For­mer sen­a­tor and at­tor­ney Suren­dranath Capildeo is dead.

Al­though rel­a­tives have kept the death with­in the fam­i­ly the T&T Guardian was told that Capildeo died at the age of 76.

There was no con­fir­ma­tion on whether he was ill and the ex­act date of his death was un­clear.

He died ear­li­er this month, the T&T Guardian learned.

Capildeo came from a long and il­lus­tri­ous line of politi­cians and at­tor­neys. His un­cle, Dr Rudranath Capildeo, was leader of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty which was the op­po­si­tion par­ty when the coun­try gained in­de­pen­dence in 1962.

His fa­ther was Simb­hoonath Capildeo, a promi­nent politi­cian and lawyer.

In 2012, as he re­ceived a posthu­mous award on be­half of his un­cle, Capildeo said his un­cle's ma­jor con­tri­bu­tion was the hold the coun­try to­geth­er, "be­cause if he had de­cid­ed to run with the pack, we would not have had a coun­try."

"This coun­try," he said, "would have been racial­ly di­vid­ed for­ev­er but he (Rudranath) crossed that bar­ri­er with Er­ic Williams at Marl­bor­ough House."

Capildeo at­tained silk and was made a Se­nior Coun­sel un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

He held strong views on the is­sue of race and racism and open­ly showed his dis­en­chant­ment with the way the pol­i­tics in the coun­try was go­ing when in 2007 at an NCIC func­tion he blast­ed po­lit­i­cal Hin­dus for what he called "their gross in­com­pe­tence and to­tal self­ish­ness, weak lead­er­ship and po­lit­i­cal stu­pid­i­ty."

Capildeo is the cousin of No­bel Lau­re­ate VS Naipaul. His an­ces­tral home is the Li­on House on the Ch­agua­nas Main Road.

He will be cre­mat­ed to­day at Ca­roni Cre­ma­tion Site at 10 am.