When dishonesty makes you sick

Feb 19, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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In 2006, an academic from India, Suresh Pillai, came to Guyana to research the East Indians in Guyana. The result was a monograph titled, “Silenced Majority.” Pillai wrote in his conclusion on page 104, “In Guyana, most of the major private sector business (sic) is controlled and administered by Portuguese, Chinese and Europeans. Indians control is restricted to some visible areas such as petty trading…”
On page 105, the last page, Pillai boldly asserted in the opening paragraph that; “Indo-Guyanese do not have an effective voice in Guyana.”
This is not just scholarly dishonesty. This is downright dishonesty of the worst kind. “Silenced Majority” is one of the most racist assessments ever to come out of this country. As an academic, it is in the interest of history to discuss the paper but I was so sickened so I will confine myself with a broad, brief description.
The entire body of the research is the painting of violence by African Guyanese against Indians out of the instinctive desire of African Guyanese to rid Guyana of Indians.
I chose to bring up a discussion of Pillai’s paper because last week in Parliament, Juan Edghill proclaimed that certain opposition politicians tried to undermine the independence of the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC). The ERC was never independent. It was most shamelessly a stooge of centralized power.
The Pillai research was one of the most egregious examples of the ERC not only remaining silent on racism that emanated from the halls of government but actually encouraged it through its association with Pillai when he was in Guyana in 2006. The ERC refused to review Pillai’s research findings (which were blatantly fictional) because at the time Pillai was a guest of the Office of the President.
Pillai, who is a very close friend of David Dabydeen, was facilitated in his research by the Government of Guyana. While in Guyana, he had the benefit of the words of Ravi Dev on ethnic relations. Pillai also spoke at length with Prem Misir. It was with a government vehicle that he was transported to Annandale to interview what he termed “Indian victims of African violence.”
I guess all Guyanese would know who accompanied Pillai to Annandale – the American-based Guyanese school teacher who spends all his time going around the world saying he is doing polls instead of teaching – So was he ever a teacher?
The ERC did not want to touch Pillai’s racist propaganda because the ERC knew that while in Guyana, Pillai was the honoured guest of the princes at Freedom House. What was sickening to note was that after completion of his paper, Pillai circulated draft copies to members of the government and their so-called academics and none saw it fit to correct his bizarre, immoral pronouncements on the ethnic content in the ownership of private businesses in Guyana.
They did not want to because it suited their racial agenda. What was most diabolic was that at the time, the ERC was prepared to confront Kean Gibson on her book, “The Cycle of Racial Oppression in Guyana” (which is far a more scholarly work than Pillai’s) I disagreed at the time with her Hindu conspiracy theory inside the PPP because it overlooked the role of non-Hindus in the PPP who were just as vicious and powerful as the Hindus in the PPP.
I believe research would show that the most repressive, Stalinist and irrational powerhouses in the PPP past and present were non-Hindus. While she was alive, Mrs Jagan together with Clinton Collymore, Gail Teixeira, Feroze Mohamed, Roger Luncheon, Clement Rohee, Bheri Ramsaran (not a practicing Hindu) among others were the persons who made decisions that affected the totality of everything in Guyana.
In fact, the most powerful Hindu personality in the PPP from the seventies until 1999 was the least influential and did not throw his weight around or even try to shape party and governmental policies – Reepu Daman Persaud.
Persaud was simply never interested in the more complex issues of party politics and governmental directions. Such was his nature. My contention in reviewing Gibson’s book was that her emphasis on an anti-African Hindu conspiracy in the PPP had obfuscated the real evil people in the PPP.
For me this was a scholarly fault. It would have been best if Gibson had stuck to the binary of ethnic preference and ethnic discrimination which is the methodology I used in my monograph, “Ethnic Power and Ideological Racism: Comparing Presidencies in Guyanese history,” and which forms the basis of my defence in Jagdeo’s libel against me. As for Gibson’s adumbration that Hindu religious texts are racist, I have no problem with that.

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