Trini race politics and history

The first event was the Trinity Cross judgment. For the first time that I know of, lawyers decided on the correctness or not of historical and epistemological analysis, ie, the relevance of a vow made by Columbus in 15th century Spain to the practice of Eric Williams in 20th century Trinidad and Tobago. History is therefore subordinated to the legal sciences.

The second event was the use of the word pogrom by Kamla Persad-Bissessar. Pogrom has a distinct meaning. It is a widespread and indiscriminate lynching and destruction of property carried out by a mass uprising of the majority population against a specific minority group. There has never been a pogrom in the history of Trinidad and Tobago. There is none now.

Since 1970 and the emergence of the Indian Student Movement SPIC, history has been the major ingredient in Indian mobilisation. It is therefore history with which this series will be concerned. This article examines race and politics.

A recalcitrant minority

After 1970, in the Indo-ethnic rewriting of Trini history, race in politics has been placed at the doorstep of Eric Williams and the PNM. This has been accepted by those who were always anti-PNM and propagated throughout the country.

Where foreigners come from the USA or Canada, the history of conflict here is seen through the lenses of Black America. It is therefore easily believed that Eric Williams was anti-White, anti-Indian and Blacks here only an extension of what they perceive as militant Blacks in the USA or Canada. The phrase that is used to support this theory is Eric Williams’ “recalcitrant minority.”

Kumar Mahabir replies

The reply to this belief that it is Eric Williams who introduced race into Trini politics is given by no other than Kumar Mahabir in his book East Indians and Africans in Trinidad and Tobago: Love in a Plural Society (Chakra Publishing House, 1993): “The Indians...have always voted for an Indian-based party: the People’s Party, the Democratic Labour Party (DLP 1956-76), the United Labour Front (ULF 1976-81) and now the United National Congress (UNC 1989 — present.”

Note that Kumar Mahabir’s People’s Party is the PDP or People’s Democratic Party founded by Bhadase Maraj in 1952 — before Eric Williams had decided to enter politics. Kumar Mahabir does not worry to say that Eric Williams visited India before he visited Africa. No one worries to compare Williams’ policies with Nehru’s. It takes Indira Gandhi in a meeting with Reginald Dumas, then our man in India, to underline that Nehru considered Williams somewhat as his son. These left out bits of information changes the received ideas of race and politics in Trinidad and Tobago. Moreover on Mahabir’s own say so, it is Indians who always voted for an Indian-based party.

Misusing MG Smith

Kumar Mahabir was arguing for segregation of Indians from Africans. In this he misquotes and misuses the Jamaican social anthropologist — and my friend and mentor — MG Smith. I will take up this use of MG Smith’s Plural Society to legitimise Indian communalism and Herskovitz to legitimise Black cultural nationalism, in another article. In this article I am mainly concerned with the historical myths which frame social behaviour today and which, particularly in the case of Indo myths, are widely believed —and used — beyond the Indian community.

An early GOPIO

Kumar Mahabir could have gone further back and given us a clue to the ambiguity of Indos vis-?-vis integration into Trinidad and Tobago as citizens. The first modern call for race-voting does not come from a Trini Indo. It comes from Ranjit Kumar, an Indian from India. I quote from John Goffar La Guerre: “When Ranjit Kumar burst on the scene and introduced ‘Bala Joban” (an Indian film)...he aroused a consciousness of racial and cultural identity that struck responsive chords throughout the colony.”

In 1940 Ranjit Kumar established the Hindu Maha Sabha with the aim, according to the Maha Sabha bulletin of August 1940, “to unite Hindus in every colony in the world... it is only concerned (to encourage) Hindus in every place to unite and organise themselves in order to safeguard and further their interests.” One cannot fail to recognise the similarity between Ranjit Kumar’s Maha Sabha and the GOPIO of today.

Ranjit Kumar introduces race

On July 1, 1946, in the first voting under the adult franchise general elections, Ranjit Kumar entered politics in the political arena of Victoria against the Trades Union Congress’ candidate MacDonald Moses who was widely expected to win at a time when sugar and oil unions were generally united. In an area where Indians outnumbered Creoles three to one, Ranjit Kumar appealed to race, addressed the crowd in Hindi and had a run away victory, gaining 13,328 votes against MacDonald Moses’ 4,420. In other words almost the total Indian vote. Well could Patrick Solomon in his autobiography (1981) remark that this election introduced for the first time “the ugly element of race.”

The year is important. It is 1946. India gained her independence in 1945. For many of us, and certainly in my own home, India’s independence was a major victory for the anti-colonial struggle. That the Mahatma had been influenced by the hunger strike of Cork’s mayor McSweeney, in Ireland’s battle for independence, added to the universality of India’s struggle and victory. It is this which saw me queuing up on a cold English afternoon to add my name to those who mourned the death of Nehru.

Hindu India

For Indians in Trinidad Independence was not part of a universal anti-colonial victory which could be seen as part of the process whereby Trinidad and Tobago would one day become independent. The implication for Trinidad of a secular India which refused the Hindu-Muslim conflict and battled caste, was lost.

For Indians in Trinidad, Indian independence solved the ambiguity of their presence here.

They were Indian. The division of the sub-continent into Pakistan and India automatically divided Indians in Trinidad as between Pakistani Muslim and Hindu Indian.

For Trini Hindus, it was Hindu India which had triumphed.

Ambiguity

The ambiguity of Indians in Trinidad was there from the beginning, of settlement.

Spaniard and French men and women were barely recognised by Spain and France. Settlers in Trinidad and Tobago of the topmost strata of society had no intention of returning to Spain or France. They were Trini.

Africans were largely ignored by an Africa for which in any case, slave automatically bestowed an inferior status. Few Afro-Trinis, if any, knew that defining method of African classification: their tribe. Africans were Trini.

The Chinese who defined what it was to be Chinese in Trinidad and Tobago, had left a China impoverished and humbled in the aftermath of the “unequal treaties.” Few wished to return to what had become Bandit China plagued by famine. Chinese were Trinis.

India takes an interest

It was different in the case of Indians. India continued to be very interested in the conditions of Indians coming out as indentured labour. Not only did they attempt to modify the terms of indentureship. In early as 1877 the Viceroy and Council of India suggested regular visits to countries receiving Indians. The first of these visits however took place only in 1913.

By the time of the Moyne Commission the insistence of India that an Indian should be included as a Commissioner, visiting Trinidad in order to ensure that Indian interests were represented, triggered a battle between Britain’s Colonial Officer and India.

In the event even the suggestion that Trini Indians could be represented by Cola Rienzi, a well respected Indo trade unionist, was turned down by the Viceroy and Council of India.

An Indian from India eventually represented Trini Indos’ interests on the Moyne Commission. No other group in Trinidad and Tobago was represented.

It is hardly surprising that Trini Indos were ambiguous with regard to Trini citizenship. This ambiguity would be eventually dispelled by Nehru.

It is this which accounts in large part for the Trini Indian dislike of Nehru and his Congress Party.

In this article I have attempted to dispel one of the myths carefully cultivated and increasingly believed, ie, that the history of racial voting is equally divided as between Afros and Indos and that this was introduced by the PNM.

It was not. Indeed I would argue that it was the presence of an Indian Party which made it likely that Eric’s PNM would fail to achieve its Republican goal of political non-racism.