Posted October 30th. 2002. - Special Feature by David Hinds

The highest form of Revolution is fighting evil in your own house

Both Mr. Amar Panday (Stabroek News October 21) and Mr. Sirju Singh (Kaieteur News October 24) have presented eloquent analyses of the Indian condition in Guyana. After my last piece on African Marginalization (to which Mr. Panday and Mr. Singh have responded) was published, someone sent me a note warning that as clear as I was, ways would be found to misrepresent me. Although I agreed that there was that possibility I thought that given my record of striving for balance in discussing race, it would be hard to misrepresent me as a biased customer. Apparently I was wrong.

Both Mr. Panday and Mr. Singh, the latter far more than the former, have misrepresented what I wrote. Mr. Singh actually quotes me to misrepresent me while Mr. Panday accuses me of siding with those who blame Indians for Guyana's problems. These two gentlemen have found themselves in a tangle because in answering the "pseudo intellectual" line that blames Indians for all of country's problems, they in turn have absolved Indians of all responsibility for the decadence. For these men decadence and Indianess are diametrically opposed. That is why they did not address my central theme that Indian spokespersons must speak out and fight Indian political and other decadence. "What decadence are you talking about Hinds?" they seem to ask. Once you begin your analysis from such a point, you are doomed to racial defensiveness that is quickly transformed into the racial supremacy you originally set out to counter.

Why is it so difficult to say that some Indians have practiced racism? Why the denial? To admit that Indians have practiced racism in Guyana does not make the Indian race wicked or solely responsible for Guyana's mess. Africans have practiced racism and so have the Portuguese, Chinese, and Europeans.

My crime seems to be my statement of what I understood Mr. Abu Bakr to be saying in his discussion of race, especially in relation to Indians. Whatever else Mr. Bakr has been saying, I understand his central theme to be a call on Indians to examine their experience and condition to discern and confront Indian racism. This is what I stated. Mr. Panday, Mr. Singh and other Indian writers have seen something else in Mr. Bakr's writings--a demonizing of the Indian as the ultimate racist. I don't see that but if that is indeed what Mr. Bakr is getting at I disagree with him.

But rather that respond to my discussion, Mr. Panday and Mr. Singh took me to task based on their reading of Bakr. The logic is that if Hinds concludes anything positive from what Bakr says, then he is agreeing with what we think Barkr is saying. I am no longer judged based on my own thoughts and writing on race, but on Mr. Bakr's. There is something troubling about that development.

Mr. Singh seems unhappy with the term "Indianist." I used this term in the most positive sense, as I was referring to those persons who have decided to publicly defend and promote the dignity of the Indian and the justness of the Indian cause. I make a separation here from the Indian politician who manipulates Indians for partisan political gains. The counterpart on the African side would be the Africanists. I do strongly believe that the presence of Africanists and Indianists are not harmful to multiracialism so long as they do not degenerate to racial supremacy and domination.

So, Mr. Panday and Mr. Singh are picking a fight with me when there is no basis for a fight. Mr. Singh starts off by saying that I am contending, "that violence against Indians is born out of the issue of African marginalization and Indian apathy towards it." How he arrives there I don't know. I have repeatedly said that in my view the violence against Indians emanating from Buxton is part of a political project by some black extremists to create as much anarchy as possible as a means of either forcing the PPP to come to its senses or out of power. As regards Indians refusal to acknowledge African marginalization, I said that this plays into the hands of the extremists who use it to reinforce their argument that Indians are insensitive to African concerns and that they do not feel that Africans have any cause for dissatisfaction.

I do not wish to get into an argument over who is more violent or not violent to whom, for this gets use nowhere. But I have great difficulty in summarily branding police violence as African violence. The police are the coercive arms of the state and have and will violently suppress any challenge or potential challenge to the state regardless of the racial make up of the police force and the challengers. Africans have also suffered at the hands of the African police, perhaps more than Indians. Mr. Burnham's Death Squad shot down more Africans than Indians just as the PPP's Black Clothes is doing today.

I am also very uncomfortable with the painting of the racial conflict of the 1960s as a one-sided attack on Indians, for it was not. Both sides were aggressors where they dominated and both sides were victims where they were defenseless The Wismar Massacre in terms of its concentration and its large members of victims was perhaps the most extreme, but it was not the sum total of the conflict. Many people arrive at their conclusion because they conveniently begin the conflict in 1962. But if the correctly trace the conflict back to the killings in the countryside beginning in 1961 after the elections, then the will see a different picture. Mr. Singh cites the Jagan "Wismar Commission" report but does not cite the Kwayana "Next Witness" report, which documents Indian aggression against Africans. This is the problem-- we tell only our side and we believe only our side. As Bakr says each side develops its own myth of victimhood. This attitude is what is tearing Guyana apart.

