Dear Editor,
I see from the letters of Mr Jerome Khan captioned “Mr Kwayana’s criticism of Pandit Gossai is spiteful” and Mr Charrandass Persaud captioned “Shri Prakash Gossai is highly qualified for the job he has been offered” (07.03.08) that my earlier letter shows up my maladies, including spite, racism and ambition. Somehow they omitted my greed, or is that not a malady? I later saw Dr. Tara Singh’s evaluation of me and my supposed silence during the Burnham dictatorship and that of Hoyte’s early years. I have also seen copies of an exchange between Mr Clarence Ellis and Mr.Ravi Dev and noted their views on gurus, elders and values. I shall make a brief comment on these exchanges, but only in the light of the present controversy.
If Dr Tara Singh sincerely believes that I slept during a dictatorship in Guyana then the learned doctor will believe anything. He can simply have it as he prefers.
In all of this I understand the indignation of various persons who believe that I set out to discredit someone whom they see as a towering example. I am not insensitive to all of that. However, since I read the December 6, 2006 announcement that he was a potential presidential adviser, for ethnic relations and other things.
I have, without the privilege of knowing him, seen him as a most important public official. I will not hide my interest.
The world knows that I have never previously raised an issue about him. I have long considered the relations of races a fundamental problem left to us by our former rulers and never pretended that Guyana was free from racial problems. So when an individual described in a certain way is going to advise the President of Guyana on ethnic relations, it is something for comment.
I have tried to be very vigilant from time to time, and continuously since 1971 against the treating of government business as private affairs.
Until the Pandit, through an announcement made only by a New York Mandir, became known as a likely presidential adviser, he was a talented private citizen and spiritual leader. I did not invent the information on which I made my comments. The passage, said to be part of a release from the adviser’s Mandir read and still reads:
“Mr Prakash Gossai, leader of the Bhuvaneshwar Mandir in New York is to serve as an aide to President Bharrat Jagdeo, with responsibility, among other things, for ethnic relations and culture, the organisation announced yesterday.”
Since then he has been described as an artist, community activist and spiritual leader, and more.
The Guyana Chronicle is not hostile to the Government of Guyana. Those who, knowing, but forgetting my history and “activism” so well, expected me to be silent on such an announcement, not yet withdrawn, simply do not understand me. I first raised concerns of how race was being handled in Guyana in an internal PPP document, in reply to Dr Cheddi Jagan’s Congress 1956 paper “On The Political Situation” That was fifty years ago.
When I read the announcement about Shri Gossai in the Guyana Chronicle, I went to the relevant part of the Constitution dealing with the President’s power to “create offices” for the state of Guyana.. We had attacked that Constitution when it was made public from 1980 and all of this is fully documented. I described my interpretation of the process introduced by the amendment to that article during the process of revision by the Constituional Review Commission . My views are open to correction from government or ruling party lawyers.
It is none of my business and I do not wish to know who drafted the Mandir’s announcement of Decem-ber 6. 2006. I refuse to believe, unless I can be convinced, by evidence now being studied deeply by Mr. Jerome Khan, that the organisation, tampered with that job description. It is that job description which publicly invited me into Pandit Gossai’s affairs.
I see now that Dr Tara Singh whose recent letter reached me by e-mail, has said that the Permanent Secretary corrected the Chronicle report, So was the whole idea of “ethnic relations” a misunderstanding of a conversation, or a misunderstanding of a written communication? We cannot pretend that this question has been answered by anyone. I accept all the testimony on behalf of Shri Gossai. I can add to his credit what I just read on March 20 of a planned December 17 party by New York’s GOPIO honouring him for his “extraordinary contribution to preservation and promotion of Indian culture, Hinduism, humanitarianism, and inter-ethnic relations in North America and the Caribbean.” I do not accept the process of the appointment and am of the opinion that the agreed job description was altered officially, not by the Mandir, after it began to attract comment. My opinion is that the New York organization had let the government’s cat out of the bag.
Unlike those who remained silent I said openly that neither Pandit Gossai nor any individual I knew should be adviser to the President on either ethnic or religious affairs. I had in mind the Guyanese experience. My opinion may be a minority opinion within the country. That is not a problem for me. Dr Tara Singh, for all his resentment at my reporting, has at least, as an independent source, confirmed that all is not well.
It does puzzle me that devotees and other admirers are so happy at a guru’s descent into party politics. After all, he will not be a philosopher king as in a state of Ramraj, but a philosopher in the king’s office. Can anyone imagine Mahatma Gandhi trying to help India by accepting a post of advisor to the Prime Minister of newly independent India? Will I be told that there is some better model?
When I received information from Florida I studied it and shared some it with readers of the Stabroek News. This would have been unnecessary if only some authority had said that he was the object of a malicious campaign but that they were assured that it was without substance.
I had asked the whole of Guyana publicly, when Mr Jagdeo was first named as president, to give the young man a chance. Shall I now shut up when I perceive manipulation and abuse of power?
Now, for age and respect. Mr Dev has argued with Mr Ellis that just as some persons felt strongly about how an African elder was treated by writers, so also others felt strongly about the way a Guru was treated by writers. In speaking of African culture I have argued for years among Pan Africanists that what I call the “Cultural Constitution” may need to be revised to require not only respect for elders, but respect for young people, and also to require practical recognition of women’s equality. Without these, human capacity in any culture is repressed and retarded. Moreover, I have always learned from these “attacks”, even from those I consider mean. We have all lost by placing some people beyond the scope of question and challenge.
While thanking Mr Ellis and those who felt it necessary to come to my defence in writing, I have no objection at all to challenges from anyone to what I write.
The tone of what they write will depend on their culture and perhaps on the degree to which they are offended, or pleased. Mr Khan, who considered my second letter spiteful, showed himself master of the art in the language he himself used to describe Mr Bisram.
There may be wisdom in what a writer in SN said, that the whole matter concerning the Pandit has nothing to do with culture or religion, but with politics. Another short letter set me thinking. If it is true that the new Advisor has become a Justice of the Peace and Commissioner of Oaths to Affidavits, whether acting or not, he will be more self- contained and less dependent on others in carrying out his responsibilities.
With the President’s knowledge of his adviser’s job descriptions, we have to assume also that the need for the status of JP and Commissioner of Oaths to Affidavits was seen as real.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana