Independence ruminations

May 24, 2009 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

As we approached another anniversary of our independence from Britain, I was particularly disheartened by the wrangling in the letters’ pages of our newspapers over whether the African during slavery or the Indian during indentureship “suffered more”. Over a decade ago, the same debate raged furiously in the same space following the January 12th riots of 1998. Finally, Mr Eusi Kwayana had to interject: “Let us say that we suffered equally…we cannot continually argue over who suffered more.”

It is evident that Mr Kwayana’s advice has not found favour in some quarters. If we are ever to develop our nation and really become independent, we will have to understand why this has been so.
Back in 1998, I proffered a hypothesis advanced by the political scientist David Horowitz (who incidentally studied our polity for his PhD) about why such arguments are advanced. In a wide-ranging analysis of politics in divided societies, he proposed that politics there is driven by a process of group comparison that has grave implications for some at the level of identity for group and individual worth. This is especially true, when as in Guyana, a previously despised group such as Indians are perceived to have passed over others that were “higher” on the old social, economic and political scales.

In an age that has universally accepted the norm of “equality”, groups that suffer in such comparisons seek out reasons that would justify, morally, why the state ought to violate that norm to favour them and return them to their “rightful place”. Horowitz called such reasons, “bases of greater legitimacy” for advancing the primacy of the claims of some to the national patrimony. They include assertions such as “indigenousness/prior arrival”, “greater suffering”, “earlier education or westernisation”. These assertions produced a particularly debilitating form of politics set out in a simple equation by Horowitz: Group Worth+ Group Legitimacy = Politics of Entitlement. Such a politics is extremely explosive because of the intensely subjective and personal bases on which it is conducted – or more usually, fought.

The claim of greater legitimacy by one group is contested most often when the other groups are of comparable size as in Malaysia, Fiji or Guyana. In addition to championing the virtues of equality and its political corollaries such as majoritorianism, these other groups seek to counter the legitimacy argument directly pointing to their role in national development, role in the independence struggle, etc. Or, claim that they suffered as much as the “other”.

Minority groups without pretensions of superseding legitimacy will typically align themselves with the dominant group in power, as have the Portuguese or Chinese. In Guyana, the group in possession of the greatest claim to such legitimacy – the Amerindians – has never made their case.
If we believe that there is some merit in Horowitz’s theory, as I do, we can begin to understand the persistence and contestation of the claims on “suffering” in Guyana: it is merely a trope to justify greater political entitlement.

But at this juncture of Guyana’s history one can also view the call for violation of the strict norm of “equality” as ironically necessary to ensure equality for some groups that are excluded by the application of the equality principle when their participation is group rather than as individually oriented. There may have been a time (as I have argued elsewhere) when Africans and Coloureds may have assumed a greater legitimacy over Indians – especially on the right to govern the nation – but I believe that apart from a recalcitrant rearguard, we have progressed past that stage.

For this reason, I would like to put forward once again the suggestion I made in 1998, following Elder Kwayana’s Solomonic proposal on the quantum of historical suffering endured by our forebears. After delineating its source of energy, as above, in a struggle for national patrimony, I offered that we should agree that ultimately: “All citizens of Guyana have equal rights to its patrimony.” It would therefore be up to us to do whatever it takes to ensure that institutions and a climate are created that such a right is given meaning in all aspects of our lives.

It is my hope that the leaders of our nation, would concede that we have gained nothing by our interminable bickering: we have rather gone backward. What is this patrimony that we are killing each other over? Is it not time that we pledge to put our shoulders to the wheel or to develop that patrimony, in whichever way we can, so that our country can move forward – and not so coincidentally, carry us along with it?

Finally, I would like to pay tribute to one who has sacrificed his entire life towards the independence of our nation: I speak of Elder Eusi Kwayana. He was there when Dr Jagan made his first run for Parliament in 1947; there when the PPP entered government in 1953; there at the split in 1955; there with Mr Burnham at the formation of the PNC in 1957; there during the riots of the 1960s (of which he has been the only one to concede his then mindset); there in the struggle against the PNC dictatorship of the 1970s-80s with the WPA; and there at the return of democracy in 1992.

And is still here with us (notwithstanding the body that was chased out of Buxton in 2002) as we struggle to develop and share our patrimony equally. Our greatest tribute to him would be if we could work out some sort of national reconciliation before he departs to the great beyond. Yes, we can?