Kamla’s second coming: a blessing
By Dr Selwyn R. Cudjoe
May 31, 2025
SOMETHING extraordinary happened two Fridays ago. Kamla Persad-Bissessar—the Mother of our Nation, as I call her—went to Woodford Square to thank her supporters. Her supporters from Tobago chanted: “Thank you, Kamla, the Mother of our Nation. We love you, Mother.”
Such adulation signalled that Trinidad and Tobago is evolving to another stage of social development. It reminds me of “The Chambered Nautilus”, a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Snr, that explores themes of growth and change. The last stanza reads: “Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul /As the swift seasons roll! / Leave thy low-vaulted past! / Let each new temple, nobler than the last, / Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, / Till thou at length art free, / Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!”
Last Sunday I wrote that the UNC will be in power for the next ten years. A Facebook post responded: “UNC and its previous incarnations have never been voted into consecutive terms. History is a great teacher. Learn from it instead of indulging in wishful thinking.”
This reader, like so many others, may be missing some important things about Persad-Bissessar’s second coming. Although she took her oath of office on the Constitution, Hinduism plays an important part in her life. She says: “I also have my Christian learning and beliefs and was raised as a Spiritual Shouter Baptist.” (Private communication.)
There are four stages of life, or ashramas—abodes of identification with an ideal—in Hinduism: Bhramacharya (celibate student), Grihastha (householder), Vanaprastha (retired), and Sanayasa (renunciation). These provide a framework for a meaningful and purposeful life. Persad-Bissessar is in the fourth stage of Hindu life.
A sanyasini (a woman who reaches this stage) is free to devote herself entirely to her spiritual growth. Srimati Kamla reminds us that a sanyasini does not have “to wear a robe and go preaching or to retreat from the difficulties or the burdens of life. Sannyas is an ideal of heart. It is the life of subjective freedom, embracing all in consciousness of the Self with love and wisdom. When one lives in the consciousness of God one becomes a sanyasini, having totally renounced selfish desires”. (Frontiers of the Spirit.)
Mahatma Gandhi believed the most important principle of the Bhagavad Gita is the idea of desirelessness which culminates in the attainment of self-realisation or freedom. Such detachment from worldly things allows Persad-Bissessar to devote herself to those things that are in the country’s best interest. This is why she proclaimed in her swearing-in speech: “My role as your newly-elected Prime Minister is to love you and to do everything possible to make you and your loved ones happy.”
Critics who predict Persad-Bissessar will fail do not understand that, like all Trinbagonians, she is evolving to another stage of spiritual and social development. It’s noteworthy that she has clung to the Children’s Life Fund programme and seeks to expose the wrongdoings of the previous government.
Curtis Cuffie, Maxie Cuffie’s younger brother, voted for Maxie in 2015 and Foster Cummings in the 2020 election. He voted for Phillip Watts, the UNC candidate, in 2025. He told me: “I cried when I heard Kamla’s final election speech and her inaugural address.”
I asked him what touched him so much about her speech. He replied: “She was compassionate when she spoke. She said PNM had vilified her for nine years but she transcended that. Such vilification will make her a better Prime Minister. The last nine years was a government of darkness. The next five will be a Government of light.”
Curtis liked Persad-Bissessar’s lighthouse analogy: “Beyond the lighthouse in Port of Spain, there is a country with real people, real feelings, real dreams, and real ambitions. This is our country, too. I dedicate my term to the forgotten people of his nation.”
Curtis and his family reside in Todds Road, part of which falls within the La Horquetta-Talparo constituency, the other part in Caroni Central. Light, as Curtis may not know, holds profound symbolic value in the Hindu religion. It represents knowledge, purity, and the divine; the triumph of good over evil and the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment.
Curtis’ joy also occurred at a mundane and sensuous level that Blaka Dan’s calypso “Blessing” captured. It was a blessing that Cummings and the PNM lost the election. He identified particularly with Blaka Dan’s resurrection moment: “De day yuh leave me was a Blessing / Ah started to see my way / ...What I thought was a tragedy, was a blessing.”
We may have a Government of light for the next five years. Curtis is still singing: “Hands up high / Ah wining low / Glad you go. / I don’t want you no more.”
Whether we wine down low or high on Indian Arrival Day, every Trinibagonian should know something about Hinduism.
—Prof Cudjoe's e-mail address is scudjoe@wellesley.edu. He can be reached @ProfessorCudjoe.
Share your views here...
The Slave Master of Trinidad by Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
|
