Indo-Trinidadians and Hindus in particular are threatened by ideas that have failed in every country where government used state power to prefer one group.

A black professor has said: “Indian teachers do not teach African children. They put Africans in the back of the class.” I had responded to that slander by asking, “Who are the Indian teachers in Tobago that put children at the back of the class or refuse to teach them?” Tobago is the least performing education district.

Two years ago an Afro-Trinidadian girl came second in the SEA examinations. Hindu teachers at the Robert Village Hindu School taught her. She was also the top student in our Ramayan quiz competition. Her cousin was also on the list of the first hundred and was taught by Hindu teachers. At all Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha schools all children get the same attention.

But Hindus will now suffer from the implementation of the wrong ideas of pseudo intellectuals who are copying failed ideas of black American rabble-rousers. Their policies have resulted in a disaster for Afro-Americans.

“New studies suggest that black males in the US are falling even further behind other groups in health, education and employment. Black Colorado state Senator Peter Groff said the black community needs to do something about black males. Bill Cosby said blacks must stop blaming society for their troubles and start looking at themselves.

“Cosby attacked hip-hop culture and the collapse of the two-parent family. He challenged the black leaders who opposed ‘washing their dirty linen in public.’ Your dirty laundry gets out of school at 2.30 every day. It’s cursing and calling each other n-----. They can’t write. They’re laughing and giggling and going nowhere” (Sunday Guardian, March 6).

The article reported that, “Cosby’s words were welcomed by senior black figures, including Jesse Jackson and Kweisi Mfume, then director of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP).

“Gruff blamed failure of the education system on a lack of role models, and “the anti-intellectualism fostered by black street culture. In a relative sense we are not closing the gap between whites and blacks when you look at the rate of educational and economic progress.”

The role models of the black youth in Trinidad include calypsonians who every year target the Indo-Trinidadian community for stereotyping, kidnaping or vulgar abuse. This libel was sung in the calypso tents while Hindu teachers and parents were working hard for the past three generations to instill a culture of academic excellence into children.

At every level in the Hindu community parents, the schools and children work to get rich rewards. You see it in the results from SEA, CXC, A-Level and the graduation class at UWI. Instead of emulating our success, the simplistic mimicry of black American rhetoric is copied wholesale to influence the Ministry of Education to pursue a disastrous course of preferences.

The adoption of racist criteria for selection of children to access tertiary education in T&T will not improve the quality of education for Afro-Trini children. It will create incentives for anti-intellectual criteria leading to lower standards and segregation.

I had warned there was a plot to downplay the high academic standards for access to medical schools at UWI by introducing high marks for beating pan, and dancing in the Prime Minister’s Best Village Competition. They have developed new criteria to target the Hindu children with three and four distinctions in mathematics and science.

The admission form for the Faculty of Medical Sciences now gives high marks for “demonstrated social awareness.” Hindu children will now have to take time off from study to give voluntary community service or participate in some Cepep project in order to effectively compete for a place at medical school at Mt Hope or Mona in Jamaica.

Our children who have taken part in Ball Vikaas, temple and village activities must now add to these social activities “membership on government committees, sub-committees, working groups or task forces that have implemented policies or brought about changes in any area of endeavour.”

Such criteria mean our children after succeeding at A-Level must first work for the Government before going to medical school. These are revolutionary impositions that remind us of the quota system for Jews to attend medical school in the US in the 20th century.

The new Best Village criteria are wide-ranging. High marks for ceramics, drawing, photography, dance, drama and music. You get marks for sport, chess and debating as well as having work experience to study medicine.

Indo-Trinidadian students are under threat. Our success evokes anger, not emulation. The sober opinions of Bill Cosby, Jesse Jackson and other black leaders are ignored.

Setting up criteria to discriminate against Hindu students will not solve the problem of bad role models and the anti intellectual culture or the lack of proper parenting that explains the poor education results of some children.

SATNARAYAN MAHARAJ is the Secretary General of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha