The Jahaji-Bhain Principle: A Critical Survey of the Indo-Caribbean Women’s Novel, 1990-2009

Abstract

This paper provides the first critical survey of the Indo-Caribbean women’s novel, a distinct sub-genre which now spans approximately two decades. The survey examines the way these novels critically map the trajectory of Indo-Caribbean women’s lives from the moment of colonial servitude to the post-colonial present, through highly individuated expressions of Indian female subjectivity, in a context where sexual and racial politics have so often overdetermined women’s lives. It anchors its discussion of these novels in the feminist poetics of the “ jahaji-bhain principle of affiliation”, which advocates a more fluid and racially inclusive application of the ethics of community epitomized by jahaji-hood, a traditionally male-dominant and ethnocentric system of inter-relation borne out of the history of indentureship. Writers discussed include those who have published several or more works in the genre — namely Lakshmi Persaud, Jan Shinebourne, Shani Mootoo and Oonya Kempadoo — as well as first-time novelists Ramabai Espinet, Joy Mahabir, Niala Maharaj, Narmala Shewcharan, Ryhaan Shah and Andrea Gunraj.