Religion, Race, and Remembering: Indo-Caribbean Christians in Canada

remember and tell stories about their own and their family’s religious histories. Most participants in this study had Hindu ancestors who con-verted to Christianity during or after the Caribbean experience of inden-tured labor. Most of the stories I heard identified Africans as the source of the problems that once and still beset the homelands of the families I encountered. Moreover, many of the people I interviewed told generally positive stories about the period during which they or their relatives were objects of British imperial power and the Christian missionary project so closely associated with British geo-political expansion. I suggest that the narrative patterns I heard regarding both Africans and the British must be understood against the backdrop of the interpenetration of race and religion among the Indians I interviewed. WHILE IT MAY BE COMMON for representatives within religious traditions to police the circulation of the narratives that galvanize their communities, contemporary religious and cultural studies scholars recognize that individuals retain an enormous amount of autonomy in the way they interpret and personalize the stories they hear from th