T&T a house with many rooms—Douglas

Trinidad and Tobago is a house with many rooms, says Minister of Arts and Multiculturalism Dr Lincoln Douglas. He made the comment at the opening of an exhibition: Rediscovering Gandhi through Dandi at the Divali Nagar to mark T&T’s and India’s Independence celebrations—August 31 and August 15, respectively.

“The ancestral roots of roughly half of our population are buried in the bowels of India...Trinidad and Tobago and other nations of the Caribbean became the adopted home in the first instance of millions of diasporic Indians,” he said. “Today, many years later, Trinidad and Tobago is simply...a house with many rooms that embraces us all in our diversity and our many commonalities that bind. In this our 50th year, we have much to be proud of.”

 Douglas said the Dandi salt march which the exhibition sought to capture was a pivotal occasion in the history of India and it epitomises the power of conviction to cause. “Gandhi stands like a giant at the centre of this signal event,” he added. He said Mahatma Gandhi’s visionary leadership was untainted by insularity, and his outlook embraced a national and global consciousness that spoke of world peace and unity.

Minister of Communication Jamal Mohammed hailed Gandhi as a communicator who used the power of the word and changed the course of history for India and the world. Indian High Commissioner Shri Malay Mishra also addressed the assembly.­