Indian High Commissioner under fire over Emancipation Day event

The Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee is con­sid­er­ing ask­ing In­dia to with­draw its High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Dr Pradeep Singh Ra­jpuro­hit, af­ter crit­i­cis­ing the de­ci­sion to sched­ule an Open House for mem­bers of the In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty and di­as­po­ra on Eman­ci­pa­tion Day.

Dr Asha Kam­bon, di­rec­tor of pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion at the com­mit­tee, said the de­ci­sion by the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion was “very dis­ap­point­ing” and showed what she de­scribed as a lack of knowl­edge and un­der­stand­ing of the coun­try to which the High Com­mis­sion­er was as­signed.

She said the mat­ter went be­yond the sched­ul­ing of an event and could af­fect the so­cial co­he­sion that many have worked to build in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“We were pen­ning, and may still pen, that let­ter re­quest­ing his with­draw­al be­cause his in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty is sig­nif­i­cant, and it could in­deed de­crease the so­cial co­he­sion in the so­ci­ety that many of us have strug­gled to build,” Kam­bon said.

The con­tro­ver­sy arose af­ter the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion an­nounced an “Open House for the In­di­an Com­mu­ni­ty and Di­as­po­ra Mem­bers” sched­uled for Au­gust 1, the day Trinidad and To­ba­go cel­e­brat­ed the eman­ci­pa­tion of en­slaved Africans. The High Com­mis­sion lat­er resched­uled the event to Au­gust 8, stat­ing that Au­gust 1 was al­ready a pub­lic hol­i­day. But many not­ed it al­so came af­ter pub­lic back­lash on so­cial me­dia.

Kam­bon said she was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­ap­point­ed be­cause, based on what was re­port­ed pub­licly, the resched­ul­ing ap­peared to have tak­en place with­out any ac­knowl­edge­ment of Eman­ci­pa­tion Day.

“That’s very trag­ic be­cause, of course, the his­to­ry of eman­ci­pa­tion in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean is that at the end of that long strug­gle for the dig­ni­ty and the free­dom of peo­ple who were en­slaved.”

Kam­bon said the abo­li­tion of slav­ery changed the na­ture of labour in the Caribbean, as colo­nial pow­ers could no longer bring peo­ple in­to the re­gion as en­slaved per­sons.

She said his­to­ry “must be re­spect­ed and re­gard­ed by every­one who has a part to play in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

“The In­di­an High Com­mis­sion has had a long pe­ri­od of es­tab­lish­ment here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and we at the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee have al­ways had an ex­cel­lent re­la­tion­ship with the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion,” she said.

She stressed that the con­cern was not about the High Com­mis­sion host­ing an event for mem­bers of the In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty or di­as­po­ra, but about choos­ing Eman­ci­pa­tion Day as the date.

For­mer tourism, cul­ture and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell had al­so crit­i­cised the orig­i­nal date, writ­ing to In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di re­quest­ing a re­view of the con­duct of High Com­mis­sion­er Ra­jpuro­hit.

In his let­ter, Mitchell said African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day was “not an or­di­nary na­tion­al pub­lic hol­i­day” but a day mark­ing the abo­li­tion of slav­ery and ho­n­our­ing “the strug­gle, sac­ri­fice and re­silience of gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple who were de­nied their free­dom.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the high com­mis­sion’s right to en­gage the In­di­an di­as­po­ra, Mitchell said the con­cern was the de­ci­sion to hold the event on “the one na­tion­al hol­i­day that car­ries unique his­tor­i­cal and emo­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance for a large seg­ment of the Trinidad and To­ba­go pop­u­la­tion.”

“There were 364 oth­er days on which such an event could have been held with­out cre­at­ing the ap­pear­ance that the sig­nif­i­cance of African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day was be­ing over­looked or di­min­ished,” he wrote.