Shah and Indo-tribalism

My mission was to investigate some widely-held views about Indo- Trinidadians to ascertain to what extent such views represented reality or were merely myths, half-truths, misconceptions and misrepresentations.

I concluded that (a) the notion that Indo-Trinidadians dominated the national economy or the public bureaucracy at any level was a myth, (b) the view that they were significantly over-represented in the professions was a half-truth in that this position was probably true only of medicine and law but not of the whole gamut of other professions in the country, (c) the belief that Indo-Trinidadians were more clannish and indeed more racially-oriented than other ethnic groups was a misconception and possibly a deliberate misrepresentation.

Such conclusions I had hoped would serve to place ethnic perceptions and indeed ethnic relations on a realistic footing.

With respect to (c) above and the allegedly more deep-seated racial psyche of Indo-Guyanese and Indo- Trinidadians as propounded by Raffique Shah in his column in the Express of 16/5/17, I had intended to respond earlier to draw attention to the flawed premises of Shah’s emphatic conclusion. In the meantime, one Kamal Persad penned a response in the Express of 15/7/17 which refuted Shah’s assertions that Indo-Trinidadians are more racially predisposed than Afro-Trinidadians in their voting behaviour.

My own view is that substantial numbers of both Afros and Indos are motivated by tribal instinct and deep ethnic sentiment. However, any attempt to determine which ethnic group displays greater racial consciousness and solidarity may be both unproductive and inconclusive.

To assert, as Shah does, that Indos are more guilty than Afros in this regard can hardly be supported by all the available data and seems merely to be the result of selective interpretation.

Shah is of course free to hold whatever view meets his fancy but the motivation which compels him to easily castigate Indos as racists and inveterate tribalists is a matter of speculation.

I myself in 1991 was deemed by Shah to be foremost among Indo- racists due to my effort to investigate the notion that Indo-Trinidadians dominated the economy. One wonders whether he is desperate to advertise his assumed credentials as a patriot and nationalist totally free from racial and tribal sentiment and, in order to do so, he sees the need to come down heavily against the ethnic group to which he belongs by lineage.

Incidentally, this self-acclaimed patriot led an army revolt against a constitutionally elected government and, on the charge of treason, was set free on a legal technicality.

There is also speculation that Shah’s bitterness against Indo-Trinidadians stems from his firm belief that in the merry-go-round contest for the parliamentary leadership of the ULF during the 1977-78 period, Basdeo Panday strongly appealed to Indo-Trinidadian racial sentiment against him and his radical associates which resulted in his and his group’s defeat.

Is it then that he has never forgiven Panday and his support base for his political demise? It is of course true that, consummate politician that he is, Panday is not averse to using any and every means at his disposal to defeat a political enemy. As we are aware, he has given currency to the dictum that “politics has a morality of its own.” The appeal to race as a mechanism of political mobilisation is not novel in Trinidad politics. The reality is that it has been used on occasions by politicians of all hues from the 1940s through the 50s and 60s to the present day.

Race was indeed a factor in the 1976 election campaign, even if muted and latent.