Mr. Clarence Ellis was erudite, reasoned and deeply committed to peace

Apr 24, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
I express my heartfelt condolences to the family of Mr. Clarence Ellis at his recent passing.
Over the last two decades, I have had extended colloquies with him in the press on a host of subjects on Guyana. I always found him to be erudite, reasoned and deeply committed to peace, reconciliation and the development of Guyana. It is a loss to all of us that he is no longer with us.
In 2007, he and I had an exchange in the pages of Kaieteur News that revealed our agreement far outweighed our disagreement on several issues.
As I wrote then, “In the discussion with Mr. Clarence Ellis on the gulf between Indian and African Guyanese, it may be useful to summarise the points on which I believe we have agreement.
1. Deep fears of ‘domination” and “subjugation” underlie the reflexive defensive and offensive reactions Indians and Africans have to each other when it comes to matters of national power.
2. Extra-national diasporic organisations should be sensitive to the internal inter-ethnic dynamics and try not to exacerbate divisions.
3. While all groups in Guyana were subjected to the mental chains of a hegemonising programme centred on “education” by the British after 1838, Africans uniquely experienced slavery (domination” in Gramsci) which utilized unimaginable terror and brutalities to denude them of their culture. The resultant “Creole” culture perpetuates many of the debilitations of that earlier experience.
4. Because of the different cultures they brought with them, the different times they were introduced, the different methodologies of control between slavery and indentureship, their spatial separation etc., the major groups have differing cultural responses to the demands of “modernisation”.
5. Governments have an obligation to take into consideration these differing cultural repertoires when designing and implementing programmes.
6. Governance structures should be severely decentralised and development should be community focused. At the central level, executive power must be shared to deal with the African Ethnic Security Dilemma.
7. Anti-African racism exists in Guyana and across the world and is deeply embedded in the European Enlightenment project that still undergirds much of what is defined and legitimised as “knowledge”. This is the causative constant.
8. While the caste system in India is deformed and an abomination as presently practiced there, it is not a factor in modern Guyana and is not the ideology of the PPP Government Guyana.
9. Economic development of all groups is a prerequisite for social peace and stability – not to mention justice.”
One issue that has not been commented on in the dialogue is the Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma: that even though their party may win elections, because the coercive apparatus (the essence of the “state” in Gramsci) are dominated by their political opponents – Africans, Indians experience an existential physical insecurity. This locks them into a defensive mode vis a vis Africans.
How do we deal with this? Shouldn’t we have a more nuanced view as to what constitutes “state power” and who controls it?
Mr. Ellis replied that mine was an “excellent summing up of where we are” but disagreed with my premises on how to deal with the “The Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma”. This, he felt, “is best confronted in the very Constitution that we now have if it is amended to put that supposedly coercive apparatus firmly under the controlling oversight of Parliament and out of the control of the President.”
May his soul rest in peace.
Ravi Dev

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