Ravi Dev’s ethnic dilemma

Jan 13, 2012 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I refer to a section of your columnist Ravi Dev’s article “Background to the Present Imbroglio II” in Sunday’s Kaieteur News, more specifically, his conclusion “…it was now quite clear to both Indian and African thinkers that as the leaders of the NPC had feared, the Indians could deny the Africans control of the Government in perpetuity.
“This structural condition created what we have labeled the “Ethnic Security Dilemmas in both the African and Indian sections. … Their trump card would be their serendipitous domination of the armed forces-precipitating and maintaining the Ethnic Security Dilemma”
I have some problems with this conclusion. Firstly, it gives the false impression that the ethno-political developments of the 1950’s would lead inexorably to the “Current Imbroglio”. Secondly, the sustained representation of this incomplete picture promotes the Indian and African to the role of natural protagonists from inception to the current time in a zero-sum game as it were, locked in a never-ending struggle for supremacy.
Thirdly, it ignores the role of other simultaneous conflicts being prosecuted in the wider world to which the ethnic struggle in Guyana was subordinate.
Permit me to deal with the first and make a few general comments about the others. The conclusion ignores the fact that the PNC of Forbes Burnham had the opportunity to make permanent the alliance with another ethnic group (which had featured prominently in conflicts with Africans before that time) – the Portuguese.
This opportunity arose in the wake of the results of the 1964 elections in which Peter D’Aguiar’s United Force obtained 12.4% of the votes, the PNC 40.5% and the PPP 45.84%.(http://www.caribbeanelections.com/gy/past/graphs_1964.asp) thus facilitating the coalition between the PNC and the UF. Those who were politically conscious at the time inform us that the PNC proceeded not only to marginalize the leader of the United Force but to embarrass him and to thus begin the process of political alienation of this natural ally as they had by the election results become.
In so doing, Burnham succeeded in destroying the political ecosystem that had developed (40+12 is bigger than 45). The subsequent (and possibly consequent) decline of the UF, accompanied by migration of the Portuguese to Australia, New Zealand and Canada is what created the configuration prior to the emergence of the AFC. Forbes Burnham then resorted to rigging the elections.
Had the African leadership at the time not allowed this alliance to wither, Dev would most likely have been doing a different analysis.
Furthermore, in focusing on the two main ethnic groups (the protagonists in his ‘imbroglio’)  to make his point, it seems to me that the African comes out as the villain in the piece (he saw this ‘backward’ Indian coming to take his inheritance – see part I) notwithstanding that Dev’s basic thesis seems to be that ethnic cleavage is a universal phenomenon and it is naïve to have expected any difference in Guyanese historical development.
His citation of a quotation by Ashton Chase: “They were already envious of the economic strides the Indo-Guyanese had made and considered them a threat” helps this conclusion. The reason is firstly, that (a) it is not clear how the action of a group in protecting its perceived interests when motivated by envy differs from those motivated by the fear he identified (b) the validity of the citation is very dubious.
While Mr. Chase has emerged as the preeminent authority on industrial relations in Guyana, I doubt whether he would represent himself as an authority on psychology. (c) But even if he were so tempted at this time, we must wonder about the competence of a then young man to interpret the motivation of an entire people who even Dev admits had made its own progress.
The writer V.S. Naipaul may, on a cursory reread of one of his earliest books , be struck by the laureate’s comment on a visit to the then British Guiana that he saw locals ‘taking themselves seriously’ by driving around in cars.  These were the times and perceptions.
Having gone to the trouble to establish that there were strong ethnic considerations on the part of both of the two ethnic groups who are the protagonists in his representation of what is really a six-group theatre with five of them jockeying to preserve what each of them considered its strategic interests, and before conceding rationality to Africans in utilizing ‘whatever resource would help equalize the playing field’, this ascription of envy to the group does no good to his argument. It looks more like a Freudian slip.
This focus on the two ethnic groups locates the protagonists in a theatre with the eyes of the two firmly fixed on each other, in which there were no Angel Gabriel or Cent Bread riots when Africans felt discriminated against by Portuguese, no effects of the two other wars to which Guyana fell victim (The cold war and the adoption of communist and socialist precepts and practices by both the PPP and PNC thus hastening the exit of the Portuguese, and the war between the PPP and PNC as political forces pure and simple – the objectives of race (or ethnicity) and those of politics were not always coincident).
Lastly, there should by now be a serious question as regards whether the security element in Dev’s theory ( the ‘ethnic security dilemma’ ) stands up to the developments since he first enunciated them.
Security is about safeguards, survival, protection, access to opportunity and things of that category. I believe that insofar as these elements were concerned, the validity of this theory could survive up to the time of Dr Jagan when there was plenty of talk of ‘lean and clean’ and the ‘dawn of a new era’.
What the nation has seen since is a grab for the nation’s resources as never before seen. A certain political commentator was to say that the PPP made the PNC look like schoolboys when it came to corruption.
That was before the 2006 elections. That was before the nation began to recognize – thanks to KN – that there was a runaway train of corruption.
This need to retain power is about the need to control, to reward friends and family, to live large and to be seen to be living large regardless of the means of acquisition.
That, of course, creates its own imperative to retain power. This dilemma appears to be about the security of a few not of the many.
Frederick W. A. Collins
3186 Congress Drive
South Ruimveldt Park

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