Clearing the air

THE EDITOR: I have read Dr Richard Clerk’s letter of Wednesday March 2, with irritation and sadness. It illustrates that even when Sat Maharaj has withdrawn from the allegations of the Prime Minister interfering with the judiciary outside of the provisions of the Constitution and after the Archbishop’s apology, some Catholics continue to believe that the sacred duty of the Catholic Church is to be an appendage to the UNC’s unfounded hysteria.

I can assure Dr Clerk that history will not record that Leela Ramdeen “saved the day while becoming the sacrificial lamb” as Dr Clerk writes. On the contrary, history will record that the official Catholic Church in the form of its Episcopal Delegate for Social Justice, Leela Ramdeen was prepared to encourage leaks of confidential material rather than encouraging the transparency, honesty and discretion proper to any Public Service in spite of the fact that the regulations of the modern Public Service were first worked out within the bureaucracy of the Catholic Church. Worse, the official Church was prepared to act on these leaks rather than to take the obvious precaution of consulting the Nation’s Constitution. Historians today carefully read the newspaper correspondence of the period they study.

They will note from Dr Clerk’s letter that Dr Clerk’s asking “Will the CCSJ be now able to speak out on issues that might ruffle the feathers of Government” is strangely at odds with the fact that not a single Government representative has commented on the Leela Ramdeen affair nor on any statement that the Church or any Church has made so far. The underlying assumption that any TT Government has attempted to muzzle the Catholic Church is dishonest and false. The outcry against both what Leela Ramdeen said in the name of the Church and how she said it came from the public. That public included many Catholics outraged that the Indo-Afro conflict — at present stoked by some members of the UNC — was for the first time being imported into the Church.

Finally, the word “race” is being liberally used in this affair. Yes, all former slave societies from the USA to Brazil remain fundamentally racist. However not all conflicts are primarily racist nor are, in this case, Indos and Afros equally racist. There was no Indo outcry in the Chadee case although one and perhaps two of those hanged were suspected as being innocent. The two were relatively poor. The present Indo mobilisation led by Hindu Nationalists was once used against Cipriani and the call of his Republicans for what was in effect Home Rule. Cipriani was a French Creole. It was used against Richards and indirectly Mahatma Gandhi when both called for the end of indentureship and it was used against Capildeo — an Indian — in the election that the now defunct WIN fought.

Its leaders and spokesmen of the DLP for a time demanded partition on Independence. Much of the venom of the time was written by Cassandra or, if you like, a certain Balgobin Ramdeen. With the defeat of the UNC at the polls, the usual agitation was in the cards. What is new is the impression being given that for the first time in our modern history, the Catholic Church of Cipriani and Richards has joined the Hindu Nationalist mobilisation whether this is on doctors, on the Trinity Cross or on the CJ. Archbishop Ryan refused this, Archbishop Pantin would have nothing to do with it.

MARION O’CALLAGHAN
Woodbrook