Brinsley Samaroo
Brinsley Samaroo was a Trinidad and Tobago historian and former politician who served as the Minister of Local Government and Decentralisation and the Minister of Food Production under the National Alliance for Reconstruction government.
Early life and education
Samaroo was born on 14 April 1940 in Rio Claro, in south Trinidad, the youngest of seven children of George and Myna Samaroo. Both George and Myna were the children of indentured Indians. Samaroo grew up in Ecclesville, outside Rio Claro, where his grandfather, Gobindaye Samaroo, had worked for Canadian Presbyterian missionaries who developed the settlement.Samaroo won a scholarship to attend Naparima College, where he received his secondary education. At Naparima he lived in the dormitories along with other students who lived outside San Fernando. He became close friends with Kenneth Ramchand, a fellow "dormitory boy".
In 1960 Samaroo applied for a scholarship to study in India. He was awarded a scholarship by the government of India and attended the Delhi University from 1961 to 1965, where he received his B.A. and M.A.
Samaroo won a Commonwealth Scholarship to study at Birbeck College, University of London. He defended his dissertation in 1969.
Career
Samaroo returned to Trinidad and Tobago in 1965 and taught at Naparima College for a year.Academics
Samaroo served on the faculty of the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine from 1968 until 1986, and again from 1992 to 2005. He was department chair twice. From 2005 to 2010 he was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Trinidad and Tobago.Samaroo played a "pioneering role" in the field of Indo-Caribbean history; historian Bridget Brereton describes Samaroo was "unquestionably" the leader of this group. His work in the field includes two collections, India in the Caribbean and Across Dark Waters which he co-edited with David Dabydeen, and The Construction of an Indo-Caribbean Diaspora with Anne-Marie Bissessar.
Samaroo admired labour leader Adrian Cola Rienzi, and his 2022 biography Adrian Cola Rienzi: The life and times of and Indo-Caribbean progressive, was described by Brereton as "perhaps his most important book".
Historian Richard Drayton also describes Samaroo's work as creating a "global conversation" with collaborators in Fiji, Mauritius, Natal and India to explore the common experience of Indian indentureship among the descendants of the of the Girimitayas. Samaroo also published work on the Presbyterian Indo-Trinidadians and on African and Indian Muslims in Trinidad and Guyana.
Samaroo edited the final manuscript of former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams, for publication. The manuscript, which Williams had worked on over the course of the final decade of his life, was published in 2022 as The Blackest thing in Slavery was not the Black Man. Although at odds with Williams politically during the period when the book was written, and later belonged to political parties opposed to the People's National Movement which Williams founded, Samaroo was "fascinated" with Williams' life and work. Drayton described Samaroo's editing of the book "sympathetic and respectful".
Activism
As a lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Samaroo was supportive of the Black Power movement, working quietly to aid grassroots groups, while trying to defuse Indo-Trinidadians' fears about the movement. David Nicholls described Samaroo and other Indo-Trinidadians at UWI as supporting the goals of the movement "without committing themselves totally to it". According to Richard Drayton, he also "covertly assist" the National Union of Freedom Fighters.After the closure of Caroni (1975) Limited, national sugar company, Samaroo was able to rescue the company's archives, which were in the process of being discarded as "old paper". He also worked to establish a sugar museum and sugar village at Sevilla House, part of the defunct company, but was unsuccessful in his efforts.