The Bloodstained Tombs: The Muharram Massacre in Trinidad 1884 (Warwick University Caribbean Studies)

This work focuses on the social tensions generated in post-emancipation Trinidad when Indian immigrants were imported to prop up a floundering plantation bases society over which preside a White ruling class steeped in traditions of autorhoritarian control. It shows how the intense opposition to Indian immigration mounted by an articulate Black and Coloured middle class, combined with the desire of a White ruling class to maintain a coercive system of plantation labour, produced a social environment increasinly hostile to the Indians, who were culturally differentiated from the rest of the society and who were becoming refractory under their oppressive conditions of work. In the midst of these growing tensions, the annual Muharram festival provided emotional release for the Indians. Though of Shia Muslim origins, the festival, which revolved arount the symbolic tombs of the Prophet Mohammed's slain grandsons, attracted Hindus and working class Noegroes as well. A scintillating display of artistic grandeur combined with the pulsating rhythms of the skinned drums, the festival was destroyed under a hail of police bullets at its main venue, San Fernando, in 1884. The book graphically recounts and interprets the events leading to the tragedy. Kelvin Singh, a Trinidadian, is currently a lecturer in Latin American and Caribbean History at the University of the West Indies.