Prakash Per­sad

The New Year has start­ed with un­wor­thy com­ments be­ing made by two sea­soned gen­tle­men, both vet­er­ans in their re­spec­tive fields of en­deav­our. One is from a large coun­try of which Kolkata is its east­ern me­trop­o­lis, and the oth­er is from a tiny is­land with Cal­cut­ta is­sues on his mind. The tar­gets of both pro­nounce­ments were the In­do-Trinida­di­an com­mu­ni­ty. These must sure­ly be noth­ing more than aber­ra­tional slips of the tongue, one hopes.

The com­ments by the High Com­mis­sion­er of the Re­pub­lic of In­dia about lo­cal pan­dits were both in­ac­cu­rate and in­ap­pro­pri­ate. Both Shri Mishra-ji and his pre­de­ces­sors have al­ways been warm­ly wel­comed with­in and by the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty and thus it is baf­fling that, com­ing to the end of a tenure marked by ex­cel­lent work, he has pro­ceed­ed to tar­nish his lega­cy.

Now, Mr Mishra is en­ti­tled to his view of what he thinks Hin­duism is and in what di­rec­tion it should pro­ceed. How­ev­er, to make com­ments crit­i­cal of lo­cal pan­dits is tan­ta­mount to in­ter­fer­ing in lo­cal af­fairs and as a sea­soned diplo­mat he must be aware of the in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ness of this.

Oth­er com­men­ta­tors have in­di­cat­ed the Her­culean ef­forts that the pan­dits of Trinidad have made to pre­serve Hin­duism and In­di­an cul­ture and their ster­ling con­tri­bu­tions to na­tion build­ing.

Most of this im­por­tant part of our na­tion's his­to­ry has not been doc­u­ment­ed and that which has been is pro­ject­ed through hos­tile lens as part of an over­all con­ver­sion strat­e­gy, and to de­mean and de­val­ue Hin­dus in gen­er­al and their pan­dits in par­tic­u­lar. It is thus rather re­gret­table and iron­ic that His Ex­cel­len­cy's com­ments will aid those hos­tile to that which he pro­fess­es to hold dear.

The fact that there is an In­di­an di­as­po­ra here, one that the In­di­an Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers im­por­tant, is due, in a large part, to the out­stand­ing work of lo­cal pun­dits. It is not­ed, with in­ter­est, that no such com­ments were made about the In­do-Trinida­di­an Mus­lims or Chris­tians.

It would be most ap­pro­pri­ate then that Shri Malay Mishra-ji take the nec­es­sary steps to smoothen the feath­ers he has un­nec­es­sar­i­ly and un­fair­ly ruf­fled. This would be the most Hin­du thing he can do and would be con­so­nant with the ethos and teach­ings of Swa­mi Vivekanan­da.

T&T is a uni­tary state with a di­verse and plur­al so­ci­ety. It is thus ex­ceed­ing­ly re­pug­nant to hear the com­ments made by Mr Sandy. He has made what ap­pears to be an off­hand, non-con­trite apol­o­gy and has earned nei­ther re­buke nor sanc­tion from his par­ty. One can on­ly as­sume that his par­ty and po­lit­i­cal leader are aware of the im­pli­ca­tions of his words and their lack of sanc­tion on their ef­forts to lead a mul­ti­cul­tur­al and mul­ti­eth­nic so­ci­ety and the im­age of T&T in the eyes of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

The lat­est at­tempt at con­don­ing these un­wor­thy com­ments is the talk about not chang­ing the cul­ture of To­ba­go. This is disin­gen­u­ous at best and to­tal­ly dis­re­spect­ful at worst. Can you imag­ine the furore that would erupt from the same quar­ters who are spout­ing such shame­ful com­ments if any such com­ments were to be made in Trinidad about peo­ple from To­ba­go or cit­i­zens mov­ing from one area of the coun­try to the next?

Sandy Sahib has crossed the line and it is re­al­ly re­gret­table that nei­ther his par­ty nor he did the ho­n­ourable, de­cent thing: make an un­re­served apol­o­gy and take a hasty ex­it from the po­lit­i­cal scene.It is said that pol­i­tics has a moral­i­ty of its own. Are pol­i­tics and moral­i­ty be­com­ing mu­tu­al­ly ex­clu­sive?