Should I be ashamed to be an East Indian?

Jul 13, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Is something wrong with the mind, soul and psyche of an ethnic group found in Guyana – the East Indians? Are they different from other ethnic communities elsewhere?
If there is anything I hated in life was an ignorant, stupid but psychologically sick attitude that was displayed and demonstrated by Guyanese East Indians to my Indian friends during the election campaign last November.
My friends told me that Indians said to them, “I don’t want to see the PNC back in power so I will have to vote for the PPP.” Were they being honest? No, they were not. When Guyanese Indians tell you they don’t want to vote for the PNC, they mean they don’t want to see African politicians in power. They substitute “PNC” for “African.”
But can this aversion to rule by African Guyanese be explained using sociological concepts? My answer is no. To understand the Guyanese East Indian is a trip into Freudian psychology. It takes the use of psychology to fathom the contents of the psyche of the Indians in this land.
Take an example of where I live. I reside in Turkeyen in a place that is a so-called gated community. There is one road in, one road out. It is right next to the Caricom Secretariat.
In fact only one house separates mine from the Secretariat. Close by are the Convention Centre and the National Aquatic Centre. It was land donated by Guysuco to its Indian managers as individual plots. They already had resplendent homes so they sold them off on the market.
The road in this compound is not one of the worst in Guyana, but the worst. When the residents of Glasgow village in Berbice protested the conditions of their main road, I was there to lend solidarity. But when I reached the place I was laughing. The people of Glasgow should come and see where I live.
Some of the residents of my community have literally humiliated themselves the past six years begging President Jagdeo and his Ministers to fix the road.
Then came the 2011 election. Indian people had no more fear of the PNC (the African) winning and ruling them.
There was the historic figure of Moses Nagamootoo in a party that certainly had top class East Indians in it. My neighbours now had a choice. Plus I campaigned for the AFC and therefore an AFC victory would naturally have meant that the road would be fixed.
A majority in my community voted for the PPP. I would like to think that using any theory to explain this, one will have to end up with the masochist paradigm.
My Indian neighours voted for a party that refused to repair their streets. Are Indians a self-destructive lot?
This is the psyche of the Indians in this country. Enter the Chronicle editorial. Do we need to reprint its horror content for emphasis? In a nutshell, this is what the Chronicle published.
African youths are out to use violence on Guyanese Indians, even murdering them, because Black youths have been socialized to hate Indians.
The Chronicle went further than this by stating that it is not sociological hatred but psychic hate, meaning that at the level of mental thinking, African youths detest Guyanese Indians and are destined to commit violence against them and take their property.
After two weeks of such anti-civilized ranting, at the time of writing, there are no voices of denunciation from East Indian stakeholders. And I am not talking about Ravi Dev. I have no respect for this man and I don’t expect him to say anything philosophically uplifting about race relations in Guyana. Where is the educated Indian mind to speak up against this evil?
Where are the voices of the Hindu and Muslim priests? The Indian lawyers who have African clients? The Indian doctors who have African patients? Where are the Indian businessmen whose African patrons they have come to know and respect?
These very people were in plentiful supply and their voices reverberating when Dr. Kean Gibson posited that there is a Hindu conspiracy in the corridors of power that want to physically eliminate African Guyanese because Hindu culture sees Africans as being inferior humans.
I spoke out as an academic against Gibson because her theory was flawed.
As an East Indian I am denouncing the racist pathology of the Chronicle. In the rising silence of East Indians in Guyana and abroad over this anti-African nightmare, I am embarrassed to be an East Indian at this moment.

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Should I be ashamed to be an East Indian?

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