To be a Guyanese East Indian in a certain context

Jul 25, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Ravi Dev and the usual suspects in the PPP leadership, and in Little Guyana in Richmond Hill, New York, have sprouted on countless occasions that I wrote that I am ashamed to be an East Indian. What was left out deliberately by Dev and Indian racists was the context.
Before I go on, I need to advise the younger minds that read this column, that one of the golden rules of life is that context is everything. Without context, human action and motive have no meaning. I did say that I was ashamed to be an East Indian after the way I saw Indians voted in successive general elections.
I observed that for a people who wandered all over the globe crying to the world that the PNC Government, both under Forbes Burnham and Desmond Hoyte, was a dictatorship that was doing horrible things to Guyanese, it was unforgivable the way they chose to either stay silent or support the PPP Government since Jagdeo came to power, right up to the present.
As an East Indian I would say I have intimate access to a wide range of African Guyanese communities. I taught African Guyanese students for twenty-six years at UG. I go into African villages with my African friends and I hear what fears they have. The common thread that knits these conversations together is the bitter disappointment among Africans on the support Indians gave to the PPP Government which, according to African Guyanese, has done worse than Burnham and Hoyte.
Africans would say to me; “But Freddie, look how boisterous these people were in condemning Burnham. Where is their voice now?’
The empathy from me is there because I know what African Guyanese are talking about – I lived under both Burnham and Hoyte. I have been living under the PPP since 1992. I see the same moral turpitude of the PNC administration in the Jagdeo/Ramotar cabals. So it comes down to this – how can an ethnic community that bore the brunt of dictatorship politics forty years ago, accept the same type of abuse?
It is in this context I say that I am ashamed to be an East Indian. I make this statement with unreserved intention. I unapologetically stand by it, particularly given what Tacuma Ogunseye said on the witness stand in the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry. The WPA stalwart recounted how he fought the Burnham regime and was incarcerated in every conceivable police station on the East Coast.
These are the African Guyanese who fought against dictatorship that eventually led to free and fair elections that led to Indian acquisition of state power, and now we have reverted back to dictatorship. The missing link is the disappearance of the Indian voice. Every day, power abuse in this country affects Indian people to the core, but it seems that Indian people only wanted the removal of the PNC government from the face of Guyana, but not dictatorship itself.
In this context, I repeat; I am ashamed to be an East Indian. Guyanese Indians have a long tradition of struggle against injustice, eons before Burnham and Jagan came upon the scene. There was the BG East Indian Association. Indians spearheaded the anti-colonial protest against the shooting of the Enmore sugar workers.
Indian professionals were extremely active against the Burnham regime. Indians participated in violent acts against Mr. Burnham’s Government that led to the murder of security personnel and arson on the sugar estates.
Compare Jagdeo with Burnham. Compare the post-1999 PPP Government with the PNC Government and the decay is graphic for any researcher to see. But what is invisible is the Indian protestor. Yes, rice farmers confronted this decay two weeks ago. But wasn’t that an isolated incident?
Every dimension of power abuse affects the East Indians of Guyana, but these helpless and hapless people take it, endure it, and refuse to act. Yesterday it was the birth certificate nastiness. They will take it. A birth certificate is like a transport for property, a national ID card, a marriage certificate, a graduation certificate, meaning it is a life document. Why does a birth certificate have to be two years old or less when applying for a passport?
Today, it is the UG fee increase. In a poor country where a majority of Indians are poor and their children are in a majority in the UG student population, why do they have to pay that enormous sum for an education at a university that has virtually collapsed? So what will it be tomorrow? Come tomorrow, there will be a policy that will hurt Indians and they will take it. Are these people, modern slaves?

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To be a Guyanese East Indian in a certain context

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