Dear Editor,
Stabroek News of Tuesday 22nd October, contained Mr. GHK Lall’s most articulate, if not poetic, plaintiff on the ‘hyphenation’, if you will, of two distinctive Guyanese identities. In the process he refers to two protagonists at opposite ends of the ethnicity spectrum, while boldly insisting that he, for one, is a totally whole Guyanese (One Nation).
Mr. Lall’s proclamation resonated in my going in search of my own persona, and where to locate it. For the previous protestations to which he adverted did not appear to make accommodation for the rest of six peoples. Or are there six ‘hyphenated’ peoples?
Where the argumentation may appear to point is towards types of self-conflicted leaderships.
At this juncture however, one reflection must be on the progress we have made as an ethnicity conscious society, with palpably hyperattenuated governments – the whole being the sum of its parts (if not of parties).
So then in what direction does our future splinter, and to whose benefit? Is this the psycho-political legacy we will bequeath to future generations, who themselves will have to cope with invasions of unapologetically ‘whole’ foreigners.
It is worth recalling that the ‘hyphen’ psychology derived initially out of the communities from which foreigners, sugar barons in particular, extricated our forebears. As it turned out their inheritors forged a succession strategy that resulted in the depletion of the emphasis on ethnicity, so that working and social relationships thrived across the industry laterally and vertically.
So that some six decades on I can still celebrate with Nowrang, Raikha, Jai, Rama, Rajendra, and many others, the triumph of an unhyphenated spiritual relationship.
At a more mundane level, it is about friendship. But it was Kahlil Gibran of The Prophet who wrote:
“and let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.”
More profoundly perhaps, Gibran has this to say:
“Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”
Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.”
We are a village of 700,000 people.
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