It is for this reason that I have challenged and opposed those Africans who tell African people that Indians have marginalized them and that all other troubles began in 1992. It is a lie and I am fighting it. So to the Mr. Singhs please stop your lies that all racial violence has been African violence against Indians, its simply untrue and its poisoning Guyana. You quote Kwayana at length, but you should also quote him as saying that in our ongoing racial conflict there is no guilty race.

There is no doubt that the current violence against Indians emaciating from Buxton is unprovoked and one sided. That is the truth. No amount of African marginalization can justify the violence. As an African, I am outraged and ashamed of it. Although it is coming from a small band of armed Africans and promoted and supported by a small section of the black political elite, I see it as an African abomination that tarnishes the entire African community. I treat it as an African Guyanese absurdity and not a PNC absurdity.

That is why I am amazed that both Mr. Panday and Mr. Singh treat Indian corruption, discrimination, nepotism, and triumphalism in and around the PPP as Freedom House excesses and not Indian excessiveness. But this very Mr. Singh treats African police violence and the Buxton violence not as colonial or PNC violence but African violence.

The bad behavior of PNC leaders during the PNC years was the behavior of the African political elite and not the majority of African people. But that does not absolve the majority of African people from responsibility for its consequences, as most of them did not resist or condemn it enough. I am sure Mr. Singh will congratulate me for saying this, but when I call on responsible Indian voices to condemn the bad behavior of the Indian political elite, I am wrongly accused of "branding all Indians as part of the present government." The naked truth is that just as the vast majority of Africans did not actively resist or condemn PNC excesses, the vast majority of Indians have not actively resisted or condemned PNC excesses. And this is a problem in Guyana. Even as I state the above I wish to point out that from as early as 1968 ASCRIA frontally took on the PNC for its anti-working class attitude and later challenged it on corruption. Kwayana and ASCRIA broke with the PNC on corruption and Kwayana exposed and fought PNC corruption throughout their tenure. Where is the Indian Kwayana? Moses Bhagwan took on the PPP establishment and exposed its excesses through IPRA. Where is today's Bhagwan?

Buxton resisted the PNC from beginning to end. The bauxite workers, mostly against the wishes of their unions, carried out five major strikes during the PNC tenure that played a pivotal role in weakening the regime and strengthening the anti-dictatorial movement. Rodney, Thomas, Ogunseye, Andaiye, Bonita Harris and other African leaders joined their Indian counterparts in fighting the PNC.

After ten years in office, the only Indians who have condemned PPP excesses are those in the PNC and WPA. ROAR, although it has modified its stance, has tackled the PPP on the grounds that they are not properly representing Indians, but they have not vigorously tackled the PPP on corruption, discrimination, domination, and bad governance, Apart from Freddy Kissoon, no independent Indians have consistently criticized and fought PPP's excesses publicly.

This is what I am calling for-- ROAR, the Guyana Indian Heritage Trust, the Mr. Singhs and Mr. Pandays must in addition to defending Indians begin to fight PPP excesses. The highest form of revolution is when you fight evil in your own house. If the Indianists were to do this it will send a strong signal to Africans. It will also strengthen those of us who are resisting African racism and extremism. And most of all, it will help rebuild that multiracial center that the WPA once represented. As an aside those who criticize the WPA for losing its multiracial character must ponder whether there can be a genuine multiracial party without a multiracial constituency. This constituency has been seriously diminished. I am proposing that one potent way to rebuild it is for us to tackle the negative in our own race group, as IPRA and ASCRIA did in paving the way for the evolution of the WPA in the 1970's.

Finally, I wish to repeat loud and clear for all to hear that to my mind the PPP and Indians are not responsible for African marginalization. The African condition is a historical development that is global, but the fact that successive governments, including the Indian-led and supported PPP, have not sought to fundamentally alter the political economy that feeds not only African marginalization but the marginalization of all of the poor and the powerless regardless of race they have prolonged and intensified the problem.

In my last letter, I called for internal conversations by both Indians and Africans as a start in to the process of rebuilding or building trust among our people. After reading Mr. Singh, I am convinced that this is most urgent than ever. We want an open conversation that acknowledges our separate and common wrongs with the intention of purging ourselves of distrust and hate and creating a common existence based on mutual trust and respect.

Dr Hinds is a University Lecturer and Political Commentator and Activist. He currently teaches Political Science at Glendale College and Mt San Antonio College in California. Please send your comments on this article to dhinds6106@aol.com.

For more information about and analysis of Guyanese and Caribbean politics click here at guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com.