By Pandita Dr Indrani Rampersad
Trinidad and Tobago remains racially divided at leadership levels (though less so than before), and especially in politics. Some folks are walking our nation backwards in racial harmony. It’s PNM vs UNC flinging an incendiary racial cocktail back and forth as the citizenry duck and take cover.
Minister Camille Regis-Robinson elongated the pronunciation of “Sushila,” the middle name of the Leader of the Opposition (Kamla Persad-Bissessar), in a derisive and contemptuous tone. Her audience snickered and laughed. And PNM’s Laurel Lezama continued with the derision.
I wanted to know what was wrong with the middle name. Many see nothing wrong in calling out a person’s full name, and I agree. However, this is not just about words, but intent, tone, and enunciation.
Persad-Bissessar defiantly shot back, defending her ancestral Hindu name, and asked Regis-Robinson about her African ancestral name while having the name of a slave master. She made further personal attacks.
The Hon Prime Minister Keith Rowley reminded the country of the trauma involved in the American slavery experience of forcing white names on the African slaves and their descendants. The surnames in the West remind us of that African legacy of deep trauma.
Too many Indo-Trinidadians/ Tobagonians grew up with the indignity of their names being butchered and derided from the primary school level and throughout their lives. Not only Indians, but Africans, too, have had scorn heaped on their traditional African names. The First Peoples have largely lost their ancestral names. The Chinese still have their surnames.
The reclamation of traditional African names started a long time back in Trinidad and Tobago, and it continues. It is a long and painful process. First Peoples are also going back to their ancestral names. Many Hindus are voluntarily giving non-Hindu names to their children because of the trauma, low self-esteem, and hegemony associated with their names, whether they are conscious of it or not.
Creolised Trinidad and Tobago uphold Western values and Christianity as the norm to which all should aspire. That history continues. Columnists and the media openly deride Indian and Hindu names, like the recent column of Winford James, wherein it can be argued that he seemingly projected a sexual deficiency in converting the name “Hardik” to “Hard D*#k”.
Other Hindu names have been similarly hate-butchered in media and persons.
This nation needs a psychoanalyst to contextualise our lived experience with a history of colonialism, slavery and indentureship, and to caution about the continued trauma that irresponsible leaders are directly causing to personhood and nation.
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) psychoanalysed the interface between the colonised and the coloniser – a relationship that mutates over time. He explained that the colonised folks “internalised” and “epidermalised” an inferiority complex that made them wish to emulate the white coloniser. Indigenous cultural originality was replaced by that of the white colonisers. So many of us continue to see Western aesthetics as superior to that of the non-Western world.
Language gives power – it was the tool of imperial power. An effective post-colonial voice rejects the world of the coloniser.
While we recognise our different realities, we must transcend the binary thinking that puts us against each other. We are in a different part of history. We should be proud of those who kept their ancestral names, those who were forced to give up theirs and accept another, those who are reclaiming their names, and those who freely adopt from the cultures around us. Our discourse has to cease being violent, even as we exchange truths from varied perspectives. This can happen only with mutual respect and a commitment to truth and harmony.
My recommendation is to look into the eyes of children and their innocent faces and wonder if they all don’t want the same kinds of material and spiritual security, and wonder why adults mess up their world early in their lives.
In conclusion, I will give zero marks to Camille Regis-Robinson, Kamla Persad-Bissessar and Laurel Lezama. Back in time, you would have been sent to the back of the class, but nowadays you will be sent to counselling and sensitivity training in race relations, identity, and the power of the name. Merle Hodge is the best for this training.
