Indo-Caribbean Masculinities: Reclaiming the Twice-Displaced

You've completed six modules developing a comprehensive understanding of South Asian Male Studies:

• Module 1: Theoretical foundations and the need for this field
• Module 2: Historical mechanisms of colonial trauma and dismantling
• Module 3: Contemporary psychological manifestations and mental health crises
• Module 4: Agency, resistance, and cultural production
• Module 5: Healing frameworks and liberatory visions
• Module 6: Applied interventions and practical tools for change

Module 7 expands our framework to center Indo-Caribbean South Asian men—a profoundly underrepresented yet historically significant diaspora community. This module challenges the North American-centric focus that has dominated South Asian studies, recognizing that the largest South Asian diaspora outside of South Asia itself is in the Caribbean.

Indo-Caribbean men represent a unique case study in how masculinity is constructed under fundamentally different historical conditions than those examined in previous modules. Their experience was shaped not by post-1965 professional immigration or even earlier exclusionary immigration policies, but by the brutal system of indentured labor that followed the abolition of slavery. This system created a masculinity formation process distinct from all other South Asian diasporic experiences.

This module examines four critical dimensions of Indo-Caribbean masculine experience:

1. The legacy of indenture as a foundational trauma that differs from both colonial emasculation and immigration trauma
2. Dougla identity and the complex navigation of mixed African-Indian heritage within Caribbean racial hierarchies
3. Political masculinity in contexts where Indo-Caribbeans have wielded significant power but within deeply divided societies
4. Secondary diaspora experiences as Indo-Caribbeans migrate to North America and the UK, becoming "twice removed" from their ancestral homeland

By centering Indo-Caribbean experiences, this module accomplishes several crucial aims:

• Challenges monolithic narratives of South Asian masculinity by revealing how different historical contexts produce fundamentally different masculine subjectivities
• Reveals the limitations of North American frameworks for understanding global South Asian experiences
• Demonstrates how colonialism operated through multiple systems—not just direct rule but labor exploitation and racial engineering
• Provides insights for healing that account for multi-generational displacement, cultural rupture, and creolization
• Builds solidarity across diasporas by recognizing shared experiences of displacement while honoring distinct historical trajectories

This module doesn't just add another population to our study—it transforms our understanding of what South Asian masculinity can mean when we move beyond methodological nationalism and North American exceptionalism. The Indo-Caribbean experience forces us to ask: What happens to masculinity when cultural continuity is fractured across generations? When racial positioning is completely reconfigured? When language and religious practice evolve in isolation from the homeland for 150+ years?