Dear Editor,
I write with reference to an invented controversy now raging in the Guyanese press. It has to do with whether prime ministerial candidate, Moses Nagamootoo disavowed his origins and whether he accepted GOPIO’s award under false pretences.
In the KN of April 3, Minister Leslie Ramsammy speaking as an official of the PPP said: “…since Nagamootoo ‘denies’ being Indian, he should do the ‘decent thing’ and return the award he received in 2008 from the Global Organisation of the People of Indian Origin (GOPIO)”. Minister Ramsammy’s statement followed several attack-letters by Dr Vishnu Bisram, Dr Baytoram Ramharack, and others under fictitious names in the Guyana Times newspaper, none more twisted and invented than Dr Ramsammy’s.
I spoke recently via telephone with the chairman of GOPIO, Mr Indar Singh who said: “The award was given to Mr Nagamootoo for being a Guyanese of Indian origin”. Mr Indar Singh also mentioned another point of more significance. Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, in his last address at the Pravasi Convention in India told the attendees: “… you have distinguished yourselves in the country of your birth, your nationality comes first, then you are Indian”.
I had asked Mr Indar Singh to issue a GOPIO statement to clarify the issues that have since become central in the PPP’s campaign to win “every last Indian vote”. He referred me to Mr Ashok Ramsarran, who happened to be Guyanese and is currently president of GOPIO. I was unable to contact Mr Ramsarran – his contact number was not on the GOPIO website.
Minister Ramsammy, as reported in the KN, said: “Mr Nagamootoo said, ‘I am not an Indo-Guyanese’, that he was born in Guyana”. I challenge Dr Ramsammy to provide a citation for that specific quote. I would have to suspend my capacity for disbelief to even consider that any Indo-Guyanese could possibly say: “I am not an Indo-Guyanese”.
I was at the Naresa Palace two weeks ago when presidential and prime ministerial candidates, David Granger and Moses Nagamootoo, respectively, spoke there. Mr Nagamootoo was responding to a criticism directed at himself over some earlier statement: Was he of Indian or Guyanese nationality? He made it clear his nationality was Guyanese, and said, “If I had been born in Pakistan, I would have been a Pakistani”. He left no room for ambiguity. When Dr Ramharack launched his attack on Mr Nagamootoo in the first published letter, it was something that came out of the blue. None of the people I spoke with thought Mr Nagamootoo had made any statement denying his ethnicity. In the minds of Messrs Bisram, Ramharack, Ramsammy and the PPP campaign officials, any argument or statement, invented or real would suffice, if it works to get the Indian-Guyanese to vote strictly on the basis of race.
Mr Nagamooto also published a work of fiction titled Hendree that is filled with composite characters based on the life of several members of past generations of his family. In the book he revealed himself as a proud Indo-Guyanese of Tamil-Indian origin.
Minister Ramsammy would do well to ponder the quote I cited above from Mr Indar Singh. I repeat it for him: “The award was given to Mr Nagamootoo for being a Guyanese of Indian origin”. I now emphasize it for him: His nationality comes first, then his origin or ethnicity. Would Minister Ramsammy deny that his party’s campaign is built around the idea of brainwashing the Indo-Guyanese to consider their ethnicity first and their nationality second? And that’s why the PPP leaders have decided to make this issue front and centre of their campaign. I also repeat my challenge: Provide the quote where Nagamootoo said: “I am not an Indo-Guyanese”.
Yours faithfully,
Mike Persaud
