Ogunseye responds to Sultan Mohamed

Aug 30, 2024 Letters

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Dear Editor,

After long and careful consideration trying to understand why a letter written by Dr. David Hinds in honour of the 99th birthday of Eusi Kwayana would move anyone in their right senses to write a letter like the one written by Mr. Sultan Mohamed with gross misinformation and outright falsifications. What manner of man is he? However, I choose to respond for the benefit of the younger generation and unsuspecting readers.

His premise, “Kwayana and Rodney had different goals”, if this meant that Walter Rodney and Eusi Kwayana had different goals for their lives, Mohamed might be correct. But that is not what he meant. He is telling readers that during Walter’s activism in Guyana, he and Eusi had different political goals. This self-appointed ‘Know All’ knows things that have no existence in reality. Unlike him, I sat in the WPA’s Executive before Walter arrived in Guyana. I am in a position to challenge Mohamed’s false narrative. When the information of Walter being denied work at UG emerged, Eusi brought the leadership of ASCRIA to discuss the developments and what should be done. He pointed out the political importance of Walter and the fact that he was not tainted by race politics, and we should create a unifying response that cut across race and the political divisions in the country.

This led to the organizing of the Walter Rodney defense committee, involving several forces, and individuals including Jagan’s PPP. The rest is history. When WPA was formed before Rodney’s arrival, the political goals were well established: (1) recognition of the historic race contradiction, and its negative effects on the nation and to seek a solution (2) build a political organization that facilitates the struggle and aspirations of all race groups (3) recognition of the class struggle and the need for multi-racial unity as paramount to success. In a nutshell advance the Guyanese revolution as a multi-racial, multi-class project driven by the unity of the working class/working people. Rodney had no problem with any of the above, he embraced those goals 100%. At no point in the WPA Executive did the issue of ‘Black Power’ ever arise, let alone any comparison between Kwayana’s and Rodney’s perspectives. This is purely a fiction of Mr. Sultan Mohamed’s imagination.

It was no secret that ASCRIA saw black power through a Pan-African lens, when Brother Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture, was abandoned by his host in his visit to Guyana in 1971, ASCRIA filled the role. I was present at Queen’s College when the Indian detractors in the audience asked Carmichael about his definition of black power, he replied that black power was for Black People/Africans. He did not stop there and suggested that Indians build Indian power. He was in my view giving one of the highest honours a revolutionary can give, to an oppressed racial group who experienced indenture and colonialism. Yet Indian detractors of Carmichael even decades after the event are still poisoned by their anti-African mentality. Many years ago in a letter, I corrected the misrepresentation of Carmichael’s position on Indians in the Caribbean and black power. Readers should remember that in the period referred to above, the WPA was not in existence.

If one followed the erroneous logic of Sultan Mohomed, Kwayana called for ‘partition’, – end of story. But history will show that the proposal made in the name of Kwayana was for a “joint premier ship” between Jagan and Burnham, and if rejected partition, as the last resort. The younger generation has a right to know the truth and hold the truth. In the propaganda war that followed led by Jagan/Burnham and their parties, the proposal’s objective was not discussed, which was to avoid the pending crisis over which race would control Guyana after independence. We know what followed, a civil war between Africans and Indians. What is also not known in this narrative is that the PPP and PYO were by 1964 also calling for partition as a last resort. This is a quote from the Sunday Chronicle in December 1964:

“Indian religious organizations yesterday supported Premier Jagan’s talk of partition; according to a Press release by Pandit Reepu Daman Persaud, secretary, British Guiana Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha. He disclosed the Indian organizations cabled Britain’s Prime Minister stating that Burnham’s refusal to form a coalition with the PPP constitutes denial of the Indian population which is 51 percent of the population of the right to participate in the government.

The Indian organizations urged Mr. Wilson to use his good offices to bring about a solution between all parties.  “Unless these steps are taken immediately”, the press release stated: “the Indian community will have little alternative but to begin consideration of partition.”

For Kwayana’s detractors, attempting to avoid that ‘bloodbath’ was an unforgivable political sin. I am not surprised that Mr. ‘Know-It-All’ is unaware that Kwayana himself had spoken and written about his Joint Premier proposal, admitting in retrospect that it was too sophisticated and advanced a political solution for a colony just emerging from colonialism.

More importantly, Eusi is the only major leader in the anti-colonial struggle for independence to have publicly engaged in self-criticism of his role during that period of Guyanese politics. He presented a paper at a symposium held at The Bishops’ High School where he addressed those issues. This isn’t for Sultan Mohamed, who doesn’t care, but rather for the education of the younger generation.

Now let me address the question of Walter Rodney being the Leader of the WPA. The WPA at that period never named anyone the leader of the organization/party, we practice collective leadership of the executive. This was before Walter’s activism and during. The way struggle developed after Walter’s return, declaring any member more so Walter as leader, was setting up that comrade for execution. It was the multi-racial, multi-class masses in the Civil Rebellion that made Walter Rodney the leader of the WPA and the mass movement at the time.

On another matter, Sultan Mohamed’s claim that Rodney and Jagan had devised a plan for the WPA to integrate into the PPP—an assertion made only after the deaths of both Rodney and Jagan—is yet another of Sultan’s fabrications. I close, by saying that even the ‘wicked’ in their quest to sow seeds of ‘dirty’ open the door to enlightenment.

Yous sincerely,
Tacuma Ogunseye.
WPA Co-Leader.

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