SAMAROO, BRINSLEY
Retired Professor @ Independent
Bio
Prof. Brinsley Samaroo is a retired Professor of History, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. He has served as senator, minister and member of Parliament in the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. He has written extensively on Indo-Trinbagonians and descendants of Indians across the Caribbean. He has been a regular presenter at conferences across the Caribbean, India, UK, and the USA. His iconic publications include the jointly edited volumes The Construction of an Indo-Caribbean Diaspora and Across Dark Waters: Ethnicity and Indian Identity in the Caribbean. His recent publications include The Art of Garnet Ifill: Glimpses of the Sugar Industry (2015), and The Price of Conscience: Howard Nankivell and Labour Unrest in the Caribbean in 1937 and 1938 (2015). His forthcoming publications include books on Eric Williams (2022) and Adrian Cola Rienzi (2022).
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Social Media
Panel
Seepersad Naipaul’s Trinidad
Presentation
Seepersad Naipaul as Political Commentator
The broad range of Seepersad Naipaul’s journalism and creative writing includes extensive political commentary. His political writing is particularly important as it relates to the entry of the East Indian community into national life. Seepersad spent much time among the Indians documenting their lives in its various modes. In Port-of-Spain he talked to the grass-cutters who eked out a miserable existence in ‘Pavementdom.’ In Central Trinidad he did his best to discourage those Indians who wanted to return to India. Equally significant were his detailed and accurate accounts of the operation of the panchayat system. Beside panchayats, another device used to encourage popular participation in local government was the setting up of a system of Local Road Boards wherein citizens with regular income or property could be elected to preside over roads and other pathways in their area. Seepersad took a special interest in the promotion of the activities of these boards. A final public issue which caught Seepersad’s crusading spirit was his detailed reporting of the gradual emergence of the East Indian politician. This he did by tracing the career of Sarran Teelucksingh (1889-1952) who in 1933 was elected as the representative for Caroni for the third time.