{"id":6151,"date":"2006-06-05T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-05T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2006\/06\/05\/2006-06-05-trinidad-government-to-review-controversial-trinity-cross-award\/"},"modified":"2006-06-05T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-06-05T12:00:00","slug":"2006-06-05-trinidad-government-to-review-controversial-trinity-cross-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2006\/06\/05\/2006-06-05-trinidad-government-to-review-controversial-trinity-cross-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Trinidad Government To Review Controversial &#8220;Trinity Cross&#8221; Award"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"source\">By Paras Ramoutar<\/p>\n<p class=\"summary\">TRINIDAD, June 6, 2006: For 37 long years, the East Indian and Muslim communities have been protesting the controversial &#8220;Trinity Cross&#8221; being given out as Trinidad and Tobago&#8217;s premier national award on Independence Day Augsut 31 annually. But it took a High Court Judge, Peter Jamadar, himself a Christian, to tell the black-dominated government led by Prime Minister Patrick Manning that the Trinity Cross, a Christian symbol, was discriminatory and racist to the Indian, Muslim and non-Christian communities. Satnarayan Maharaj, Secretary General, Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS), among others, took the matter to the courts, and on May 26  Justice Jamadar ruled that the Trinity Cross was discriminatory against the Hindu, Muslim and non-Christian communities. Manning bowed to these groups and told the Parliament on Friday that the cabinet has appointed a committee to be chaired by Prof. Bridget Brereton of the University of the West Indies to, &#8220;review all aspects of the nation&#8217;s highest award, examine such other national symbols and observance which may be considered discriminatory and make appropriate recommendations to government.&#8221; Several years ago, the late Dharmacharya of the SDMS, Pundit Krishna Maharaj refused the Trinity Cross on the ground that it was a Christian symbol. Maharaj said that he was pleased with Manning&#8217;s decision, as was  Winston Dookeran, Political Leader of the United National Congress.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Paras Ramoutar TRINIDAD, June 6, 2006: For 37 long years, the East Indian and Muslim communities have been protesting,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}