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GLOBAL SOCIETY

Multiculturalism and Its Challenges in Trinidad and Tobago

Selwyn R. Cudjoe

Published online: 26 May 2011

# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the

fragments is stronger than the love which took its

symmetry for granted when it was whole. The glue

that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original shape.

It is such a love that reassembles our African and

Asiatic fragments, the cracked heirlooms whose

restoration shows its white scars.

Derek Walcott, The Antilles: Fragments of Epic

Memory

Recognition of every individuals uniqueness and

humanity lies at the core of liberal democracy,

understood as a way of political and personal life.

The liberal democratic value of diversity therefore

may not be captured by the need to preserve distinct

and unique cultures over time, which provides each

separate group of people with a secure culture and

identity for themselves and their progeny.

Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism

It is common knowledge that Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the

prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, changed the name of

the Ministry of Culture to the Ministry of Arts and

Multiculturalism as a gesture toward my friend Sat Maharaj,

secretary general of the Maha Sabha, more as a payoff for

favors rendered than the culmination of a carefully thought-out cultural policy. Sat has always advocated the celebration

of the multicultural dimensions of our society rather than our

working toward the creation of a transcendent national culture

that results in the formation of national consciousness and

loyalty to the nation. His demands have been fueled by a

conviction that non-Hindu groups and festivals (such as

Africans and carnival) received more government funding

than his causes (the Hindus and Diwali). He wanted to level

the playing field so that all cultural groups were funded in

proportion to their numbers. This demand was driven also by

his fears of what he calls the doularization of the Indian

population and the inherent suspicions that minorities within

any society feel toward the presumed advantages of the

majority group.

Following her concession to Mr. Maharaj, Prime

Minister Persad-Bissessar, subsequently revealed her own

misgivings about the previous governments disbursement

of funds to cultural groups. Speaking with Jason Edward

Kaufman, a foreign reporter she invited to attend the Diwali

celebrations in November 2010, the prime minister said she

wanted to see the emergence of a new national mind

based on the values of respect and understanding. . . . I

want Trinidad and Tobago to be the best example in the

world of unity in diversity.1 She claimed that while the

previous government did not pay much attention to the

Hindu population, . . . her government would. Anand

Ramlogan, attorney general, was of a similar opinion:

People think of Trinidad as a predominantly African

country. We want to rectify this mis-perception.Previously

there was discrimination manifest in subtle ways, . . . one

of which was the allocation of state funding.2

2 Jason Edward Kaufman, In Trinidad, an Ascendant Hindu Paradise

Flourishes During Divali, Artifino,November 17, 2010. In his article

Kaufman asserted incorrectly that around half the population [of

Trinidad and Tobago] traces its roots to India.

1 Incidentally, this tagline unity in diversity is not particularly new.

It is the subtitle of the cultural policies of both Ghana and Australia

from which Trinidad and Tobago multicultural policy takes its

inspiration.S. R. Cudjoe (*)

Department of Africana Studies, Wellesley College,

106 Central St.,

Wellesley, MA 02481, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

Soc (2011) 48:330341

DOI 10.1007/s12115-011-9446-3


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The first expression of the Peoples Partnership multicultural

policy was articulated by the Honorable Winston Peters,

minister of arts and multiculturalism, at a conference, Towards

a Multiculturalism Policy,held at the Center of Excellence on

October 13, 2010, under the auspices of his ministry and the

University of the West Indies.3 There he expanded upon the

remarks of the prime minister and of Sat Maharaj. He noted

that the policy of multiculturalism came about because thegovernment of Trinidad and Tobago recognized that a large

portion of the citizenry feels itself alienated from sharing in

the development of the nation.4 He did not say why they felt

that way. Further, he said the policy seeks to fostera climate

of inclusion, equitable distribution of resources and recogni-

tion and celebration of cultural diversity.

In his short statement of 1,000 words, the worddiversity

occurred nine times; national identity once; and national

consciousness was never mentioned. This policy speaks to our

diversity rather than to our commonalities. Only once in this

address did the minister mention what we have in common as

a people. He never outlined an approach to foster ourTrinbagonianness. Interestingly enough, Minister Peters

words do not match his actions, as recent articles by Martin

Daly and Lennox Grant point out.5 One would have thought

that the person who implored Little black boy; go to school

and learnwould have been the first person to understand the

scientific achievements inherent in the creation of the pan

and the genius of the pioneers of this musical form.

When the prime minister, the attorney general, and the

minister of multiculturalism attack aspects of black culture

that reflect the essence of Africanness and African survival in

this country, one wonders whether the term multicultural-

ism,as used by the Peoples Partnership (PP), is not directed

at promoting Hindu culture at the expense of the other culturesin Trinidad and Tobago under the guise of unity in diversity,

the slogan used for the Australian multicultural policy. When

one announces that our nations cultural policy is intended to

assuage the alienation and exclusion East Indians feel, I

wonder if we are starting out this policy with a false premise.

In other words, how can we base a cultural policy on the

alienation that one group says it feels when the very argument

made in favor of East Indians is that they have maintained

their culture (cited as the reason for their advantages in the

society). On the other hand, that the Africans have lost their

cultural heritage is advanced as one reason why so much

antisocial behavior occurs in the black community.We cant have it both ways. Either East Indians are more

closely linked to and interwoven in their various religions and

cultures in ways that Africans are not; or Indians have

deliberately separated themselves from the society because

of the particularity of their beliefs; their original location in the

country; and the various constraints that prevented them from

intermingling with the larger majority group. V. S. Naipaul has

taken pains to make this point in his nonfiction writings.

When the minister of arts and multiculturalism speaks

about ensuring the equitable distribution of state resources

to each group in the society, I wonder if he is aware of the

fatuity of his statement. The Housing and Population Census,

taking place in the island as I speak, identifies nine categories

of people in the society: 1) African; 2) Caucasian; 3) Chinese;

4) East Indians; 5) Indigenous; 6) Mixed: African and East

Indians & Others; 7) Syrian Lebanese; 8) Other Ethnic group;

9) Others. Do such fine-tuned distinctions cause further

separation of these groups from one another? In other words,

how do those persons of the mixed category (to take one

category) organize themselves to benefit from this well-

intentioned program? Does such a policy fragment the society,

or does it help to bring it together?

To listen to the proponents of multiculturalism, one

would think that Trinidad and Tobago never possessed a

national cultural policy. Yet the multiculturalism of which

the PP speaks merely describes an existing condition, that

is, T&T possesses different cultures and religions that need

to be respected, rather than the formulation of a policy that

works through what multiculturalism means within the

context of our society; how it impacts upon our conduct of

national business; how it creates national consciousness;

and how it emphasizes our Tobagonianism rather than

keeping us entrenched within our particularisms.

