I wish to commend Raymond Ramcharitar on his article "Inward Hunger: The Ballad of Bad Bill" Published on Wednesday, August 8, 2012 in the Trinidad Guardian. Mr Ramcharitar makes a critical and significant point "If we are still paying for Williams sins to this day, then why then are there calls by the Opposition PNM to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dr Eric Williams with pomp and splendour?
My grandmother was of East Indian descent and I remember her telling us while growing up as Selwyn Cudjoe and other like to call it "the cowshed fable". Today, probably the first time in 50 years that Indians/Hindus are holding high offices within the State and this makes those in the PNM uneasy. Williams publicly announced that all Indian children were schooled in "cow sheds" thus showing his contempt for those of this race and the PNM probably still holds firm to the idea.
He also showed his contempt for his own PNM people as according to Ramcharitar's article, Williams said, "I wanted our party members to read. They lacked the money to buy books, or the time or inclination to read them. So I did their reading for them." This is not indulgence, it's contempt, made clear as he observed that his "people's lives are bound by narrow, materialistic considerations" to which he would not succumb."
Ramcharitar continued, "Naturally, this is a small sliver of a rich text. Many people alive today remember Williams as a gregarious, funny, and acerbically entertaining man. In the early days of his premiership, he was open, accessible and charming. But Williams's tragedy is that as he became immersed in power he fell victim to the very tradition of slave immorality he decried."
"On our 50th anniversary it seems evident that the nation is still paying for Williams's sins, especially his sidelining of the project of creating intellectually able citizens." So tell me, if he despised us all to this extent, Why should we, as ctizens celebrate Williams?
Angelique de Freitas
Via e-mail
