Dear Editor,
Mr Nascimento’s claim of “multiple egregious comparisons of indentureship equaling slavery” (SN13/09/23) was troubling. It sent me to the archive to gain a better understanding of his concern. I found nothing; not a single instance where a writer to this newspaper came even remotely close to equating indentured labour and slavery.
I will come back to this point but let’s be clear: The horrors of the transatlantic slave trade, the evils of slavery or the suffering of African slaves are not in dispute. Secondly, there was no comparison of indentured labour and slavery
conceptually or in a general sense as his statement inferred. Those are all settled issues and those who introduced them into the conversation were trying to cloud the real issue which was: the experience of indentured Indians in the narrow context of Guyana and attempts to minimize it.
It became a manufactured controversy, based in part on a false premise that writers who suggest that some aspects of the experience of indentured Indians in Guyana were analogous to slavery are equating indentured labour with slavery. Nothing could be further from the truth. Words have meanings. Similar does not mean same (or equal) and Merriam Webster’s English Dictionary can resolve that matter very quickly. Don’t take my word on this: take the words of Dr Walter Rodney who examined this very issue and found that the treatment of indentured Indians in Guyana was “indistinguishable from the memories of African slavery.” That is as close as one can get to a redline without crossing it and no one did. Is Mr Nascimento suggesting that Dr Rodney committed an “egregious comparison of indentureship equaling slavery,” and minimized the suffering of African slaves?
Let me restate the obvious. Slavery and indentured labour were two horrible chapters in our history. Both were about the exploitation of human beings for profit. Both were characterized by hard labour, punishment, physical, emotional, and psychological abuse, humiliation, degradation, and control. To that extent, the two systems were similar at their core and for me, the conversation ends there. Some writers object to that approach and perhaps understandably, their responses have been more emotional than rational. Their best argument is that merging the two experiences would minimize the suffering of African slaves. That, on its face, might be a legitimate argument however, it falls flat when it is advanced by dismissing, minimizing, and trivializing the suffering of indentured Indians as they have done.
Aside from the sheer pettiness, the problem with that approach is that human suffering cannot be measured and quantified.
Subjective assessments of human suffering are of little value. When I was in high school, boys were caned on the buttock and girls were struck on their hands. Many girls cried; many boys didn’t. Who suffered more remains an open question because everyone has a different pain threshold. It is also an accepted fact that different forms of punishment can have the same or a similar effect on human beings and therein lies the problem. It is undisputed that African slaves and indentured Indians were treated horribly by the plantation owners and suffered greatly. That much we should be able to agree on. On one side of the debate, the suffering of African slaves is undisputed. On the other side the contention is that the treatment of indentured Indians, while substantially different from slavery in some but not all respects, was similar in effect.
Attorney Darren Wade, Vishnu Bisram and Gokarran Sukhdeo presented reasoned arguments to support their respective positions. Their views must be respected even if they are not accepted. I saw no evidence of intellectual irresponsibility or racial animus. They engaged in civil discourse demonstrating that reasonable people can disagree without being disagreeable. The same cannot be said about those who resorted to ad hominem attacks (which are never a substitute for good arguments) and took the conversation in different directions.
The fake news industry thrives when false information is parroted and amplified. An example of “Intellectual dishonesty” was on display when one writer, in an attempt to draw a distinction between the two systems, dismissed indentured labour as “human trafficking;” overlooking (or disregarding) the fact that slavery was quintessential human trafficking and so defined by the United Nations. The contradiction did not trouble the writer or Mr Nascimento who embraced him and his condemnation of “racial entrepreneurs.” Such condemnation, while selective, is overdue. Well known suspects have been plying their trade in plain sight, unrestrained, in Guyana and safe havens in the US.
I do not want to be drawn into a discussion of reparation, but a lesson can be learned from an earlier time in our history when the former slaves compared their performance with the Indians to make their case for higher wages. Their actions placed added pressure on the Indians to produce more but did not get them the higher wages they were seeking. Global settlements are much easier to accomplish than piecemeal approaches. I end with a question:
Does anyone believe a former slave and an indentured Indian ever sat in a cane field and argued about who suffered more or less?
Yours truly,
Milton Jagannath