Dear Editor,
My challenge to Mr Dev was a not denial of what I had really said. Mr Dev had misrepresented my statement. My delay is due to several circumstances demanding my attention and is longer than I intended.
Mr Dev has often caused me to question his accuracy in writing. I have found that when he misfires, he usually has a purpose. This time his purpose was to show me in Buxton as somehow engaged in racial violence “in the sixties” that is, from the start of racial political violence. Supporting this was Mr Ramjeet who, independently, but from the same mindset, claimed that the violence really started in Buxton. Well, it absolutely did not!
Mr Dev was prompt when challenged in giving my statement as I made it. I now invite the readers to form an opinion. Of course I do not object to being called an elder. I am rather old. I prefer not being called an elder in one breath and a crook (eminence gris) in the next, with its underlying meanings in this context. He since said that he relied on another meaning. I accept his word.
Mr Dev wrote originally in Kaieteur News on September 5, 2010: “During the riots of the 1960’s, the latter declared that he adopted the role of organising the ‘defence’ of Buxton against what he concluded then to be the hostile surrounding Indian communities of Annandale and Lusignan. By the time he accepted that he had been wrong, Buxton had cleansed itself of all its Indian inhabitants and had earned a reputation it still hasn’t shaken off. Buxton has not been led astray only by ‘outside political sophisticates.’”
By “the latter” he meant me. He wrote “defence” to suggest that I was perhaps making a big thing of the deaths of two old people. I disagree.
Next, the way he reported me confuses the time and duration of my making the statement. As he now shows I made no such statement “during the riots of the sixties” but in 2002. Yet that is what the comma after the word ‘1960’s’ conveys. When Mr Dev gives the source and date of my statement correctly it is clear that I made it at a time when I was rebuking gunmen in 2002 for menacing people who had not attacked them or the village. My reference to 1964 was to tell the gunmen that in that year Buxton first suffered casualties and that I did not ignore them, but did what I said, took charge of the defence of the place. I wanted them to know that I did not have to be told by strangers when village people were in danger.
I know that those who disagreed with my position in 2002 will not like this. Those who have an old mindset of Buxton will not like it either. .
Next, my statement he quoted as made did not mention “the surrounding Indian communities of Annandale and Lusignan.” Neither of them in any way “surrounds” Buxton. Mr Dev does not use words carelessly. My statement mentioned Annandale, which stands and has stood west of Buxton. From his confidence in his own very real brilliance, Mr Dev is so assured that he dares to put words in the mouth of another as though he knows better than I what I intended.
Please note that losing an argument does not bother me if I deserve to lose it, that is if the facts are not on my side. My statement as Mr Dev reports was headed ‘An open letter to the gunmen…’ It appeared on September 8, 2002 on Mr Hinds’s .website. Only when I challenged his claim of September 5, 2010 did he give my statement as I had written it: “Moreover I am the person who in 1964 after Buxtonian casualties took charge of the defence of Buxton Friendship. I can say that we feared an attack from our neighbours in Annandale, but they did not ever attack or attempt to attack. Get that in your pipe and smoke it.” Please note, not “during the 1960s,” but “1964.”
“Get that in your pipe and smoke it” was addressed to the gunmen.
Mr Dev goes on in his September 5 column, using what he does not understand to instruct Dr Hinds. “By the time he accepted that he was wrong…” (“He” here means “Kwayana”). Wrong in doing what? He does not explain, but he daubs the tar of ethnic cleansing on me, by saying, “By the time he accepted that he was wrong, Buxton had been cleansed of all its Indian citizens.” In other words he blames me, not the general and localised ethnic tension for the great majority of Indians leaving Buxton. I abjectly and respectfully beg Mr Dev’s supreme pardon, but we have a sharp disagreement there. I have always assumed that persons unfairly attacked were entitled to defence. This for me applies to all races, all genders, ages, to communal or domestic assaults.
I have noticed that Mr Dev makes no comment on the loss of lives that caused Buxton to become involved in the disturbances. It is the thought of defence that offends him. He writes ‘defence’ as though there was no need for defence when the village, not involved in the fray, had suffered casualties of an elderly couple. I will not allow Mr Dev to decide that for me at this stage, from the remote standpoint of 47 years.
There are many things I admire about Mr Dev. He can sometimes show great largeness of heart. But he is not always able to put himself in the shoes of others. In 1964 I was responding to the first fatality in Buxton in the sixties. Perhaps he will say that it was not a political fatality, or will ask how I knew it was political. The couple had not been hit by a falling tree. Gunfire was involved. If he cannot imagine the tension and suspicions arising from that event, I experienced it. I was teaching advanced economics at my school when young relatives and friends of the victims came to tell me that the elderly villagers had not come home from their farm.
But he then in his September 12 column went on to behave as though his allegation and my statement were the same. They were not. To me, “the sixties” and “1964” are two different time durations. He cannot bear to think that Buxton had no political disturbances, that is ethnic violence, before 1964, so he makes me say that I took over its defence in “the sixties” to fit in with what he would call a narrative. I spoke of only one year, the last year of violent disturbances. Yet Mr Dev repeats that I said in the sixties I took over the defence. He does not admit a serious error.
Similarly, after the Jagan victory of 1992 there was ethnic tension. Responding to it, I drafted a press and TV appeal for the WPA and it was approved. In it we called for recognition of the new government. We also addressed the losers asking them not to attack those who appeared to be PPP supporters. I wrote “Fight with development plans in hand.” Mr Dev in his wisdom and his superior US education saw this as a call to arms and condemned it in his lecture ‘Aetiology of an Ethnic Riot.’ Similarly, Dr Hinds’ call on villagers to “agitate” is taken to mean a call to arms.
