Paras Ra­moutar

Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Ja­mal Mo­ham­med has called for tol­er­ance and non- vi­o­lence in so­ci­ety, sim­i­lar to the ac­tion em­ployed by Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi in the strug­gle for In­di­an in­de­pen­dence. Mo­hammed was ad­dress­ing a func­tion to com­mem­o­rate the In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions of both In­dia and Trinidad and To­ba­go which took the form of an ex­hi­bi­tion ti­tled Free­dom to March: Re­dis­cov­er­ing Gand­hi through Dan­di, at the Di­vali Na­gar site, Ch­agua­nas, on Tues­day.

With­out re­fer­ring to the na­tion­al watch­words of Dr Er­ic Williams-Dis­ci­pline, Tol­er­ance and Pro­duc­tion-at the time of Trinidad and To­ba­go's In­de­pen­dence in Au­gust 1962, Mo­hammed re­flect­ed on the ac­tions of Gand­hi. "Gand­hi tol­er­at­ed all forms of re­li­gious, cul­tur­al, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal ad­ver­si­ties and main­tained his fo­cus on the achieve­ment of In­dia's in­de­pen­dence," he said.

The min­is­ter said Gand­hi was an ex­cel­lent, per­fect com­mu­ni­ca­tor who was able to en­list more than 300 mil­lion In­di­ans in the 1930s and 1940s and have them join in the strug­gle to achieve In­di­an In­de­pen­dence. "It was an epochal hu­man­i­tar­i­an ini­tia­tive," he said. "What would have hap­pened if Gand­hi had to­day's new tech­nol­o­gy like In­ter­net, Skype, Twit­ter, e-mail and Face­book to chal­lenge the British Raj?" Mo­hammed said.

"Can you imag­ine that sce­nario? Yet he changed the course of hu­man his­to­ry. He used the pow­er of the tongue by pass­ing the word to each one." Mo­hammed praised the strong, friend­ly and cor­dial re­la­tions be­tween In­dia and Trinidad and To­ba­go over the past 50 years, and which he felt would con­tin­ue in­to in­fin­i­ty.

In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Shri Malay Mishra told the au­di­ence to look for­ward and take the teach­ings and phi­los­o­phy of Gand­hi, whom the world still re­spects for his pro­mo­tion of peace, uni­ty and love in In­dia, and which had been du­pli­cat­ed the world over. He said Au­gust is the month of free­dom for In­dia and Trinidad and To­ba­go. "In­dia achieved In­de­pen­dence on Au­gust 15, 1947, while Trinidad and To­ba­go achieved its In­de­pen­dence on Au­gust 31, 1962," Mo­hammed said.

De­ok­ien­anan Shar­ma, pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture, re­ferred to the theme of the ex­hi­bi­tion. "Dan­di was the start of the strug­gle to achieve full In­de­pen­dence for In­dia from Britain, and once hav­ing achieved that free­dom in 1947, a long line of coun­tries un­der the rule of Eng­land fol­lowed suit, in­clud­ing our own coun­try, Trinidad and To­ba­go, dis­man­tling once and for all the mighty British Em­pire," he said.

Shar­ma said T&T's in­de­pen­dence can be di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to In­dia's strug­gle 50 years ago. In­den­tured work­ers num­ber­ing over 147,00 from In­dia were brought to Trinidad and To­ba­go's from Ut­tar Pradesh and Bi­har be­tween 1845 and 1917, to work on the sug­ar and co­coa plan­ta­tions.