Dear Editor,
Annan Boodram, in a letter published in your December 31 edition, makes several points that bring a useful contribution to the discussions about our national history of the recent past.
His point about the generally Marxist coloration of many post-colonial third world leaders and thinkers emerges from a truth. To be noted is the fact that Guyana, in the late seventies, was one of those countries where both government and major opposition parties (PPP and WPA) had a distinctively Marxist orientation, and where the electorate, estranged at the deeper philosophical level from this ideology, no doubt sympathised with the larger pro-worker aims of the national leadership. The struggle, as defined by all three parties just mentioned, was about delivering better social services and a greater portion of the economic pie to the people.
Essentially then, with three parties all pointing in the same direction at that given historical moment, the questions that settled before us were which of the three could be counted upon to provide the honest leadership we hoped for, but also which of the three could satisfy the ethnic and racial anxieties and ambitions that overlay all aspirations for a more just order.
But Mr Boodram uses as his starting point an interesting series written by Ravi Dev in his Kaieteur News column. Mr Dev deals with “revisionism,” usually a scholarly and often ideologically-driven re-examination of all we had been taught on a given subject in a particular history. Another Kaieteur News columnist, Peeping Tom, did an excellent summation and analysis of the points raised in the Dev series and his presentation suffices to cover most of the issues evoked. What was notable to us was the evolution of what we may call the ROAR/J aguar political philosophy. From an identification and accentuation of racial conflict in the Guyanese situation, Ravi Dev has, as the context changed, modulated his ideology, seemingly reversed himself and appears to be de-emphasising the antagonisms that he insisted are inevitable because rooted in cultural difference. No more “us” versus “them,” he declares.
But then Mr Dev has always been a subtle thinker and politician. To be recalled for his courage, at a difficult moment, during the Ronald Waddell affair and his participation in the great rally of opposition forces during the height of the latest round of racial conflict. He could therefore point to consistency in his call for us all to comprehend the pain of the other and the “ethnic security dilemma” that is the cause of it all.
That, as politician, Ravi Dev has to be understood as bound to a certain manoeuvering, “comes with the territory.” But as theoretician he has to be remarked for the manner in which his latest positions all seem to emerge from the same ‘us’ versus ‘them’ reading of history he has presented in the past. Absent in his work, as always, is any reference to the guilt of the group with which he identifies. Essentially then, his ‘us’ versus ‘them’ is a re-formulation of his ‘victim’ versus ‘oppressor’ thesis. The ‘victim’ is Indo-Guyanese of course.
Mr Boodram spends much time on the treatment of Dr Cheddi Jagan by recent historians, including Dr Baytoram Ramharack and Dr Clem Seecharan. What is of equal interest to us is the portrayal of Mr Burnham both in the popular imagination and in the history. Recently, apart from the PNC faithful and some people in ACDA, only Frederick Kissoon has had the courage to say that we now also have to do some ‘revision’ of our reading of the PNC years.
It is through a reading of the treatment of these two figures in the literature, including the letter columns, that the core of the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ conflict is revealed. Dr Jagan, as historical figure and effigy, is most often insulated from the sins and wickedness of his successors. Mr Boodram is careful to insulate Dr Jagan “warm, caring… honest ethical” personage, from the “immoral, unethical and criminal” character of those who now lay claim to his heritage.
On the other hand, Mr Burnham is generally, in the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ schema, portrayed laden with all the sins and wickedness of those who surrounded him during the 28 years. Dr Jagan is a character above the impurity and the fray. Mr Burnham is ‘collectivity,’ both a man and a system, standing accused of responsibility for choke and rob, kick down the door, multiple murder and all the immoralities that marked his time.
This therefore is the essence of much current argumentation.
While Cheddi marches unsullied in the national consciousness, the figure em-blematic of the Afro-Guy-anese political leadership, Burnham, decked out in his usual demonisms is unceasingly flayed and flung on the fire. But neither man was without a share of the responsibility.
Bringing us to the point of the role of the leader (and both men were maximum leaders) in the case of a collective culpability. Doubtless an international tribunal such as the post-Nazi courts at Nuremberg would insist that the leader bears some, if not all the responsibility for what his followers do, and that the naïvete with which Dr Jagan is excused may signify a criminal negligence and extend into a conscious culpability. Whatever our own conclusions, it is clear that Frederick Kissoon is right in many ways. It is unlikely that Mr Burnham would have tolerated much that has embarrassed the present government and its supporters.
But the finality of all this remains as a comment on our own weaknesses and capacities as a people. Or as six peoples if you wish. The fact that we saddle ourselves with governments that do brilliantly on the world stage (as evidence we only have to look at the high international profile enjoyed by both PNC leaders and diplomats and now Mr Jagdeo) but fail in the delivery of service and assurance at the national level. It marks us as a people of a certain character.
Isolated from the miasma of local politics and the web of relationships and mutual favours that decide its tenor, we are at our best.
But once confined to wrestling with the local and intractable problems, we use the reality or the pretext of fears and dislike for the ‘them’ among us to excuse and to cover up, to exculpate and to justify.
We can only conclude that to the ‘us,’ the ‘them’ has become necessary. Excising this from the polity is therefore not only difficult because of its historical roots, but also because at every level of our society, the conflict is manipulated as a form of special pleading for more favours for our group and often as rationalisation for ‘runnings’ of all sorts. At all levels of society. We therefore come to the factor of the social necessity of conflict creation in human cultures. Inbred, it seems to often work as a factor in group cohesion, but also as a platform for constructing group privilege in the face of a competing ‘them.’ But in our political history, in both major racial groups, it remains the motor that propels matters in the bad direction they inevitably take. The direction of the petty abuse of power allied to the supression of criticism and the rationalisation of collective guilt.
So we conclude that if us versus them did not exist, we Guyanese would necessarily re-invent it if only because it could be used to give us an advantage over the Other. But for the health of our society we would have to re-define it along different lines. No longer Indian versus Black, nor capital versus labour, nor, as is fatal in some places, one faith versus another, but drawing the lines of battle along the divide between the corrupt versus the clean, the competent versus the inept and parasitic, the immoral and unethical versus the just and the good. It is only at this level that the cosmic binary of good and evil now solely expressed in some legal codes, will give positive meaning to ‘us’ versus ‘them.’ Guyanese people would be more assured of a fair deal and better government if the conflict were re-defined in these terms.
In this way we join Mr Boodram and the many others in calling for the elimination of the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ as we know it now.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr