutiji, students, other teachers,

and parents about Kendra philosophy and the practices that followed from it. Emphasis is

always on discipline. I regularly asked Shrutiji about her methods, specifically her near

unrelenting pursuit of perfection even in matters that seemed rather trivial, such as

arranging tables and chairs. An exceedingly astute woman, she picked up on my

skepticism, stating that “as teachers we must hold the children to very high standards.

The children must be disciplined now so they can be disciplined later in life.” This

statement powerfully attests to nearly all parents’ motivation for sending their kids to the

Kendra.

When I sat down with Partap one sultry afternoon in late June, he wasted no time

launching into a spirited oration celebrating the virtues of sadanas on the one hand and

23

lamenting the destructiveness of a disorderly society on the other. Partap enrolls his two

children every year in the Bal Ramdilla Summer Vacation and Heritage course. When I

saw him that day in June, I congratulated him on his son’s national archery competition

victory. “You know,” he quickly began, without acknowledging the accolade, “Ganesh

was the youngest of the boys and he beat children much, much older than him. His focus

is incredible. Very advanced for a boy his age.” I added that his daughter, two years

Ganesh’s senior, was no slouch either, having memorized a great deal of Tulsidas’

Awadhi Ramayana and established herself as a promising young leader at the Kendra.

“Every morning, seven days a week, every day of the year, my children doing

sadanas. Before they gettin’ ready for school. Before breakfast. They must do their

sadanas.” Sadanas, Partap explains, are meditative practices designed to focus and

discipline the mind and body. As Partap sees it, his children are so successful, and so

advanced, not because of any inherent tendencies, but simply through the power of daily

austerities. His take borders on tantrism, though he never uses that term. “When the

children can focus,” he continues, “they have great power to achieve anything they

want.” The sadanas, he says, help them block out the constant stream of soul disturbing

noise and confusion permeating Trinidad’s public life.

“I never take the maxis,” he explains of the ubiquitous micro-buses shuttling

Trinidadians throughout the island at a very low cost. “They are too noisy. They play

soca and rap and all them thing so loud you can’t think. That noise disturbs the soul. It is

not good for spiritual development.5” As a daily rider of maxis I could relate to Partap’s

assessment, though my experience with it was both more varied than he describes (some

drivers may listen to talk radio, some to classical or jazz, and some no radio at all) and

24

less confounding (unlike Partap, I appreciate most styles of soca, reggae, and hip hop).

Thus for Partap, maxis are metonymical of the chaos that besets youth at every turn and

that can easily undo parents’ and teachers’ work if they are not vigilant.

Creating disciplined subjects is a critical corrective in a nation dominated by an

ethos of decadence and reckless self-indulgence. Such a nation, Shrutiji tells her students

on routine occasions, and to me in numerous conversations, can never truly prosper. A

nation that is undisciplined and cannot, or worse, will not, work is a nation doomed to

mediocrity at best and criminality at worst1. In one of the lengthier interviews I conducted

with Shrutiji, she uttered the word “discipline” over a dozen times in just a three-minute

span. When asked why discipline is such an important virtue she told me what she tells

the kids in so many ways,

I had access to school children in India, how they behave and stuff like that, which is

very different from here in that they’re much more disciplined in the school system,

because they have values that we are leaving in the sense that the guru for instance is

always very highly respected., revered, whereas children here have more access to

television and they see all sorts of violence and stuff happening so they imitate it also.

Here in Central and in South ten years ago the school climate was very different from

now. Now these children have become like the children of the East-West corridor in that

they are restless, they can’t focus, you know, all of those things, because of how society

has changed and how parenting has changed. Value systems have changed, right? In

India they tend to be more respectful of their teachers. So they tend to listen. They tend

to focus...and they prize education very highly...my class mates, some of them are 21, 22

years old and they already have their Master’s, you know, which is unheard of here. So

their education system is more about achievement and they take it for granted that they

1

25

have to be educated... And so that is why they’re so successful.

She goes on to say that Indians are also more cosmopolitan than Trinidadians, evident in

their ability to speak European languages and operate fluently in different cultures, a

problems she sees Trinidadians struggling with. Starting to inquire about the current state

in Trinidad I managed to mutter, “So, Trinidad is getting...” before she finished the

sentence for me stating, “it’s getting worse...When my father was in school he had to

learn Latin, civics, and ethics, you know, basically how to be a civilized person.”

