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Guyana hardly needs formal reinforcement to its entrenched divisiveness
Dear Editor,
It is difficult to escape the very relevant reminder of Shridath Ramphal in Part 1 of his article titled ‘Careless with Caricom’ published in Kaieteur News of Tuesday May 04, 2010. The following were his introductory observations:
“As ‘West Indians’, as ‘Caribbean people’, we face a basic contradiction of oneness and otherness, a basic paradox of kinship and alienation. Much of our history is the interplay of these contrarieties. But they are not of equal weight. The very notion of being West Indian speaks of identity, of oneness. That identity is the product of centuries of living together and is itself a triumph over the divisive geography of an archipelago which speaks to otherness. Today, CARICOM and all it connotes, is the hallmark of that triumph, and it is well to remember the processes which forged it – lest we forget, and lose it.”
The foregoing should resonate quite loudly in this South American component of the West Indian social and economic structure.
Certainly in sport and particularly in cricket, this multi-racial country could be said to have first expressly identified its West Indianness.
In the earliest years there were, interestingly enough, ‘Guyanese’ representatives in West Indies Cricket such as Browne, Wight and Christiani. Later, as the game progressed and its standards raised in Guyana the country produced Kanhai who, like Lloyd later, became captain of the West Indies.
There were, however, other redoubtables like Kallicharran, Gibbs, Fredericks, Butcher and Solomon succeeded by the current champions Chanderpaul and Sarwan.
What was instructive throughout all the years – in books, articles and other publications on West Indies cricket – was the identification of its heroes simply as follows:
Headley, Rowe, Holding – Jamaican, West Indian
Hunte, Marshall, the three Ws – Barbadian, West Indian
Richards, Richardson – Antiguan, West Indian
Constantine, Ramadhin, Lara – Trinidadian, West Indian
The Guyanese representation has already been mentioned.
Recent events have however served to identify a decomposition of this ‘West Indian’ body, with emphasis placed on being ‘Indian’.
It is an ironic intervention, particularly in the cricketing world where Indians will be identified with Gavaskar, Tendulkar and Harbhajan Singh (a Sikh), Azharuddin and Zaheer Khan (Muslims).
So far as one knows, Hashim Amla is seen by the rest of the cricket world as South African.
In the case of Australia, its cricketers (supplied by the intensive state competition) are presented to the international cricket world as Australians whether or not Tasmanians are included in the team.
Sri Lanka, a country known for its decades-long violent divisions, does not reflect such in its international cricket team. With the growing ambitions of Bangladesh and Afghanistan to be serious competitors in the world cricket scene it seems unlikely that these countries would make an issue of the domestic origins of their potential talent.
The point is that in international cricket, as in other sports, relevance is to the country one represents. Guyana’s Chanderpaul has currency only as a West Indian cricketer from Guyana. To treat him otherwise is to diminish a persona that is sustained only by recognition as a high-ranking West Indian sportsman. Any other imposition devalues him, and may in the process, mitigate against his teamsmanship. This young man does not deserve such an act of subversion, however unintentional.
One hates to ponder the possibility of a counter-balancing emphasis on non-Indian ethnicity in the rest of the West Indies Team. Perhaps they can be lumped as ‘occidentals’.
It may not be totally inapposite to reflect once more on these words from Ramphal:
“We have lost solidarity not only with ourselves, but collectively with our brothers in the developing world.”
Guyana, at this juncture, hardly needs the formal reinforcement to its entrenched divisiveness. The fundamental message sent to young sportsmen and women by this misconceived event, is that even in team games, ethnicity in Guyana is more important than Guyana itself.
E. B. John
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