Dear Editor,
Vishnu Bisram flails away at the windmills of false argument he has imagined out of my letter in SN of September 23 (The mechanism which works to ensure the ethnic vote has been under-analysed’) about the fallacy of an ‘Indian face’ as a means by which our friends at Congress Place could regain office and recover their spirits.
In a letter of September 30 (‘Indians have voted for non-Indian parties in many societies,’ SN) Mr Bisram accuses me it would appear of having said (in defiance of demonstrable fact he insists), that Indians only vote for Indians in all times and circumstances. This is misrepresentation, simpliciation.
He cites to contradict me the case of Trinidad and Indian support of the PNM in some constituencies. He conceals the fact that I had myself given this as a counter-example. He also cites the case of micro-minorities of Indians in the smaller islands voting for non-Indian parties. He conceals the fact that I had quoted Hoetink as suggesting that the Indian electoral impulse takes over once a certain critical demographic mass is attained by the Indian group.
He conceals, likewise, the fact that cases which featured Indian parties in coalition with others occur only after the Indians have cohered around their own party first and negotiated as a bloc and hence declared where the primary political identification and the “principle of adherence” is located.
In short Mr Bisram hardly contradicts anything included in my letter. When it comes to ethnic politics in Mauritius and Fiji or Trinidad he should read Selwyn Ryan or Brij Lal or Mohan Gautam for attitudes in Suriname and any from the long bibliography or press reports that disconfirm his hypothesis that Indians do not vote race in those countries.
Here is a man who takes care to establish his authority by stating that he circles the globe and lectures in Ethnic Relations. We fear that he travels light. He also contradicts his colleague Mike Persaud who argues that Indian-Guyanese are so race conscious that there is no way they would vote PNC unless an Indian face is flashed before them. Mr Bisram says lamely that they were so badly treated by the PNC, etc. He fails to consider the question that lies in his response. If they would not vote PNC because of bad treatment, why are they also not voting non-Indian in Trinidad or Fiji. Are they being badly treated eveywhere?
These are false constructs that Mr Bisram carries with him. We have said before that the answers to voting behaviour in immigrant populations lie in the psycho-sociology of immigration and settlement. People migrate, form nuclear communities if possible, like Richmond Hill or Little Italy or Jewish or Irish NY, and they vote for their own people to represent them. This behaviour often entirely changes the profile and character of surrounding groups. The vote may or may not be lubricated by racism, religious prejudice, colour and class considerations, etc.
Indians are not voting PPP nor blacks PNC because they are bad or all racists (even though some are), they are voting because our society, at this stage, is still behaving as if we got here recently. Naturally those who have been here longer would have different responses. So ideas about divide and rule, as in Melissa Ifill’s last Week in History piece, or mentions of ethnic security dilemma by Henry Jeffrey, do not to my mind account for the phenomenon.
Mr Bisram may have written his letter simply to generate discussion and pick our brains. It happens. Or he may have, like so many of the remnants of the small band bearing those banners of Indian suffering in the snows of New York or Toronto, simply have succumbed to the time-worn impulse to strike out with the weapons he has at hand – the misrepresentation, the myth. The narrative requires villains and heroes. It is a convention. The recurrence that dogs us is the delusion secreted by the few. That we are there to malign ‘Indians.’
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