4 The term alienation is used much too loosely. In his speech the

minister of arts and multiculturalism used the term to suggest that the

East Indian population feels separated from the mainstream or what

they sometimes call

Creole

society. He does not pay much attentionto the inverse of the proposition that East Indians may have separated

themselves from the society because of their culture and religions.

Apart from asking why and how East Indians feel separated from

other groups in the society, the real question is why they feel that way.

The term alienation [or estrangement] is taken from Karl Marxs

Economic and Philosophical Manuscriptsof 1844 in which he argues

that creative labor is the essence of ones humanity. Capitalist relations

however have distorted this relationship thereby separating mans

essence [who and what he is] from his existence [what he must do to

exist] which leads Marx to argue that the object produced by labour,

now stands opposed to it as an alien being, as a power independent of

the producer[T]he more the worker expends himself in work the

more powerful becomes the world of objects which he creates in face

of himself, the poorer he becomes in his inner life, and the less he

belongs to himself

The alienation of the worker in his product meansnot only that his labor becomes an object, assumes an external

existence, but that it exists independently, outside himself, and alien to

him, and that it stands opposed to him as an autonomous power.

[Karl Marx,Early Writings(New York: McGraw Hill,1964), pp. 122

3.]. This separation is called estrangement or alienation. So that it is

almost a meaningless statement [or a statement of little meaning]

when one affirms that a group of people feels alienated from the

society. It cannot be the basis upon which one develops public policy

or a national culture policy.5 See Martin Daly, Equal to Pythagoras, Trinidad Express, January

13, 2011; and Lennox Grant, Knife-and Fork Dining on Golden

Memories, Trinidad Express, January 13, 2011.

3 This position was reiterated by the Honorable Nela Khan, parliamentary

secretary in the Ministry of Arts and Multiculturalism, when she

addressed the opening session of GOPIOs Multicultural Conference.

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On the eve of our national independence, Dr. Eric

Williams, the first prime minister of the republic, launched

his hurriedly written History of the People of Trinidad and

Tobago. It was a present to the nation. I was at the

University of Woodford Square and still possess a copy of

this work. In the conclusion of his book, he outlined a

national culture policy that sought to break down the

boundaries behind which various races and cultures hadentrenched themselves. He declared:

There can be no Mother India for those whose

ancestors came from India. . . . There can be no

Mother Africa for those of African origins and the

Trinidad and Tobago society is living a lie and

heading for trouble if it seeks to create the impression

or to allow others to act under the delusion that

Trinidad and Tobago is an African society. There can

be no Mother England and no dual loyalties. . . .

There can be no Mother China even if one could

agree as to which China is the Mother; and there canbe no mother Syria or no Mother Lebanon. A nation,

like an individual, can have only one Mother. The

only Mother we recognize is Mother Trinidad and

Tobago and a Mother cannot discriminate between

her children. All must be equal in her eyes.6

To me this is Dr. Williams Mother Trinidad and

Tobago Speech. This is his approach to the construction

of a transcendent national cultural policy.

In 2007 Thabo Mbeki, former president of South Africa

conferred the Order of Companions O.R. Tambo (Gold), South

Africas highest national honor, on Dr. Williams posthumously

on behalf of his commitment to peace, cooperation, and his

inspiration to South Africa in its quest for racial harmony. In his

foreword to Imtiaz Cajees Timol: A Quest for Justice, the

biography of Ahmed Timol, one of South Africas most

noteworthy freedom fighters, President Mbeki noted the impact

that Dr. Williams Mother Trinidad and Tobago Speechhad

on the South African liberation struggle. I quote this extract at

length because Timol was a South African of Indian descent

whose first loyalty was to a unified South Africa:

Just as Dr. [Yasuf] Dadoo expanded the non-racial

ethos that is the hallmark of our liberation movement,

just as Dr Dadoo lifted the gaze of his community tobehold its African realities, so too did Ahmed Timol

expand upon and enact, in his own flesh and with his

own blood, the great lengths to which the Indian

community in South Africa could and would go in

order to assert and claim its proper birthright in this

place: Ahmed belongs in a high place amidst the

pantheon of great African indigenous leadership not

only in this country but across the diaspora. As is

often the case, the challenges that we face are not

unprecedented and we are able to learn from the prior

experience of others in the nationalist struggles

elsewhere. The vision of Dr. Dadoo during our

struggle for liberation was, for instance, strikingly similar

to the vision of the great West Indian historian and primeminister, Eric Williams whose book Capitalism and

Slavery, pioneered a new understanding of the end of

the slave trade a century and a half after the end of the

successful revolution of Haitian slaves. In his speech

marking the independence of his country, Williams

directly addressed the great diversity of his country in

the cause of national unity.

After quoting from Dr. Williams Mother Trinidad and

Tobago Speech, Mbeki exclaims: This is the wisdom we

too apply, in our quest for a single South Africa7 If South

Africa, an emergent nation and a society with more culturesand ethnicities than Trinidad and Tobago, accepts the

wisdom of our Founding Father as one of their guiding

principles, why does the present government feel it can so

easily discard a concept and practice that guided the first

50 years of our nations development?

In Trinidad and Tobago some of us have been talking about

a national cultural program that speaks to our oneness as a

people. In 1983 I added my voice to the national conversation

when I spoke about the need to develop a national cultural

policy and the part it should play in our development. In that

lecture, Cultural Policy and Social Development, I bemoaned

the absence of a well-delivered and articulated politicalideology . . . and the exact method we are supposed to pursue

to achieve those objectives.8 I also differentiated between

7 Imtiaz Cajee, Timol: A Quest for Justice (Johannesburg: STE2005),

p. 7. This is a book all Trinbagonians should read. It tells the story of

Ahmed Timol, one of the most celebrated official murder victims of

apartheid South Africa (p. 13) who gave his life for his country. The

author draws upon the wisdom of C. L. R. James, Michael Manley,

and V. S. Naipaul to set up his story. This story is even more touching

because it speaks to the commitment to his nation of a South African

of Indian descent. In this context, the statement of Dr. Dadoo, another

South African of Indian descent, is instructive and speaks to the

limitations of a concept of multiculturalism in a postcolonial society:Insulating ourselves from the national and international development

of society would be nothing short of suicidal. We can no longer afford

to remain narrow, sectarian and fanatical. We either march forward

with the rest of the world or condemn ourselves to stew in our stinking

juice. We must cultivate that healthy progressive national outlook,

which alone can lead to our salvation. . . . In South Africa it is

criminal to identify ourselves as Kholvadians [an Indian community in

South Africa in which he lived] only; we belong to and are part of the

great South African Indian community and nationally oppressed Non-

European people (p. 36).6 Eric Williams,History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago (Port of

Spain: PNM Publishing Company,1962), p. 281.

