|
Timeo Beckles et Dona Ferentes
Posted: Sunday, August 6, 2017
By Stephen Kangal
August 06, 2017
There can be at least three reactions to the question of lumping Indians and Africans together by Sir Hilary Beckles for advancing his money-based regional Caricomesse reparations agenda:
1. One cannot trust Afro-Caribbean intellectuals to sincerely look after the interests of Caribbean Indians after they have been excluded in the first instance by Caricom.
2. They cannot help but look at and re-create "Indianness" though African lenses and studiously ignore the peculiar socio-cultural values and distinctive characteristics of the Indian community as expressed, inter alia, on their presence in the Caribbean.
3. They have their own peculiar intellectual superiority agenda to promote at the expense of the Indians who are expected to be dotish, quiet and docile.
If they get money they will take 95% and let the Indians have the rest as pittance. Look at the aftermath of the 1970 Revolution in Trinidad when Indians and Africans were expected to unite against underlying white supremacy and senior Indian public servants were eventually dissed from the Public Service including the late Frank Rampersad to placate growing African sentiments by Dr Williams.
Look at the delays in granting EU support money to penniless cane farmers after the closure of Caroni Ltd and the sugar industry.
The Indian response to the indenture story is the antithesis of the African response to the slavery question and their associated transportation to the West to build the ailing sugar industry. Raviji calls it A Mission to the Caribbean inspired by divinity.
Indians came from a predominantly built environment with 6,000 years of human organisation and a very distinctive and advanced set of embedded socio-cultural practices including Sanskrit - the mother of all languages and over 500 dialects including Bhojpuri the language on indentureship.
Indians do not harbour the same persistent level of antagonism towards the White man as the Africans do. They are not interested in any form of reparations because of a deep-seated conviction and feeling that they are a superior group to the white man in terms of religion and culture and will triumph over him eventually as India emerges as the third largest economy.
That is why conversions to Christianity are not so widespread because it is viewed as the decadent White Man's religion by the Hindus. Look at how many swamis have gone to the West to recruit devotees and followers.
Sir Hilary Beckles is indulging in an issue that is way beyond his human capacity as he has not taken the time to analyse the Indian question dispassionately to determine how willing they can be to joining any crusade/litigation for prosecuting reparations against the white Europeans.
Has he spoken to any Caribbean Indian group or leader?
After all they that is to say the Indians celebrate their arrival in Trinidad and not the end of the system of indentureship in 1917 that Beckles likes. That decision was engineered in India for non-humanitarian considerations because previously-indentured Indians who returned to Moolook eventually came back to the Caribbean to make a life of their own to escape from the socially disruptive caste system, extreme poverty, famines and lack of land-ownership prospects that were better in Trinidad and Guyana.
This is a long and complex story way beyond the reach and scope of contemporary tertiary history at UWI. One cannot trust the Bajans even when they bring gifts since the days when sugar was King and country.
See how the Indo-Guyanese are treated in Barbados and how our Indo- T&T cricketers are side-lined to make way for Bajan mediocrity/captaincy/insularity in the West Indies team in collusion with their like-minded Jamaican counter-parts such as Cameron and Co presiding over the demise of West Indies cricketing glory and harmony.
Share your views here...
 Send page by E-Mail
|
|
