The Ma­ha Sab­ha in­vit­ed Sixth Form stu­dents to par­tic­i­pate in an es­say com­pe­ti­tion on mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. The first place win­ner re­ceived a cash prize of $5,000. We pro­duce the es­say of Lak­shana Ma­habir of Low­er 6L Lak­sh­mi Girls Hin­du Col­lege. Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, though dif­fi­cult to de­fine, is at its core a so­ci­ety's ac­cep­tance, in­te­gra­tion and pro­mo­tion of its com­po­nent eth­nic, re­li­gious and cul- tur­al de­mo­graph­ic groups. It's po­lar op­po­site, na­tion­al­ism, is the pro­mo­tion of one par­tic­u­lar group of peo­ple as a coun­try or by pref­er­ence of the dom­i­nant com­pos­ing de­mo­graph­ic group. The elec­tion of a new po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship in Trinidad in ear­ly 2010, led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, pledged the fol­low­ing where­by "...the Min­istry of Arts and Cul­ture will be re­designed to be­come the Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism in or­der to give greater voice to the di­verse cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions of our com­mon de­sires for in­di­vid­ual and na­tion­al iden­ti­ty" (May 30, 2010).

There­fore, the mul­ti­cul­tur­al as­pect of Trin­bag­on­ian so­ci­ety, should cease to be mere­ly de fac­to in na­ture, and rather, fur­ther pro­mot­ed in gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and leg­is­la­ture, via the trans­for­ma­tion of the Min­istry of Arts and Cul­ture to the Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. We should ex­am­ine whether a pol­i­cy on mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism can pro­mote in­te­gra­tion of the peo­ple and their pa­tri­o­tism to Trinidad and To­ba­go. As with any ar­gu­ment there are two dis­tinct sides, op­pos­ing and in sup­port for, as well as some grey ar­eas in-be­tween. The es­say seeks to an­swer the above pro­posed ques­tion per­tain­ing to the es­tab­lish­ment of the Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. The first sub ques­tion we can pro­pose is: can a pol­i­cy re­al­ly pro­mote in­te­gra­tion of our peo­ple? When we speak of in­te­gra­tion, we mean the uni­fi­ca­tion of dif­fer­ent sub groups (dif­fer­ent faiths, eth­nic­i­ties, sub-cul­tures) in a par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty. Our coun­try en­com­pass­es a huge­ly di­verse de­mo­graph­ic, with dif­fer­ent races and creeds, and com­plex mix­tures.

Achiev­ing in­te­gra­tion in a coun­try where ex­ist large and dis­tinct blocks of the African, In­di­an, Chi­nese, var­i­ous Cau­casian and Lebanese peo­ple has long been a daunt­ing task. Fur­ther, the in­te­gra­tion of these groups was not en­cour­aged, but rather a "di­vide and con­quer" pol­i­cy was pur­sued by the plan­ta­tion of­fi­cials and pre-in­de­pen­dence colo­nial pow­ers. Is it too late to in­te­grate our peo­ple? Has the dam­age al­ready been done? Cer­tain­ly, race and cul­ture re­la­tions in Trinidad post 1962 have been tur­bu­lent, with the Black Pow­er move­ment of the 1970s, and the con­tin­ued racial di­vide in pol­i­tics. Hence, it is im­per­a­tive to pur­sue a pol­i­cy to mend this di­vide and bring the peo­ple back to­geth­er.

That was the dream of Tri­ni-dad's his­to­ri­an and first Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams, who, in his 1962 (Au­gust 1) in­au­gur­al in­de­pen­dence speech, stat­ed: "There can be no Moth­er In­dia for those whose an­ces­tors came from In­dia; there can be no Moth­er Africa for those of African ori­gin, and there can be no Moth­er Syr­ia or no Moth­er Lebanon. A na­tion, like an in­di­vid­ual, can have on­ly one moth­er. The on­ly moth­er we recog­nise is Moth­er T&T and moth­er can­not dis­crim­i­nate be­tween her chil­dren."

His mes­sage was that from 1962 hence­forth, Trinidad was a unit­ed coun­try of all these dif­fer­ent peo­ple, who shared their na­tion­al­i­ty in com­mon. It can be ar­gued that Trinidad at its very core, on it's found­ing,was meant to have its cit­i­zens live in uni­ty, to have a de­fined Trinida­di­an iden­ti­ty. Sec­ond­ly, we must seek to im­prove the pa­tri­o­tism of our peo­ple with every gov­ern­ment pro­pos­al. But pa­tri­o­tism is nei­ther a law nor a rule, but a feel­ing and emo­tion that can­not be forced on­to the Trin­bag­on­ian pop­u­la­tion by poli­cies of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. It can be en­cour­aged by in­still­ing a sense of pride in the an­ces­try and cit­i­zen­ry of the peo­ple. Pa­tri­o­tism may be fos­tered if the Trinida­di­an law­mak­ers and cit­i­zens, over time, del­i­cate­ly try to put in place a true Trinida­di­an iden­ti­ty, that which com­pos­es of many creeds and races, with­out cross­ing over in­to the ob­scu­ri­ty of a qua­si-na­tion­al­ism. This may be achieved through en­cour­age­ment of the var­i­ous char­ac­ter­is­tics of the her­itages of the Trinida­di­ans, such as mu­sic, dance, eth­nic­i­ty, lan­guage, art and re­li­gion, whilst giv­ing each sep­a­rate group in the coun­try equal at­ten­tion, as well as in­creased cul- tur­al learn­ings of one an­oth­er.

The pledge of PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar's min­istry to pur­sue a mul­ti­cul­tur­al pol­i­cy has so far been vague, but one can as­sume that it will in­volve the pur­suit of in­creased knowl­edge of the ex­ist­ing cul­tures with­in our coun­try. Hence, the first area to be tar­get­ed to pro­mote these ideals would be the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, with in­te­gra­tion of cul­tur­al and re­li­gious habits in­to the school's cur­ricu­lum. The pos­si­ble ad­van­tages of this is that knowl­edge eras­es ha­tred or in­tol­er­ance of an­oth­er per­son, and with well in­formed, un­bi­ased lessons giv­en to young stu­dents, they can har­bour with­in them­selves, from an ear­ly age, a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the norms of their neigh­bours who may be dif­fer­ent from them­selves. One pos­si­ble dis­ad­van­tage of this ven­ture is that there are too many cul­tures ex­ist­ing in Trinidad at any one mo­ment in time to cov­er with full jus­tice on the cur­ricu­lum. Pos­si­ble ig­nored groups may be the small church­es. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, cul­ture varies from in­di­vid­ual to fam­i­ly, to in­sti­tu­tion, thus mak­ing cer­tain as­pects of cul­ture, such as in­ter­pre­ta­tion of folk­lore, hard to de­fine and teach.

Part II next week

Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the

sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha