Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

In 1987, a group of women came to­geth­er to es­tab­lish a Hin­du Women’s Or­gan­i­sa­tion (HWO). The pur­pose of the or­gan­i­sa­tion would be a sim­ple one: work to im­prove the sta­tus of women and girls in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Their ef­forts would be stonewalled by sev­er­al in­flu­en­tial Hin­du men across the coun­try. Bren­da Gopeesingh was one of those women seek­ing to start this or­gan­i­sa­tion, still, at a time when Hin­du women were per­ceived to be less im­por­tant to their male coun­ter­parts and ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly for girls, was still in its for­ma­tive stages.

“When we tried to form that or­gan­i­sa­tion, we re­ceived a lot of op­po­si­tion from male mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty–the Hin­du hi­er­ar­chy,” she re­called to the WE mag­a­zine last week.

Then, when they tried to reg­is­ter the or­gan­i­sa­tion in 1991, Gopeesingh re­called how a sen­a­tor ques­tioned, “Why should Hin­du women want an or­gan­i­sa­tion of its own?”

She said, “We were ex­pect­ed to be docile and ac­cept what­ev­er they dic­tat­ed down to us. You have to un­der­stand the type of cul­ture we women ex­ist­ed in at the time. Many peo­ple were house­wives, and In­di­an women got ed­u­ca­tion far lat­er than African women.”

An­oth­er sen­a­tor at the time, Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, would help Gopeesingh and her team get the or­gan­i­sa­tion over the fin­ish line. It would be a key mile­stone for Gopeesingh in her life­time of ser­vice to Hin­du women in this coun­try and women and girls as a whole.

For al­most 40 years, Gopeesingh has worked with the HWO to im­prove the lives of women in T&T, serv­ing as both a pres­i­dent and co-founder.

Much of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s fo­cus has been on erad­i­cat­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in T&T. How­ev­er, per­haps the HWO’s most sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion since its es­tab­lish­ment was help­ing to re­form the Mar­riage Act. While the or­gan­i­sa­tion faced stiff op­po­si­tion from tra­di­tion­al­ists, Gopeesingh and her team pow­ered on with ed­u­ca­tion dri­ves, ral­ly­ing sup­port around the coun­try to raise the min­i­mum age of mar­riage to 18 years for both males and fe­males, with­out ex­cep­tion.

This fight­ing spir­it was in­spired by the Work­ers and Farm­ers Par­ty of 1966 when she was 20 years old. That po­lit­i­cal par­ty in­clud­ed the likes of Stephen Ma­haraj, CLR James, George Weekes (of the Oil­fields Work­ers Trade Union) and the then lit­tle-known Bas­deo Pan­day.

She at­tend­ed most of the po­lit­i­cal meet­ings of that par­ty, though she ad­mit­ted none of them were re­al­ly well at­tend­ed be­cause of an on­go­ing rift be­tween for­mer prime min­is­ter of T&T Dr Er­ic Williams and CLR James.

Nev­er­the­less, the po­lit­i­cal meet­ings would have an out­sized in­flu­ence on Gopeesingh, not on­ly mak­ing her aware of the do­mes­tic is­sues fac­ing the coun­try but al­so awak­en­ing her pur­pose.

“I felt I should al­so do some­thing. I am an In­di­an woman, and we are in­vis­i­ble. We should make our­selves vis­i­ble in this coun­try.”

She would start ral­ly­ing In­di­an women across the coun­try to be­come a more promi­nent part of the day-to-day life of T&T. Then, when the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion for Fem­i­nist Re­search and Ac­tion was formed, Gopeesingh joined that as well, learn­ing the rudi­ments of ad­vo­ca­cy for women and ap­ply­ing it to this coun­try.

Now, in 2025, as Gopeesingh watch­es the coun­try be­ing led by a fe­male pres­i­dent, prime min­is­ter and op­po­si­tion leader, she is heart­ened.

“I think this is all for the good. Women are braver now, so maybe that would make some of us a lit­tle bit braver,” she stat­ed.

De­spite pub­lic of­fice be­ing a chal­lenge, Gopeesingh in­sist­ed women are on the right path in this coun­try, though she wants more fe­males to be braver and speak out on is­sues fac­ing women and girls.

“Not enough are out­spo­ken. Not enough are pay­ing at­ten­tion to the is­sues that women face on a na­tion­al lev­el. We are very con­tent to sit in our nice places and not say any­thing be­cause once you say some­thing, it is con­tro­ver­sial, and no one wants to get in­to con­tro­ver­sy, so there is a bit of timid­i­ty in voic­ing your opin­ion,” she said.

Gopeesingh con­tin­ues to run her leg of the race, though now she wants to hand the ba­ton over to the next gen­er­a­tion of women and girls to en­sure that T&T’s women con­tin­ue to pros­per for gen­er­a­tions to come.