Lowering standards, she laments, means that children these days will get the same marks

she got in school as a kid for easier work. Trinidadian dialect is now acceptable in

schools, meaning survival in the world of work will be a tougher proposition than times

past. “The language of scholarship is Standard English. To survive in the world, to have a

good job and all those things, you have to have good English. And quite a few of them

[Trinidadian children] can’t speak Standard English.”

The view that educational and moral standards are slipping rehearses, in

its own idiosyncratic way, dystopian visions of a world lost to total solipsism. Few

strands of Hindu theology could fairly be labeled as millenarian, for in Hinduism there is

no final eschaton, only the era of Kali Yuga lasting 432,000 years and in which we reside.

The Kali Yuga, Shrutiji tells me, is characterized by a declining moral order where

violence, disrespect for elders, greed, and corruption of all sorts dominates the globe. In a

sense then, Shrutiji’s narrative is eschatological in that the declining moral order we find

ourselves in is the last epoch before Vishnu closes the door on this world before opening

the next. Thus, given the logic of Hindu circular, or more accurately spiral-esque,

temporality, the Kali Yuga is not strictly speaking an eschaton, for there will be another

world. Additionally, though this world is a lost one, a massa perditionis, it is still worth

26

fighting for, evidenced by the many efforts made by Kendra members to promote

dharmic values of duty, effort, work, generosity, and discipline. This massa perditionis

can only be navigated successfully with asceticism, discipline, and focus. Though their

view of this world as a lost one differs in many ways with the massa perditionis found in

numerous Christian theologies, it also converges with it on the point of self-indulgence.

The critical difference, which has been the centerpiece of this article, is that the

anxieties animating the two praxes emerge from different places. The anxiety for

Protestants as they separated from a very “works” oriented Catholic theology, were

absences of an orthopraxy telegraphing to self, other, and the Absolute Other Subject (as

Althusser refers to God, 1995:133) that one is working dutifully toward salvation. The

Protestant move from works to faith (sola fide) removed a critical mediation of

human/divine interaction, further abstracting the sacred. In the emergent capitalist

theology of early Protestantism, work within the Catholic Church that operated as a

signifier of one’s piety and thus salvation was transferred by Protestants to work in the

extra-ecclesial environment of labor. In this theological context we see the first

articulations of individual culpability for poverty (Malthus 1928). Capital success is thus

situated in a clever liturgical sleight of hand as an indicator of grace, which allays

religious anxieties of salvation. At the Kendra, and for many Trinidadians, the problem is

the reverse: the anxiety is one of global and local failure in a capitalist order. Thus, it is a

secular anxiety allayed through religious frameworks of moralities of work and worldly

asceticism.

27

Conclusion

To the extent that work acquires more meaning as an act of signification than as production, there is something ritualistic about our adherence to its discipline.

~ Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work

Though I have framed the problem of anxiety in Trinidadian Hindu logic in distinction to

Weber’s articulation of the Protestant work ethic, and thus as rather incommensurate

problems, it is worth underscoring the ascetic impulse between the two that bears such

resemblance. In his chapter on asceticism, Weber notes that the ascetic impulse in

religious practice extends from a view of the world that, using St. Augustine’s terms, is a

massa perditionis, or lost world (Weber 1963:167). As he notes, “any sensuous surrender

to the world’s goods may imperil concentration upon and possession of the ultimate good

of salvation, and may be a symptom of unholiness of spirit and impossibility of rebirth”

(1963:167). If here we take “salvation” out of its clearly Christian context and read it in a

Hindu-Trinidadian context, the statement also accurately articulates the ascetic impulse

evident in Kendra practice. Indeed, the notion that their children will surrender to the

sensuous world of winin’ (“grind” dancing) and limin’ is the very thing that inspires so

much anxiety in parents and instructors. For Kendra leaders, the salvation, read here as a

life of prosperity, that is imperiled is from surrendering to Trinidad’s endless parade of

temptations, Sat Maraj’s “culture of the extended Carnival.”

