RUM TILL I DIE…..NEAR STE. MADELINE 1931

 From the late Author/Historian Angelo Bissessarsingh.
Although they brought the habit of ganja-use from their homeland, the Indian Indentured Labourers who began arriving in Trinidad in 1845 were introduced to rum in the colony. As early as 1860 it was recorded that drunkenness was a problem since many Indians were jailed for abandoning work due to inebriation. When the Canadian Mission to the Indians was founded by Presbyterian minister, Rev. John Morton in 1868, he noted :
“I have never been in a place where rum stares one so constantly in the face as Trinidad. Two large distilleries are above smuggling but there is not a village of any size in this island, except the Mission (Princes Town) which has not got a distillery where smuggling is more or less carried on. San Fernando has 42 licensed places, Iere Village 4, the Mission 10 etc. ”
The smuggling that Morton talked of was the manufacture of illegal spirits, called Babash. The drinking among the Indians inadvertently contributed to the high rate of wife-murders which occurred throughout the 19th and well into the mid 20th centuries. With a drink of rum selling for as little as six cents, a labourer could be drunk all day for a couple dollars which could very well represent his week’s earnings. Drinking was seen as a means of dulling the harsh realities of labour on the sugar estates of Trinidad. In 1887, J.H Collens noted:
“In Trinidad, as in India, many of these people become renegades to their creed, solely for the sake of being able to drink and sell rum, and it must be borne in mind that, with the Coolie, who will not partake of proper nourishing food when he has to pay for it himself, to drink rum is to become a drunken, besotted beast…………I have stated that by the Koran the Mussulman is prohibited from indulging in strong drink. It is unlikely that many in Trinidad forsake the religion of their forefathers from no better motive than to gratify their craving for alcohol. Years ago, when a youngster, I remember seeing a pictorial sketch in Punch entitled ' Accommodating.' An officer is seated in his bungalow, enjoying the dolce far niente of military life in India. Addressing his native bodyservant who stands near :—' What caste are you, Bamsammee V Native : ' Same church like Sahib ; me eat beef and drink brandy, sar !' To him Christianity and grog-drinking were unfortunately synonymous terms. After all, coolies are much like other people : treat them properly
and they -will serve you well—always, however, with an eye to the main chance ; but is not human nature the same all the world over”
In the 1890s the dangerous precedent of rum for wages began. At Forres Park, the lifestyle of the labourer was typical…Squalid barracks, zero sanitation, no school for children , scanty rations, and heavy tasks. One great evil which was introduced by Mr. Farmer, the manager in the 1890s was the offering of white rum, firewater, as a supplement to wages and even as wages themselves. This of course enslaved the Indians since they became rapidly dependent on the alcohol and thus were always in debt to the estate since the cost of rations was also deducted from the pittance they received for their task work. Almost until the demise of the sugar industry in 2007, employees of Caroni 1975 Ltd. could acquire rum on credit from the distillery and have the cost deducted from their wage packets. In the 1950s, researcher Morton Klass recorded the lifeways of Indo Trinis in Felicity. In a typical sorrowfully poor shopping list for the fortnight, the average family stinted the basics,…one tin of sardines for five persons , a few pounds of flour and a bottle of oil; but never missed the half-bottle of puncheon rum. One of the banes of Indo Trinidadians, most people are angry when this is mentioned, but it is a sad reality with historic origins.
Disclaimer : Views expressed are that of the author . Not intended to offend anyone sector of population.