Ignoring Indian Fears

May 15, 2011 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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I return to my response to Dr David Hinds and note that my good friend Malcolm Harripaul has entered the discussion.
I had pointed out that the good doctor (along with other African activists) had studiously ignored the Indian Security Dilemma even as they demanded justice in rectifying the African Security Dilemma.
The former was based on the dominance of Africans in the Disciplined Forces which offered African leaders quite a strategic power resource; the latter on the exclusion of Africans from the Executive on account of being a minority in a majoritorian political system. Justice, I naively assumed, was supposed to be blind.
Dr Hinds claims that Africans “are calling for power sharing— not African domination of the government.” But if Africans obtain a share of the Executive, through their explicit identification as Africans, and the power bases of the state – the Bureaucracy and the Armed Forces – remain overwhelmingly dominated by Africans, does this not signal an existential African dominance of such a government?
This becomes more than a signal when Dr Hinds demands that any rectification of the above imbalance in state institutions be counterpoised by African parity in the private economic sphere.
Dr Hinds raises the ante further when he asserts that the unilateral African inclusion in the Executive must precede (“non-negotiable”) even discussion of his amazing proposal!
Dr Hinds disingenuously equates staffing of state institutions with those in the private economic realm. He knows they are not.
The state, constituted by all the people, must in its own composition reflect the latter for its fundamental legitimacy, if nothing else. While ROAR had indeed called for affirmative action for Africans in specific economic sectors, the justification cannot be as a quid pro quo for creating representative state institutions. Our rationale was based on natural justice.
In the US, where Dr Hinds resides, the state may mandate affirmative action programs to rectify ethnic/racial imbalances in state institutions but not in the private economic realm – unless a state nexus is present.
Dr Hinds raises the issue of African political marginalisation – being institutionally excluded from executive decision making. Malcolm cites this also.
But both completely ignore my question as to why this is so when the African/Creole group, which generally votes as a bloc, are 47% of the populace compared with, at best, 43% Indians.
And now to Malcolm’s critique, “Ravi Dev should educate Indians about racism”. More than most, Malcolm would know that this was one of the major thrusts of ROAR.
He was a senior leader. After Malcolm and others moved on with their lives, between 2001-2006 I continued in this vein as I worked most closely with the primarily African opposition groups and parties.
After I left politics and returned to working at the grassroots level with Hindu youths (as I was doing before Jan 12th 1998) this has been maintained. Check, for instance, my comparison of our conflict to the familial one of the Mahabharat and my writings on the African predicament.
But I discovered that political parties are unwilling to consistently speak across the racial divide even as I am exhorted to do so.
One instance: dissuaded by every Indian acquaintance much less friends, I yet addressed an opposition rally at the Square of the Revolution on what was then dubbed the “Gajraj Affair”.
To my consternation, when the drumroll of the names of crime victims were announced, not a single Indian was mentioned, just Africans. I protested in my speech. Later, another opposition party refused to be publicly associated with me: I was “racist” to articulate Indian concerns but they could defend African interests. Let us all take the motes from our eyes.
And now we have the mask pulled away by Dr Hinds, a spokesperson of the party that epitomises the approved “multiracial” approach. The Indian Security Dilemma is to be addressed only if Africans have economic parity and then only after they are parachuted into the Executive. What do you call this position?
Finally, Malcolm is concerned that I am not “deconstructing” the PPP. To what end? Are Indians too dumb to assess the world around them?
For five years I have been crying in the wilderness that the opposition is making a tactical mistake to focus on the PPP – with some insisting on the cuss-down mode – rather than strategically creating a platform for Indians.
Firstly, many Indians become defensive when Cheddi and the PPP are chastised – as do Africans about the PNC and Burnham. Secondly, Indians are essentially conservative (in the original sense of the word – to conserve) and inertia will hold them to the PPP, unless there already exists an alternative vehicle with which they are comfortable.
The opposition has refused to do this. And in my estimation, Indians will remain in 2011 with the PPP. A bird in the hand and all that.
And the opposition will once again blame them for being racists; for which transgression, violence may be inflicted.

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