To say that Kendra organizers view this world as a lost one would be

paradoxically both overstated (they spend little time warning members of the end times in

the way fundamentalist Christians might), and somewhat accurate (they do say our times

are the Kaliyuga, the last of eras before the cosmos is destroyed and recreated, which

Myers [1998] has also found). However, there is little question that they see temptations

28

of many kinds threatening to lead their youngest members down adharmic, or

unrighteous, paths. The cosmic struggle between dharma, represented by Lord Rama, and

destruction, represented by the demon king Rawana, narrated in the Ramayana is thus a

cautionary tale about the social disorder that erupts when vigilance slackens. The rishis

(saints), yogis, and gurus that can no longer meditate and teach, the kings that can no

longer rule, and marriages that are torn apart are both signs and symptoms of a lack of

discipline. Likewise, the problem Kendra instructors face is not merely the wayward

direction of this or that member, but rather the more harrowing potential of complete

social collapse. The liming, the fêting, the drinking, the unrestrained sexuality, all lead,

they fear, to a nation that at best sets new standards for mediocrity and at worst spirals

into global and regional irrelevance. As Eric Williams did, Kendra members see great

potential in Trinidad to be a model nation. They also fear, as Williams did, that

Trinidad’s lack of discipline could make of them an example of how not to organize a

country.

Anxieties of abjection have been the centerpiece of this article. However, justice

both to the complexities of my participants’ lives and the data I extracted from them

requires at least a passing awareness of the ambivalence they express about modern

Trinidad. In other words, anxiety is not the only thing. As Weeks reminds us, capitalism

embodies a number of contradictions, what Weber called “antinomies”, that have both a

push and pull factor on capitalism’s subjects. For example, dichotomies of

independence/dependence, work/leisure, producer/consumer, exclusion/inclusion,

asceticism/freedom (Weeks 2011:42-55), and others, underscore the many challenges of

negotiating modernity. Members of the Kendra are no less subject to (of) these

29

antinomies simply because their pedagogy favors one side of the dichotomies. Put more

simply, it is not the case that Kendra community members oppose fun in distinctly

Trinidadian ways. Indeed, it was Partap, the father of the kids who must do daily

austerities (sadanas), who told me he didn’t like New York City because it was too busy

and felt too competitive and work-oriented for his liking. “I like the island life,” he

reported, “we take it easy here, not all this rushing around and thing. We spend time with

our families hanging out, you know.” Partap crystallized in a phrase what I heard, in so

many words and gestures, from countless Trinidadians, both at the Kendra and elsewhere.

Though Kendra participants would like to see more discipline and asceticism in their

youths, and in the nation more broadly, and though many Trinidadians long for “first

world” status, that does not mean they a want a nation that looks or acts like the US, or

Canada, or England (the three most popular immigration destinations). This ambivalence

to neo-liberal modernity permeates nearly all levels of discourse, from Manning’s speech

on the potential of Trinidad to teachers who want more opportunities for their students.

Though many Trinidadians would like to see a more robust work ethic in the twin island

nation, few long to see a Trinidad that mirrors the world’s most prosperous nations.

Indeed, those that want a social order so configured are often the ones who leave and

only return for the occasional visit. The ambivalence of those who attempt to reform

Trinidadian work ethics on the one hand but yet appreciate “island life” on the other,

bears emphasizing for its telling illustration not only of the real anxiety people carry but

the real playfulness by which they can at times traverse modernity’s challenges.

30

1 The list of citations for the centrality of “sacred spaces” in various religious communities could extend for pages. However, relevant to Hinduism more broadly Gold (2000:34-58) offers an insightful discussion on the polyvalence of religious spaces. On the importance of religious spaces as places of safety, solidarity, and community organizing in the Caribbean, see for Vodou Deren 1972:178-84, Desmangles 1992:65, for early Jamaican Baptists see Turner 1998:65-95, for Hinduism in Trinidad see McNeal 2011:160, Vertovec 2010.2 “Global competition” can of course mean many things, but one indicator of the salience of it for many nations is the marketing language adopted by many countries seeking to “brand” themselves. For Trinidad, Carnival and steel pans have become trademarks (metaphorically and legally) around which they have attempted to brand their country. Professor Scher has written on the copywriting of Carnival in Trinidad, highlighting the importance of cultivating a distinctive national product (2003:140-7, 2010:160-179).3 This issue will be brought up in fuller detail in the conclusion.4 The use of Standard English versus Trinidadian & Tobagonian English Creole (TTEC, locally referred to as “dialect”; see Winer 2009:xiii-xv, Solomon 1993) is a source of ambivalent consternation for many educators I’ve spoken with over the years. I use paradoxical language to evoke images of a linguistic medium that has so permeated Trinidadian speech patterns that even those who correct its usage by others may unwittingly reproduce it. Correcting students’ use of dialect required vigilant governance from Shrutiji. “It have three mangoes on the table?” she asked her class. “No, there are three mangoes on the table,” she corrected. 5 The volume in maxis reached such a pitch that a law was passed in the 1990s to regulate decibel levels. Many locals complain that the law has had little effect.

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