Prof Sel­wyn Cud­joe in his col­umn of Jan­u­ary 6, came to the con­clu­sion that his niece Becky may have a point when she ex­pressed to him that Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan is a racist (even though he did not men­tion a name, my read­ing be­tween the lines leads me to be­lieve it was Ram­bachan he was re­fer­ring to) and that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment is racist be­cause Russ­ian and In­di­an cit­i­zens are al­lowed to en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go with­out visas dur­ing a grace pe­ri­od of three months.

And this was in spite of the fact that he was quite aware that in 2010 "five of the world's top lead­ers, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma (USA), Pres­i­dent Nicholas Sarkozy (France), Pres­i­dent Dmit­ry Medvedev (Rus­sia), Prime Min­is­ter Wen Ji­abao (Chi­na) and Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron (UK) vis­it­ed In­dia to gen­er­ate good­will among the In­di­ans," so that they can have bet­ter eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al ties with In­dia.

Cud­joe must be aware of the BRIC the­sis mar­ket­ed in 2003 by Gold­man Sachs that Brazil, Rus­sia, In­dia and Chi­na had the abil­i­ty to form a pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic world bloc.

I rec­om­mend that he sug­gests to his sim­plis­tic xeno­pho­bic niece that she reads Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown's col­umn ti­tled "Do we need more In­di­ans and Rus­sians?" pub­lished in the News­day of Jan­u­ary 6. He should al­so point out to his niece that in the 1970s (the af­ter­math of the Black Pow­er rev­o­lu­tion), Ram­bachan with oth­ers formed an or­gan­i­sa­tion, the So­ci­ety for the Prop­a­ga­tion of In­di­an Cul­ture and this was not a racist or­gan­i­sa­tion and its pol­i­cy was to ed­u­cate East In­di­ans and the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion of East In­di­an cul­ture.

Re­mind her that Ram­bachan was al­so the deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of the ONR which em­braced all eth­nic groups to con­test gen­er­al elec­tions. Karl Hud­son-Phillips was the po­lit­i­cal leader of that par­ty which con­sist­ed of every creed and race. On ac­count of peo­ple like Ram­bachan we saw the birth of the In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion. The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha al­so played an im­por­tant role in the for­ma­tion of this or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Pro­fes­sor, I hope your niece looked at the fu­ner­al ser­vice con­duct­ed at NA­PA for the late Sir El­lis Clarke. She would have wit­nessed Dhar­ma­charya Ut­tam Ma­haraj read­ing from the Bhag­vad Gi­ta and Imam Abzal Mo­hammed read­ing from the Ko­ran along­side Arch­bish­op Ed­ward Gilbert and Bish­op Calvin Bess. And this is in spite of the fact that Chris­tians be­lieve that there is no name giv­en amongst men where­by we will be saved but by Je­sus Christ.

Tell your niece, pro­fes­sor, that the So­ci­ety for the Prop­a­ga­tion of In­di­an Cul­ture helped in mak­ing this a re­al­i­ty. Most of all, where in the world you would wit­ness in a state fu­ner­al for a for­mer head of state, who so hap­pens to be a Ro­man Catholic, the sign­ing of Ag­nus Dei (Lamb of God) ac­com­pa­nied with a beau­ti­ful and pi­ous clas­si­cal death dance per­formed by a Hin­du maid­en? Oh God, Cud­joe, try and con­vince all your nieces and nephews that they should stop this race talk. Af­ter all, you are the founder and head of the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion for the Em­pow­er­ment of African Peo­ple.

Con­vince her it is not "In­di­an time ah come" but "peo­ple time ah come." And by the way, in­form her that Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan, the For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter, an­nounced at a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre on Jan­u­ary 6 that Dr Ru­pert Grif­fith, Min­is­ter of Tourism, was due to lead a del­e­ga­tion of 20 peo­ple to In­dia in or­der to at­tract in­vest­ment and tourism for this beloved T&T. Most of all, tell your nieces and nephews, pro­fes­sor, that there is a tremen­dous in­ter­est from peo­ple in In­dia in the in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy in­dus­try who want to come to T&T to in­vest in the eTeck Tamana Park in Waller­field.

Is­rael B Khan SC

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