For some time now, apol­o­gists for the PNM have been ve­he­ment in their at­tacks on me for stat­ing that the PNM, over the years, has in­sti­tu­tion­alised dis­crim­i­na­tion against In­do-Trinida­di­ans. Their at­tempts to bur­nish the im­age of the PNM and its founder with self-serv­ing half-truths and spu­ri­ous dis­tor­tions can­not stand scruti­ny.

Of late, there was the puerile re­but­tal of Fitzger­ald Hinds, the un­var­nished di­a­tribe of Sel­wyn Cud­joe and now the in­sid­i­ous per­son­al at­tack of Fer­die Fer­reira. It seems that I have touched a raw nerve in the PNM body politic.

But I won­der if it was the same erst­while, ram­pant Fer­die Fer­reira who was in­volved with wa­ter­front and oth­er work­ers in a PNM march be­fore the Elec­tions of 1961 along the East­ern Main Road from San Juan in which the marchers rained stones and bot­tles on per­ceived DLP homes along the route and threat­ened and ha­rassed their oc­cu­pants—which in­clud­ed the fam­i­ly of for­mer PNM Min­is­ter Au­gus­tus Ram­rekhars­ingh in St. Joseph.

As to in­sti­tu­tion­alised dis­crim­i­na­tion against In­do-Trinida­di­ans, space does not per­mit a com­pre­hen­sive il­lus­tra­tion whether in em­ploy­ment and pro­mo­tion prac­tices in the pub­lic ser­vice, es­pe­cial­ly in the up­per reach­es of man­age­ment and ad­min­is­tra­tion, state en­ter­pris­es, statu­to­ry au­thor­i­ties, the ju­di­cia­ry, pro­vi­sion of ba­sic in­fra­struc­tur­al ser­vices, ac­cess to pub­lic hous­ing, al­lo­ca­tions for In­do-dom­i­nat­ed lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies, cul­tur­al grants and recog­ni­tion, award of li­cens­es, agri­cul­tur­al in­fra­struc­ture and sup­port etc.

Po­lit­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion against Hin­dus, the largest ma­jor­i­ty among In­do-Trinida­di­ans, has been well doc­u­ment­ed.

I have been ac­cused of ig­nor­ing the con­tents of Al­bert Gomes’ au­to­bi­og­ra­phy “Through a Maze of Colour.”

How­ev­er, in it Gomes makes ref­er­ence to what I con­sid­er to be the root of dis­crim­i­na­tion against In­do-Caribbean peo­ple.

On page 232 he writes, “Nev­er­the­less, the pol­i­tics of the ne­gro, in both Trinidad and British Guiana, con­tin­ue to be dom­i­nat­ed by fear and sus­pi­cion of the In­di­an, much of it gra­tu­itous­ly fed for po­lit­i­cal pro­pa­gan­dist pur­pos­es.”

And on page 237 he con­tin­ues: “The 1956 Elec­tions which had re­turned Dr Er­ic Williams’ Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment had fea­tured an­ti-In­di­an pro­pa­gan­da as a ma­jor fac­tor of elec­toral suc­cess. In­deed, the vote had ral­lied to an es­sen­tial­ly racist ap­peal based large­ly on the al­leged threat of In­di­an dom­i­na­tion.”

Poor Dr Brins­ley Sama­roo’s com­ments are re­li­gious­ly in­voked to sup­port the view that Dr Williams did not har­bour racist an­ti- In­di­an sen­ti­ment. I have al­ready dealt with the com­pet­ing cred­i­bil­i­ties on this is­sue be­tween Dr Sama­roo and Dr Win­ston Ma­habir.

How­ev­er, I am not sure ex­act­ly what Dr Sama­roo wrote or said but I have not heard him ex­plic­it­ly say that the PNM did not dis­crim­i­nate against In­do-Trinida­di­ans.

I may al­so men­tion that Dr Sama­roo, as part of the NAR Gov­ern­ment, op­posed the Mo­tion in Par­lia­ment tabled by me to have May 30th de­clared as a pub­lic hol­i­day to be known as In­di­an Ar­rival Day.

Now, it is true that I was vi­o­lent­ly and al­most fa­tal­ly at­tacked in Sep­tem­ber 1971 by men from Badase Sagan Maraj’s sug­ar union when I sup­port­ed an­oth­er union which sought al­ter­na­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion for sug­ar work­ers.

How­ev­er, by that time, Badase had be­come a firm al­ly of the PNM and Dr Williams. At the be­hest of Dr Williams, he op­posed the Black Pow­er Move­ment of 1970 and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 1971 Gen­er­al Elec­tions de­fy­ing the Op­po­si­tion’s No Vote cam­paign. Fer­die would bet­ter be able to de­ter­mine if this was a be­tray­al of sug­ar work­ers and Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ers and their po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ties since he ap­pears to be an ex­pert on the sub­ject of be­tray­al.

While I am ac­cused of be­tray­ing Bas­deo Pan­day, Fer­die for­gets to men­tion that in 2007 Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj was re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed by Pan­day, giv­en the Tabaquite seat and promised lead­er­ship.

Thus, be­tray­al seems to have se­lec­tive con­se­quences.

The pre­ma­ture end of Bas­deo Pan­day’s Prime Min­is­te­r­i­al tenure came to an end, not as a re­sult of my al­leged be­tray­al, but be­cause of his own ego or naivete when, with the 2001 elec­tion re­sults tied at 18-18 and with the UNC gain­ing 25,000 more votes than the PNM, he went to have dis­cus­sions with Patrick Man­ning and asked Robin­son to de­cide who will be Prime Min­is­ter.

Was it Fer­die Fer­reira as a found­ing mem­ber of the PNM, who broke with the par­ty and its leader Dr Williams and to­geth­er with Karl Hud­son-Phillips formed the ONR with the fo­cused in­tent, through scur­rilous and re­lent­less at­tacks, to bring down his for­mer par­ty and leader?

I won­der if his ac­tion qual­i­fied as be­tray­al of Dr Williams.

Since Pan­day was a spe­cial guest at Fer­die’s book launch, I am cu­ri­ous to know whether, through the ed­u­ca­tion­al ef­forts of Fer­die, Pan­day ex­pe­ri­enced a con­ver­sion and no longer be­lieved that the PNM was en­gaged in sys­temic dis­crim­i­na­tion against In­do-Trinida­di­ans.

The rel­e­vance of Vish­nu Bis­ram’s opin­ion of failed In­di­an lead­er­ship in the Caribbean es­capes me.

Is it to be in­ferred that on­ly In­di­an lead­ers are guilty of the sins of cor­rup­tion, self-serv­ing agen­das, com­fort­able lifestyles, au­toc­ra­cy and ne­glect of sup­port­ers and not African lead­ers?

And are all In­di­an lead­ers to be so brand­ed in­clud­ing Ched­di Ja­gan in Bis­ram’s own na­tive Guyana?

Space does not per­mit me to deal with Fer­die Fer­reira’s so called “un­ques­tion­able facts” which is to be the sub­ject of a sub­se­quent let­ter.

How­ev­er, I must make men­tion of Fer­die’s fi­nal sal­vo—“Trevor, take care you get what you want and lose what you have.”

Is this a threat of ex­pro­pri­a­tion or ex­ile from the PNM do­min­ion of T&T?