Reversing a colonial mind requires certain essentials for self-healing our enslaved mentality through a decolonized education which will determine how we behave socially and politically. The essentials of having political power will give rise to producing the brand of self-awareness that will shape a given race or society.
On the passing of Dr. Brinsley Samaroo, a well known historian in the Caribbean, much has been written about him by other prominent academia about his role in the history of Trinidad and especially on slavery and indentureship. While few Indians are willing to take on the task of history vs the rewards of big check from being a doctor, we risk leaving our Indic and Hindu civilization open to social and political attacks because those areas are not heavily defended. So, in that area credit is due to where historians of Indian origin do dedicate themselves to this undertaking.
While I share deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Dr. Samaroo on his passing we in modern day must take stock of some of the damage caused by these early “Indian” historians writing from a far left socialist, Marxist practically communist point of view. Such ideology left Indians more prone to attack from anti-Hindu forces and those racist towards Indians. To do this, my part on Dr. Brinsley Samaroo is to try to understand his mindset which dictated his behavior politically and socially.
In Trinidad, and like most colonial countries even India within our academia, Indians was and still is colonial Christian Marxist and Communist educated. These primary ideologies were hostile to anything remotely pro-Indian and especially Hindu. Their twisted narratives on history and religion leave Indians especially the Hindus vulnerable to attack socially and politically by downplaying Indian hardships, suffering from racism and bigotry and making them the villains of society who needed to civilize just as they were trying to civilize the African or the Native American. The evidence of this still plague Indians in Trinidad. Indians in Trinidad and the rest of the Caribbean face bureaucratic bigotry and discrimination based on race and religion and yet find themselves having to apologize and finance the burdens of other races while silently suffering. This comes from not having historians, academics and other scholars of the humanities with an Indic Dharmic point of view but one crafted for them by their masters that continue to focus on divisive topics concerning Indians.
The questions I always ask include why a pool of Christian educated Indians, some remain Christians and others revert to their Hindu heritage? In the case of Dr. Samroo a son of Trinidad who knew my father very well and even grew up together in the same village, they both represent the two types of Indians in Caribbean society. Both are of cocoa and coffee heritage, and both were Presbyterian-educated Indians. However, unlike Dr. Samaroo my father remained a practicing Hindu. Unlike a lot of other Indian intellectuals of the old days my father did not convert and leave his Hindu religion to progress faster under the Black Anglo-Saxxon Presbyterian elites of Trinidad. My father did not abandon Hinduism for a comfy government job with PNM. In fact, anyone choosing to remain Hindu and as any Indian Christian or Muslim knows you will face discrimination as long your hair was straight with Caucasian features.
So, my question still needs to be answered as to why such intelligent historians as Dr.Samroo did not revert to his Sanatanist [ Hindu ] culture. In the case of my father, it hard to do with his parental input that safeguarded him from a slave religion and not looking for an easy slice of bread.
In the case of Dr. Brinsley Samaroo not reverting to his Hindu culture appears much to with his education and his environments. I am in no way questioning Dr. Samaroo’s intellectual capacity or his hard-earned degrees but the damaged inflicted on the Indians he might have thought he was educating and even “saving” albeit from a Christian Marxist point of view laced with a hidden agenda to destroy the Indian way of life and make Hindus ashamed of their religion.
So here’s what I do know about Dr. Samaroo so Indians especially the next generation can properly assess the early “Indian” historians of Trinidad in the next generation and decide for themselves if the contributions they made did more damage or good. After leaving the plantations for his first taste of a colonial education from the Presbyterian elementary school to the Canadian Indian Missionary School now called a Naprima High School to higher education or his first degree in India is what had the most impact on Dr. Samaroo’s mindset. Now one might think but the man studied in India how then could he have been led astray and colonized. For the last seventy years India has been worse plagued than us in the Caribbean with schools and institutions rife and rampant with anit-Hindu, anti-India agenda with divisive policies and politics supported by the Gandhi-Nehru gang set to destroy India and Hinduism like a bomb from the inside. This carnage goes on today and Hindus are now facing the barrel of the gun in India, at a crossroads do we push back, or do we silently exit the planet demonized as the villains? India may have been the most anti-Hindu swamp he could have gotten an education from. He would have been better off even at Cambridge.
Dr. Samaroo’s education in India came out of the Nehruvian Socialists Secularists atmosphere just like the modern-day educators such as Romilla Thapar, Shashi Tharoor and Arundhati Roy who hated Hindutva or reverting to Indian Civilizations. While these Socialists Indians feign an Indian cause by appearing to be anti-white anti-British and decrying what colonizers did, they are deathly silent on 700 years of the bloody brutal Arabs invasions of Bharat / India. They also stay silent on the Christian missionaries and their militant approach to conversion in India or the genocide of Hindus in Kashmir, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They are silent on the current genocide of the Meitei Hindus by Kuki Christians in Manipur state India, happening as I write this article. Under the Gandhis for the next 70 years, the Hindus of India would see a decline in their rights taken away through a proxy war they labelled as secularism.
Similarly, Dr. Samaroo returning to Trinidad armed with his PhD in History demonstrated his dislike of White Colonialism but embracing his White God with an Afro-Centric Socialists blend. It was tit for tat. Instead of apologizing and kissing the feet of Arab invaders Indians began to swap with their Afro rulers. Dr. Samaroo while mixing with Indians was abhorrent to the Sananti ways or Hindu culture. Dr. Samaroo told me personally time and again he is a Presbyterian Hindu or “Pres-Bindu” as he called himself and preferred a Cuban style communist government.
The leftist’s environment and the dependence on the PNM – government salary, charity and opportunities may have caused Dr. Samaroo not to address contemporary political and cultural issues affecting the Indian Race in Trinidad. Had it not been for an ill-education against Indians our community could have used the brilliant minds of many early historians like Dr. Samroo. Associating with leftists’ intellects like historian and lecturer as Bridget Brereton – UWI he felt that Indians in Trinidad did not suffer as much as Blacks during the colonial time, and, therefore, Indians can only play a supporting role in the politics of Trinidad. This kind of concept that Dr. Brinsley Emeritus Samaroo preached that Indians did not suffer as blacks may be one of the reasons why Indians remain a politically defeated race in Trinidad. Numerous so-called intellectuals sitting in UWI continue to think like this and none have found themselves off the anti-Indian anti-Hindu rat race including the top echelons of our government and the opposition UNC. Hence, this is why even when UNC is elected, they would rather leave Indians in the dust and spend time uplifting everyone else because what suffering, and problems do Indians have reach in your pockets and help yourself. The Indian drives a BMW so the Indian doesn’t need a government job or to fix his village road.
Although, Dr. Samaroo did immense research on the Indian equations during the colonial time, he intentionally avoids discussing or researching Systemic Racisms
against Indians in Trinidad. Historians like him continue to focus on the old British colonial dystopia rather than our present Indian condition. In conclusions, I ask, how an eminent intellectual like Dr. Brinsley Emeritus Samaroo can dislike WHITE COLONIALISMS BUT EMBRACE A WHITE GOD AND AFRICAN SUPERIORITY?
Jai Shri Ram,
VASSAN RAMRACHA.