Dr Er­ic Williams, first Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go and leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), in his book “In­ward Hunger,” at­tempt­ed to stereo­type the Hin­du and In­di­an when he wrote: “There was no ques­tion that the In­di­an oc­cu­pied the low­est rung of the lad­der in Trinidad.

“Cribb’d, cab­in’d and con­fin’d in the sug­ar plan­ta­tion econ­o­my, from which oth­er racial groups had suc­ceed­ed in large part in es­cap­ing, the few who did es­cape to the Mec­ca of Port-of-Spain were con­cen­trat­ed on the out­skirts of the town in a sort of ghet­to pop­u­lar­ly known as ‘Coolie Town,’ to­day known as St James.”

One of the en­dur­ing tragedies of our coun­try is the way some ‘in­tel­lec­tu­als’ have at­tempt­ed to de­ny the mas­sive In­di­an-Hin­du con­tri­bu­tions to our cul­ture. Even with­out the lit­er­ary ge­nius of Sir Vidia Naipaul, dai­ly we are aware of the ne­ces­si­ty to use In­di­an-Hin­du words to ex­press our­selves and to com­mu­ni­cate. The po­lit­i­cal pun­dits are pro­nounc­ing their own pref­er­ences like mantra every Sun­day in the news­pa­pers.

These par­tic­u­lar views, which re­flect spe­cial in­ter­ests aligned to a par­tic­u­lar po­lit­i­cal par­ty, for­get that there is a Hin­du-In­di­an view alive all over this coun­try. It in­forms the po­lit­i­cal de­bate and the vot­ing be­hav­iour of hun­dreds of thou­sands. Such vot­ers are moral­ly moved by the idea of the Gu­ru and see them­selves as po­lit­i­cal chelas, who must not be­tray Baap (fa­ther), or Mai (moth­er), or their po­lit­i­cal leader.

We tend to think that the in­flu­ence of In­dia in Trinidad is con­fined on­ly to Di­vali, Eid and Ram­leela. There are those who con­cede that baara, kuchela and chut­ney have an In­di­an ori­gin, as in the case of roti. Our chil­dren need to know such things, but it is much more im­por­tant to pur­sue the dili­gent study of how Hin­du-In­di­an ideas con­tin­ue to shape our at­ti­tude to all spheres of ex­is­tence in the Caribbean and be­yond.

This amaz­ing Hin­du-In­di­an pres­ence be­gan very in­aus­pi­cious­ly with the ar­rival of the SS Fa­tal Raza­ck in 1845. In re­cent years, chil­dren of Hin­du-In­di­an ori­gin have run away with the Pres­i­dent’s Medal and most of the schol­ar­ships award­ed by the gov­ern­ment based on the CXC, CAPE ex­am re­sults.

Even some of the most wide­spread changes and ini­tia­tives to im­prove the qual­i­ty of ed­u­ca­tion for all chil­dren have been made by Hin­du-In­di­an in­sti­tu­tions, such as a mu­sic project, teach­ing clas­si­cal mu­sic to pri­ma­ry school chil­dren, the gov­ern­ment has al­lo­cat­ed funds to buy har­mo­ni­ums and oth­er in­stru­ments for the Baal Vikaas pro­gramme of Hin­du schools. Nev­er mind that the steel­pan is al­lo­cat­ed more than one hun­dred times an­nu­al­ly.

Tas­sa, dhan­tal and dho­lak are now Trinidad and To­ba­go words, as com­mon as roti and chan­na. More sub­tle, but as per­va­sive is the Brah­minic in­sis­tence on ex­cel­lence and learn­ing. The Ox­ford Dic­tio­nary ex­plains the word “Brah­min” to mean an in­tel­lec­tu­al. Brah­min as an ad­jec­tive means au­thor­i­ta­tive.

Op­po­si­tion par­ties strug­gled to abol­ish apan jat pol­i­tics or vot­ing based on eth­nic­i­ty and re­place this di­vi­sive prac­tice with all-in­clu­sion. This bold em­brace of all eth­nic groups has caused ‘jhan­jat’ and ‘khoo­chor.’ Jhan­jat, or con­fu­sion, is now as com­mon as bac­cha­nal in our lan­guage to de­scribe am­bi­tious politi­cians who cre­ate splits and fac­tions in a par­ty. Khoo­chor is po­lit­i­cal mis­chief-mak­ing.

Neemakharams and Ma­ha neemakharams are now a pop­u­lar top­ic for colum­nists and ca­lyp­so­ni­ans. Ma­ha means great and neemak means salt, while haram means an in­grate. Ma­ha neemak haram in the po­lit­i­cal con­text means a great in­grate.

Kum­ba Karan, a char­ac­ter in the Hin­du epic, the Ra­mayan, is al­so now a pop­u­lar per­son in our po­lit­i­cal dis­course. The broth­er of Ra­vana, who slept most of his life, but was on­ly awak­ened when he smelt food. Be­cause of his ten­den­cy to fall asleep in par­lia­ment and pub­lic func­tions.

The loud and rau­cous dis­cus­sion of cor­rup­tion leads our minds to loot­ing, as in loot­ing of the trea­sury. The word ‘loot’ is al­so In­di­an in ori­gin and orig­i­nal­ly had to do with the un­law­ful re­moval of prop­er­ty by thugs and sol­diers.

The po­lit­i­cal lan­guage of T&T will con­tin­ue to ben­e­fit from the ab­sorp­tion of Hin­du-In­di­an words. More im­por­tant though, are the ideas which the words con­tain. Our po­lit­i­cal dis­course will be great­ly im­pov­er­ished with­out the words pun­dit, mantra, Brah­min, neemakharam, ma­ha, khoo­chor and jhan­jat.