The way we are: Ethnicity

Feb 12, 2012 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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This is the first in a series in which we will examine some of the factors that enter into our political behavior, which some politicians tend to excoriate. We begin with the fact that our society is comprised of ethnic groups. This, of course, is the categorisation of a social group i.e. one that self-consciously recognises itself, based on a common descent (even if mythical) and common cultural practices.
Historical
Guyana is a very good example to demonstrate a salient feature of ethnicity, to wit that if examined historically it will be discerned that ethnic groups are not immutable and in fact they can in many ways, be contextual. Those who are today labeled “Africans” were brought as slaves from various tribes originating from all across West Africa and originally practiced quite divergent cultural forms. Indians also have gone beyond regional (North and South India), caste (all the four castes and “outcastes” were brought in roughly the same proportion as in North India), and religious (Hindu, Muslims and Christians) cleavages to regard themselves by and large, as a single ethnic group.
This process of ethnic consciousness was facilitated by a number of factors acting over the course of time. Firstly, from the beginning of the colonisation of Guyana, ethnicity was a crucial variable: all of the colonisers were white Western Europeans and all the oppressed were from other geographical areas and anthropological cultures. The oppression was separated in space or time, which initially precluded any bonding of groups from different lands. The Amerindians, who were also from many tribes, were deemed unfit for plantation labour and allowed to drift back into the jungle.
After the African slaves were freed in 1838, they decamped the plantations en masse, with only the mostly skilled factory workers remaining, never having much intercourse with the indentures, especially Indians, who replaced them. The smaller number of Portuguese and Chinese also soon found separate occupational niches but concentrated in the urban areas, and interacted much more with the Africans who had also gravitated there. It is apposite to note that the British Whites did not include the Portuguese, who had been brought from the island of Madeira, in their definition of “European”. Portuguese thus are considered a separate ethnic group in Guyana from “Europeans”.
Mobilisation
However, even as we have pointed out that ethnic groups can be created, and are not immutable, we have to indicate several features that militate against their disappearance in the modern world. Firstly, the state has become such a dominant feature of society in the allocation of rewards, economic and otherwise, that it is seen as the greatest prize to be captured. Whether peacefully or not, this capture can only be accomplished by the mobilisation of people, thus any grouping, potential or existent, will be galvanised by observant and ambitious politicians. The ethnic group is one such grouping.
Today, “self determination of peoples” has become such an accepted international norm since WWI that it is almost impossible to coerce supposedly backward subaltern ethnic groups into abandoning their cultures, as was possible before. A major contributory factor in the generation of conflicts in Guyana as we shall see later, is the perception by Africans that Indians persist in practicing “Indian” culture at the expense of some hypothesised “Guyanese” culture.
In the British Caribbean, of which Guyana has historically been a part, it is an article of faith amongst ethnic Africans, that the Caribbean is an “African” nation. As George Lamming, the Barbadian African intellectual wrote, “This perception of the Indian as alien and a problem to be contained after the departure of the Imperial power, has been a major part of the thought and feeling of Black West Indians and a very stubborn conviction among the Black middle layers in Trinidad and Guyana. Indian power, in politics or business, has been regarded as an example of an Indian strategy for conquest.”
Then, there is the even more pervasive international norm of “equality” to which everyone now aspires and which no one is willing to be accused of denying. Frequently, and certainly not fortuitously, in the development of the present state-system, different ethnic groups ended up in unequal positions – whether it is economic, social or political equality. Since the ethnic group in the seat of power would tend to support the status quo, the underdog groups are forced to mobilise qua ethnic groups. Ethnicity thus can become a strategic necessity to secure justice by attempting to rectify unequal power relations.
Another feature that makes ethnicity here in Guyana so resilient is that the distinct geographical origins and cultures of the several groups are reinforced by other exclusive attributes. The Africans may have converted into the same religion as the British and Europeans, but their phenotypical characteristics of skin colour and hair texture kept them distinct. Their skin colour, as well as their religions of Hinduism and Islam, distinguished the Indians from the Whites, with the last two possessions also marking them off from all other groups in the society. Thus the cleavages reinforced each other, resulting in a situation, unlike that of many other ethnically plural societies, where is no doubt as to the identities of the various ethnic groups.
Identity
Lastly, the ethnic group, being based on culture and origins, is tied up with the individual’s conception of “self”. An individual’s personality or self is a construction, and almost a reflection of his social world. His perception of the worth of his group, to a marked degree, shapes the self-esteem of the individual. Man seeks transcendence in this transitory world; in identifying with the accomplishments of his ethnic group, he partially accomplishes this. When an ethnic group has a poor image, some of its members will work to improve that image even if for their egos. And the ethnic group will survive.
Thus while ethnicity is contextual, it is not infinitely so. Certain conditions in society, which we will examine further, in tandem with certain imperatives in man, determine both the salience and intensity of ethnicity.

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