Tag Archives: Indians

England, General T&T, India, International, Sports

The British Re-Conquest of India

By Stephen Kangal
November 11, 2022

Stephen KangalThe Indian performance last night at the Adelaide Oval was a monumental anti-climax breaking the hearts of more than a billion devotees and 45m in the diaspora by their lack-luster approach to batting and hanging their bats to dry outside the off stump and unable to attack the English quite ordinary bowling.

Honestly from the very first over I thought India would have been a walk over for the Brits on a pitch that held no horrors for the pulverising pair of Hales and Butler who scored freely and indeed majestically as if they were playing against an English County pick up side.
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Elections, General T&T, Labour, PNM, Politics, Russia, UNC

Show me your leader

By Raffique Shah
August 29, 2022

Raffique ShahIt’s not so much that we have little or nothing to celebrate on the 60th anniversary of our Independence from Britain, as so many who swear they are patriots, but whose patriotism swings with the pendulum of their political party’s fortunes, which almost always are linked to their personal fortunes.

It’s more that our democracy has been carved up into near-equal but uneven parts in such manner, to misquote Irish poet William Yeats in his near-prophetic masterpiece, “The Second Coming”, “…Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned/The best lack all conviction/While the worst/Are full of passionate intensity…”
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General T&T, Racism Watch

The Indentures Did Not Affect the Wages of the “Apprentices”

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By Stephen Kangal
June 14, 2022

Stephen KangalIndians were recruited by ” arkatias” and transported to work on the cane-fields of Caroni in Trinidad because after a period of keen observation and analysis by the occupying British and based on their experience in sugar cultivation in India (UP and Bihar) and taking into account the extreme famine of the 1850’s it was decided that perhaps with the advice of the established East India Company, Indians were going to be the most effective and economic type of unskilled labour to increase sugar production and achieve increasing efficiencies.

This was a business decision taken by the planters.
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General T&T, Racism Watch

Whiter shade of pale

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By Raffique Shah
May 23, 2022

Raffique ShahI have grown accustomed to watching a scene in front of me—teenage boys kicking what life there was in a long-expired football, others of similar age and background carrying on an animated discussion on a subject I could not determine from where I stood, and yet others glued to their communication devices, maybe “chatting” with friends, maybe conducting extensive research into issue—I don’t know.
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COVID-19, General T&T, Health, NJAC

Death, Be Not Proud

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
January 10, 2022

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeDeath has stalked our land this past year with particular fury. More than 3,000 have died from Covid-19; 448 people died from homicides in 2021 and, blissfully, there were only 76 road fatalities—the lowest number since 1957. Yet, we only talk about death in mournful terms rather than what it might mean to those who are still alive.
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Elections, General T&T, PNM, Politics, Racism Watch, UNC

‘These PNM cockroaches keep populating’; Ramsaran’s racist rant

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By Letters to the Editor
August 09, 2020 – wired868.com

PeopleNaila Ramsaran: ‘Let us the hardworking UNC supporters continue to pay taxes and mind the loafers that support the PNM… I hope [Prime Minister Dr Keith] Rowley starts putting contraceptives in their water supply yes because these cockroaches keep populating and the only thing they know to do is vote…’
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General T&T, PNM, Politics, Race and Identity, Racism Watch, UNC

Contradictions & Counterfactuals – Pt 3

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 20, 2018

“…a state could never have been born without surplus.” —Yanis Varoufakis

PART 1 — PART 2 — PART 3

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeReading Ralph Maraj and Kamal Persad’s contributions, one would think that Eric Williams and the PNM were the worst things that ever happened to Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). They seem to suggest that if only Badase Sagan Maraj and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had won the 1956 general election T&T would have been a paradise.
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Africa, General T&T, Labour, Law, PNM, Politics, Race and Identity, Racism Watch, UNC

Contradictions & Counterfactuals – Pt 2

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By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
February 13, 2018

“…a state could never have been born without surplus.” —Yanis Varoufakis

PART 1 — PART 2

Dr. Selwyn R. CudjoeIn the nineteenth century Trinidad saw the first massive giveaway of lands and bonuses to the Indians in lieu of their passages to India. Those options were never available to Africans. This was the first step in the systematic dispossession of Africans in the land to which they had been brought. Few of us seem to remember it.

Fast-forward to one hundred and thirty years (around the year 2003) when a PNM government engineered another massive giveaway of lands, which is taking place in front of our eyes under the faulty premise that Indians had the first preference because they farmed the lands. This was/is strange logic since these lands belong to all nationals.
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Gender, General T&T, Hindu, India, Politics

Whither India?

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By Raffique Shah
May 25, 2014

Raffique ShahWith Narendra Modi taking office as Prime Minister of India following a convincing victory in the month-long general elections, the world’s largest parliamentary democracy, India, stands at critical crossroads.

The close to 200 million voters who propelled the controversial Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power comprise in the main Hindu nationalists who see the country as Hindu first, anything else afterwards. But they were not the decisive elements that drove the Indian National Congress and the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty out of power in a humiliating rout.
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Africa, General T&T, India, Race and Identity

Question of Origins and Indian Arrival

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By Dr. Kwame Nantambu
May 31, 2011

Dr. Kwame NantambuIn the aftermath of the celebration of Indian Arrival Day on 30 May 2011 in T&T, this article focuses on certain origins and the historical dynamics of Indian Arrival. These origins include the Asian-Chinese Dynasty, “Ganges” River, Indian Originality and the label “Indentured Servants.”
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