Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

Part II

Most of the In­di­an em­i­grants were con­sid­ered il­lit­er­ate, al­though many of them could read and write their own In­di­an lan­guage. Un­til about 1900, at least the Hin­dus did not have for­mal­ly trained pun­dits. They did not have suf­fi­cient mon­ey to build their mandirs (places of wor­ship) and lim­it­ed copies of a few scrip­tures like The Tul­si­das Ra­mayana. It is re­al­ly a mir­a­cle that out of the torn ends of so­cial in­sti­tu­tions, we have been able to weave out a new Hin­du so­cial fab­ric.

At an In­di­an Ar­rival Day cel­e­bra­tion held on the grounds of Tu­na­puna Hin­du School on May 30, 1999, I said, “The Ma­ha Sab­ha will file a Class Ac­tion Writ seek­ing $2 bil­lion com­pen­sa­tion for prop­er­ties seized from Hin­dus be­tween 1845-1945.”

Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, the State re­fused to recog­nise Hin­du mar­riages al­though they were per­formed by pun­dits and wit­nessed by en­tire vil­lages.

The Gov­ern­ment in­sist­ed that on­ly Chris­t­ian mar­riages or mar­riages per­formed at the War­den’s Of­fice were legal­ly valid. The mar­riage cer­e­mo­ny was used as a tool by the State to con­vert thou­sands of Hin­dus to Chris­tian­i­ty.

For one hun­dred years Hin­du prop­er­ty own­ers were de­nied the right to pass on their wealth to their chil­dren when they died. By deny­ing state recog­ni­tion of the mar­riage, the sur­viv­ing spouse had no le­gal right to claim the prop­er­ty.

The State ‘stole’ the es­tate. Al­though no prop­er au­dit of the amount of prop­er­ty stolen ex­ists, the Ma­ha Sab­ha puts the fig­ure as at least two bil­lion dol­lars at present day prices. Many Hin­dus of this coun­try are poor be­cause their grand­par­ents were robbed. A great in­jus­tice was done which is still not recog­nised.

There are lec­tur­ers at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies who are fa­mil­iar with the facts but have so far not as­signed stu­dents to in­ves­ti­gate those ‘crimes against hu­man­i­ty’ which were com­mit­ted against Hin­dus in Trinidad.

The on­ly lec­tur­er who grudg­ing­ly ad­mit­ted at the time that the Ma­ha Sab­ha claim had mer­it was Pro­fes­sor Sel­wyn Ryan, who wrote in the Sun­day Ex­press on June 27, 1999: “Ac­cord­ing to a Ma­ha Sab­ha spokesman, there was a pe­ri­od in our his­to­ry be­tween 1845 and 1945 when mar­riages solem­nised by Hin­du priests were not rec­og­nized by the State and wid­ows could not claim the prop­er­ty of their late hus­band; nei­ther could their chil­dren be­cause they were not (legal­ly) recog­nised.”

Ryan went on to ad­mit: “I am ad­vised some (prop­er­ty) were in fact sold and pro­ceeds used to build or fund the Tacarigua Or­phan­age.”

This was al­so sup­port­ed by UWI his­to­ry lec­tur­er, Dr Brins­ley Sama­roo, who agreed that the ex­pro­pri­a­tions did take place.

He said on a TTT tele­vi­sion pro­gramme host­ed by Rev Glas­gow Cuffie that he had ev­i­dence and knew ac­tu­al prop­er­ties that were claimed by the State.

The Ma­ha Sab­ha was con­demned by colum­nists and in news­pa­per ed­i­to­ri­als. Even then prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, when asked about the state­ment that two bil­lion dol­lars should be paid as repa­ra­tions, re­spond­ed thus: “It should not be ex­pect­ed that I must re­ply to every fool­ish state­ment.”

His­to­ry is about facts and to­day the gen­er­al pub­lic, as well as the fu­ture stu­dents of his­to­ry must be grate­ful to the Ma­ha Sab­ha for ex­pos­ing a great in­jus­tice.

Those crimes and in­jus­tices have im­pact­ed neg­a­tive­ly on scores of thou­sands of our peo­ple.

The par­ti­san over-val­u­a­tion of the pain of some peo­ples must not blind us to the suf­fer­ing of oth­er groups.

At a UN World Con­fer­ence Against Racism in Dur­ban, South Africa, from Au­gust 31 to Sep­tem­ber 7, 2001, the in­jus­tices of the At­lantic slave trade, as well as of in­den­ture­ship were top­ics on the agen­da. At one of the ple­nary ses­sions, the in­jus­tice of the 100 years of steal­ing Hin­du prop­er­ty in Trinidad was dis­cussed. Be­fore the con­fer­ence closed Bar­ba­dos, Be­lize, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Cu­ba, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Guyana, Haiti, Ja­maica, Suri­name, and Trinidad and To­ba­go is­sued this joint state­ment:

“The World Con­fer­ence should ac­knowl­edge the un­told suf­fer­ings of mil­lions of men, women, and chil­dren as a re­sult of slav­ery, the Transat­lantic Slave Trade, in­den­ture­ship and oth­er forms of servi­tude, and calls up­on states that prac­tised, ben­e­fit­ed or en­riched them­selves from these ac­tiv­i­ties to ex­press their apol­o­gy ex­plic­it­ly to the vic­tims of these acts and their con­se­quences.

“These ten re­gion­al coun­tries al­so de­mand­ed repa­ra­tions from coun­tries that en­riched them­selves from slav­ery, the Transat­lantic Slave Trade and in­den­ture­ship to pro­vide repa­ra­tions to coun­tries and peo­ples af­fect­ed.”

It is grat­i­fy­ing to note that the Gov­ern­ment of T&T specif­i­cal­ly recog­nis­es the in­hu­man­i­ty and in­jus­tices which were com­mit­ted against Africans and In­di­ans dur­ing slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship. Our then high com­mis­sion­er to Nige­ria, His Ex­cel­len­cy Mr Patrick Ed­wards led the T&T del­e­ga­tion to this his­toric con­fer­ence in South Africa.

Next week: Part 3