IJFANS International Journal of Food and Nutritional Sciences

ISSN PRINT 2319 1775 Online 2320-7876

A BRIEF HISTORY OF COOLITUDE: PERUSING RAJKUMARI SINGH'S I AM A COOLIE

Main Article Content

Shivangi Gautam

Abstract

Rajkumari Singh (13 October 1923-1979) was an Indo-Caribbean, Guyanese writer, with Indianness infused at the core. She has endowed the world with her beautiful and thought provoking poems like – 'Per Ajie.' This poem is a standout defining indentured laborers' perplexities and emotional journeys. She accorded the Indian Indenture Literary period and was one of the first published Indian women to strain through, to bring the best of Guyanese culture and Indian spirit into written words. A wonderful poetess, she has depicted the journey of all those Indians who had to leave their motherland for a better prospect of life. She is acclaimed as a Guyanese Cultural Hero. She emphasised the ignorance that people had for their collective histories. She advised celebrating the individual ethnicities, but she also stressed the notion of solidarity and mixed racial or fusion history. This paper aims to read one of her very straightforward and brilliant works titled- 'I am a Coolie'. This work delves into the meaning, the cultural, political, and emotional significance of the word 'Coolie' and its usage for Indian workers in the Caribbean. She has a massive role in putting the Indenture Literature on a pedestal for the world to know the grievances and experiences of the indentured labourers at every place they know of. This paper, in a way, is an understanding of her views on the word- 'Coolie' and her interpretations as of that time. The paper also briefly looks at the three more authors- Gaiutra Bahadur, Historian Brij V Lal and Peggy Mohan Jahajin and their significant works in the field of Coolitude.

Article Details