In the mid-19th century, when the colonial powers declared slavery abolished, they still wanted cheap labour. The Cane-Cutter’s Song brings to life one of the consequent human dramas, wherein indentured Tamil ‘coolies’ emigrated to the French Martinique, in the Caribbean, to cut sugarcane — and to contend with other races, black and white.
From this “miasma of exploitation, inter-racial hatred and... angst” (as the translator’s introduction puts it) emerged a new Creole tongue and identity. This book too is originally in French and Creole. Raphaël Confiant, the author, is described by the same introduction as “one of Martinique’s most prolific littérateurs... a militant proponent of Creole culture.”
The book is colourful, energetic, chock-full of ‘lilting pathos’, well written and evidently well translated. I could elaborate on all these fronts, but I would rather not, because there is another factor which calls for comment, one which does not exactly belong to the novel, but does belong to the rhetorical context, and therefore to that communication which a reader is actually encountering.
It is the arbitrariness of this publication. In the blurb, Jerry Pinto says: “This story is a part of our history on the subcontinent, one which we have long neglected ” (my emphasis). He is surely right. But is neglect a kind of achievement, a foundation for gushing sentimentality? No. In fact, neglect carries an inexorable price.
When a theme hardly figures in any literary conversation in Indian English, then for a novel bursting with it, to suddenly drop out of nowhere, is confusing. One thinks, by analogy, of some wastrel aristocrat discovering a new treasure in his inheritance, and excitedly ‘laying claim’ to it, without ever tending to it.
In a lesser degree, this criticism may apply even to the original. Confiant does seem too possessive of his material, such that the superstitions, prejudices and greed (of all concerned races) become more exoticised than understood. However, Confiant has an enduring relationship with his material. One respects that. When the same book appears in India, entering the Indian English literary discourse, then the idleness of the communication becomes startlingly brazen.
The Cane-Cutter’s Song; Raphaël Confiant, trs Vidya Vencatesan, Speaking Tiger, ₹499
The writer is the author, most recently, of The Outraged: Times of Strife.
