The technicolour side of tragedy

Mar 21, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There are people in this world that you admire because you have intertwined yourself with them over a long period of time or you have worked with them on some realm in life or you just know them for a lengthy period. For who they are you have come to admire them. My policy on my activism and social analyses over a long period of time is that if I have engaged in unacceptable behaviour and it has been so deemed by those I look up to, then I will contemplate my modus operandi and my attitude to life.
Once I receive no chastisement from my flock, I don’t care a damn what my detractors say about me. I wouldn’t even lose an infinitesimal fraction of a moment of sleep. There are those who love you because they believe in what you do. They are those who hate you because you expose their rape of humanity.
After the 2006 election, I did an analysis that contained the statement, “I am ashamed to be an East Indian.” In fact that was the caption. In the context of the election results, I made that opinion. I stand by it and I am unapologetic. People like Ravi Dev have criticized me for making it. Others have done so through letters in the press or telling others. A well known visitor to the office of this newspaper tried to ridicule me in front of some of my KN colleagues for writing it. I stand by what I wrote.
That gentleman, and others like Ravi Dev, were shouting from the roof top in the seventies that an African Government in Guyana under the PNC was doing wrong and harm to the East Indian people. By some strange, contorted, diseased logic, it is fine and acceptable in 21st century Guyana for an East Indian government to discriminate against other ethnic communities
More importantly, the very East Indian population in the seventies found Burnham’s rule objectionable on many grounds. Those identical grounds are present in the PPP’s exercise of power at the moment. It was wrong for the Burnham Government to dismiss state employees, bypass them for promotion, refuse the granting of radio license, arrest people for treason, physically attack anti-government critics, avoid transparency and accountability, give jobs to PNC supporters only. But it is quite in order for the PPP to do so. If so, it is logical to conclude that all of us who opposed Burnham were wrong. If the naked use of power is acceptable then shouldn’t one feel regret at the confrontation we had back then with Burnham?
What is the answer? It was ethical politics to oppose Burnham back then and it is a moral obligation to stop the PPP’s dictatorship at the moment. Where are the Indian voices speaking out? It is in this context that I wrote about my shame of being an Indian and I repeat it here. The year 2006 and the election therein are gone. Let us look at 2011. Are there characteristics in the present Government of Guyana that Indians revolt against and find horrible and terrible? Does one need to enumerate these pathological traits?
Indians all over this country read this newspaper and the Stabroek News. They watch at the television newscasts of the private media. The evidence of dictatorship is all over and they are far more grotesque, abominable, nightmarish and frightening under the PPP than when the PNC ruled. Can Indians look themselves in the eyes and say that Mr. Jagdeo is a better ruler than Desmond Hoyte?
Today the technicolour dimensions of the Phagwah festival will be in full flow. Indians will paint the faces of African on the streets of Georgetown in an atmosphere of conviviality and brotherhood. There will be no presence of the race monster but the shadows of it will lengthen as day runs into night. And tomorrow the debate will resume. Do Indian people have democratic instincts? The answer is yes. They had to have such feelings because they knew and understood the concepts of freedom and justice and they complained that they weren’t getting these values under the PNC Government.
The problem with the Indians of this land is that those instincts have either become dormant or exist in convenient modes. The forthcoming elections will cast ultimate judgment on who we are as Indians of this territory. The time has come where the Guyanese people must finally cast aside ethnic conceptualizations of life and choose its leaders on the basis of issues. Only issues matter. Race should be placed in a coffin

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The technicolour side of tragedy

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