Dear Editor
Mr Ralph Ramkarran’s recent article entitled ‘Sean Hinds’ should be taken seriously by the coalition government and umbrella cultural organizations in Guyana, and they should not speculate about his integrity or reasons for writing. The saying, ‘Those who feel it know it,’ is applicable. I believe the article is really a call for reconciliation, healing and a more cohesive society committed to our collective growth as a people. As Mr Ramkarran himself noted, he left the People’s Progressive Party he had served since his youthful days because he knew the direction in which certain influential leaders were taking his party and what it had become; he wanted no part of it. I dare say too that Mr Ramkarran, given his societal influence, his years of public and political service and the respect in which he is held by Guyanese of Indian and African ancestries, should be specially invited to participate in efforts at social cohesion and reconciliation.
Editor, his column seemed also to be a nascent call for better and more inter-cultural communication, targeting different social groups using varying approaches, eg, entertainment, sports, jointly planned cultural events by resident umbrella cultural organizations and so forth. Since as he notes, we rarely discuss politically motivated violence against Indians I add that there is nothing special about the victimization and marginalization of Indians; the same happened to Africans and to a lesser extent all other groups in Guyana. This marginalization and victimization strangely enough has not only been perpetrated by the ‘other’ side but by Indians working against Indians and Africans working against Africans. We need to stop measuring and promoting who had it worse; the truth is nothing happens to one group which doesn’t affect the other at some point. I would always wonder why we don’t hear Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Barbadians and other regional groups referring to themselves as Indo-Jamaican, or African Barbadian and so on. We must think we are really special in Guyana, or could it be that politically inspired marginalization and victimization has contributed in large part to different conceptualizations among ethnic groups of what it means to be Guyanese?
Recently I met a gentleman who told me that when he visited Guyana in the ʼ70s it was like coming to Miami. It was hard for me to imagine this but I am sure there are many others who have lived through the era of Guyana’s initial golden period to the miasma of a country we find ourselves in today.
Sometimes I ask myself did we aspire to political independence from the United Kingdom so we could marginalize and victimise ourselves instead of the British and other colonial oppressors? Do we find more satisfaction in engineering our own impoverishment as a people? Can we, will we, ever return to a place where self-serving political leaders are few and far between? Can and will we ever realize our full environmental and human resource potential? Editor, Guyana is arguably the most resource rich land and social space within the English-speaking Caribbean. We have energy from green to black and yellow gold. We have land space, amazing waterways, rich biodiversity and of course some of the best and brightest people. Our problem continues to be self-serving political leaders who capitalize on the under-education and impoverishment of both Africans and Indians living in Guyana. These political leaders disguise their interests as public when behind closed doors the party is paramount and authoritarian desires flourish and seep into the economic, social, governance and environmental management of the land. Check our history; from independence to date, this has been our story. It is against this backdrop and my call for more open, genuine inter-cultural communication by all Guyanese, in
particular our respective umbrella cultural organizations, that I thank Mr Ramkarran for encouraging us not to forget our past, reminding us that there is no one victim; we are all victims and we must have the courage to open ourselves to empathy and self-criticism, for whether by political allegiance, silence or verbal or physical assault we are party to the troubles of Guyana today.
Thank you Ralph Ramkarran. There are many wounds to heal; open, uncomfortable and tough conversations to be had; amd no room for the type of ethnically polarizing politics of the past and present. We should thank him for helping us to further see that violent and criminal acts under the guise of self-defence may be perceived as legitimate by some but these acts are criminal in law and immoral; in the end we lose, with friends and family the targets of bandits, our pockets suffering, relationships breaking down and self-interested politicians winning. This type of politics is ugly, hurtful and counter-productive. Mr Ramkarran has highlighted the depths of political immorality and ethnic pandering by some on both sides of the political divide in Guyana’s political fraternity. He has also recognized that political manipulation of ethnic differences and insecurity is the crux of continued ethnic mistrust and voting along ethnic lines. And the low resistance of Guyanese to said manipulation is what any effort at cohesion and reconciliation must target. When the ordinary, grassroots villager openly says no to ethnic/racial politics in spite of the origin and messenger, this is when we would have turned the corner.
Yours faithfully,
R Small
