Dear Editor,
I am pleased that Stabroek News’ columnist Allan Fenty found my poem ‘I Did Not Begin Anew’ both riveting and defiant (May 13, 2016). The poem was published by the Guyana Times after I recited it at the Pushpanjali 16 event arranged by the Indian Commemoration Trust on Arrival Day.
While it speaks to the Indians in Guyana, the poem should resonate with every proud African, Amerindian, Chinese and Portuguese since our respective history and heritage determine our unique cultures, values, and psyche even as we all share a common Guyanese citizenship. We should all be so proud.
The defiance Mr Fenty notes derives from the situation where the Indian is still viewed as an outsider after 178 years, and still faces the brunt of the political/ethnic/criminal violence that has caused many to choose flight and migration and a peaceful life elsewhere.
Their citizenship has changed. Most have become Americans with the added important value of an ethnic identity as in African American, Hispanic American and Asian American. No one should support the idea that we in Guyana should be reduced to a mono identity where only citizenship matters, and where ethnic and cultural identities are obliterated because some among us lack self-worth or are unable or unwilling to respect our nation’s diversity.
In America, our migrated families live in a society where their President, in an address to university graduates, said: “First of all ‒ and this should not be a problem for this group ‒ be confident in your heritage. [Applause.] Be confident in your blackness.” This was US President Barack Obama speaking to graduates at Howard University just over a week ago.
This is what makes America great. This is why we all want to live there. I wrote my poem which celebrates my Indian heritage and culture as if I lived in such a progressive country where our President could stand before an audience of Indian Guyanese on a day named ‘Indian Arrival Day’ and speak honestly and with maturity as a statesman and tell us to be confident in our heritage and to be confident in our Indianess.
The most that politicians and public officials here ever manage are the lukewarm niceties about the wealth of our diversity. They manage politically correct speeches that do not ever translate into the reality we live with.
I was seated next to Social Cohesion Minister Amna Ally at the Pushpanjali event and she thought my poem was beautiful. That gives me hope.
As a government Minister she must know that it is a national good for citizens to have pride in their respective ethnic/cultural/religious identity and, further, that there must be national space for each of us to express that pride and to do so knowing that we will not then be accused of being triumphal, racist, supremacist and divisive.
I am hopeful that Minister Ally will be in the forefront of such real change and that Guyana will become a country where every race, ethnicity, culture, religion and gender will be able to live and to speak without fear of repression and abuse. We could do worse than emulate the US in this regard.
Howard students were not the only ones cheering over Obama’s speech. Janell Ross at The Washington Post praised Obama’s call for “empathy and [an] expanded moral imagination” as one of the few surprising and thought-provoking messages that graduates will receive this season. On Twitter, Slate writer Jamelle Bouie called the speech “a great mediation on democracy AND a celebration of black life.” Mathew Rodriguez at Mic described Obama’s speech as “one of the best and blackest he’s given.”
I believe all this will give Mr Fenty even more to wonder about.
Yours faithfully,
Ryhaan Shah