IESD: Theory or dangerous propaganda?

Oct 02, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

A group from the Diaspora in the early nineties, called the Jaguar Committee for Democracy, posited the existence of the Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma (IESD).

Since that time, this explanation of one aspect of the political sociology of Guyana has been preserved and promulgated by a small group of East Indian activists.

Although the PPP and its leaders in the Guyana Government have never openly and publicly embraced IESD, they accept the broad outline of IESD and have formulated high policies based on their acceptance of it.

When the Bartica massacre occurred earlier this year, the inventors of IESD became furious at my KN columns. Their argument was that gunmen were attacking the state and Indian citizens.

In such a dangerous environment, they argue that my criticism of the Government as an elected dictatorship could embolden the gunmen.

I replied by positing a theory of my own; that it was the undemocratic policies of the government that may be the real culprit.

This essay argues that IESD is not only propagandistic but a subtle version of racial advocacy that should attract the attention of all political parties in the opposition, Guyana’s intellectuals, civil society and even the Ethnic Relations Commission when it becomes properly reconstituted.

The broad outline of IESD cannot be described without a brief note on the historical evolution of Guyana’s social structure.

The Africans went into the professions, administration and state occupations after the colonial officials stultified their attempts at building an independent village economy (see Alan Adamson, “Sugar without Slaves.”

This is undoubtedly the best non-fiction book on Guyana by a long, long way). East Indians went into agriculture.

Tensions arose in the forties and fifties when Indian professionals came to Georgetown. East Indians also entered trade unions and formed political parties.

What has evolved then in Guyana are two distinct economies and two distinct cultures. The active members of each culture want their communities to observe the demarcation line.

For the Africans, Indians are merchants, farmers, agricultural workers, moneyed and landed people who should be happy with their existence in the rural sections of Guyana.

For the Indians, African people need to understand that investment is an essential activity that no society can do without and that profit in business is a thing to be pursued.

The Indians went further than this. They wanted to have a taste of state administration as the Africans did so they moved to Georgetown after becoming lawyers and doctors and educators. The stage was now set for intense rivalry in a plural society.

The advocates of IESD are arguing that the public sector employee will never accept Indian control of the state as demonstrated with what happened in the sixties with the PPP in government and since 1992 with the return of PPP’s control of the state. Special attention is given by the framers of IESD of the security forces.

Here are the exact words of the founders of IESD about what their hypothesis is all about: “If there are circumstances in which a minority has control of the state institutions, especially if these include the Armed Forces and the Civil Service and the Judiciary, then the will of the majority can also be denied, since the minority would calculate that they have the wherewithal to challenge the majority violently.

“This is the situation in Guyana where the minority African section has a vast overrepresentation in the key state institutions mentioned, especially the Armed Forces, and has used this incumbency to neutralize the numerical advantage of the Indians.

This creates an Ethnic Security Dilemma for Indians, since, even though they are a majority and can form the executive after “free and fair elections”, that Executive cannot guarantee stability, especially for their supporters.

“The Executive, under the principle of “anticipated reaction”, has to ALWAYS (emphasis mine) take into consideration, before taking ANY (again, emphasis mine) policy decision, as to whether the opposition will initiate violence under cover of their control of State institutions.” Here then is what the Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma is all about.

Space has run out so my rejection of this macabre attempt at understanding one aspect of Guyanese political sociology will have to wait for another column. Suffice it to say that there is absolutely nothing redemptive about this kind of theorising.

This explanation is not based on even an ounce of factual recording of contemporary Guyanese history.
It rests on a complete misreading of Guyana sociology in the sixties and political events since 1992.

I will argue in my forthcoming repudiation that the IESD is a mask for nasty propaganda and the sooner the monumental flaws in it are exposed, the better for the stability of this country.