Dougla

Dougla (or dugla) is a word used by people of the West Indies, especially in Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. It is used to describe Caribbean people who are a product of African and Indian descent. It is a non-hereditary means of naming people; that is, dougla progeny would usually be categorized as another race based on the progeny's appearance, even in the case of dougla-dougla unions.

Origins and Etymology

The word originated from doogala (दुगला), which is a Bhojpuri and Hindi word that has many meanings such as many, a mix, or much. It literally means "two necks" in Bhojpuri and is highly insulting in the Bihar and Purvanchal regions of North India. Some of the connotations of the word such as bastard, illegitimate and son of a whore are secondary and limited to sections of North India where the term may have originated. The term itself has a puzzling connotation, for it has very limited use within the subcontinent for the purpose that it gained in the West Indies. In other words, there is no recorded use of the word other than that which the definition describes, and yet, there is little or no record of such a defined use anywhere on the continent. Originally, the use of the word in the West Indies was only used for Afro-Indo racial hybrids, despite its origin as a word used to describe inter-caste mixing. In Bihar and Uttar Pradesh it is considered highly offensive, as it denotes that one is of mixed caste or a half-breed.