Ignorance or distortion by intent

Feb 25, 2013 Letters

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Dear Editor,
One would think that there’s a school of thought dedicated to historical and social distortion active n our national ethos when reading some letters in the media, perhaps it’s a result of an education and cultural system that has not addressed the topics of our differences which has failed and have fragmented into dogmas of bias and pure ignorance.
The letter in Kaieture News, Monday Feb.11 by Devanand Bhagwan is such a case study. He commented on Freddy Kissoon’s reference to racist ideals and the racism of pigmentation as enforcing Indo-Euro Aryan myth supremacist ideals in popular culture.
What attracted my attention to Bhagwan’s commentary were his distorted arguments utilizing references to the Diaspora and continental Africans, as follows; the recent trend of ‘Bleaching’ was highlighted with intense detail, among Africans as if to negate the argument of advertising not using darker persons as argued by Freddie.
These are separate topics. While in the same vein he ignored parallel trends that have been in practice for decades among Caucasians in trying to acquire the romantic ‘Tan’ of the dark and handsome hero in the romance novels, while in the popular culture of that same human variation ; the derogatory term ‘Dumb Blonde’, is used to describe cousins across the street. Is Bhagwan merely trying to extract substance out of human social trivia?
More important though, are the stockpile of stereotypes and distortions commonly used and intended to be absorbed as Historical and social fact, which lead to the racist prejudices that has become second nature in the mind set of Mr. Bhagwan for example; Ravi Dev’s mantra that had not Indians come to British Guiana that the colony would been a wasteland, when in fact every plantation , the majority of villages and townships were already in existence before Indentureship began, and Afro Caribbean, Africans, Europeans, Chinese also came as Indentured workers, contributing and enriching the Creole Culture of Guiana/Guyana yet strange enough this did not occur to Dev.
During the 2005 floods Vishnu Bisram in a letter on Feb, 3 2005 Stabroek News in response to Afro Guyanese allegations of discrimination declared, quote; “while Afro-Guyanese are getting the bulk of the relief, I am told that some people who did not have three meals a day before the flooding now have many meals a day while supporters of the PPP were neglected. I was told that some people who did not have a mattress before the flood now sleep on a mattress.”
Unquote: Only a state of mental illness could drive this kind of insipid reasoning and race hatred. Was Bisram in some macabre fit of delusion imposing the plight and grim reality of the oppressed Shudras of India which he most likely has a deep haunting subconscious historical memory off on Afro-Guyanese?
Bisram again travels down the irrational road of bigotry when he attempted to juxtapose on Jan 7, 2013 Stabroek News the use of the Indian repatriation fund as a decision of the then PNC Government to build the National Cultural Centre as equivalent or poetic justice to Minister Frank Anthony’s decision to reconstruct Afro Guyanese history and redirect the 1823 martyrdom to the historically
insignificant sea walls on this matter. Bisram obviously does not know or does not care that the post emancipation 1840’s onward taxation imposed on the young Afro Guyanese villages by the colonial authority to address drainage to their farm lands was redirected to assist in the programme of bringing Indentured labour.
This resulted in the flooding in the villages and the forced abandonment of their lands and accustomed crops, thus the push to the gold fields and the public sector, and the culinary dependence on the imported food varieties of British Industry.
The Cultural Centre is for the Nation including the Ind° Guyanese population who had no interest in returning to India, why is this still a topic of contention? simply, irrational racism.
Bhagwan moves onto Uganda, asserting that Uganda’s survival depended on the Asians who had migrated there during that Nation’s colonization by the British.
The Dictator Idi Amin in his quarrel with the British [ former colonial rulers of Uganda from 1894-1962] over the sale of arms, decided that the Asian merchants planted during Uganda’s colonial past who had British Passports must give up their British status and become Ugandan citizens they refused and they were used as pawns and unlawfully deported to England, knowing that this was the then England of the Teddy Boys[ read Roy Shaw’s book]. Idi Amin came from the small Kakwa tribe and was insecure, he murdered and chased hundreds and thousands of other progressive tribal Africans out; On South Road in the late seventies a Ugandan Tailor practiced his trade and he sewed some tie-die shirts for me, he often spoke of his home land.
Uganda [Land of the Ganda, the most populous Tribal group] is a geographic construct of the colonization of Africa by Europe that divided and destroyed Kingdoms displaced tribes and set the stage for tribal wars once Colonization was over, Uganda had encompassed several kingdoms including Buganda of which I quote; John G. Jackson’s Introduction to African Civilizations “By the middle of the 18th century Buganda was the greatest state and the most advanced society in central Africa.
The ruler of Buganda was called the Kabaka.” After Idi Amin’s brutal era was over Uganda’s leaders invited back all disenfranchised Ugandans, including its Asian population.
Bhagwan implies contemptuously that “While some [Afro Guyanese no doubt] are asleep from their late night dance, they [Indians] get up early in the morning and feed themselves and families” now this is racism at its most idiotic manifestation, obviously Bhagwan doesn’t get out much to see who’s in the discos, I’ve got a friend on the East Coast who has a Boat that serves the CARICOM route, he’s Indo-Guyanese and he requited his crew from a nearby Afro Guyanese village, because his countrymen informed him that they could not leave for the sea on Monday because it’s too near to Sunday[ Hangovers].
The lazy are equally distributed, what I must insert that since we’re dealing with separate cultural philosophies, it is noted that what applies as a means to an end and good business practices in one group is abhorred by the other side, it is not by coincidence that four of the former PPP President’s closest friends are now in prison Roger Khan, Bernard Kerrick , Sonny Ramdeo and Ed Ahmad.
Since the 1880’s Bhagwan’s ‘lazy’ Afro Guyanese villagers as Port Knockers have pioneered and kept the mining industry alive, each village has paid a price of death to the rapids, cave- ins and malaria, up to recently. Now this Industry is a main contributor to the economy second possibly to the GRA.
The same lazy Afro Guyanese public service whose contributions including mine built the NIS and have borne the blunt of the taxes since Nathaniel Critchlow fought the labour wars 1905… you see them catching transportation in the late afternoon going home, and in time for work at the lowest wages in the morning, they are the foundation of this country and you have the temerity to address them sarcastically.
It was concluded by the PPP pre elections 2011 that the young Afro Guyanese were a tribe mesmerized by popular culture shows dancing into the futureless doom of the PiedPiPer, they proved you wrong. I do hope that you’ve also read M. Maxwell Feb. 5 Kaieteur News ‘The struggle for dominance will destroy this nation’ presently all the asinine irrational racism is loudest from wan path ah de village, Rahul Bhattacharya wrote a novel on the secret thoughts of the Bhagwan’s of Guyana, it’s time to shed the Onumbie and replace the imagination with patriotism and the basic tenets of collective principles with a social conscience.
Barrington Braithwaite

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