8 Selwyn R. Cudjoe, Cultural Policy and National Development,

Ref. WI 308, Cudjoe (Trinidad Collection), January 11, 1983. p. 1.

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what I called an official and unofficial culture; traced the

historical development of our peoples cultural activities; then

suggested how such a policy may conduce toward the

development of national consciousness and a national identity.

I asked: Should we promulgate a policy that fosters the

maintenance of a multicultural society, or should we strive

toward the creation of a homogeneous Trinidad and Tobago

culture? I drew the following conclusion:

There are consequences for both choices. If we

determine that at the present time we are a plural society

but in the future we hope to create a more homogeneous

Trinbagonian culture out of this heterogeneous mix, it

then presumes certain strategies. Do we begin by

teaching all our children in all of our schools the Hindu

language, do we make the Ramayana and the Bhagvad

Gita mandatory at all schools, and do we make John

Mbitis African Religions and Philosophy and Janheiz

Jhans Muntu mandatory for all of our children? It is

only by the possession of the full knowledge of eachothers culture that we can begin to aspire toward a

truly homogeneous Trinidad culture. The same of

course would be true to some degree for the culture

of the Chinese and other groups.

If, on the other hand, we opt for the preservation of our

separate and distinct cultures, such a course presumes

different strategies and leads to different results. Thereby

we condemn ourselves to the maintenance of our

immigrant society with each different group making

separate demands upon the body politic and the body

social and a continuous demand for proportional repre-

sentation. We presume a perpetually fragmented society.

Or maybe there is a middle ground. We have to

decide a course. It is only within this context that

cultural activities can be made more meaningful.9

The Peoples Partnership opted for the second possibility.

This was a far cry from what Dr. Williams intended when he

celebrated our commonalities and warned that the Trinidad

and Tobago society is living a lie and heading for trouble if it

seeks to create the impression or allow others to act under the

delusion that Trinidad and Tobago is an African society. It

was imperative that he took this position at the formation of

our nation. In doing so Dr. Williams sought to respond to a

comment that Lord Harris, the governor of Trinidad, made in

1848, 10 years after apprenticeship. He observed thata race

has been freed, but a society has not been formed. 10 As if to

reinforce this position, Dr. Williams quoted an Oxford

professor who on contemplating this wave of immigrants

who were flocking to Trinidad observed: Such a colony is

but a great workshop rather than a miniature state.11 These

were the realities that Dr. Williams had in mind when he

declared that our citizens could have no Mother India or

Mother Africa. Williams believed that we ought to stop

paying loyalties to our particularities and embrace a larger

entity called Trinidad and Tobago.

Many newly formed independent states faced the sameproblem in bringing together their various nationalities and

ethnicities. Some adopted a position similar to that of Dr.

Williams, but not all succeeded. In 1947 India divided into two

states, India and Pakistan, despite the best efforts of Mahatma

Gandhi. In 1957 when Ghana became independent, Kwame

Nkrumah, the leader of that country, saw the uniting of fifty

ethnic groups of his country into one national entity as the most

important item on his political agenda.12

Akailapa Sawyer, in

his 2007 foreword to David Rooneys Kwame Nkrumah:

Vision and Tragedy, observed that Nkrumahs fight for

independence went beyond anti-colonialism, involving as it

did an uncompromising quest for autonomous and self-sustaining national development. A principal component of

his vision was national unity, rejecting the centrifugal forces

generated by regional, ethnic and other particularisms.13 It

might be of interest to some and ring a bell to many when, in

his quest for national unity, Nkrumah called those persons in

the Asante region feudal tribalists who wanted to secede

from a unitary state and opt for a federal system.14 Although

these ethnic tensions led in part to Nkrumahs downfall, his

steadfastness in working toward the creation of a unitary state

proved immensely important to Ghanas development as the

political conflict in Cote dIvoire, by contrast, demonstrates.15

In 2004 Ghanas President John Kufuor brought together a

committee to update the countrys cultural policy. President

Kufuor noted that one fascinating attribute of our culture is

strength and unity we derive from our diverse cultural

background. 16 The policy notes that Ghanas culture is

dynamic and gives order and meaning to the social, political,

economic, aesthetic and religious practices of our people. Our

9 Ibid., p. 8.16 The Cultural Policy of Ghana, National Commission on Culture,

2004, p. 2.

15 See Selwyn R. Cudjoe, Mother Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad

Guardian, January 20, 2011.10 Quoted in Williams,History of the People of Trinidad and Tobago,

p. 97.

14 Ibid., p. 153. The reference here is to Dr. Williams description of

certain elements in the Indian community that he called arecalcitrant and

hostile minority to which Kamla Persad-Bissessar referred to in her

Indian Arrival Day Speech, 2011 inIndian Time Ah Come, pp. 11216.

13 David Rooney, Kwame Nkrumah: Vision and Tragedy (Legon,

Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers,2007), p. 15.

11Ibid., p. 97.

12 Apart from its fifty ethnic groups, there are about 35 languages spoken

in Ghana. Nine are government-sponsored languages. They are written

languages and are taught in Ghanaian schools. There are 26 non-

government sponsored languages all of which are spoken languages.English, the official language of Ghana, is used to unify the country.

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culture also gives us our distinct identity as a people.

Furthermore, their culture is established by our concepts of

Sankofa, which establishes linkages with the positive aspects

of our past and the present. The concept affirms the co-

existence of the past and the future in the present. It, therefore,

embodies the attitude of our people to the interaction between

traditional values and the demands of modern technology

within the contemporary international cultural milieu.17

Such an approach suggests that as we construct a national

cultural policy every attention must be paid to the varied

cultures within our midst, our historical past, and those

elements, positive and negative that make us who we are.

However, it must speak to our oneness rather than to our

apartness.18 This is where the concept of national conscious-

ness and national identity comes in. It cannot begin with the

assumption that all that is necessary to construct a national

policy consists in giving equal amounts of money to each

group and to promote what Kaufman, Persad-Bissessars

special guest saw as the special status that Indian culture

now enjoys and its newly prominent place on the govern-ments agenda.

19 It is not without irony that he testified:

There is a palpable sense that Indian culture now enjoyed

special status in Trinidad government.

