172 years later

Readers will recall that I had placed a private member’s motion on the Order Paper of the House of Representatives in 1989 for the House to approve that May 30 be declared a national public holiday to commemorate this event. After many deferrals and partial debates, the motion was finally approved in May 1995, a couple of weeks prior to the 150th anniversary of that arrival.

My primary argument was that the day was undeniably of immense significance in the history of the country simply because the first arrival of these immigrants and the choice of the majority who came over the period 1845-1917 to reside permanently in Trinidad after indenture constituted the core of our evolution into the multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural society that we are today.

The motion was meant to record a national official recognition of the day and an acknowledgement of the diverse elements of our history and heritage.

If citizens of Indian descent sought to celebrate the day and look to the past with some measure of satisfaction and pride for whatever they and their forbears have achieved, the evocation of this sentiment or even a sense of identity and self-awareness were ancillary to the main purpose for proposing the motion.

For my effort I was branded as an exponent of Indo-centrism, as a promoter of racial divisiveness and as an instigator of Indo-Trinidadian solidarity for political purposes.

I have ignored all these attacks which I consider par for the course for a politician, however well-intentioned.

Much has been written by historians and others about that fateful journey from India, the arrival in Trinidad and the awful conditions of indenture on the sugar estates but very little by way of critical assessment of the situation of the recent and current Indo-Trinidadian presence and the perceptions of their position as a group in the country whether based on misconceptions, myths or latent agendas.

Subsequent to my motion in Parliament, I attempted to examine the validity of one perception assiduously promoted by some in the country, particularly JA Bain, who articulated his views in the Trinidad Guardian in 1976, 40 years ago, that “East Indians…have acquired more and more of the land and business of the country” and were poised to own “…most of the property, business and wealth of the country.” In order to investigate the veracity of this assertion it was necessary to attempt to enumerate the presence of the Indo-Trinidadians in all aspects of ownership of business, land and wealth in the country and, with my restricted access to information and limited research resources, I endeavoured to undertake this exercise.

This endeavour raised the hackles of many, both inside and outside of Parliament. Raffique Shah, writing in the TnT Mirror in 1991, would label me one of the foremost Indian racists in the country for merely trying to throw light on one aspect of how Indo-Trinidadians were perceived as a group in the country.

After conducting the research of which I was capable, I came to the conclusion that the assertion of Indo- Trinidadians’ dominance of the economy was a misperception and indeed a myth. When one examines the areas of the economy and the value of assets in them in which Indo-Trinidadians have a strong presence, the assertion of dominance cannot be supported.

More so is this thesis flawed if we look at the ownership of the economic assets by other ethnic groups such as the Syrians, Chinese, French Creoles, mixed elements and the State.