Ravi Ji

The Hon Prime Min­is­ter chal­lenged Chief Ser­vant Makan­dal Da­ga to ac­count for an episode at a Catholic church dur­ing the Black Pow­er days of the 1970s.

He has al­so sig­naled an alarm to Catholics. Mr Man­ning, in my mind, re­duces the en­tire sev­en­ties–Black Pow­er, African iden­ti­ty, op­por­tu­ni­ties for all be­yond colour of skin, rel­e­vant ed­u­ca­tion, free­dom from prej­u­dice lin­ger­ing in post-in­de­pen­dence in­sti­tu­tions–sole­ly to the event at the church in which Black Pow­er pro­tes­tors draped black cloth across white stat­ues. Mr Man­ning al­so de­rid­ed Daa­ga for still wear­ing his African dashi­ki. I will not con­done des­e­cra­tion to a sa­cred place. But was this an act of des­e­cra­tion?

This is why we, in­clud­ing the Hon Prime Min­is­ter, have to be ed­u­cat­ed about the sev­en­ties. Giv­en that 2010 marks the 40th an­niver­sary of the Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion and 125th An­niver­sary of Ja­ha­jee Mas­sacre, this is the kind of dis­cus­sion, the TT Com­mis­sion to Un­esco could have en­gaged in this year of Rap­proache­ment of Cul­tures. So, was it a des­e­cra­tion or a rit­u­al of recla­ma­tion? Was it a dra­mat­ic rit­u­al­is­ing by black chil­dren of Africa, stak­ing claim to the God they had come to ac­cept in lieu of their own de­monised God, Oludu­mare, and re-mak­ing Him in their own black im­age and like­ness?��This is im­por­tant, since iden­ti­ty, self-es­teem and loss of cul­ture were crit­i­cal to the Black Pow­er move­ment. For Africans, black is not skin deep, but a deep prej­u­dice and a heavy bur­den; lis­ten to com­pos­er's ca­lyp­so, Black.

This an­thro­pophag­ic phe­nom­e­non is uni­ver­sal and ex­pressed in di­verse ways and in­ten­si­ties. The Chi­nese look of the In­di­an-born Bhag­wan Bud­dha evolved through grad­ual artis­tic rit­u­al­i­sa­tion and so too has Car­ni­val mu­sic. African slaves em­ployed the re­verse of this art of sur­vival in mask­ing their di­vini­ties un­der the guise of Catholic saints. It is al­so in­struc­tive that the Cathe­dral was not van­dalised, as were, say, mandirs in T&T, on Au­gust 4, 2007 and 2008, back to back.

The Prime Min­is­ter's re­duc­tion­ism of the sev­en­ties to the lone episode at the church is a dis­ser­vice to the many lead­ers of Black Pow­er and ca­lyp­so­ni­ans like Stal­in and oth­ers who have im­mor­talised the sev­en­ties, like Bro Valenti­no who sang,"Doh mat­ter how they try to tar­nish those sa­cred mem­o­ries, I will nev­er for­get the Roar­ing Sev­en­ties," and Chalkie who ad­vo­cates, "Say thanks to Daa­ga!" The dis­ser­vice ex­tends not on­ly to Da­ga, Khafra and Ein­tou but to all–in­clud­ing In­di­ans and Catholics who sym­pa­thised and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Black Pow­er move­ment.