Sultan Mohamed misdirected racist attacks

Sep 26, 2012 Letters

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Dear Editor,
This is a response to Mr Sultan Mohamed’s letters of September 8 and September 12, 2012  on my letters about the importance People’s Parliament and “protest” and on the harassment of Dr Hinds.
It is interesting how mention of the word “slavery” has moved Mr Sultan Mohamed once again to lofty eloquence  against a known stone ager like me, who unlike him, is unfit for the 21st century.
I invite him to write another brilliant letter full of “lore” from the past on another statement about slavery, a statement I read in the1940s and never forgot. I thought of it when I heard that Kwakwani residents had taken steps to counter the unelected Interim Management Committee. I have used it since then in relation to various rulers. Here is the statement:
“We have found that any government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.”
No. That statement was not made by any Afrocentric Pan Africanist, the new curse words.
Was that finding from a warped mind?  Of course not. It was the finding of one of India’s best known thinkers.
Mr. Mohamed has a 21st. century mind. Good for him.  He chides me for not including Walter Rodney along with Cuffy and Damon. I was saying that some people celebrate Cuffy and Damon, and others, but cannot spare time for the humble People’s Parliament. I was talking of many people’s fear of the present rulers.   So he mentions Rodney and in the next breath says that I “allowed” his assassination. He supposes that I am too stupid to understand his accusation of complicity.
He also sees me (KN September 12) as concerned only with “Black People.” Is he white?  He says nothing of our group’s solidarity with Academics Mohamed Insannaly and Josh Ramsammy. And hear the analyst.  Having made me into a “blacks only” activist he now calls for the Indians to stand up for Indians. He wants me to respond to a magistrate without being in her court, or in hearing.
He conveniently forgets what others and I have responded to, without waiting on his prodding.  He is writing propaganda, not history.  I really will not respond to him line by line.  Mr Mohamed is preparing the atmosphere for elections in Guyana. My last election was in 1997.
Mr Sultan Mohamed sees the need for a Jumbie for use in scaring the people he wants to impress.
Here is one of his messages: All I have done was to represent or defend Africans, making me, in his sharp eye, the enemy of Indians. To make these brazen claims he needs either malice or ignorance.
Is he really vigilant about leaving Walter Rodney out?
A PPP woman leader, not here to defend herself, wrote in 1995 a book “Children’s Stories of Guyana’s Freedom Struggles.” All those named in it were of one race. I am happy to record that there is a cartoon on the last page with one flag, “African slaves” and another, “indentured slaves” with a PPP symbolic figure in the centre. I refer to the first edition of the book . Hm! Slaves?  The book is available.
There was another edition after the WPA made its comments. And OOPS!  Walter Rodney was not among the names; the children were to see as heroes. Ooops!
Mr Mohamed seems to believe that people think “slaves” means “Africans”. A Portuguese scholar who did not take flight reminds us in her book who the first “slaves” were in colonial Guyana. They were some of the indigenous people. Has he heard of them?
Chiefly, though, Mr Mohamed wants me to spend my little time attacking a government which lost power in 1992. That is his preferred role for me.
He takes real flight when he accuses me of “allowing” the assassination of Walter Rodney. So I was a conspirator. And who “allowed “the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948?  And if this is not too surprising, who allowed an assassin to make an attempt on my life in the light rain, early in the morning on March 23,1992 on Alexander Street?  It was the fiftieth birth anniversary of Walter Rodney.  Does he know that it was an Indian man looking at his plants who shouted at my intending assassin, a man I never saw before or after, a Black man with a foreign accent?
I had passed out, a new experience. I lost speech above a loud whisper. I was medically examined. It was Brother Josh Ramsammy who told me that it would take me several weeks to regain my normal pitch of voice. It took all that time.
