Place of birth
Guyana
Gender
Male

Dale Bisnauth

Short biography
Dale Bisnauth was born in rural Guyana in 1936. His parents were farmers as were their parents. He attended the Unity Theological College of the West Indies (Jamaica), where he was trained for the ministry of the Guyana Presbyterian Church, having been converted from his Hindu background to Christianity at the age of fifteen. He read for a Ph D in History at the University of the West Indies (Jamaica) where he had earlier obtained a BA.

"He has been a minister of religion for nearly 35 years, served in the regional and world ecumenical movements and worked in Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados.
Dr Bisnauth was secretary of the Caribbean Council of Churches and is currently Minister of Education in the Government of Guyana. In addition to The Settlement of Indians In Guyana: 1890-1930, he is the author of A Short History of the Guyana Presbyterian Church (1979) and History of Religions in the Caribbean (1989).
As a leading member of the Caribbean Council of Churches, he was an indefatigable supporter of human rights during the long years of repression in Guyana. As an Indo-Guyanese, whilst concerned to emphasise the Indian presence in national life, his historical work is characterised by a total rejection of the kind of ethno-centric biasses which mar some of the work in this area.

His commitment to social justice is strongly reflected in The Settlement of Indians in Guyana which writes history from the perspective of the working classes and focuses on the contribution of those who came from the Indian lower castes to the making of a dynamic Indo-Guyanese culture.

Jeremy Poynting writes: ‘I met Dale in the Education ministry in Georgetown, listening patiently to countless pleas and complaints from parents concerning the collapsed state of schooling that as a new minister he was desperately trying to remedy. I was deeply impressed with his sincerity, his accessibility and total absence of ministerial ""grandness"". Later, I discovered that the Minister has a very hearty sense of fun and enjoyment in life.’"