Sat Ma­haraj

The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) over its years in gov­ern­ment since the death of its founder, Dr Er­ic Williams (1911-1981), has worked at in­flat­ing the con­tri­bu­tion of Williams to the na­tion. Any op­por­tu­ni­ty is used to add glo­ry to Williams. There is no sur­prise there­fore that there is the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, the Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, the Cen­tral Bank Er­ic Williams Lec­ture Se­ries, and the UWI Er­ic Williams Col­lec­tion.

The ghost of Williams is ex­humed at every PNM func­tion. The cen­te­nary ob­ser­vance of Williams was no dif­fer­ent. Once again the dis­tort­ed and dis­fig­ured Dr Er­ic Williams was res­ur­rect­ed for na­tion­al at­ten­tion.

De­spite what the PNM his­tor­i­cal re­vi­sion­ists may wish to write, there re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion who re­mem­ber Williams dif­fer­ent­ly. This pop­u­la­tion re­mem­bers Wil-liams as be­ing pet­ty, spite­ful, an­i­mat­ed by race and leav­ing T&T woe­ful­ly short of its pre-in­de­pen­dence po­ten­tial. Williams used race and re­li­gion in the 1956 gen­er­al elec­tion. He climbed his plat­form and told a lie on the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha. He ac­cused us of be­ing linked to the Ma­ha Sab­ha of In­dia, whose de­ment­ed mem­ber Godse as­sas­si­nat­ed Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi.

The Ma­hat­ma was killed in 1948 in Del­hi and the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha was in­cor­po­rat­ed by Act # 41 of 1952 in Trinidad. The na­tion is sel­dom re­mind­ed that Williams was made Chief Min­is­ter due to a fear by the British Home Of­fice that the In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty was not pli­able to their world­view. On Sep­tem­ber 24, 1956, the PNM won on­ly 13 of the 24 elect­ed seats in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil. Al­though the PNM did not se­cure a ma­jor­i­ty in the 31-mem­ber Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil, Williams was able to con­vince the Sec­re­tary of State for the Colonies to al­low him to name the five ap­point­ed mem­bers of the coun­cil (de­spite the op­po­si­tion of the Gov­er­nor, Sir Ed­ward Beetham). This gave him an ar­ti­fi­cial ma­jor­i­ty in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil. Williams was thus elect­ed Chief Min­is­ter and was al­so able to get all sev­en of his min­is­ters elect­ed.

The PNM of­ten projects the mem­o­ry of Williams as the great African in­tel­lec­tu­al who de­bunked the colo­nial in­tel­li­gentsia with his sem­i­nal work, Cap­i­tal­ism to Slav­ery. The PNM choos­es not to re­mem­ber that Williams was a de­scen­dant of the de Boissiere fam­i­ly which made its for­tune trad­ing African slaves il­le­gal­ly, af­ter the slave trade had been abol­ished in 1811. In­deed, this slave own­er ge­neal­o­gy in­formed the poli­cies of Wil-liams and led to the de­cline of the African com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad from a po­si­tion of in­de­pen­dence to one of de­pen­dence.

Pri­or to the PNM, the African com­mu­ni­ty was in com­mand of the pro­fes­sion­al class, teach­ers, busi­ness etc, but by the time Williams died in 1981, the African com­mu­ni­ty was rel­e­gat­ed to mere vote banks, de­pen­dent on State hand­outs. Many claim that Williams pro­vid­ed "free ed­u­ca­tion" to the na­tion. We are nev­er told of the price of the "free ed­u­ca­tion." The de­struc­tive lega­cy of Williams's ju­nior sec­ondary schools is still be­ing felt in T&T. Thou­sands of young minds were de­stroyed with this so­cial­ist ex­per­i­ment. Iron­i­cal­ly, Williams, while boast­ing of the PNM ed­u­ca­tion­al mod­el, nev­er al­lowed his daugh­ter Er­i­ca to at­tend such schools.

The Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty will nev­er for­get the pe­jo­ra­tive man­ner in which Williams de­scribed Hin-du schools as "cow­sheds." To­day those cow­sheds have pro­duced many of the na­tion's schol­ar­ship win­ners and lead­ers of the coun­try. The bias of Williams against the Hin­du school build­ing pro­gramme was ev­i­dent as the Ma­ha Sab­ha was nev­er per­mit­ted to build new schools af­ter Williams came to pow­er. The Hin­du school sys­tem grew de­spite the best ef­forts to de­ny such growth by Williams. Un­der Williams, re­la­tions be­tween the two dom­i­nant races, African and In­di­an, de­gen­er­at­ed to an all-time low.

Dur­ing the en­tire Williams era not a sin­gle Hin­du was ap­point­ed to the PNM Gov­ern­ment as a min­is­ter. In­stead, Williams cap­i­talised on the an­cient di­vi­sion be­tween the Hin-du and Mus­lim/Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty to keep the In­di­an com- mu­ni­ty di­vid­ed. Fol­low­ing the de­feat of the PNM at the 1958 Fed­er­al elec­tions, Wil-liams railed against the In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty, de­scrib­ing us as a "hos­tile and re­cal­ci­trant mi­nor­i­ty mas­querad­ing as the na­tion of In­dia." On hear­ing this state­ment, even the Chris­t­ian and Mus­lim In­di­ans in the PNM re­coiled in dis­gust. Win­ston Ma­habir (a PNM min­is­ter) wrote in his bi­og­ra­phy, In and Out of Pol­i­tics: "We all ex­changed hor­ri­fied glances. We ex­pe­ri­enced a sud­den shat­ter­ing of all the ideals for which we thought we stood. We felt guilty of the lies we had preached to the In­di­ans about the gen­uine­ness of Williams and our par­ty..."

In 1961, the PNM and Williams in­tro­duced the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Bill, which at­tempt­ed to en­trench vot­ing ma­chines and re­vise elec­toral bound­aries. These changes were an at­tempt to dis­en­fran­chise the main­ly In­di­an il­lit­er­ate rur­al vot­ers through in­tim­i­da­tion. Rig the elec­tions through the use of vot­ing ma­chines and al­low Afro-Caribbean im­mi­grants from oth­er is­lands to vote. Ger­ry­man­der the bound­aries to en­sure vic­to­ry by the PNM. Proof of these al­le­ga­tions came when ANR Robin­son was de­clared win­ner of the To­ba­go seat in 1961 with more votes than there were reg­is­tered vot­ers. The use of the in­fa­mous gang called Marabun­tas in Trinidad saw the in­tro­duc­tion of crim­i­nal el­e­ments. This trend of Williams al­so man­i­fest­ed it­self in his DEWD pro­gramme.

• Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha