By Sue-Ann Wayow
PROFESOR Theodore Lewis’ recent article printed in the Newsday with focus on Indian Arrival Day shows clear biasness against the persons of East Indian descent in Trinidad and Tobago.
Member of Parliament for Chaguanas West Dinesh Rambally said on Tuesday that with respect to equal education opportunities for all, those persons of African heritage were pioneering in the education system long before East Indians were even allowed to have a proper schooling.
Rambally who is also the legal advisor to the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS), one of the major religious educational school boards, gave a history of the education system in a statement to the media following the publication of the article.
He is also challenging Minister of Education Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly to refute the claims made by Prof Lewis.
Rambally said Prof Lewis was living in a fantasy world where T&T was a mini-America in which the East Indians, an underclass of field labourers for most of their history, have somehow taken the place of white Americans as the holders of unsurpassed privilege and perpetrators of institutional racism.
Prof Lewis began his article, “Schooling here is an extension of party politics. As a result, black children attend the worse schools. They are excluded from the best schools. For example, when Samsung offered the People’s Partnership the opportunity to convert two secondary schools into model technology-driven schools, then prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar chose Lakshmi Hindu High School, and Iere Presbyterian, her alma mater, as the models. No government schools. Just UNC-affiliated schools.”
He knocked the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) placement system and called the 20% allowance of religious educational school boards in which they can choose who attends their schools, a racket.
Listing several prestigious schools, Prof Lewis wrote, “Black children can get in if they can play sports.”
However, Rambally stated, “The African intellectual tradition in T&T predates the arrival of East Indians and had grown from strength to strength from Jean Baptiste Philip in the 1820s through Michel Maxwell Phillip, JJ Thomas, Emmanuel Mzumbo Lazare, the McShines, Henry Sylvester Williams, our first Prime Minister Dr Eric Eustace Williams, Professor Ken Julien and Prof Lewis himself, to name just a few.
“Through much of this period, the East Indians languished in illiteracy in the fields and barrack yards, with virtually no educational opportunities until the arrival of the Dr John Morton’s Presbyterian mission in the 1860s.
“Even then, opportunities were limited, and it was not until the mid 20th century that the first Hindu and Muslim denominational schools came into being—yes, these included the “cow shed” schools that were ridiculed by the supercilious Dr. Williams in the 1960s.”
He added that since 1962, the country and since then to now, T&T had only two prime ministers of East Indian descent who served for a total of 11 years which was “a ridiculously short time to establish the pro-Indian institutional racism alleged by the Professor.”
These two were Basdeo Panday and current Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
The Professor claims that children of African decsent were excluded from the best schools were hurled without any supporting evidence.
“It escapes the Professor that the SEA marking system does not include caste and wealth identifiers,” Rambally said.
He stated, “ I challenge the Honorable Minister of Education to confirm or refute the claims made in Prof. Lewis’ article. The SDMS is unaware of any method by which any East Indian entity is controlling her Ministry and operating a stealth apartheid system therein. If the grave accusations against an entire race contained in Prof Lewis’ article cannot be justified by the Minister, she must then justify the Professor’s continued control over the rewriting of our history.”
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