Indo-Trinidadians’ innocence

Statements on race and ethnicity from notable individuals and organisations, however provocative and tendentious they may appear, ought to be examined for their validity without being dismissed out of hand.

We should, as far as possible, seek to dispassionately engage rather than casually ignore, as indeed Noel Kalicharan has, in part, challenged through evidence Theodore Lewis’ claim of the absence of young black males in tertiary education.

Reverting to the Indo-Trinidadian community, diligent and disinterested enquiry into their place today in the social order may undermine some of the cherished beliefs and long-held convictions they harbour of themselves and other groups. It would, indeed, be a bold and candid attempt to differentiate myth from reality and receive the wisdom from obtrusive fact.

As John F Kennedy remarked a few decades ago: “The great enemy of the truth is, very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived, dishonest but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic… We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” There are various tendencies among elements in the Indo-Trinidadian community. There is the propensity to engage in triumphalist rhetoric which very often is at odds with the social reality. Another is to invest in the present generation the virtues and values of a previous era without acknowledging the changed mentality.

Also, there is an inclination to unquestioningly accept and regurgitate the views of themselves as formulated by others — the tendency to perpetuate half-truths and myths. Then there is the disinterest or reluctance to engage in more objective, evidence-based self-assessment which may be due to an anti-intellectual tradition among their leading opinion makers.

One Dool Singh of Chaguanas in a letter to the Newsday of 30/6/16 referred to this indifference thus: “(Strategising and toiling) are not being done in the Indian community.

Indians are happy to bury their heads in the sand and pretend they are safe and secure.” Such complacency seems to be promoted by many in the Indo-Trinidadian business and professional classes from the assumed safety and comfort of their social cocoons.

In previous columns spanning 27 years, I have adverted periodically to one issue of obviously questionable validity propagandised nationally and believed by vast numbers of Indo-Trinidadians themselves that they dominate business and land and property ownership and, by extension, the economy of this country. In my own constrained way I investigated this notion two and a half decades ago. The results of my research were published in a series of columns in the Express newspaper in 1990 and 1991.

I found little evidence to support this assertion of Indo-Trinidadian dominance and therefore characterised it as a myth.

However, the myth persists and is perpetuated by Selwyn Ryan and others. As recent as June 2013, in a column in the Sunday Express, titled “The passing of Afro-Creole hegemony,” Ryan emphatically affirms that Indo-Trinidadians dominated the ownership of business and urban commercial real estate in the country, the professions and, amazingly, even “bureaucratic power in the State sector,” as well as their making dominant strides in the energy and financial sectors.

In response to what I regarded as a flawed perception, I again delved into the issue in a series of columns in this newspaper between 6/6/16 and 18/7/16 to question the basis of this claim because it has significance for the politics and social and ethnic relations in the country.

Today, I am aware of no current research being done to validate or refute this notion of Indo- Trinidadian economic and professional dominance.