Narrative of reconciliation?

Feb 07, 2010 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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In his letter, “It is foolhardy to deny that Rodney and the WPA existed”, (KN, 1-5-10) Dr David Hinds proposes, “The discourse on race and ethnicity since 1992 has been driven by three narratives.” Namely, a PPP/Indian one, a PNC/African one and a “…third narrative, a rejection of the two ethnic narratives…a projection of national reconciliation and ethno-racial equality”.
The last one, of course, is “Advocated mainly but not exclusively by present and former WPA members and supporters, it argues against the notion of a guilty race.
In this regard it has sought to revise the narratives of guilt and innocence and construct one consistent with its objective of a national reconciliation based on ethnic equality and mutual security.”
I would like to interrogate these two claims and will begin with the “no guilty race” assertion.
The felicitous phrase was introduced into the discourse by Elder Kwayana (EK) in 1999, when he critiqued the 1998 GIFT Report and, inter alia, my paper, “Aetiology of an Ethnic Riot”.
Unfortunately the argument captured by the phrase, “No Guilty Race” was directed against a “straw man” created by EK. I have never stated or implied that “race” could be the basis of action much less to determine “guilt. In fact, my whole argument in “Aetiology” was premised on the assumption that ethnic violence was totally contextual, and made policy recommendations geared towards changing that context: Federalism, Representative Disciplined Forces, Ethnic Impact Statement; EEOC; Anti-discrimination laws etc.
In his booklet, “No Guilty Race”, EK concedes that “(Dev) warned his audience against simplistic explanations, such as “Africans are violent”. But I did much more than that.
Let me quote from the introduction to the paper, to demonstrate how contingent I envisaged ethnic violence: “If we take a comparative approach and examine other multiethnic/multiracial societies similar to Guyana we discover that Guyana is not unique in the occurrence of ethnic conflict and violence.
Malaysia, Fiji, Nigeria, Burundi, Rwanda etc. have all had their problems. In view of the wide differences between these societies, we in Guyana must be wary of simplistic explanations for the conflicts such as “Africans are bad”, since a constant (conflict) cannot be explained by a variable (different groups).
(The paper)…considers the independent variables of group comparison and group legitimacy interacting in the several ethnic groups to produce differential value expectations of group entitlement to the national patrimony (especially national power).
These value expectations are shown to be evaluated vis-à-vis the groups’ position (present or projected) through the yardstick of relative deprivation to produce satisfaction (+) or discontent (-).
The dependent variable of a group’s collective response to the latter (resignation, non-violent protest or violent protest) is considered as a contingency of the group’s assessment of its Social facilitation factors (beliefs, traditions, power resources and most importantly, leadership strategies) versus Social Control factors (sanctions, retribution etc.) of other ethnic groups and or the State.” How does this translate into the reductionism of a “guilty race” to which violence is “natural”?
But I want to raise a more fateful point EK makes in “No Guilty Race” that impacts on “national reconciliation”. He asserts bluntly: “If …‘Aetiology’ is talking about the second half of the 20th century, it is mistaken in selecting 16 February 1962 as the starting point (of ethnic violence)…The disturbances of the 60’s started in 1961.”
Now this is a very extraordinary contention that in my estimation vitiates EK’s (and WPA’s) claimed position that there is no “guilty race” and in fact argues that in Guyana, Indians are that “guilty race”. It also justifies EK’s oft stated avowal (e.g. in “No Guilty Race”) that he only supported African “retaliatory violence” in the sixties.
To support his assertion, EK offers as his main piece of evidence a booklet he had published in 1962, “Next Witness”, to protest the findings of the Commission of Enquiry into the Feb 16 1962 (Black Friday) riots. In essence, he quotes himself.
“Next Witness” summarises about thirty incidents of harassment (3of 20 alleging some assault) by Indians against Africans in the days on, before and after the Aug 21st 1961 elections from his “notebook”.
There are also letters and statements from respondents to EK’s African Society for Racial Equality, claiming some 10 other incidents – six alleging violence.
It is not clear whether the most serious charge was from a letter or the notebook. It alleges that “on or about August, 28, 1961, at Port Mourant…, an African man named Felix Ross was murdered by three Indian men. The men entered his house at night, tied up, gagged and assaulted the wife and afterwards butchered the man Ross. “You vote PNC” they said, “awe go vote for you now”.”
The only problem is, as even “Next Witness” notes, “The incident was reported in the press as an ordinary murder.” As I wrote three times in the press after Elder Kwayana republished “Next Witness” in 1999, in all my subsequent research into the event, not only the press, but even the PNC of which Kwayana states Mr Ross was a member, ever claimed that it was a “political murder”.
I also found in the press that there were a number of incidents of petty election-related incidents by Africans as well as Indians across the country. The former are silenced in “Next Witness”.
Most incredibly, as proof of the veracity of his claim on Ross, EK in a letter of 7-05-06 claimed, “When Dr Jagan broadcast to the nation on August 27, 1961 about “violence involving persons of different races,” he did not exclude, nor name the Ross incident, but it was this fatality that drove him to the airwaves for the only official admission in 1961 of political violence.” Jagan’s broadcast was on August 27, but Ross according to “Next Witness” was killed “on or about August 28. Whatever. Indians started the ethnic violence in Guyana and are ipso facto the guilty race.
In the booklet, EK states his case about “guilt” explicitly, to expose, “(‘the coward’) Jagan’s racial insolence and his cold-blooded organisation of the East Indians for the conquest that has always been their dream.” He concludes: “The (PPP) Government, the guilty party in the matter of racial conflict, wished to hide the truth because it wants immediate independence under a constitution, which will leave it free to strangle the breath of the African people and the minorities, to create here an East Indian State, to plant the East Indies in the West Indies.”
From Elder Kwayana’s problem-space in the sixties, I can understand (if not agree with) his answers to the questions then posed.
What has troubled me since was his resurrection and deployment of those Qs & As, based on questionable “facts”, in the present.
At a minimum, I thought, the latter revealed and confirmed facts of foreign fomentation in Feb 16, 1962, and offered us the opportunity to “revise the narratives of guilt and innocence and construct one consistent with its objective of a national reconciliation based on ethnic equality and mutual security.”

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