Gail Alexan­der

The term 'knife and fork' In­di­an is an in­sult to all young men and women of East In­di­an de­scent whose par­ents toiled long and hard and made sac­ri­fices to pro­vide their chil­dren with an ed­u­ca­tion to al­low them to have up­ward mo­bil­i­ty.

So said Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress lead­er­ship chal­lenger Vas­ant Bharath at a cam­paign meet­ing last night in Ch­agua­nas, where he rub­bished the term used on Mon­day by in­cum­bent leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar when she at­tacked his slate.

He de­fend­ed his fa­ther and his fam­i­ly against her ac­cu­sa­tions of dy­nasty and en­ti­tle­ment pol­i­tics. Bharath said "they" in the UNC knew the "knife and fork In­di­an" term re­al­ly meant "ed­u­cat­ed" In­di­ans and that such peo­ple will have an opin­ion.

"And that's the last thing the UNC lead­er­ship wants - any­one with an opin­ion dif­fer­ent to the leader's," he added.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar's re­mark was a naked dis­play of us­ing caste and class and an­oth­er at­tempt at us­ing race rhetoric. He said most In­di­an par­ents and oth­ers would want to see their chil­dren ex­cel and go on to pro­fes­sions and the days of In­di­an peo­ple be­ing sheep­like and sub­mis­sive were long gone.

Bharath ques­tioned which fa­ther would want to see his daugh­ter labour­ing over a chul­ha, leep­ay­ing the floor or us­ing dat­wan to brush their teeth. He al­so said call­ing peo­ple "neemakharam" is ob­scene.

He asked if peo­ple talk­ing about "knife and fork In­di­an" came to Par­lia­ment via bul­lock cart or BMWs, if they ate "dhal and bath" or ate at the Hy­att or town restau­rant, if they drank dharo or Grey Goose and if they smoked In­di­an Bidis or Co­hi­ba cig­ars.

"Are they wear­ing dhoti and kur­ta or Hugo Boss, us­ing out­side la­trines or porce­lain toi­lets en suite?"

Bharath added, “Am I not who you al­leged to be 'knife and fork' In­di­an and wasn't it said I could have made the dif­fer­ence be­tween win­ning and los­ing the St Joseph seat for UNC and I'm be­ing blamed? In this elec­tion, this is the hypocrisy of the cur­rent lead­er­ship - neck-deep in go­b­ar as Op­po­si­tion and en­joy­ing every minute of it.

"We hard­ly hear the Op­po­si­tion Leader and when we do, she choos­es to vi­cious­ly at­tack mem­bers of her own par­ty. The per­son who lives in a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar palace, owns a fleet of lux­u­ry ve­hi­cles and at­tends a Machel con­cert in a $5,000 pair of boots has at­tacked me for be­ing elit­ist."

He added, “I’m a grand­child of in­den­ture­ship and my par­ents worked hard – like all oth­ers – to se­cure a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life for their chil­dren. My fa­ther, a pro­fes­sion­al per­son, served the peo­ple as elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive for St Au­gus­tine from 1966.

“I stud­ied and worked hard and served as a se­nior ex­ec­u­tive of ma­jor cor­po­ra­tions in Eu­rope. I'm proud of my achieve­ments, just as I'm thrilled about the suc­cess­es of all de­scen­dants of slaves and in­den­tured labour­ers."

Say­ing his fam­i­ly wasn't elit­ist, he de­tailed his wife and chil­dren's work his­to­ry, adding it's hyp­o­crit­i­cal to at­tack suc­cess­ful peo­ple when they were speak­ing of the val­ue of ed­u­ca­tion and es­tab­lish­ing a mod­ern, com­pet­i­tive so­ci­ety.

For­mer UNC MP Fuad Khan, who al­so spoke, re­mind­ed new UNC MPs that what hap­pened to oth­er MPs be­fore will hap­pen to them

"Your turn will come," Khan said.

He urged the new UNC MPs not to go on Face­book and de­monise oth­ers.

Khan said Per­sad-Bisses­sar nev­er al­lowed her MPs such as him­self and oth­ers to sit on the stage for par­ty events but she put na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers in­stead.

“I kept say­ing she will get rid of every MP and bring in the Nat Ex mem­bers for 2020 elec­tions - so said, so done.”