Q: Mr Ma­haraj, what do you have against Black peo­ple?

A: (A brief as­ton­ished ex­pres­sion then a burst of laugh­ter at his Ra­dio Jagri­ti of­fice off the Churchill-Roo­sevelt High­way in Tu­na­puna on Wednes­day morn­ing) I love Black peo­ple, they are some of the most at­trac­tive of our cit­i­zens. What I de­test is ig­no­rance.

In what con­text?

To­tal po­lit­i­cal ig­no­rance; ig­no­rant about the facts, ig­no­rant of things that they know noth­ing about, and those who are to­tal­ly in­flu­enced by the neg­a­tive as­pects of the pol­i­tics of the land.

So those who la­bel you a racist are ig­no­rant?

Not on­ly are they ig­no­rant, they them­selves are the racists. They try to throw this on some­body else. Each one of us has nat­ur­al affini­ties to our clan, to our com­mu­ni­ties, to our re­li­gion but we don't use that as a mea­sur­ing rod for our re­la­tion­ship with oth­er peo­ple.

An ac­cu­sa­tion lev­elled against you Mr Ma­haraj, is that you have said if any of your chil­dren should mar­ry a Black per­son you would dis­own them?

That, my friend, is a to­tal and ab­solute fab­ri­ca­tion.

You can swear to that on the Bha­gavad Gi­ta?

I swear by the (raised voice)... I, uh...why should I have to swear to any­body? Why do I have to swear to you or any­body else? I have nev­er said that! What I said is if my daugh­ter mar­ries some­body who the fam­i­ly doesn't ap­prove of we re­serve the right to ac­cept or re­ject...and that still holds. And that is the case with many fam­i­lies in this coun­try; not on­ly Hin­du fam­i­lies...the right to ac­cept or re­ject.

What do you feel is the cause of this con­stant vil­i­fi­ca­tion of Sat Ma­haraj?

They need some­body...you see, for the PNM to sur­vive it needs the Black/In­di­an di­vide to ex­ist, for they can­not sur­vive be­cause they have no pol­i­cy, no pro­grammes that can at­tract peo­ple back to their par­ty. What they should be do­ing is talk­ing about their plans for the fu­ture.

What do you mean they have no pol­i­cy or pro­gramme, what about the Vi­sion 2020?

(Throw­ing his arms wide open) What vi­sion? That was a back­ward vi­sion which they picked up from the waste pa­per bas­ket of oth­er coun­tries. Since Dr Er­ic Williams, no­body in that par­ty has had any vi­sion. None whoso­ev­er! Their on­ly vi­sion is to rape the trea­sury.

Mr Ma­haraj, weren't you once a strong sup­port­er of the PNM, ac­tu­al­ly speak­ing on their plat­form?

(He ex­plains he part­ed with the PNM im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the 1981 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign dur­ing which the PNM had mount­ed an "Ah Fraid Karl" strat­e­gy in­still­ing imag­i­nary fears in the elec­torate against Karl Hud­son-Philips,QC, then po­lit­i­cal leader of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Na­tion­al Re­con­struc­tion). That was suf­fi­cient be­cause of the fear they aimed against Mr Hud­son-Phillips; The same modus operan­di the PNM is re­ly­ing on to­day. To­tal fab­ri­ca­tion! Fear, racial fear.

In this im­broglio at the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School an agree­ment was reached that no­body should speak pub­licly about it?

(In­ter­rupt­ing) No. No. The agree­ment is no par­ty will at­tack the oth­er par­ty, right? Maybe I should give you a copy of the agree­ment. (He pulls out two copies of the ac­cord which was hand writ­ten by Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh who bro­kered the deal) This is the hand­writ­ing of the min­is­ter, which states in part: "TTUTA has cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied mak­ing any charge of racism against the SDMS and the SDMS has al­so cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied any racism in any of their schools." The prin­ci­pal was right there when the mat­ter was be­ing dis­cussed.

Did she de­ny mak­ing that state­ment?

Well, she signed the doc­u­ment, too. She signed it.

Do you agree with the crit­i­cism lev­elled against Dr Gopeesingh that he failed to act in the dis­pute which al­lowed it to get out of hand?

To­tal false­hood. I mean, the same peo­ple are say­ing the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion has the au­thor­i­ty...not the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. All the au­thor­i­ty he has is what he did in bring­ing the par­ties to­geth­er to ef­fect con­cil­i­a­tion. MP McIn­tosh raised this in the Par­lia­ment. Did she first bring it to your at­ten­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly the charges lev­elled against you be­fore tak­ing it to the leg­is­la­ture? Mrs McIn­tosh told a lot of lies in the leg­is­la­ture in this mat­ter, and I want to tell you that we have writ­ten the Speak­er of the House this morn­ing re­quest­ing that our side of the sto­ry be placed in­to the Hansard (The ver­ba­tim record of de­bates in the Par­lia­ment).

Clevon, what is ab­solute­ly stun­ning is that this ho­n­ourable la­dy nev­er both­ered to take up the tele­phone and make some sim­ple in­quiries to as­cer­tain if these al­le­ga­tions lev­elled against me by the prin­ci­pal were true. I just can­not be­lieve that kind of con­duct from some­one as­pir­ing to high po­lit­i­cal of­fice. She nev­er made any at­tempt to send any­body here to check the ve­rac­i­ty of the claim that I do not want African chil­dren in our school. De­lib­er­ate lies! They are not mere fab­ri­ca­tions.