My letter on the People’s Parliament  did not  call for  Guyanese to march anywhere, or to march all over Guyana. I have led as many illegal marches in Guyana as any other single, par–time, civil outlaw. In the WPA and the PCD it was part of my portfolio.
I remember one illegal march, a Saturday late morning, down High Street, after a conference at NAACIE, with Dr Jagan, Dr Rodney and others. Mr Sultan Mohamed might have been there.
That march was against the PNC. And it was all right. The PNC had rigged elections. It is my humble opinion that the PPP/C has rigged a Cabinet. So what, Mr. Mohamed?  He writes brazenly. It is the old problem of “the single story”.
He writes brazenly, “Indeed, Mr. Kwayana more than anyone amongst those who fought alongside Dr Jagan’s PPP can be pinpointed for his singular championship, defence, promotion and agitation for black people’s rights and aspirations.”
Note the word “singular”, I am no candidate but he is warning younger people that anyone who says a word in favour of a “Black” cause is no longer a Guyanese. This is not our history. I did not “fight alongside Dr Jagan’s PPP.”  I am one of its founders  with a record in it  that cannot be called race biased.
Before 1953 I had about as many estate trespass notices as Dr Jagan and Dr Lachmansingh and Mrs Jane Gay. Mrs  Jagan, Rangela and Alexander Perry. Tell the young people that, too.
I have had to defend the PPP and the PNC against this curse of the single story. Mr Sultan Mohamed is not original. Look at his treatment of Mr Frederick Kissoon, because Mr Mohamed wants all Indians in one camp, but is above race! When the President attacked APNU  and AFC with rigging the November 20211 elections  did he make exceptions?
And all these allegations about inciting Lindeners are off the mark. My forgotten book on 1971 turned up somewhere and some scholars sought my permission to publish it. That was a record a revolt against the Burnham Government and I did not make it up. Now this book about 1971 will confirm that Linden people have not needed incitement to defend their interests. They make or choose their own leaders. They once accepted  Ayube Edun and the MPCA in place of  H.N. Critchlow and the BGLU.
To approve protest now against the Holy Family is a mortal sin worthy of Mr. Mohamed’s high moral condemnation.  Of course Mr Mohamed does not believe “protest” means  “march”.  He is only trying to scare others.
I would not stay here though and call on others to march. If he knew me, he would know that is not my way.
One minute. Here is a glimpse at Mr.Sultan Mohamed’s refined 21st century mind as in one of his letters he rebukes my backward thinking.
I wrote, and I believe, that a country that allows itself to run into a state of “no protests” is heading for slavery. I did not address this to Africans  on some island, but to all Guyanese,  including Mr Sultan Mohamed. Is he suggesting that only Africans read the Kaieteur News? Or that my language is coded?
He tries to show that I mean “slavery” imposed on Africans by another race of Guyanese.  Guru Mohamed writes, “Obviously there is no white presence in Guyana like long ago colonial days. With the PNC effectively ensuring the Portuguese quitting Guyana after their own folly of coalition in 1964 there is, again, no prospects…”
Concluding that there is no chance of the Portuguese as enslavers, Mr Mohamed seeks an answer.
He argues, “And despite Indians never being slaves nor slave owners, Mr. Kwayana’s exhortations therefore cannot be categorised as being subtle. In provoking and harnessing fears about a coming slavery among his black kith and kin, he unequivocally can only mean that the new slave owners would be, who else?”
Mr. Sultan Mohamed is very, very subtle, bless him, in his own opinion.  He writes freely about Indians, Africans and Portuguese. Is he perhaps one of our new Whites? I ask because he borrows Ian Smith’s “kith and kin” concept and places it in my head.
What does he mean by saying that “the Portuguese” quitted? Is that true?
But there were Portuguese citizens all those years in the PPP and in the PNC and in the UF.
He also speaks of  “their own folly”, meaning the folly of a “the Portuguese” an entire people. If I had written that, it would be more proof of my backwardness. But Mr Sultan Mohamed feels privileged to speak like that of a race of people. Is it because they are a minority?
Mr. Mohamed seems to be more than an ordinary, average citizen reading a newspaper.
Eusi Kwayana

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