Rav­i­ji

"De way t'ng waz go­ing, ah nev­er dream dat ah go see ah wo'd like, 'Min­istry of Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism' in Chinidat," I could hear the vil­lage com­men­ta­tor, Jagdeo Ma­haraj, say­ing to me in his sig­na­ture con­spir­a­tional whis­per. I al­so hear my­self re­spond­ing, "Well, Baapie, deswah aage bar­rd­hat baa...laa­gat bate ki kaljug it­naa kharaab na baate." (Kaljug does not seem so men­ac­ing any­more.")

I have there­fore to thank Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for tak­ing this bold step. And con­grat­u­la­tions to Win­ston Pe­ters, ca­lyp­son­ian Gyp­sy, for be­ing the first Min­is­ter of Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. I guess a ca­lyp­so on Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism is in or­der. He once de­clared that he was think­ing about singing Pichakaa­ree.

The evo­lu­tion of Mul­ti­c­ul­tal­ism

A Min­istry of Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism ought to have been a nat­ur­al flower on the mul­ti-branched plur­al so­ci­ety that is T&T. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant be­cause of the his­to­ry of colo­nial an­glo­phone so­ci­ety like T&T. But this was not to be so. But then again, many things ain't so, just be­cause it ought to be so, or be­cause do so ent like so.

Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism ap­peared in the pub­lic do­main in the six­ties and fed in­to the "Roar­ing Sev­en­ties." It was a re­sponse to the de­mand for equal­i­ty that was based on pro­cess­ing im­mi­grant so­ci­eties in Aglo­phone coun­tries, to be­come main­stream in lan­guage and cul­ture.

It was prob­a­bly well meant and per­ceived as nat­ur­al to de­mo­c­ra­t­ic ide­al­ism. But the con­se­quence was the op­po­site–a dev­as­tat­ing po­lit­i­cal and cul­tur­al doos­ra of au­toc­ra­cy in democ­ra­cy, re­sult­ing in the decul­tur­al­i­sa­tion of large col­lec­tives of peo­ple.

Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, at that time, seemed to have been dri­ven by a rit­u­al of cul­tur­al-ex­or­cism un­der the be­nign guise of, equal­i­ty of same­ness. It may have well been an un­no­ticed con­queror's guile to re­duce that which was dif­fer­ent–un­known and there­fore threat­en­ing–to se­cure their com­fort zone.

To­day, Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism pro­pos­es an, "equal­i­ty of dif­fer­ence," as a nat­ur­al and non vi­o­lent means to shape mod­ern so­ci­ety. There is a nat­ur­al fear of dif­fer­ence. The con­queror's im­pa­tient way slipped un­no­tice­ably in­to the norm of, do­ing-away with dif­fer­ence rather than the de­mand­ing way of un­der­stand­ing dif­fer­ence. How much must have been lost? There has been an ob­vi­ous shift in thought and en­light­ened think­ing.

This move to­wards anek­ta mein eka­ta–har­mo­ny in di­ver­si­ty–is fast be­com­ing a fetch­ing propo­si­tion. The in­ten­si­ty of the eco­log­i­cal de­bates and an in­creas­ing aware­ness of in­ter­con­nect­ed­ness are propos­ing a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the world so­ci­ety based on an es­sen­tial har­mo­ny of all things. This can me­di­ate a har­mo­nious re­la­tion­ship amidst the di­ver­si­ty which, in any case, will nev­er go away.

Maybe for these rea­sons the UN had launched pre­vi­ous­ly, a decade for de­coloni­sa­tion, a decade for in­dige­nous cul­tures, and this year–The In­ter­na­tion­al Year for Rap­proache­ment of Cul­tures. An en­light­ened trib­ute to Un­esco's theme by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T is the de­c­la­ra­tion of "Min­istry of Mul­ti Cul­tur­al­ism." At the lev­el of the Caribbean, a thrilling sub text comes with the ap­point­ment of the icon­ic, chief ser­vant, HE Makan­dal Daa­ga, Cul­tur­al Am­bas­sador to the Caribbean.

Con­grat­u­la­tions.