Dear Editor,
When Harold Bascom asked the question, “Who was Banwari?” everyone in the room raised their hands. One would think.
In a place and times where things are hard you would think that everyone has felt sometimes or even permanently like Banwari.
But in a sense Banwari is more than an individual. More like a state of being.
Banwari has come to mean long suffering, patience and endurance in difficulty, life in a place and state far from the ideal… It has always been a condition that most people endure or witness at some stage of life. It is living in Banwas, as the Hindu scriptures say Lord Rama lived 14 years in Banwas. Rama as a figure in the Hindu pantheon is thus the original Banwari.
Although, concretely, the Banwari I understood, when small, to be this Old Indian Man, that gets indentured here. Goes through all the affliction and hardship and grows old. He lives only for repatriation at the end of the indentureship and period of hardship. He, according to a version I remember, gets sick. But still gets the ship to make the reverse journey to Mother India whose sacred soil he treads after a harrowing journey.
This personified Banwari whose physical functions, in the end only by the power of the will to get back home, dies, surrenders his spirit upon touching the sacred soil and thus becomes more than a man bearing his chafe, but a man bearing his chafe in the interest of some higher end or goal.
Banwari is thus legendary even though thousands would have lived the legend.
He exists in our “Banwas,” which may be translated as a place of exile. And Banwari would have been derived from ‘Banwas.’ In Trinidad the terms are also used. I am sure the scholars in Guyana and elsewhere can throw additional light on this.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
