The ref­er­ence by Mr Hilton Sandy to a shipload wait­ing at Cal­cut­ta is most ob­scene. He has since apol­o­gised, re­fer­ring to the lyrics of the song Ja­haa­ji Bhai and deny­ing that it had any racial con­no­ta­tion. I and the rest of the pop­u­la­tion must have heard some oth­er song of the same name be­cause this ex­pla­na­tion do not trim the racism of the state­ment.

Al­so, why does it have to be po­lit­i­cal pres­sure and pub­lic out­cry that forces him to re­tract his state­ments? Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are con­stant­ly liv­ing in a fairy tale world where we think that racism does not ex­ist here. It is a cur­rent be­low the sur­face that is ex­ploit­ed by many for self­ish ends.

I be­lieve it starts in our So­cial Stud­ies class at pri­ma­ry school. We all learn the watch­words: dis­ci­pline, pro­duc­tion and tol­er­ance. Tol­er­ance im­plies that what­ev­er dif­fer­ences you prac­tise ab­hors me but I sit qui­et­ly and grind my teeth in dis­gust. It does not en­cour­age me to learn why it is im­por­tant to you or to ap­pre­ci­ate the beau­ty and bless­ing that we can live in a place where we see so many dif­fer­ent world per­spec­tives so close to­geth­er and feel proud to be Trin­bag­on­ian be­cause of this.

Tol­er­ance does not stop us from try­ing to make our fel­low cit­i­zen feel that they are not Trin­bag­on­ian be­cause they ap­pre­ci­ate their mu­sic in a dif­fer­ent lan­guage, or wor­ship in a dif­fer­ent way. We need to re­place this word with re­spect and the change needs to be a sig­nal of an at­ti­tude change. At last year's Di­vali Na­gar, Quin­cy Kendell Charles stunned us all with his skill and grace.

He is not In­di­an and his skill sur­passed many of the lo­cal ex­perts in the field. Do you think it is mere tol­er­ance that cul­ti­vat­ed this? It has to be re­spect for what he saw, an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the beau­ty he saw. The same can be said for artistes like Shiv­an­na Ra­goo­nanan and Jit Sama­roo.

Ve­david Man­ick

San­gre Grande