Dear Editor,
In its September 22, 2024 edition S/N published a letter written by Baytoram Ramharack; ‘Janet Jagan showed little interest in Indian history and culture.’ Whatever his motive, Ramharack and his comrades in New York seem bent on waging a letter-writing campaign to besmirch the image and belittle the struggles of the Jagans of this country. This is not the first time such letters were published. Based on what he writes from time to time, it is clear that Ramharak and compnay’s obsession is to denigrate the Jagan legacy, shape it in an anti-Indian framework and replace it with le’ grande epiphany of a deceased, non-resident Indo-Guyanese critic of Cheddi Jagan. This time, Ramharack chose to pick a bone with Janet Jagan, a founder member of the PPP and former President of Guyana. But hard as he tries, life itself has proven his campaign unattractive, nor is it gaining traction within the wider Guyanese society.
Observers are keen to know what exactly Ramharack was referring to with his reference to ‘Indian culture?’ Is it the Hindutva-type Indian culture or is he referring to what we know as Guyanese multi-culturalism? Was he thinking of today’s new writing, thinking, music and art? Or, did he envisage something simple and copy-cat-like, replete with patterns of the past? These are serious questions any pretentious academic needs to answer. Further, it seems to me that Ramharack’s reference to ‘Indian history’ should be viewed in a Guyanese context and should mean Indo-Guyanese/Caribbean history. Worse yet, any attempt by his comrade at home to show that Indo-Guyanese owe a debt of gratitude to Afro-Guyanese historically and contemporarily contradicts President Ali’s modernistic pursuit of ‘One .Guyana’ as well as his commitment to the ‘Pact for the Future’ principle and goal of ‘Leaving No One Behind.’
Instead of situating Janet Jagan at the center of the Guyanese people’s struggle for free and fair elections and the restoration of democracy in which Indo-Guyanese led by the PPP played the leading role, Ramharack chose, for the sake of his narrow-minded and clannish academic pursuits to jump on incendiary ethnically-laced rhetoric and esoteric issues camouflaged as legitimate historical and cultural phenomena.
Graduates like Ramharack who claim to have studied at an American college are prone to accept Western ideologues’ interpretations and narratives about ideological, social and political developments in countries of the Global South. As a consequence, because of their disdain for the ideology and politics of the Jagan’s what they set out to accomplish is to influence the Indo-Guyanese populace ideologically into accepting a Hindu supremacist ideology and anti-Jagan narrative. Such writings and pronouncements must be exposed as unhelpful and mischievous, they do not contribute to the unity and cohesion of the nation as a whole.
Sincerely,
Clement J. Rohee