Multiculturalism, as the Concise Oxford Dictionary of

Politics asserts, emerged in the sixties in Anglophone

countries in relation to the cultural needs of non-European

migrants. It now means the political accommodation by the

state and/or a dominant group of all minority cultures defined

first and foremost by reference to race or ethnicity; and more

controversially, by reference to nationality, aboriginality, or

religion. The latter groups that tend to make larger claims;

however claims of national minorities now enjoy considerable

legitimacy, whereas post-immigration claims have suffered a

backlashin the last decade.20 As far as I can determine, the

multiculturalism that Sat and the PP endorse is taken from the

Canadian model which has been described as the the

instigator of multicultural ideology because of its public

emphasis on the social importance of immigration. In his

contribution to the GOPIO Multiculturalism Conference, the

Honorable Surujrattan Rambachan, minister of foreign affairs,

argued that his party also drew on the Australian model of

multiculturalism to fashion its policy.

Canadas multicultural policy was driven in no small way by

the desire of the French-speaking group in Quebec to secede

from the federal union and the right to form adistinct society.

They wantedto safeguard the integrity of its own form of life

against the Anglo Saxon majority culture by means, among

other things, of regulations that forbid immigrants and the

French-speaking population to send their children to English-

language schools, that establish French as the language in

which firms with more than fifty employees will operate, and

that in general prescribe French as the language of business.21

I dont know if the PP adopted its multicultural policy

because it felt that Africans in Trinidad and Tobago were

about to secede from the union to create their own state.

Canada also adopted its multicultural policy to accom-

modate the many immigrants flooding into the country

which also presents its own problems.22

Immigrants who do not share much of Canadas history

constitute a tiny proportion of Canadas population.

However its multicultural policy is meant to assuage its

own racism and exclusionary politics. It is noteworthy that

the Durham Report that led to the Canada Act of 1867 that

conferred independence on Canada spoke of the homoge-neous and racist nature of Canadas culture. It said:

We have in our country a stable society. Our economy

is healthy, as good as any for a country of our size. In

many respects, we are very much better off than many

sovereign states. And our potentialities are large. Our

people are homogeneous nor are we plagued with

religious and tribal problems.23

While Canada was congratulating itself about its homogene-

ity and patting itself on the back about its not having religious or

tribal problems, Trinidad was proving a laboratory experiment

of what a multicultural society was. In 1866 W. H. Gamble, a

Trinidadian who had studied at Oxford, described Trinidads

multicultural mix: Many distinct peoples go to make up the

population of Trinidad. There are men from all quarters of the

globe, and with but little exaggeration, it may be said that, in

Trinidad, all the languages of the earth are spoken.24 In his

work Gamble provides a comprehensive description of the

Africans and Indians who lived in Trinidad; the many

19 Kaufman, In Trinidad, an Ascendant Hindu Paradise Flourishes

During Divali.

21 Charles Taylor, Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recog-

nition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1994) p. 111.

23 Quoted in Rooney, Kwame Nkrumah, p. 110.24 See William H. Gamble, Trinidad: Historical and Descriptive

Being a Narrative of Nine Years Residence in the Island (London:

Yates and Alexander, 1866), p. 42. See also Selwyn R. Cudjoe,

Beyond Boundaries (Wellesley, MA: Calaloux Publications, 2003) for

a discussion of Gambles life.

17 Ibid., p. 9.

20 Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan,The Concise Oxford Dictionary

of Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2003), p. 351.

18 Although I disagree with Prime Minister David Camerons denunci-

ation of multiculturalismit seems to be more a condemnation of

Islamic extremismthere is some merit to the claim that under some

circumstances state multiculturalism tends to divide a population.

22 Jurgen Habermas identifies two challenges that immigration

presents to the host country, a)

assimilation to the way in which theautonomy of the citizens is institutionalized in the recipient society

and the way the public use of reasonis practiced there and a desire

for an assimilation that penetrates to the level of ethical-cultural

integration and thereby has a deeper impact on the collective identity

of the immigrants culture of origin than the political socialization

required under (a) above. (Taylor, Multiculturalism, p. 138).

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languages that were spoken; and the diverse cultures that were

practiced.

In a word, there is nothing that Canada can teach us

about multiculturalism. Whereas Canada began to get its

first taste of multiculturalism in the 1970s, Trinidad was a

virtual laboratory of race, language, religion, and culture

mixing a century before Canada adopted its multicultural

policy. Trinidad has always been a diverse society where allcreeds and races respected one another, although we have

not always understood one another as fully as we might

have. Trinidad has accommodated numerous cultures,

religion, and languages from the inception of its adventure

as a society.

Australias multiculturalism policy arose in the latter part

of the twentieth century in response to the exclusion of non-

European immigrants. Fact Sheet 6, The Evolution of

Australias Multicultural Policy, states: The White

Australia policy as it was commonly described, could

not, however, withstand the attitudinal changes after World

War II, and the growing acknowledgement of Australiasresponsibilities as a member of the international community.

In 1966, the Liberal-Country Party Government began

dismantling the White Australia policy by permitting the

immigration ofdistinguishednon-Europeans.25

In other words, for most of its history Australia

discriminated against non-whites and treated its indigenous

population in a horrible manner. When Foreign Minister

Rambachan celebrates the virtues of Australias multicultural

policy, which he proudly announced as his governments

policy, he ought to remember that Australia is a society which,

from its inception, committed genocide on its indigenous

population, who incidentally are of African origin.26 It ought

not to be used as a model for Trinidad and Tobagos national

cultural policy.

Indeed, our leaders are citing the multicultural

approaches taken by Canada and Australia, two European

countries. Why does the PP take its inspiration from two

white governments who brutalized and alienated their

nonwhite population? Shouldnt we look to South Africa

and Ghana, two African countries, for inspiration? South

Africa suffered from the apartness of the races (apartheid)

whereas Ghana, a former colonial society, suffered from the

policies of a colonial master that did everything in its power

to set different ethnic groups against one another. Might it

not be helpful to seek inspiration in the cultural policies of

nonwhite nations who have been faced with the divisive-

ness in their societies rather than those who belatedly tried

to accommodate those citizens whom they left out and

discriminated against initially?

Trinidad and Tobago has never been a homogenous

society. In fact, it has been a society in which all persons

have been accepted; where we have worked and lived

together although there may have been forces, from time to

time, within and without the society that have sought toseparate some groups from the larger body social. Dr.

Williams was aware of this reality when he offered his

version of the necessity to pay allegiance first to the

country in which one lives. When the minister of arts and

multiculturalism affirms that his party wishes to adopt a

policy of multiculturalism because a large portion of the

citizenry feels itself alienated from the society, one really

has to ask how such exclusion arose; who is responsible for

such a separation; and whether a policy that promulgates

differences fosters a climate of inclusion.One might even

ask if he ever read the words of the Father of the Nation.

