The Guyanese East Indians from May 2016 onwards

May 05, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There are two kinds of East Indians that I see in this country. There are those who, like many African Guyanese, choose to support a party and its government out of the psychological comfort of ethnic protection.
I selected the word ‘protection’ rather than loyalty because I don’t believe Indians and Africans in Guyana have any loyalty to their race simply because they belong to that race. They have attachments and devotion to the cultural and religious substance that is the inherent superstructure through which the race is kept alive.
An East Indian who practises Hindu Dharma is not necessarily a devotee to the Indian race in his/her country. An African Guyanese man/woman who prefers African lovers is not necessarily someone who is loyal to the African race. Because of the evolution of our politics since the 1950s, Indians flocked and continue to flock to the PPP because for them if the PPP is in power then their interest will not be abandoned because the leadership of government is in a position to be helpful.
For an African Guyanese, Black leadership would not let them be dominated by other ethnic communities. I believe the operative word to describe these attitudes is ‘protection’.
The second kind of Indians I see are those who are racist and would tolerate illegalities, immoralities and monstrosities in permanent motion from Indian leadership, just because they want Indians to rule Guyana. This is a frightening sub-sector in Guyana and they do scare me because I live in Guyana and I ain’t going out of the territory.
As someone trained in philosophy, I find that thought a semi-civilized one. How could you accept the rape of a country by a cabal and you are comfortable with it because the cabal is from the same race group as you are?
The tragedy of the past year in Guyana is that we saw educated Indians – religious people, writers, university professors, journalists, professionals – desperately throwing in their two cents at the last minute to stop the PPP from losing the 2015 General Elections. The situation was out of a zombie movie when you examined the status of some of these people – A Guyana Prize winner; a journalist honoured with a doctorate from UWI; a Swami and the list went on.
For those of us in Guyana who frown on Donald Trump and what he stands for, we should go back and look at how educated people rooted for a flawed, failed leadership during the 2015 General Elections.
There was no consideration, thought or even a reflection of what that party had become over the long years. This embrace came after years of critical exposure of the depraved criminalities these people perpetuated on this hapless, helpless, country. I could understand an Indian tomato vendor in the countryside telling me he/she prefers the PPP because the PNC Government may want him/her to pay taxes. That is what I mean by “ethnic support because of protection.”
But a Swami who takes off his cloth and dons a political banner all because of ethnic hate? How do you explain Rickey Singh’s attitude? He knows that ten percent of the financial skullduggery committed by the Jagdeo regime would have ended up in criminal charges if committed in the county where he lives – Barbados.
Is there a group of African Guyanese who will barefacedly condone the venalities of the Coalition Government because they see it a Black leadership? The answer is yes. There are educated African Guyanese living in many places throughout this world that hero-worship Forbes Burnham even though the evidence on his deeply autocratic output is larger than Guyana’s three main rivers.
And make no mistake; the reason for such mental inflexibility is because Burnham was a leader from their race group. I doubt that the average African working class citizen is going to tolerate the excesses of the Coalition Government
This is the first time in 23 years that Indian Arrival Day will not be celebrated with the excursion of Indian leaders from the Government extolling their virtues in front of thousands of Indians, whose only reason for being there was to enjoy the festivities and not the political demagoguery. It will be like that for the next four years so Indians better become accustomed to that reality.
But the reality that they need to place more emphasis on is whether the protection they so frantically sought from the PPP after 1992 ever came their way. The majority of Indians are still poor while those who were supposed to protect them have ridden away in the sunset with their wealth in the saddle.

1 thoughts on “The Guyanese East Indians from May 2016 onwards”

cuffy May 5, 2016 at 9:33 am

Be proud of your birthright. Be proud of who you are. God made you so. You can talk until you die but it wont change you. The colour of a man skin is of no more significant than the colour of his eyes.. Said Robert Nestor Marley.