REWRITING HISTORY AS WE APPROACH FIFTY

May 26, 2014 News

In two years’ time, Guyana will be fifty years old. In the ensuring period since Independence there have been attempts to have us believe that we are unworthy of our freedom.
At times even we have in frustration wondered whether we would not have been much better if the White man was still ruling us. At times, we have committed the error of questioning if we have wasted our freedom.
These claims are born out of political frustration. Other similar claims are products of a mentality that states that the outside world is better. It is what we should aim for. But while we should aim for those standards of the developed world, we would never be able to attain them. In other words, we are using a basket to fetch water; we have contaminated our freedoms. In other words, we are not fit to be free.
Those who make these arguments do not however appreciate that they in fact spring from a certain mindset, the very mindset that was used as the justification for our colonization. These claims are the product of a mindset that lost its currency more than a century and a half ago.
What cannot, however, be dismissed are two sets of revisionist projects that are underway and which sadly some members of the cultural elite in Guyana are unwittingly promoting, not recognizing the dangers that these two revisionist projects represent.
The first of these revisionist projects seeks to argue that those who came to these lands from other places were not deceived or tricked into servitude. The first revisionist project argues that those who came were running away from certain hardships. They were escaping an existence far worse than what they encountered in their new homes. In other words, what is being pedaled is that the slave trade and indentureship, just to mention two examples, were blessings in disguise because they were much better than what those who made the transatlantic journey were accustomed to. This is a most dangerous argument for two reasons. Firstly it is the very idea that was used to justify colonialism and secondly, it conflates material conditions with lack of freedom. But as we know there is nothing more dehumanizing than taking away a man’s freedom.
This obscene revisionist perspective also argues that there are narratives of our past that we wish to have erased because these narratives speak to a bleak and dismal existence. Thus, colonization was not as bad as it is being presented because it saved the “arrivals” from a life of destitution.
This is a devious revisionist attempt to rebrand colonization and to give it a softer image. It must be rejected because it contains the very germ that justified colonization: that is those who were brought here as slaves and indentured servants were actually allowed to be civilized in the values of a higher civilization. This is an attempt to rekindle the colonial idea.
The second revisionist project is related to the first. It argues that Jagan, the architect of Guyana’s Independence was a person that was likely to destroy the country. In order to support this view aimed at making colonization appear to not be as bad as it is held out to be, there is use of what is known as the counter referent.
Jagan is presented as a communist whose judgment was flawed and therefore someone who would have led Guyana to misery. In order to support this thesis, a counter reference had to be created by someone from the colonial order whose policies Jagan was at odds with and whose policies were progressive. If therefore that person’s policies can be presented as progressive, then Jagan who was opposed to those policies then be presented as the ultimate villain.
This is why our cultural elites, those with the responsibility of promoting cultural development in Guyana, should be circumspect about promoting the works of political revisionists who are attempting to rebrand colonialism and a more humane and progressive system, one that saw certain plantations in Guyana such as Blairmont, having windows in the quarters where the slaves and indentured servants were held. In other words, there were progressive planters.
The revisionists are also attempting to rewrite history by suggesting that arch- colonialists were the progressive elements who saw the dangers of Jagan. If Jagan had listened to them, Guyana’s fate would have been different. Beware of those who come bearing these gifts.

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REWRITING HISTORY AS WE APPROACH FIFTY

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