In 1948 when India gained its independence a jingoisticzeal echoed in Trinidad. Albert Gomes noted that a spirit of

Mother Indiagripped the East Indian imagination; and the

pageantry of extra-territorial patriotism exceeded itself in

Trinidad.27

Without any warning, an Indian commissioner,

Gaj Singh, maharaja of Jodhpur, appeared on the Trinidad

scene. Gomes, a leading politician at the time and later a

member of the Democratic Labour Party under Badase

Sagan Maharaj, offers the following narrative:

On the face of it the appointment looked suspiciously

like gratuitous reinforcement of the general mischief of

communal promotion. What else could a commissionerdo, seeing that he would have all the time possible for

idle hands? The flow of immigrants from India had long

since been stanched. Most of Trinidads Indians were

Trinidad born.

In the event my worse suspicions were confirmed when

one of these diplomatic gentlemen proceeded to appoint

himself leader of our Indian community and its political

counselor and organizer. On the surface, of course, it all

seemed above board and in the cause of culture, but to

my keen instinct the sinister purpose was unmistakable.

Indian separatism was being sedulously fostered by

Indias diplomatic representative in our midst. Worse

still, one of our governors, no doubt taking his cue from

Whitehall, had publicly associated himself with these

thinly disguised fifth column activities by presiding at

one of the many patriotic gatherings at which the glories

of Indias history and her widely diffused cultural

influences were feverishly flaunted.

25Fact Sheet 6: The Evolution of Australias Multicultural Policy,

Australian Government, Department of Immigration and Citizenship,

2007.26 The four principles that underpin Australias multicultural policy

are: a) Responsibilities of all; 2)Respect for each person; 3) Fairness

for each person; 4) Benefits for all.

27Albert Gomes, Through a Maze of Colour (Port of Spain: Key

Caribbean Publications,1974), p. 166.

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This commissioner and these Indians were against a

West Indian federation thinking they would be greatly

outnumbered by Africans from the other islands. He

was stirring up the Indians and fostering separation

among the various groups in the society. Gomes

continues:

I protested to the governor against the presence

and ofcourse the activitiesof the Commissioner for India,

whom I accused of subversive activity. I made it clear

that I was prepared to make an issue of the matter.

Indeed, I was not content that my protest should rest

there, and when next I was in England I took it to the

Colonial Office. I also saw Krishna Menon, then Indian

High Commissioner in the United Kingdom. . . . He was

quite firm in the view that the Trinidad Indian has to

make himself part of Trinidad, because it was to that

country that he owed first loyalty. Its future was his

future, and it behooved him, therefore, to ensure that it

was all that anyone who truly loved his country wouldwish it to be. They were also my views. The particular

commissioner, of course, was removed. But separatism

did not diminish.28

This was the climate Dr. Williams found when he arrived

on the political scene in 1955 and which led to his highly

contested views about a recalcitrant and hostile minority

after the Peoples National Movement lost the federal

election in the 1958. Lest we forget it was Dr. Williams

who defended the East Indians when Sir Francis Mudie in

his Report of the British Caribbean Federal Commission

placed Trinidad third in its consideration for the federal

capital and depicted the East Indians as having ideals and

loyalties different from those to be found elsewhere in the

Federation and they exercise a disruptive influence in the

social and political life of Trinidad which would violate the

social and political life of the capital if it were placed in that

island.29 I do not wish to re-contest this battle in this paper

or agree necessarily with the conclusion of the Mudie

commission except to say that it was against this climate

that Dr. Williams sought to dissuade loyalties to various

international mothers at the expense of the national mother.

This tendency toward excluding themselves from the

society and accepting their exclusiveness as grounds for

separation (Peters calls it alienation) has always been a

tendency among a certain section of our East Indian

populace. Albert Gomes speaks about this tendency in his

book. H. P. Singh, unhappy with the treatment of Indians by

the PNM called for the creation of an Indian state in a

separate part of the island. He called for Proportionate

Representation of all the communities and parity between

Negroes and Indians in all fields of government and

government jobs. . . . If our first proposal is not accepted,

from now onward, the slogan of our Indians must be Parity

or Partition.30

In retrospect, one has to thank Dr. Williams for not

falling into the trap of encouraging proposals for propor-tional representation during the discussion of our Indepen-

dence Constitution in 1962 that came mainly from East

Indian groups such as the Indian Association of Trinidad

and Tobago and the Indian Youth Association. In 1973

when this matter came up again, the PNM voted unani-

mously: The present basis [first past the post system] for

election to the House of Representatives should be

maintained and proportional representation should not be

accepted. 31

It is this type of thinkingthis desire always for

separationthat led to the migration of thousands of East

Indians to Canada during the 1980s and who petitioned theCanadian government for refugee status because they were

afraid to live in Trinidad. They claimed that Africans were

raping East Indian women. Raffique Shah, an Express

columnist, puts it this way:

There was a time when the moment things turned sour

in this country, those who could afford it would

simply flee to the USA, Canada or Europe. That

happened mainly among professionals who were

educated here at taxpayers expense, entrepreneurs

who rose from running one-door shops to the multi-

million enterprises. The one aberration to this patternoccurred in the late 1980s, when thousands of

ordinary people, mainly Indians, fled to Canada as

refugees, claiming they were oppressed by an

African-dominated state machinery.

The refugees of the 1980s, for example, had no

just cause for the betrayal of their fellow-Trinis, for

sullying their countrys ima ge . T he y s imply

exploited the easy rules of entry into Canada,

thought the grass was greener on that side of the

fence, and angered Ottawa to the point where,

thereafter, any citizen of this country wanting to

visit Canada must first secure a visa.

As a patriot, I cannot come around to forgiving

them for their sins against all of us who remained

here, bore the brunt of what was meted out to us,

28 Ibid., pp. 16668.

30 Ibid., p. 17.31 Eric Williams, Forged from the Love of Liberty: Selected Speeches

of Dr. Eric Williams, compiled by Paul K. Sutton (Port of Spain:

Longman Caribbean,1981), p. 156.

29 See Selwyn R. Cudjoe, Indian Time Ah Come in Trinidad and

Tobago (Wellesley, MA: Calaloux Publications, 2010), p. 16.

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and continue to contribute to building this country

we so love.32

According to Article 13 of the Geneva Convention on

the Status of Refugees, someone is entitled to asylum if he

is fleeing from a country where his life or freedom would

be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality,

membership of a particular social group or politicalopinion. Those Indians who fled their country argued that

their life was threatened because of their race which is why

Shah, a patriot, felt so ashamed when they slandered our

country.

