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 "fathe