Something an East Indian woman said to me Monday afternoon

Apr 08, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

An ephemeral cloud set off some raindrops on the Sheriff Street seawall on Monday afternoon sending the strollers including me to seek shelter at the newly reopened Texaco gas station. Among the group was the sister of a friend who was my buddy pal when we were students at UG majoring in history. He was once married to the daughter of long standing PPP theoretician, Dr. Paul Singh, who died in Jamaica three years ago.
She told me that she will leave Guyana in July. As we talked it was clear she has no regrets going. As we talked about Guyana, she was adamant that things would not get better.
Then she intoned that when it was the PNC in power, East Indians were marginalized. And here are her own words; “Now the PPP is doing the same.”
I felt proud as a Guyanese when this woman spoke those words. Here was a woman without any intellectual pretence who knew what the fundamental obstacle to her country’s progression into a meaningful future was. The more Indians come to this realization that their party is continuing the racial pathologies of the seventies the quicker will be the solution to our permanent nightmare.
Guyanese on both sides of the race fence have to exorcize this ghost, if not I predict in twenty years’ time, this society will be defunct. I had an interesting conversation with one of Guyana leading journalists on Sunday evening at the wake of one of Guyana’s longest serving pressmen, Raymond Lynch.
This journalist said to me that the reason why PPP persons on the UG Council wanted Dr. James Rose out was because he was an African Guyanese. He opined that they wanted an Indian in his place. I said to him that is true and told him that the Africans at UG stood firmly behind Dr Rose.
Then I posed a question to him that at first he mumbled at, then, briefly stumbled at, then, he controlled himself and gave an enlightened answer. I mentioned that I wanted Dr Rose out too and could he tell what my motive was. This is a top journalist who ought to know about the pitfalls of racial politics. He couldn’t dare assign the race card to me. He knew my reason was nationalism pure and simple. I wanted a UG Vice-Chancellor even if he was from China. Guyana’s development was my motive, not who was Indian or African.
That is the way we have to think in Guyana. We need people to run Guyana, people who will put Guyana above their own ethnic constituency.
The PNC has failed this nation (though I am not sure Desmond Hoyte would have continued in the same vein) because it alienated half the population that did not support it. Even the learned Burnham did not persist in trying to win the Indians. The PPP has done exactly (I repeat exactly) the same. No honest scholar can deny that.
East Indian intellectuals are beginning to write about race-based policies of the PPP Government. Clem Seecharran, in a recent article, bemoaned the fragile state of the African economy in Guyana.
Two good pieces have recently come from the pen of two educated East Indians. Dr. Tarron Khemraj, formerly of the Economics Department of UG, wrote a letter in the daily newspapers about the donkey cart (his words) economy. His thesis is that our future is doomed unless the party in power stops playing the race card. Dr. Khemraj was blunt, candid and forthright.
He accused the PPP Government of doing what my friend’s sister told me on Monday at the Texaco gas station. Khemraj sees Guyana’s economy condemned to donkey cart status unless Guyana ends racial preferences in the excise of state power.
And there is the analysis of a Guyanese law lecturer at UWI, Arif Bulkan. In an assessment of the Jagdeo presidency captioned, “Petty Tyrannies,” he wrote, “Against the background of our shameful history, which includes rigged elections, a Founder-Leader who clothed himself in imperial-like powers, consistent disregard for the independence of key institutions, the failure (of President Jagdeo) to assent to Bills is yet another unwelcome piece of evidence of Guyana’s unending saga of constitutional manipulation and subversion.
“The serial manifestations of petty tyranny are all the more disappointing because they are being perpetrated by a political party which used to pride itself on opposing the absolute power of the British overlords.”
These are brilliant words coming from an Indian intellectual. Other educated Indians must join the company of Dr. Khemraj and Mr. Bulkan right now. Where are the voices of those who denounced racial discrimination against Indians under the PNC?

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