Given these tendencies toward fragmentation, the crea-

tion of a policy that was meant to accommodate immigrants

in the 1970s and 1980s is not appropriate to a society in

which for the last half of the nineteenth century and the

twentieth century shared the same space, possessed similar

aspirations; and where our languages and cultures merged

into an organic whole. If, as the present party suggests,

more resources ought to be given to the dominant group

and Indians are now the dominant groupthen that goes

against the tenets of multiculturalism to which it says its

subscribes. In Canada the emphasis is on supporting the

minority groups and integrating them into the society. Such

an emphasis suggests that any serious multicultural

program in Trinidad and Tobago should pay more attention

to African culture, the minority culture, rather than to the

Indian culture, the majority culture and to try to integrate

them into the society.

But, alas, a multicultural policy in T&T faces more

complex problems than simply making the minority share

in the majority culture or addressing the alienation of whichIndians speak and feel. Any cultural policy, multicultural or

otherwise, must speak uniting its various groups into one

national entity and keeping the state together or what I call

a transcendent culture that creates a collective national identity.

It must speak to our Trinidadianness and Tobagonianness

first (that is our national self-awareness); our Indianness,

Africanness, Chineseness, Syrianness, etc., second. This was

the essence of Dr. Williamscultural policy that he enunciated

as Father of the Nation. It is the aspiration of both Ghana and

South Africa.

Many Indians are unwilling to accept Dr. Williams as the

father of the nation. We can arrive at no other conclusion.However, we must do so if we wish to develop a collective

identity. Any society that aspires to be a cohesive national

entity must be willing to accept all of its history; not just parts

of it. And herein lies a problem that no multiculturalism can

fix. It is precisely the inability of most of our Indian

population to accept the totality of our history and the

heterogeneous nature of our origins that prevent them from

acknowledging the appelation commonly attributed to Dr.

Williams. Dr. Williams is considered the father of our nation

because he was the leader of the nation when it was founded

regardless of his race. We may question aspects of his

stewardship. We cannot contest the incontestable fact that he

was there at the beginning and led us during the first 30 years

of our existence: from colonial status, to independence, torepublicanism. It was so for George Washington as it was for

Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. They are the fathers

of their respective nations not because they are white or Indian

but because they were there at the crucial moment when their

societies were born and were responsible for nurturing their

society at the fist formative moments of their birth. Indeed, we

can say of Dr. Williams what he said about Nehru at the

celebration of this 75th anniversary of his birth:

If I have selected some aspects of his career more than

others for special mention . . . it is the result of a

feeling of spiritual kinship with a man who was at oneand the same time a national symbol, a philosopher of

anticolonialism and a student of world history. . . .

India today would not be what it is if India had not

achieved independence and if Nehru had not been

there for 40 years to learn and to teach, to guide and

be guided, to inspire and be inspired, to aspire and to

achieve. He stands out as one of the great figures of

our country and one of the greatest champions of

freedom of all time.33

Might it not be that Eric Williamschoice of our national

motto, Together we aspire; together we achieved, wasinfluenced by the respect and admiration he felt for

President Nehru of India?

This is the first lesson that any mature society or serious

democracy must accept when it thinks of constructing a

national cultural policy or, in this case, rethinking our

national cultural policy. A country must accept all of its

history; not just part of it.

We must also learn our history anew and accept that all

aspects of the society belong to all of us, her children. In

learning our history we must be prepared to take a serious

look at how our society was made, the contributions that

each group made toward its construction; and whatconstitutes the essence of our nation. We would then know

what is distinctive about our nation; which would help us in

knowing what we need to cherish and what we need to

discard. Such a course of action depends on serious

scholars who see their scholarly and national task to tell

our history as it is.

33 Williams,Forged from the Love of Liberty, p. 233.

32 Raffique Shah, Rally, rally round T&T, Express, January 18,

2009.

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If it is truethat a people is the product of its history, thenwe

can know and understand our peoplehood by committing

ourselves to knowing the elements of that history. What in

other words constitutes peoplehood, and how do we enhance

our Trinidad and Tobagonianness? Most of us are much too

invested in the here and now and have little concern for the

past. We cannot hope to speak about our Trinidadianness and

Tobagonianness if we do not understand the contributions thevarious groups made to the construction of our society; and

the weights and values that one gives to the cultures that make

up the unitary state.

The prime minister has intimated that she wishes to have

comparative religions taught in schools and that is a good

move. But before we talk comparison, would it not be

better to teach the three or four religions that we knowto

all of our studentsand acquaint all of our citizens with the

cultural vocabularies of our various peoples. In this context

I suggest that all students should be conversant with Islam;

Hinduism; Christianity; and traditional African religion.34

These religions should be taught in all our schools, be theyCatholic, Anglican, Muslim, or Hindu schools. I do not

think a Trinidadian or a Tobagonian can call herself

educated (as opposed to being skilled) if she does not

know what the ramleelas; hosea; gyap; shango; orisas; and

some of the major celebrations are. No Trinbagonian should

be unacquainted with the cultural practices of all the major

cultural groups.

We should also stop the bad habit of thinking that all the

initiatives of a former government are bad. For the past

7 years or so, I was a member of the prime ministers

cabinet-appointed Committee on Race matters. We met

monthly to discuss innumerable conflicts that affect racial

relations in this community, and while meeting the

committee members had the opportunity of getting to know

the religions and cultures represented there. During those

meetings I had an opportunity to interact with Sat Maraj,

Deoienarinanan Sharma and Yacoub Ali. I came out of

those meetings embracing all the members of the commit-

tee, but I established a particularly warm relationship with

Sat whom I am now proud to call a friend. Sat still has his

concerns and I still have mine. However, we are able to

come together in a way that allows us to disagree

vehemently with one another and yet remain friends. Such

discussion allows citizens to see that persons with strongly

differing ideas can still love and respect each other. Jergen

Habermas, the German philosopher, argues that citizens can

only arrive at a shared conception of the good and adesired form of life through democratic discussions that

enable them to clarify which traditions they want to

perpetuate, and which they want to discontinue, how they

want to deal with their history, with one another, with

nature and so on.35

The discussion of the Committee on Race Relations can be

strengthened. An annual compilation of the minutes of these

meeting should be made available to the public, and there

should be four public discussions on air each year on these

matters. At a recent meeting inaugurating the Planet Three

Peace Programme, the speakers warned that Ghanaians ought

not to take pockets of ethnic conflicts for granted, since thoseconflicts have the potential to assume national dimensions. . . .

[The] speakers were unanimous in their call for peace to be

upheld in order not to go the path of conflicts that had plagued

so many African countries.36

Let us not take our racial

harmony for granted. Let us do all in our power to solidify

and consolidate our racial harmony. The restoration of the

Interracial Committee set up by Prime Minister Manning

with some more publicity, more members, and public debate

can go a long way to demonstrate to our publics that

although we have varying interests and concerns we can

speak about them in a civil manner.