Mr Ma­haraj, is it fair to ac­cuse Mrs McIn­tosh?

(A sharp in­ter­jec­tion, shak­ing a fin­ger at Raphael's face) Lis­ten Clevon, stop there man! Let me fin­ish! You don't guide this dis­cus­sion. If you go to the En­ter­prise Hin­du School you will find 70 per cent of the pupils of African de­scent. Sev­en­ty-per cent! The dy­nam­ics have changed. Right in this school 55 Afro-Tri­nis are on the roll. Fur­ther, in Sep­tem­ber 1952, when the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School-which was lo­cat­ed in a tem­ple next to the Roy­al Cas­tle out­let-opened, the first pupil ad­mit­ted was an Afro-Tri­ni who went on to be­come the prin­ci­pal of the El Do­ra­do Sec­ondary School.

There are 300 chil­dren of African de­scent at the San­gre Grande Hin­du School. She is try­ing to cre­ate a racial prob­lem, not try­ing to find out if there is a racial prob­lem. If she had gone to Ari­ma Hin­du School 60 per cent are Afro-Tri­nis.

These are hard, undis­putable facts?

Clevon, I am not man­u­fac­tur­ing that. Go and see for your­self and talk to the prin­ci­pal rather than talk­ing to me.

If race is not the is­sue what ex­act­ly is the gen­e­sis of this prob­lem, some­thing per­son­al be­tween you and the prin­ci­pal?

We signed this agree­ment which says that none of us will pur­sue it fur­ther, but if you look at our com­plaints against the prin­ci­pal you will get an idea why we are so up­set. How­ev­er, there are two oth­er pri­ma­ry schools in this area where the prin­ci­pals are laws un­to them­selves, the boards have no con­trol over them and I think they have been try­ing to in­flu­ence the neg­a­tives the prin­ci­pal here want to in­dulge in.

This cur­rent im­broglio has res­ur­rect­ed the de­bate on whether the Con­cor­dat with the Gov­ern­ment and the de­nom­i­na­tion­al boards should be scrapped. Which side of the ar­gu­ment are you on?

Scrap it? The Con­cor­dat has worked well for Trinidad and To­ba­go but some peo­ple be­lieve that it is just a sheet of pa­per that was signed many years ago. That is not the Con­cor­dat. It is al­so all the con­ven­tions in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that have been de­vel­oped since then.

You are aware Mrs McIn­tosh is in favour of hav­ing an­oth­er look at the Con­cor­dat?

Be­cause she has noth­ing to lose. She has not built a school, she has not de­vel­oped a com­mu­ni­ty, and she is now try­ing to mis­lead a whole coun­try.

So where do you go from here?

The agree­ment has been signed, and she is to be re­as­signed so that is now his­to­ry. Look Clevon, you are now on the com­pound of the school. Do you hear a sound com­ing out of that school where there are more than 400 pupils? That is dis­ci­pline...to­tal dis­ci­pline.

What sort of dan­ger do you see if the ac­cord should be done away with?

The coun­try would suf­fer be­cause you would lose a whole cadre of peo­ple with ex­pe­ri­ence in run­ning schools. Run­ning a school is not just teach­ing and writ­ing. Every morn­ing we teach the chil­dren to pray, to re­spect au­thor­i­ty. And when you come here at 8.30 in the morn­ing you will hear the chil­dren pray­ing to­geth­er, singing the bha­jans to­geth­er. Part of the prob­lem in the school sys­tem is the break­down in dis­ci­pline, stu­dents be­com­ing preg­nant...why didn't she speak out against those ills?

Mr Ma­haraj, I wish you will not use this fo­rum to at­tack the good­ly la­dy in her ab­sence, as it were? (An in­cred­u­lous stare) She at­tacked me! She didn't talk to the Ma­ha Sab­ha! No­body spoke to us and she at­tacked us be­hind our backs at 10 o'clock in the night in the Par­lia­ment. So what you are try­ing to tell me? Look Clevon, don't let us fall out here to­day. (Laughs) Fair is fair. You don't ex­pect me to stay here and take ver­bal blows based on com­plete false­hood and do not re­spond.

Mr Ma­haraj, in spite of what­ev­er your de­trac­tors might say you have in­deed con­tributed to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. What is your great­est wish for the land of your birth at this time?

My wish is that our peo­ple would live to­geth­er. We will share the good times to­geth­er, we will share bad times to­geth­er. When the floods come we all cry to­geth­er, and when the oil starts flow­ing again we would all ben­e­fit to­geth­er. I am a Trinida­di­an more than to the bone...a Tri­ni to the mar­row. The politi­cian from time to time try to cre­ate prob­lems and ten­sions. But go to the coun­try­side and you will be amazed to see how we all live as one.

Mr Ma­haraj, all your life you have been a mag­net for con­tro­ver­sy-you have just turned 80-when would your con­tro­ver­sial per­sona end?

(Face lit up and in a very an­i­mat­ed state) It will come to an end when I am tak­en to the banks of the Ca­roni Riv­er for cre­ma­tion. I built that spe­cial­ly for me (thump­ing his chest). You bet­ter be­lieve that, oth­ers are us­ing it right now (a large smile), but that was built for me. I told my wife (de­ceased), I told my friends I want to be cre­mat­ed there. I grew up on the banks of that riv­er and that cre­ma­tion site is where I am go­ing to end my days.­