Dear Editor
This year we commemorate among other things, the 175th anniversary of the first arrival of indentured immigrants from India to the then British Guiana. This year as well, the National Assembly of Guyana has to vote in favour of the decriminalization of consensual adult same sex relations and discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexual and transgender persons.
These two events are connected in the violence committed against two men, Mohangoo and Nabi Baksh on board the Mersey ship in 1898. Writer Gaiutra Bahadur discovered this report in her research for her book and shared her notes with the Caribbean IRN.
According to the reports “September 25: No 696, Nobibux, m., 20 years, and No 351 Mohangu, m, 22 years, were caught about midnight by a sirdar named Rambocus committing sodomy. When brought up before the Captain and myself they both confessed their guilt. Nobibux stated that for the last ten years he had allowed men to commit acts of beastliness: he had no doubt induced Mohangu to do this criminal act. Nobibux was put in irons and Mohangu, after blistering his penis, was made to holystone [scrub the decks] from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily.”
The Surgeon Superintendent Dr Harrsion was subsequently fined after much discussion about the level of the punishment meted out. It also emerged that there were previous disputes between Rambocus and the men.
This case is probably only one of many in which the presence of the “sodomy” laws resulted in the violent treatment of perceived offenders.
The repeal of the discriminatory laws against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Guyanese in Guyana is a reparative tribute to Mohangoo and Nabi Baksh and the thousands of other Guyanese who had to find ways of dealing with the brutality of colonial homophobia.
Yours faithfully,
Vidyaratha Kissoon