Any cultural policy must speak about the expansion of

our civilization and our humanity as a people. We cannot

think about culture unless we talk about how we empower

people in our communities, the heart of our society. I am

convinced that in moving from colonialism to indepen-

dence we did not empower our communities and build on

the social and cultural capital they had accumulated over

the centuries. It is true that Dr. Williams started the Better

Village Programme to mobilize the various talents in the

community and to preserve elements of our Trinidad and

Tobago culture. To a large extent it was successful.

However, any cultural program thats worth its salt must

emphasize the three ls: the development of local libraries;

the development of local culture; and the writing of local

histories (that is, the history of our villages and of the

people who made them what they are). The communities

must be the vortex around which all our cultural aspirations

revolve.

34 We ought to look at a work such as Kofi Asare Opoku, West African

Traditional Religion(FEP International Private Limited, 1978) to get a

better understanding of traditional African religion. Opoku begins hisbook by noting thata close observation of Africa and its societies will

reveal that religion is at the root of African culture and is the

determining principle of African life. It is not exaggeration, therefore,

to say that in traditional Africa, religion is life and life, religion (p. 1).

He goes on to demolish all the derogatory terms such as animism,

fetishism, and paganism that are used to define African religion and then

cautions his readers: [These] misconceptions were all based on the

assumption that the mind of the African was so different from that of the

European that special words were needed to describe his religious ideas.

It needs to be emphasized, however, that religion in Africa is part of the

religious heritage of mankind, and as such, it needs to be looked at from

the same perspective as other religions (p. 6).

36 Sebastien Syme, Dont Take Ethnic Conflicts for Granted, Daily

Graphic, January 22, 2011.

35Taylor, Multiculturalism, p. 125.

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In a recent article in the London Independent, Tim Lott

wrote that libraries remain a beacon of civilization, a mark

of what we [the British] stand for.37 We may have moved

from reading the hard copies of books to the reading of

books on our Kindles and iPads. However, if we are to lift

our cultural standards, create a mutually tolerant and

accepting society that appreciates the gift our multi-

cultures and religions bring to the storehouse of our nation;if we are to survive as a nation, then we must arm our

nation and our communities with information and knowl-

edge that allows them to understand the power within

themselves and the equally powerful truth that we have

been made in the bowels of Trinidad and Tobago rather

than somewhere else.

Multiculturalism, as proposed by its advocates in the

West, is driven by the demand for recognition and the

preservation of particular cultural identities. Amy Gut-

mann of Princeton University observed: Full public

recognition as equal citizens may require two forms of

respect: (1) respect for the unique identities of eachindividual, regardless of gender, race, or ethnicity, and

(2) respect for those activities, practices, and ways of

viewing the world that are particularly valued by, or

associated with, members of disadvantaged groups,

including women, Asian-Americans, African-Americans,

Native Americans, and a multitude of other groups in the

United States.38

However, Steven C. Rockefeller recognized the pitfalls of

multiculturalism defined in this manner. He noted: If

members of groups arepublicly identified with the dominant

characteristics, practices, and values of their group, one

might wonder whether our particular identitiesas English

or French Canadians, men or women, Asian-Americans,

African Americans, or Native Americans, Christians, Jews,

or Muslimswill take public precedence over our more

universal identity as persons, deserving of mutual respect,

civil and political liberties, and decent life chances simply by

virtue of our equal humanity.39

In fact, the dilemma becomes even more intractable:

How does one speak of the need for individual autonomy as

it coexists with what Anthony Appiah calls its uneasy

relationship with collective identity? Appiah argues that

collective identities come in tandem with notions about

how a person of a particular group or identity ought to

behave. He argues that the collectivity provides what we

might call scripts: narratives that people can use in shaping

their life plans and in telling their livesstories.This leads

Appiah to reject group recognition as ideal because it ties

individuals too tightly to scripts over which they have too

little authorial control.40

The problem of promulgating multiculturalism as a

national cultural policy is that it seeks to impose a model

of behavior that we, as a society, have worked through over

a century and a half ago and sends us back to scripts we

discarded many moons ago. What Canada and Australia do

is inapplicable in that we have already worked out a modusoperandi for existing in our small country. The trend and

experience have been to live and work together in spite of

our differences. In my humble view, the multiculturalism as

proposed by the present government takes us back to a

point that we have passed. It is a policy that emphasizes our

differences rather than our commonalities. It does not tell us

how to consolidate our nationness, concretize our national

identity; and make us proud to be Trinidadians and

Tobagonians. Nowhere in their policyand there is not

much policy one can talk aboutdoes it say who provides

for the soul of the nation; how we consolidate our cultural

and social achievements; and how to construct a moreperfect union and a truly integrated Trinidad and Tobago.

Although some of my East Indian compatriots are fond

of calling me a racist because I advocate for the rights and

recognition of the Africans in this country, there are many

things they do not know about me. In 1985, 1 year after we

began Calaloux Publications, we published Noor Kumar

Mahabir,The Still Cry: Personal Accounts of East Indians

in Trinidad and Tobago. It is now considered a classic in

the fields of anthropology and literature. In case anyone

thought that I just arrived at a position that embraces a

transcendent national identity, I reproduce what I wrote in

the foreword of that book:

It is important to understand that the heritage of the

East Indians is the heritage of all of the people of

Trinidad and Tobago. At one level, it is the heritage of

a specific group, but because the East Indians are

indeed Trinidadians and Tobagonians, their heritage

must be seen as part of the larger national heritage, for

it is the collectivity of the African and East Indian

heritage (and that of all of the other ethnic groups)

that constitutes Trinidad and Tobagos cultural heri-

tage. It is important to grasp that heritage in its totality

and to make it meaningful in our lives. The heritageof people is not something one puts up for display but

something that one takes and integrates into ones

present to create a meaningful future.41

Today, I feel even stronger about these sentiments. To

my comments I would add the words of Derek Walcott who

37 January 23, 2011.38 Taylor, Multiculturalism, p. 8.39 Ibid., p. 9.

40 Ibid., p. xi.41 Noor Kumar Mahabir, The Still Cry(Tacarigua: Calaloux Publications,

1985), p. 10.

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captures what and how I feel in the magnificent imagery of

his poem:

Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the

fragments is stronger than the love which took its

symmetry for granted when it was whole. The glue

that fits the pieces is the sealing of its original shape.

Its such love that reassembles our African andAsiatic fragments, the cracked heirlooms whose

restoration shows its white scars.42

Trinidad and Tobago is already a multicultural society.

