Pun­dit Satyanand Ma­haraj, no stranger to con­tro­ver­sy, ex­posed the prej­u­dices al­ways sim­mer­ing just be­low the sur­face of this eth­ni­cal­ly di­verse so­ci­ety this week, when he blamed “ur­ban youth from the East-West Cor­ri­dor” for crimes com­mit­ted against In­do-Trinida­di­ans in Aranguez.

His choice of words, wide­ly in­ter­pret­ed as a eu­phemism for young Afro-Trinida­di­an males from im­pov­er­ished com­mu­ni­ties, has sparked the lat­est round of un­com­fort­able, emo­tion­al­ly charged de­bate about race re­la­tions in T&T.

The com­ments by the out­spo­ken spir­i­tu­al head of the Aranguez-based Satya Anand Ashram Tem­ple of Truth and Bliss, have been con­demned in many quar­ters as an at­tempt to as­sign cul­pa­bil­i­ty for the crime prob­lems in the coun­try to one eth­nic group.

How­ev­er, Pun­dit Ma­haraj is not the first pub­lic fig­ure to link crim­i­nal­i­ty with poor, ur­ban, Afro-Trinida­di­an males. Rather, he joins a grow­ing list of in­di­vid­u­als whose com­ments have stirred up deep-seat­ed an­i­mos­i­ty be­tween T&T’s two dom­i­nant eth­nic groups.

Just as it was with all the pre­vi­ous racial­ly charged de­c­la­ra­tions, the pun­dit’s state­ment re­flects our un­for­tu­nate colo­nial lega­cy of di­vide and rule used by the rul­ing class to ex­ert con­trol and dom­i­na­tion of en­slaved Africans and East In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers.

In post-In­de­pen­dent T&T, a ver­sion of those tac­tics sur­faces every elec­tion sea­son, as po­lit­i­cal par­ties cam­paign for votes along lines of eth­nic­i­ty. Once in of­fice, the very same par­ties gen­er­al­ly steer away from such di­vi­sive strate­gies.

On his his­toric vis­it to this coun­try in 1987, South African Arch­bish­op Desmond Tu­tu de­scribed T&T as “a rain­bow na­tion.” The No­bel lau­re­ate, a pow­er­ful fig­ure in the strug­gle against apartheid, saw the beau­ty and val­ue of this coun­try’s eth­nic and cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty.

There have been land­mark mo­ments of uni­ty where Afro and In­do-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans worked to­geth­er to bring about im­por­tant so­cial changes, such as the Labour Ri­ots of 1937 and the 1970 Black Pow­er move­ment. In those in­stances, com­mon ground was found in the dis­man­tling of some ves­tiges of the old colo­nial rule.

The chal­lenge now is for this na­tion to move past the prej­u­dices and work to erad­i­cate the neg­a­tive stereo­types and griev­ances which fu­el the an­i­mos­i­ty be­tween T&T’s two main eth­nic groups.

A frank but re­spect­ful dis­cus­sion of race is need­ed to con­front the fear, mis­in­for­ma­tion and big­otry that fu­els the dis­cord that di­vides this pop­u­la­tion.

T&T’s Con­sti­tu­tion sets out the right of cit­i­zens to live with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion on the grounds of race, ori­gin, colour, re­li­gion or sex. Cit­i­zens need to em­brace that right.

In­stead of ac­ri­mo­nious race talk, it is time for ini­tia­tives that pro­mote racial har­mo­ny with a view to firm­ly es­tab­lish­ing a na­tion­al iden­ti­ty that cel­e­brates the blend of tra­di­tions, phys­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics and be­liefs that make this coun­try unique.

Chil­dren should be taught about race and eq­ui­ty at an ear­ly age to de­vel­op a healthy aware­ness and in­ter­est in har­mo­ny.

Cul­tur­al and ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes that cel­e­brate racial har­mo­ny should be added to a na­tion­al cal­en­dar that al­ready in­cludes East In­di­an Ar­rival Day, Eman­ci­pa­tion Day and Chi­nese Dou­ble Ten.

In ad­di­tion, lead­ers in var­i­ous spheres should work to­geth­er on con­struc­tive strate­gies to counter the dan­ger­ous race talk which threat­ens to tear apart our so­ci­ety.

It is time to make a re­al­i­ty that line in the Na­tion­al An­them which states that here “every creed and race finds an equal place.”