Dear Editor,
Before he sat down to write; ‘No one will deny Janet Jagan’s role but she should not be exculpated from responsibility for the problems we inherited,’ published in S/N 6.10.24. Did B. Ramharack ever asked himself with an urge to reach agreement with his conscience whether, ‘I am willing to admit it if I don’t know something?’ Or ‘Should I blot out the truth, ignore the flaws in what I’m about to write and replace them with my ethnocentric laced narrative and fallacious references?” Or, “Will it make sense to usurp the history of a people’s struggle and impose upon it another fraught with historical inexactitudes? Finally, did Ramharack ask himself, “Is it worth waging a letter-writing war against the legacy of Janet Jagan, an exceptional figure, in extraordinary circumstances?”
In an effort to grapple with this apparent mental torment, Ramharack sought to denigrate and at the same time, insert his beliefs and political viewpoints to distort what Janet Jagan stood for in her struggle to help found and lead the PPP to political power time and again. In the end, Ramharack refused to let his conscience be his guide. As a consequence, he chose to write rejecting the right side of truth; opting to abandon intellectual humility, preferring to take refuge in hubris. In each paragraph of his letter, Ramharack demonstrated his preference for attack as the best form of defense not recognizing that in so doing, he left himself exposed, sheltered only by his cliched, name-brand narrative weaponized to target his opponents.
I will ignore the many things he claims I am ‘notoriously famous for’ since being Socratic, I support the view that “strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”
In his letter, Ramharack’s remarked that; ‘It is an aberration for someone born in another country to be able to advance to the highest seat of political leadership in a developing country where racial antagonism and anti-colonial sentiments remain socially operative.’ His remarks on that issue reek of racial overtones and a xenophobic disposition towards migrants in general. And even though the USA is not a developing country, the reality is that occurrences of the antagonisms and sentiments he referred to are self-evident in the country where he resides. But the message he telegraphed in that remark is twofold; first, his claim that persons born in another country should not be allowed to assume high office in the country where they have taken up permanent residence is prejudicial and without merit.
Manmohan Singh, a former PM of India was born near Chakwal, Pakistan, and Pervez Musharraf, former President of Pakistan was born in Delhi. King Abdullah of Jordan father of Hussein was born in Mecca, in the Hejaz region, then part of the Ottoman Empire. And four of Canada’s prime ministers: John A. Macdonald, Alexander Mackenzie, Mackenzie Bowell, and John Turner were born outside of Canada. Arnold Schwarzenegger was born in Austria but became governor of California.
A corollary of the afore mentioned historical antecedents is reflected in America’s cosmopolitan self-imagery that gained prominence with the election and presidency of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of America. Kamala Harris’ Vice Presidency and her campaign to be president of the United States reinforces the reliance on America’s multicultural and multinational relationships that allow various constituents to shape the pathway for persons, born in other jurisdictions, to be elected to high office in America.
Secondly, Ramharack’s opinion, mirrors former President Desmond Hoyte’s infamous pronouncement just after the 1997 elections when he declared; “No white American Jew should be allowed to administer the affairs of this country!” Hoyte was referring to Janet Jagan’s historic victory at the polls. But it’s not just “outsiders” like Janet Jagan who Ramharack despises, it was, according to him, ‘her lack of the Indian spirit from within’ that is the ‘bee in his bonnet.’ Like his confrères elsewhere, Ramharack suggests, that it was as a result of Janet Jagan’s role in politics that ‘brought about the self-inflicted wounds of Indo-Guyanese at the hands of unassimilated foreigners and multicultural natives like her who entered the Guyanese body politic.’
As if in a struggle with self to understand and to decide how to respond to the views expressed by those opposed to his, Ramharack counters with an incessant flow of hate-filled and prejudicial misinformation aimed at spreading a divisive narrative targeting like-minded individuals who he hopes would bend to his view. Claiming historians have ‘an obligation to interrogate the past, including what existing paradigms may classify as “settled” history,’ Ramharack asserts his ‘right’ as a protagonist to untie a knot in Guyana’s political history by revisiting the part played by known political figures in shaping Guyana’s contemporary political history, but not to his liking.
In this regard, Ramharack should bear in mind the skepticism of German Philosopher, GWF Hegel who said; “The only lesson history teaches us is that nobody ever learned anything from history.” Furthermore, Ramharack should recognize that ‘reality is a strong drug, too strong for many. The temptation to deny it is usually irresistible’. Denial, allows individuals like Ramharack to live in conditions of severe cognitive dissonance which, in effect, is a form of lying to oneself, consciously or not.
As is typical with political discontents who are largely on the periphery, language becomes the rhetoric of resistance, and reluctance to accept and recognize, for example, that those who contributed to the demise of the Burnham dictatorship and the restoration of democracy, their sacrifices did not come covered with pixie dust. In an electorally competitive and politically polarized society where identifiable opposition elements persistently push race-baiting politics, Guyanese tend to seek shelter in the bosom of ‘One Guyana’ as opposed to the traumatic episodes of intellectual recklessness and hubris, characteristic of those who prefer to idolize like BSR and to wage battle on traditional Guyanese values, customs and mores.
Clearly, Ramharack’s ambition is to elevate the concept of Indian supremacy to the level of an intellectual discourse, supported by a misguided few who live in self-imposed exile abroad. These individuals, unabashedly propagate their views by way of letters to the editors of sections of the media having failed to reckon with the limits of their discourse that speaks to a genre of separationlism and exceptionalism in a society characterized by ethnic peculiarities where the PPP/C government is doing its level best to promote national cohesion through community outreaches and its uplifting social and economic programmes. This is precisely where Ramharack’s bravura and hubris takes over.
The attempt to promote an amalgam of ethnocentric ideology at home with a downsized realism abroad, fuelled by the need to stoke Guyanese interest in his prejudicial world outlook is proving to be a Sisyphuscian task for Ramharack. Ramharack’s consistent efforts aimed at disavowing Guyanese of their collective history, coupled with his attempts to pitch that history against a narrow, selective part of Guyanese historiography, leaves Guyanese with no other option but to reject such exceptionalist and ethnocentric beliefs.
Talk about being sanctimonious, how about trying to get away with an ideology alien to Guyana that the rest of us dare not advocate? Ramharack should bear in mind, that appeals to this genre of ideology only serves to sacrifice democracy on the altar of a myopic outlook heavy with his own ‘facts’ and untruths that he parades as ‘constructive criticism’ and ‘dialectical history’ both of which, only he is capable of churning out.
Sincerely,
Clement J. Rohee
