(Trinidad Guardian) Dr Neil Parsan, T&T’s ambassador to Washington, has been reported on an official Web site as saying the local East Indian community is the “most well-to-do and culturally strong and progressive ethnic group in the uniquely plural society of T&T.” The remark, contained in a speech, posted on the embassy’s Web site, www.ttembassy.org, and delivered in New York, has caused offence both at home and abroad.
Parsan said he was addressing members of the Indian diaspora at a function by the Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin on November 7 in New York. With the exception of Sat Maharaj, secretary general of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, those interviewed by the T&T Guardian, including Selwyn Cudjoe, president of the National Association for the Empowerment of African People, disapproved.
PNM MP Dr Amery Browne and Khafra Kambon of the Emancipation Support Committee also did not agree with Parsan. In response, the Washington DC envoy said the offending lines in his speech were from a first draft and were deleted. He said in the speech he delivered, those lines were left out.
He added: “Usually, I would sit and edit my speech before I deliver it. It is the first draft with the lines in question that was posted on the T&T Embassy’s Web site.” Up to yesterday evening, it was still online. Parsan said the only part from the paragraph that he kept was that East Indians were “the largest numerical representation in the entire Caribbean.”
Asked if he was not racist then, Parsan replied: “Absolutely not! My wife is a black woman.” Asked if he had dougla (mixed race) children, he said: “I have a daughter. What’s the fuss about?” He expressed disbelief that in his whole speech on the struggle of East Indians for freedom, those few lines would have been singled out for criticism. “They should applauded the achievements of Indians,” he added.
Parsan, at the end of the online version of the speech, also stated: “I stand here today as a proud national in a cosmopolitan society. In our land, we have people drawn from a multitude of races, ethnic origins and religious denominations, where culture is employed as a tool for managing diversity in a plural society.”
Cudjoe, a professor at Wellesley College,Massachusetts, said Parsan’s statement was one of those “extraordinarily silly things.” He said East Indians were a formidable force in T&T but so were Africans. He said Parsan was incorrect to conclude East Indians were the largest numerical representation in the Caribbean and showed figures which indicated Africans also had a pretty good standing.
