Charles Kong Soo

Dr Rudranath Capildeo's ma­jor con­tri­bu­tion to the coun­try was to hold it to­geth­er and pre­vent the na­tion from be­ing di­vid­ed along racial lines. This was among the trib­utes paid to the late politi­cian and aca­d­e­m­ic by his nephew, at­tor­ney Suren­dranath Capildeo.

"His ma­jor con­tri­bu­tion was to hold the coun­try to­geth­er be­cause if he had de­cid­ed to run with the pack, we would not have had a coun­try," Capildeo said. "This coun­try would have been racial­ly di­vid­ed for­ev­er but he crossed that bar­ri­er with Er­ic Williams at Marl­bor­ough House.

"If they had con­tin­ued with that racial di­vide, the coun­try would nev­er have been in­de­pen­dent and we would have been split down the mid­dle like Guyana. It was un­chart­ed his­to­ry," said Capildeo. He was speak­ing at a func­tion to ho­n­our Dr Capildeo who was posthu­mous­ly giv­en the Fa­ther of the Na­tion Medal of Ho­n­our (Gold) for mer­i­to­ri­ous ser­vice in the field of ed­u­ca­tion and pol­i­tics.

The func­tion took place at Capildeo's law of­fices on 51 Ed­ward Street, Port-of-Spain on Tues­day and mak­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion was chair­man of the Dr Er­ic Williams Memo­r­i­al Com­mit­tee, Regi­nald Vi­dale. Dr Er­ic Williams, leader of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and Capildeo, head of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Labour Par­ty (DLP) trav­elled in 1962 to Marl­bor­ough House to ne­go­ti­ate Trinidad and To­ba­go's in­de­pen­dence from Britain.

Capildeo said his un­cle, who was al­so a sci­en­tist, politi­cian and math­e­mati­cian thought the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem was a dis­as­ter and blamed Dr Williams for the "de­te­ri­o­ra­tion" of stan­dards at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege. It was a tra­di­tion that af­ter study­ing abroad, many of the bril­liant minds up­on their re­turn would teach at QRC.

"Williams de­cid­ed for some un­known rea­son he would take all the teach­ers at QRC and make them head mas­ters at dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ment schools through­out the coun­try," Capildeo said. "He picked up every mas­ter and he made all of them prin­ci­pals in schools all over T&T, so QRC was left with­out teach­ers. That de­stroyed QRC com­plete­ly.

I have no proof but I think that was de­lib­er­ate­ly done and they had no choice. It didn't do any­thing else to the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem," he said. Capildeo said there was more tol­er­ance in so­ci­ety then and there was not that deep a di­vide then com­pared to now. He said the present gen­er­a­tion didn't have the po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tion for pow­er, as so­ci­ety has gone be­yond and grown out of it com­pared to the colo­nial era, in­den­ture­ship and slav­ery.