Carisa Lee

Even as he was wide­ly con­demned for state­ments that East In­di­ans are be­ing tar­get­ed by ur­ban youth from the East-West Cor­ri­dor, Pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj is stick­ing by his claim.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence held by the Con­cerned Cler­gy of San Juan on Wednes­day, Ma­haraj ini­tial­ly made the com­ment, say­ing “mis­cre­ants” along the East-West Cor­ri­dor were re­spon­si­ble for the crime in Aranguez tar­get­ing East In­di­ans.

How­ev­er, in the face of se­vere crit­i­cism from sev­er­al sec­tors of so­ci­ety yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj dou­bled down on his state­ment af­ter a pun­dit was robbed of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $40,000 in El So­cor­ro.

In a press re­lease, Ma­haraj said the three as­sailants were de­scribed to be of Afro-Trinida­di­an de­scent, fur­ther prov­ing his point.

“The most trou­bling thing is that so many are ready to la­bel me as racist when the truth is as glar­ing as the day­light. Ur­ban youth gang mem­bers/East-West Cor­ri­dor mis­cre­ants con­tin­ue to de­stroy our sense of se­cu­ri­ty and peace of mind,” he wrote.

He added, “As to why de­cent mem­bers, law-abid­ing mem­bers of so­ci­ety will throw in their lot with crim­i­nal gang mem­bers is be­yond me. I am still wait­ing for the out­rage against the crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties grip­ping our na­tion.”

But Caribbean Free­dom Project di­rec­tor and Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee (ESC) mem­ber Shaba­ka Kam­bon said they whole­heart­ed­ly con­demned Ma­haraj’s state­ments.

“We see them as cal­cu­lat­ed, reck­less in­cite­ment to racial ha­tred and vi­o­lence,” he told Guardian Me­dia.

Kam­bon said the pun­dit’s “ur­ban youth” state­ment was a dog whis­tle and every­one knows ex­act­ly who he’s talk­ing about.

“When you get in­to that frame of mind, you ig­nore any in­for­ma­tion that is con­trary to what you want to put out,” he said.

He said he want­ed to make it clear that Africans by no means have a mo­nop­oly on crime in this coun­try, adding the so­ci­ety is struc­tured in a par­tic­u­lar way that high­lights crimes done by peo­ple in mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties.

“There is no ev­i­dence at all that those peo­ple have any racial agen­da in any crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, there is noth­ing like that in the coun­try,” Kam­bon ex­plained.

Kam­bon de­scribed the pun­dit’s stance as “dan­ger­ous” and said he and oth­er mem­bers of the ESC had worked hard to avoid racial dis­course in the coun­try.

“We come from a tra­di­tion that un­der­stands that liv­ing in a so­ci­ety where the two races are at war is an ab­solute dis­as­ter for all … we al­ways avoid­ed tak­ing the oth­er side when we feel ag­griev­ed be­cause that is not the way to de­vel­op any so­ci­ety,” he said

Head of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Vi­jay Ma­haraj al­so yes­ter­day dis­tanced his or­gan­i­sa­tion from pun­dit Ma­haraj.

“They do not speak for the or­gan­i­sa­tion,” he said.

Vi­jay Ma­haraj said no one is im­mune from crim­i­nal­i­ty and the en­tire coun­try is un­der at­tack by crimes.

“Home in­va­sion have no colour … these home mur­ders, home in­va­sions have tak­en place through­out the coun­try even in To­ba­go,” he said.

The SDMS head said Pun­dit Ma­haraj’s com­ments were dan­ger­ous to one and all and de­scribed it as race-bait­ing.

“He talked about mis­cre­ants on the East-West Cor­ri­dor. Usu­al­ly, when one talks about the East-West Cor­ri­dor, we talk about one par­tic­u­lar type of peo­ple just like we talk about South of the Ca­roni Riv­er, the im­pli­ca­tions,” he said.

He said one of the biggest crimes in this coun­try is pover­ty, which can lead some peo­ple to crim­i­nal­i­ty.

In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­gan­i­sa­tion pres­i­dent Lloyd Mukram Sir­joo shared sim­i­lar views. He said most im­por­tant­ly, Pun­dit Ma­haraj has no of­fi­cial ev­i­dence to back his claim.

“We can­not sup­port any state­ment that does not have any sub­stan­tial back­ings to it or the sta­tis­tics to go with it, all of us can come out and say any­thing,” Mukram Sir­joo said.

“We can­not sup­port any state­ment that does not have any sub­stan­tial back­ings to it or the sta­tis­tics to go with it, all of us can come out and say any­thing,” he said.

Mukram Sir­joo said the pun­dit’s state­ments were ir­re­spon­si­ble.

“We could set a prece­dent that will cause a very nasty sit­u­a­tion in this coun­try, where none of us will be able to walk the street com­fort­ably.”

He said he be­lieves now is the time to come to­geth­er in the fight against crime.

This sen­ti­ment was shared by Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer at the Catholic Ed­u­ca­tion Board of Man­age­ment (CEBM) Sharon Man­groo, who thinks that, “we have a bet­ter chance at solv­ing our prob­lems if we work to­geth­er rather than cre­ate di­vi­sion.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Aranguez Com­mu­ni­ty Coun­cil vice pres­i­dent Shafraz Ali said they were peace­ful res­i­dents and they were all af­fect­ed by crime.

“All eth­nic­i­ties live in Aranguez … we do not tol­er­ate race-bait­ing, we do not tol­er­ate in­cite­ment of racial ten­sions in our coun­try. We are a peace­ful, lov­ing com­mu­ni­ty, gen­er­a­tions of farm­ers,” he said.

Ali said it’s in­ac­cu­rate to say that on­ly East In­di­ans were af­fect­ed by crime in Aranguez.