Dear Editor,
Because I went to a government school in a classic multi-ethnic area and name-calling based on ethnicity was instilled in most students – with Afro children wearing Biblical names like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Mary and Maria (and not Judas and Jezebel) which in many instances would have been more appropriate, I have so far found this Camille/Kamla oratorical brawl a trivial non-issue not deserving of a glance from me…until now.
I was there for the prequel of this bit of shenanigan in the parliament when the debate for anointing Indian Arrival Day a holiday was taking place and PNM’s Vincent Lasse was one of their less pedigreed pit bull assigned to attack the advocates of making the day a holiday. He damned the idea on the basis that Indians had become so Anglicized/Christianised that many of us now had English names as for instance, one MP, he singled out (and watching pointedly at Sudama) had mutated from Totaram to Trevor.
Of course the PNM side of the parliament erupted in cacophonous, sarcastic hee-hawing, to which Sudama glibly but camly replied in his inimitable, deadpan, sneering style: “And what is your African name?” a sing-song quip to which the UNC MPs and all of the visitor’s section now guffawed as if this was a John Agitation moment.
So Kamla in her retort to Camille has not done something that is a first and Camille provoking it just like Lasse years ago deserves to get what she went in search of.