Three East Indians: Glenn Lall, Chris Ram and Freddie Kissoon

Mar 14, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – I was interviewed from London last Thursday by well-known diaspora activist, Norman Brown. I met Mr. Brown during my long years of struggle. He is an African Guyanese whose politics I will guardedly classify as falling into anti-dictatorship activism in general and African rights activism. He hosts a programme in the UK titled, “Voice of the Diaspora.”
Mr. Brown posted the interview on YouTube. I guess if you search under the reference, “Freddie Kissoon and Norman Brown” it will come up. If you are an African Guyanese who has a genuine concern about African Guyanese directions in Guyana you should tune into the interview.
It is valuable not for what I elaborated on but what Mr. Brown had to say. The essential political point in our dialogue lies in a compelling, dynamic contradiction between Brown’s adumbration about his positive conceptualizations of me and the negative conceptualizations of me by certain African Guyanese that Brown says he does not accept.
In that little emanation from Brown lies a large sociological, political and psychological meaning of political life in this country. Although you may see the interview on YouTube, others may not so this column is about sections of the interview that I consider of immense value to historians who one day will write about this era of Guyana’s life.
Here are crucial snippets from our conversation. My host told me that he was dissuaded from having me on his programme by African Guyanese who described me as a pariah. It is Brown’s response that should resonate among African Guyanese who have to shape a multi-racial future for this country. They should research for themselves the ongoing psychological exploitation of African Guyanese by the PNC and their racist surrogates.
Brown’s description of his response to my detractors was three-pronged and it was pointed, trenchant and forcefully strong. He said he told them that; (one) it was people like Freddie Kissoon who helped to make the 2015 victory possible. Two – African people cheered this Indian boy on when he was fighting an Indian government. Now he is a pariah because he fought the PNC government. Three – that he, Norman Brown, was influenced by the struggle of people like Freddie Kissoon.
The contradiction here between African Guyanese is glaring. Brown personifies the progressive African who sees things contextually and refuses to be part of a narrative that denigrates certain Indians as racist because they criticize the PNC. But the interview becomes absorbing when Brown related to me more of what he heard of me.
He indicated that people (Black Guyanese in the diaspora, of course, where he lives) accused me of only picking on African Guyanese personalities and who is Freddie Kissoon to define the African reality. My response was automatic; what is the African reality and who defines it.
I pointed out to Brown that he, Brown, is not part of the narrative that is shaped by those who think that they own African Guyanese. It is those who think they own Black Guyana that invented a narrative (based on formidably frightening deceptions) and have turned it into gospel and they now are the custodians of that gospel. But Brown himself is a living rejection of that sermon.
I didn’t mention to Brown that there were nine other opposition parties that contested the 2020 election and none was purely Indian; one in fact was born out of a religious denomination in Guyana whose worshippers are mostly African Guyanese. Do these people see criticism of the PNC leaders by Indians as racist? My answer is a resounding no.
The original title of this column was “I am not easily intimated.” I changed it to the one above because it has more explanatory power and is a direct exposure of the falsity of that narrative referred to above. There is an unashamed, dangerous conspiracy shaped by the PNC and their racist surrogates that seek to intimate Indians who criticize African politicians who are essentially undemocratic. This conspiracy is hateful, immoral, fetid and sick. It takes away the recognition of brave Indians like Glenn Lall and Christopher Ram, who stood up and exposed a government that was of their ethnic makeup – East Indian.
By some weird, contorted logic, Ram and Lall are either anti-African, anti-PNC or, pro-PPP all because since 2015 they have exposed terrible governance of a party named the PNC, which is predominantly African. Three Indians – Lall, Ram and Kissoon – then should have followed the logic of these Black racists – stick with your own people when they are in government. I’m glad Norman Brown is not part of that demented narrative. It is anti-philosophy and anti-civilization.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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