Our national goal should aim at keeping our nation intact as

a whole rather than trying to weaken it. Such a project takes

on much more importance since we know the trend of our

East Indian brothers and sisters has been to opt away from

unity and strive toward a kind of own-way-ness. We ought

not to take for granted our living together harmoniously or

even see it as being preordained. It is something that we

have to work at arduously and continuously. Anyone who

looks at Rwanda where various ethnicities lived together sopeacefully until the massive genocidal actions unraveled

their society can see how easily ties that have been built

over centuries can be broken asunder in the twinkling of an

eye. I repeat, We should not take for granted our living

together harmoniously.

As our government, wrongly in my opinion, pursues its

course of multiculturalism, I ask the leaders to ponder the

historic words Nelson Mandela uttered when he was on trial

for his life: I have fought against white domination and I have

fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of

a democratic and free society in which all persons live

together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal

which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an

ideal for which I am prepared to die.43We ought to cultivate

a transcendent national cultural policy that builds our identity

as a homogenous and harmonious people rather than one in

which we cling to our particularities. To achieve this we

must formulate a national cultural policy from a truthful

examination of history; one that begins with the premise that

the history of Trinidad and Tobago did not begin with

victory of the Peoples Partnership in May 2010. That in fact

the outlines of a cultural policy has been in place since 1962

when Dr. Williams offered his Mother Trinidad and Tobago

Speech. Against this background, I offer the following ideas

as a way of strengthening our national identity and

constructing a transcendent national cultural policy:

1. A national cultural policy should emphasize our

commonalities rather than our differences. It should

grow out of our historical and cultural development.

2. A national policy should emphasize our Trinbagonianism

rather than our particularisms. Schoolchildren should be

encouraged to recite our pledge of allegiance, know our

national emblems, sing our national songs, etc., as a way

of inculcating a sense of national consciousness.

3. As the proposed multicultural policy suggests, we

ought to give serious attention to and support all the

cultures that exist in our society. We need to find waysto keep what is good about them and discard what is

bad or negative about them. The major criterion of

supporting our present cultures ought to be how they

contribute to a peoples sense of themselves and how

they promote our national development.

4. We ought to develop a historically informed perspec-

tive on what is at stake when any of our groups make

demands on public institutions for the recognition of

their particular identities and the celebration of their

cultural traditions. Only a sustained nation debate can

help us to clarify these issues.

5. The teaching of the religions, cultures, and histories ofthe various groups in our society must be made a part

of our curriculum in our high schools. In this context,

there ought to be an agreed-upon core of information

that each person must know to say that he or she is an

educated Trinbagonian.

6. We ought to devote considerable resources to researching

and writing the history of our various cultures, village

histories, biographies of outstanding individuals, and the

publication of monographs, books, and documentaries,

that emanate there from. (It is a shame that we do not have

a biography of George Chambers, the second prime

minister of our country.)

7. We ought to establish a permanent commission constituted

of representatives from various groups and ethnicities to

develop a national cultural policy that speaks to our

commonalities rather than our differences. This committee

can be modeled after the Council forMulticultural Australia

or Ghanas National Commission on Culture. Its conclu-

sion should be made available for national discussion.

8. The foundation of a governments national cultural policy

must be based on respect for its citizens. Such respect can

be demonstrated in how the state treats its citizens and

how it responds to correspondences sent to government

offices for example. This is not a problem peculiar to the

Peoples Partnership government. It was rampant in the

PNM government as well. Answering letters and treating

people with respect must be the first step in the

implementation of any national cultural policy.

9. The creation of a national service program where all

young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty

are made to devote a year to serving their fellow

Trinbagonians. It is a marvelous way of getting to

know one another!

42 Derek Walcott, The Antilles: Fragments of Epic Imagination (New

York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,1993).43 Quoted in Cajee, Timol, p. 18.

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In the end, multiculturalism can be considered a

struggle of oppressive ethnic and cultural minorities for

the recognition of their collective identities44 which is

certainly not the case now that East Indians are the

dominant majority in Trinidad and Tobago. Nothing I have

said in this essay denies people their uniqueness or the

specificities of their identities or cultures. We all possess

multiple identities which we display when the occasiondemands. David Brooks puts it well when he says: People

in all nations have multiple authentic selves. In some

circumstances, one set of identities manifests itself, but

when those circumstances change, other equally authentic

identities and desires get activated.45

The only function of the state is to create a climate

whereby groups can produce and reproduce their cultural

traditions in which identities are formed. The constitution-

al state can make this hermeneutic achievement of the

cultural reproduction of life-worlds possible, but it cannot

guarantee it. For to guarantee survival would necessarily

rob the members of the very freedom to say yes or no thatis necessary if they are to appropriate and preserve their

cultural heritage.46

Insisting on the primacy of a transcen-

dent national identity does not in any way deny any ones

Indianness or Africanness. It argues simple that to insist on

a national cultural policy that privileges multiculturalism at

this time can only stymie our national development and

send us back into our tribal zones.

We should not take our national unity for granted. It is

something that we must work on constantly if we wish to

preserve our union. And, although we are not in the realm

of law, it is wise to reflect on Habermass observations:

A legal order is legitimate when it safeguards the

autonomy of all citizens to an equal degree. The

citizens are autonomous only if the addressees of the

law can also see themselves as its authors. And its

authors are free only as participants in the legislative

processes that are regulated in such a way and take

place in forms of communication such that everyone

can presume that the regulations enacted in that way

deserve general and rationally motivated assent.47

Multiculturalism is a foreign ism. As some of our

citizens say, we pas dat.It does not contain the unifying

thread that keeps our society together, generate loyalty

toward the state and help us to maintain our historically

developed cultural form of life. Our challenge in the

foreseeable future is to develop a national self understand-

ing that is based on our citizenship rather than our ethnicity.

This is why I reject multiculturalism as the national cultural

policy of Trinidad and Tobago.

Further Reading

Brooks, D. 2011. Huntingtons Clash Revisited. New York Times,March 4.

Cajee, I. 2005. Timol: A quest for justice. Johannesburg: STE.

Cudjoe, S. R. 1983. Cultural Policy and National Development. Ref.

WI 308, Cudjoe (Trinidad Collection), January 11.

Cudjoe, S. R. 2010. Indian Time Ah Come in Trinidad and Tobago.

Wellesley: Calaloux.

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Selwyn R. Cudjoe is the Margaret E. Deffenbaugh and LeRoy

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president of the National Association for the Empowerment of African

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46 Taylor, Multiculturalism, ., p. 130

44 Taylor, Multiculturalism, p. 117.

47 Ibid., pp. 1212.

45 David Brooks, Huntingtons Clash Revisited, New York Times,

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