Past, Present and Future: The Journey

Past, Present and Future: The Journey

R.R

The choice of title of this paper speaks to a continuous journey to a place where the Hindu may find his Utopia or Ram Rajya; a place of equality and justice; a place where he can live in dignity.

In Trinidad and Tobago, the Hindu journey started one hundred and seventy years ago. In Guyana it started a little earlier. Hindus had established themselves in the Caribbean a full forty- eight years before Swami Vivekananda’s address to the World Parliament of Religions in 1893.

It was a journey of sweat and toil but also one of hope. The early Hindus spoke a different language from their masters and they were viewed as heathens. People were suspicious of them and some were intent on converting them. Dr Morton, a missionary instrumental in the provision of Presbyterian Educational Institutions for East Indians, his intentions can be questioned, as some years ago a Presbyterian school principal said to me that they, the Presbyterian missionaries, had civilized the sugar cane coolies.

The 1884 Hosay riots or Moharrum Massacre in Trinidad where Hindus and Muslims died for a cause is evidence enough of a people who were willing to stand up for what they believed. [Dr Kelvin Singh: Blood Stained Tombs. ] By the time universal adult suffrage came in 1946 the Hindus were sufficiently organized to have some of their leaders elected to the legislative council.

But many Hindus were not able to cross the mental bridge from feelings of marginalization and alienation to the haven of good esteem and equality. The often repeated stories of young Hindu boys who were in upper class multi cultural prestigious schools, as a result of the Hindu quest for education and social mobility, eating humble meals from brown paper bags and not feeling good about themselves, is one side of Hindu psyche.

The story of a young Hindu being ridiculed for bowing to the feet of his guru on Coffee Street, San Fernando, tells another aspect of the place of the Hindu and of the battering of the Hindu psyche. The person who led the finger pointing and the mocking crew was an upper class Hindu who had converted to Catholicism. I was the young Hindu boy who had bowed to the guru. The year was 1961; one year before Trinidad and Tobago became independent.

It is instructive to remember that in the thirty years, from 1956-86 when the People’s National Movement was in government, the number of Hindus who served in government and on state boards was minimal. They also carried labels such as recalcitrant hostiles.

Denied of power and prestige and treated as heathens, their esteem received a battering. The manifestation of this low self esteem in moderate rates of suicide and high rates of alcoholism is well documented. Displaced hostility and inter group rivalry were and are still commonplace.

But there was always a