On May 30, 2015 we cel­e­brat­ed 170 years of the East In­di­an di­as­po­ra in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and in recog­ni­tion of the con­tri­bu­tion of the tens of thou­sands of East In­di­an women who through their blood, sweat and tears made it pos­si­ble for us to reach where we are to-day in this coun­try, I say "Na­maste, the spir­it with­in me salutes the spir­it in you."

To­day we are led by a Hin­du East In­di­an woman Prime Min­is­ter who heads a mul­ti-racial, mul­ti-re­li­gious coali­tion par­ty. She comes from the Brah­man caste but her close rel­a­tives and friends are Mus­lims, Chris­tians and even Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist. She pro­motes the cel­e­bra­tions of Christ­mas, Eid, Di­vali and oth­er re­li­gious events. She em­braces every creed and race in this beloved coun­try. She is a wife, moth­er and grand­moth­er–she adores all the chil­dren of T&T. She is 63 years old. Most of all she is the Prime Min­is­ter of the Re­pub­lic of T&T.

And this brings me to the vul­gar re­marks made about her by a man who has am­bi­tions of be­com­ing the prime min­is­ter of our coun­try.The Leader of the Op­po­si­tion on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form re­cent­ly re­ferred to our prime min­is­ter's in­ti­mate body parts in the most de­grad­ing man­ner.In this day and age you think an East In­di­an man, who was Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, could say those base things about an African fe­male prime min­is­ter? There would have been fire and brim­stone in this coun­try.

But the at­ti­tude of the Op­po­si­tion Leader is noth­ing new to the East In­di­an di­as­po­ra in Trin­ba­go. Gaiu­tra Ba­hadur in her cel­e­brat­ed book, Coolie Woman, stat­ed in ref­er­ence to the East In­di­an di­as­po­ra of Trinidad, and I quote:

"As ten­sions sim­mered be­tween Africans and In­di­ans, dur­ing in­den­ture era and be­yond, "coolie" be­came and eth­nic slur, a re­minder to In­di­ans of me­nial ori­gins and sub­tle chal­lenge to their claim to be­long.

"Coolie" was so loaded a word that, in 1956, Trinidad fu­ture Prime Min­is­ter (Dr Er­ic Williams the found­ing fa­ther of the Na­tion) urged his coun­try­men to ban­ish it, along with the N-word, from their vo­cab­u­lar­ies." Bahudur not­ed that Dr Er­ic Williams was call­ing on Trinida­di­ans (and To­bag­o­ni­ans) to cast out two va­ri­eties of hate in­cul­cat­ed by the colonis­ers–hate for each oth­er and hate for them­selves.

When the first con­tin­gent of east In­di­ans ar­rived in Trinidad in May, 1845 their sta­tus was that of "bond­ed coolies" and they found them­selves work­ing and liv­ing in sim­i­lar con­di­tions to those of the Africans when they were en­slaved.

Dur­ing the first four decades of their ar­rival in this coun­try, they were paid lit­tle wages and yet were cheat­ed in pay­ments, their food ra­tions were re­strict­ed and mut­ton which some of the low­er castes ate was rot­ten. No la­trines were pro­vid­ed and they were re­duced to the state of an­i­mals in that they re­sort­ed to the cane fields when na­ture called. They moved about bare­foot­ed and half-naked, suf­fer­ing from hook worms, dysen­tery and oth­er dis­eases. Their hair was in­fest­ed with lice.

Their wives, sis­ters and moth­ers were of­ten raped both by white over­seers and a few eman­ci­pat­ed African slaves.The sta­tus quo heaped in­sults and preached ha­tred against them. The Port-of-Spain Gazette of May 6, 1851 car­ried an ar­ti­cle which read:

"The uni­ver­sal char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Hin­doos are ha­bit­u­al dis­re­gard for truth, pride, tyran­ny, theft, false­hood, de­ceit, con­ju­gal in­fi­deli­ty, fil­ial dis­obe­di­ence, in­grat­i­tude (the Hin­dus have no word ex­pres­sive of thanks), a liti­gious spir­it, per­jury, treach­ery, cov­etous­ness, gam­ing, ser­vil­i­ty, ha­tred, re­venge, cru­el­ty, pri­vate mur­der, the de­struc­tion of il­le­git­i­mate chil­dren, par­tic­u­lar­ly by procur­ing abor­tion...and want of ten­der­ness and com­pas­sion to the poor, the sick and the dy­ing."

A few years lat­er the Trinidad Sen­tinel ed­i­to­ri­alised... "A vil­er set of au­da­cious and con­sum­mate vil­lains, to whom per­jury is but a na­tion­al char­ac­ter­is­tics is not known in cre­ation. In­di­ans be­long to a race which held women in con­tempt. Their char­ac­ter­is­tic way of re­solv­ing dif­fer­ences was by chop­ping."

It is from that set­ting that Den­ni­son Moore wrote a text: his study was un­der­tak­en in or­der to bring to light the racial ide­ol­o­gy that un­der­pins race prej­u­dice against the East In­di­ans in Trinidad to­day. Racial ide­ol­o­gy con­signed East In­di­ans to a po­si­tion of in­fe­ri­or­i­ty in Trinidad so­ci­ety and con­tributed to the poi­son­ing of so­cial dis­course.

His sem­i­nal text "Ori­gins and De­vel­op­ment of Racial Ide­ol­o­gy in Trinidad: the Black view of the East In­di­an" demon­strates why some could pub­li­cal­ly and unashamed­ly heaped vul­gar at­tacks on an East In­di­an woman and how the PNM's women's league could de­fend him say­ing "there was noth­ing ma­li­cious, sex­u­al, sex­ist or chau­vin­is­tic about it."

But say what, life for our moth­ers, sis­ters, aunts and daugh­ters would evolve in this coun­try. Many are doc­tors, lawyers, teach­ers, busi­ness women, nurs­es, dou­bles ven­dors, par­lour sell­ers, shop keep­ers and so on.These women are stand­ing on the shoul­ders of their fe­male for­bears who stood on the shoul­ders of their fore­bears be­fore. It was the chil­dren and the women who suf­fered more than their men folks dur­ing the in­den­ture­ship pe­ri­od.

To­day there are thou­sands of chil­dren and women of the di­as­po­ra who are liv­ing in the same con­di­tions of de­prav­i­ty and ab­ject pover­ty and for those of us who are well-fed, well-dress and well-ed­u­cat­ed we must pon­der on their predica­ment and do every­thing with­in our pow­er to pro­tect and help them.

And as we cel­e­brate each year In­di­an Ar­rival Day, we must join hands with those who came be­fore us as slaves, the Africans, to res­cue both the de­scen­dants of the African di­as­po­ra and In­di­an di­as­po­ra who re­main in the con­di­tions of slav­ery.To­day is no dif­fer­ent from the sav­age days of in­den­ture­ship. Some are mov­ing ahead while oth­ers are sink­ing in hell.

But as a peo­ple, as a whole, the coolie woman has sur­vived, she is strong, ded­i­cat­ed, loy­al–a pil­lar of strength to her kin. Long live the coolie woman. For us we de­mand re­spect for our women, just as we re­spect their women. Jus­tice is for all.