'Father' bullied some Indians

Jerome Teelucksingh

IT IS debatable if our first prime minister Dr Eric Williams (commonly acknowledged as the father of the nation) despised or mocked Indo-Trinidadians.

In November 1954, an article entitled “Dr Eric Williams – is he a propagandist?” was published in The Clarion, a local newspaper. The anonymous author was critical of a public lecture delivered by Williams who accused Indians in TT of opposing federation due to racial prejudice. It seemed that Williams used the Indian factor as a scapegoat.

In a defensive tone, the author argued, “Eric Williams is wrong when he states that Indians are opposed to Federation on racial grounds. Indians have always been in the forefront of the struggle against Imperialism and Colonialism wherever they have gone, and Trinidad is no exception…There can be no fear of Indians not integrating with the other races here.”

The ugliness of race again reared its head in 1958 when the People’s National Movement (PNM) was defeated in the elections for the first West Indian Federal Parliament. Williams, who was leader of the PNM, penned an article entitled "The danger facing Trinidad, Tobago and the West Indian Nation," which was published in his political party’s newspaper, PNM Weekly (later to be renamed The Nation).

Williams misjudged the Indian identity when he wrote, “PNM's decimation in areas with an preponderance of Indian votes reflects the DLP campaign and the DLP's appeal that Indians should vote for DLP so as to ensure an Indian Governor and an Indian Prime Minister. Religion figured prominently in their campaign. By hook or by crook they brought out the Indian vote….”

In 1958, Williams was also bitter when he wrote, in his party’s newspaper, the PNM Weekly, of “...the recalcitrant and hostile minority of the West Indian nation masquerading as “the Indian nation” and prostituting the name of India for its selfish, reactionary political ideals.”

The infamous speech Williams delivered at the "University of Woodford Square" certainly fractured race relations between the country’s two major ethnic groups. Winston Mahabir, an Indo-Trinidadian and a member of the PNM, was in attendance.

Williams’s presentation shocked Mahabir who candidly confessed in his autobiography, In and Out of Politics, “It contained generous ingredients of abuse of the Indian community which was deemed to be a 'hostile and recalcitrant minority.' The Indian community represented the greatest danger facing the country. It was an impediment to West Indian progress. It had caused PNM to lose the federal elections. There were savagely contemptuous references to the Indian illiterates of the country areas who were threatening to submerge the masses whom Williams had enlightened.”

And Mahabir was appalled at the bitterness of Williams, “He reproved the Indians for having brought to the polls the lame and the halt, the blind and the deaf. He referred derisively to an Indian from Coon Coon village, evoking peals of laughter with his scornful tone.” This speech by the beloved "father of the nation" was evidence that not all citizens were equal in TT.

Brinsley Samaroo believed Indo-Trinidadians have never forgiven Williams for making this statement. Undoubtedly, this blunder by Williams further polarised the two major ethnic groups. In 1996, Kenneth Parmasad, a Black Power activist and university lecturer, argued that for Williams "recalcitrant" signified “any person or group who went against the grain of what he perceived to be the working-out of his nationalist project.”

In retrospect, Williams's bitterness was specifically aimed at those who did not support him in the federal elections. It should not be interpreted as Williams and the PNM were always anti-Indian. A considerable number of Indians belonging to the Islamic faith, particularly those residing in San Juan and St Joseph, and Christians in San Fernando were staunch supporters of the PNM. This was largely attributed to the influence of men as Kamaluddin Mohammed, Ibbit Mosaheb, and Errol Mahabir.

Selwyn Ryan noted that in addition to the support of Muslims, the Vedic and Christian Indians supported the PNM rather than the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) which comprised mostly Hindus.

In 1958, Williams boasted, “Our party membership is solidly inter-racial. PNM dwells together in unity.” One can debate the extent this was an accurate depiction of this political entity. The father of the nation further contended, “And it is better a hundred times for them to have lost on the PNM ticket of inter-racial solidarity than to have won on the DLP ticket of racial chauvinism.”

Today, the hostility that Williams displayed to those who did not support him would be a form of bullying.