It seems that he is saying. “Those are your words, but I, Dev know your meaning better than you do.” In my book Guyana: No Guilty Race, I had to point out patiently Mr Dev’s carelessness with facts. As I study his method, he seems to form a point of view and then he twists statements made by persons, sometimes just a little twist, to suit his argument. He should know that such arguments, however impressive looking, are in fact very weak, In much of the book I was correcting allegations made by Mr Dev in his ‘Aetiology of an Ethnic Riot.’
I apologise for returning to scenes of which we had too many. I am also confining myself to Buxton-Friendship where I was. Mr Dev speaks with authority on the reputation Buxton earned and kept. He is not fair in saying that it suffered because of its own people. I have said that it is not a village of angels. One who should know has written that Indians began to settle there in the 1890s. Speaking about the sixties I must stress that Buxton had to respond to blows. He makes too light of the first casualties, of non-combatants, in a peaceful place. Again, he does not even say “unfortunate.” He is more concerned with the wild concept of “defence” against a mere armed double killing of industrious but unimportant people. When he says that Buxton suffered because of her own people, is he suggesting that the couple were attacked by villagers? If he is not willing to begin with the offence that led to good, bad or unpleasant responses, he is not ready for a reasonable conversation. I still think that at one time he was ready.
Since this is my last exchange with Mr Dev on this particular subject let me say that the defence I spoke of did not “surround” the village. It was a single watching post at one point within the village with a view on to a possible point of entry. This activity did not begin just after the Sealeys. On the surface, the village took the killing quietly until the day of the funeral. That night free-wheelers became active. Fires broke out at “eight or nine” Indian homes according to my own writing. During these fires an elder approached me with his concerns and I came down against the taking of life. That was my bottom line. Luckily no life was taken. Buxton had been provoked and I could not stand by and allow chaos to blow up. My aim was to defend innocent people. If Mr Dev or any other human being thinks I was wrong, I must strongly disagree with all of them.
To justify his flair for historical connection, a flair many of us have, he claims that my decision to take over the defence of the village, a task that was to prove impossible, as we have seen, led to the exodus of “all” the Indian population. Replying to Dr Hinds’ challenge he says a week after that he had known that not all Indians left the village. Why then did he say “all” knowing it from his friend and Buxtonian workmate, to be incorrect? He could have said that the great majority left. That would have been true enough.
Two British barracks with white soldiers were established in Buxton. The troops sat heavily on the village which was expected to explode. Some weeks after the Sealeys were killed, or some period later, gunfire opened on a boatload of African farmers going into the farmlands at Buxton. Since the Sealeys’ incident farmers had begun grouping. To quote from a previous writing of mine: “Three deaths, including that of a boy, resulted.” I remember the name of one adult in full. I have just noted it. Tension and anger in the village mounted. Perhaps this was not an approved human reaction but there it was. They asked no one’s agreement or permission to get into this mood. Mr Dev was not around then to advise them not to be offended. Let me repeat: There had been no aggression from Buxton residents, including from or against Indians.
Buxton did not get its reputation by mere drift of events. A PNC supporter and sociologist, Mr Harold Davis, wrote an article in the Chronicle about racial violence. The graphics of the story were not by chance. The graphics were Indian houses burning in Buxton. The anti-communist forces pretending at non-racial politics, used Buxton to illustrate “racial violence.” Why? Because a political figure there had dared to disagree with anti-communism and had deemed the issues racial. Well, what better place than Buxton, which all the political parties could disclaim, to stamp as the headquarters of race bitterness? This too was an aspect of the foreign intervention and the intellectuals who felt that to discuss race meant to be racial. As I may show in my letter on 1961, one anti-communist wing even wanted to see more bloodshed. Where did they send them for a possible warm reception?
And is Mr Dev serious in hinting that my attitude caused, or embraced, ethnic cleansing? I beg him please to set out patiently for the public the series of events, starting if he likes to do, with 1962 that lead him to this conclusion.
At 85 plus I do not have as much time left, as younger people deserve to have, to spend throwing dead cats both ways over the fence between me and my neighbour. This is my last response to Mr Dev about the disturbances in Buxton. No other political leader has made any statement. This person, considered politically foolish or incorrect, has made personal statements. I wish to return in another letter to the issue of when the disturbances started in the sixties. We may be splitting hairs, but we shall see. However, I shall not be debating with persons who use methods I cannot respect.
I have always felt in public life that it is more important to be candid than clever. This ought to be a culture not a person choice. Mr Dev commenting on Mr Dev’s as he did on September 12 . 2010 is worth many columns. I am, no stranger to attempts at self criticism, as young researchers are finding out for themselves. I am inviting Mr Dev to have the last word on my role in Buxton. I have had the role, self-appointed I admit, to see that Africans in Guyana, who have never been angels, are not misrepresented in matters of violence and other stereotyped features of life. Alone of all the political activists I have written about my part in Guyana’s ethnic politics.
Finally, why do I not send my own letters to Kaieteur News? I never blamed the current editor Mr Harris. I had explained to Mr Kissoon in March 2004 that it was about an issue I had drawn to the attention of the publisher who denied knowledge of the case.
I now owe some kind of response to those who so far as I know posed me questions.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
