The
Sukhdeo Factor: Voice from a sleeper cell
Posted August 5th. 2006 - by Paul Sanders
Alas. The wise one spoketh.
And he rose like the powerful Leviathan out of the abyss of the ocean; like the fierce Kumbhakarna, in the Ramayana epic, awakened out of his deep, dark recesses of an eon's rest by Ravana's army of drummers; like the Sleeping Beauty rising out from beneath the curse of a wicked old witch, with the kiss from a handsome prince; like the deadly Bushmaster serpent that sleeps through two full moons and some, in Guyanese popular folklore.
And his tongue was sharpened like an arrow; and he was valiant for the truth upon the earth; for he spoketh peaceably to his neighbors so that they know his words of wisdom and instructions; to perceive his words of understanding …
Cut. Cut. This is no way to premiere a summer blockbuster. Opening credits first.
Our hero's name: Gokarran Sukhdeo.
Now pan our film back to the screen idol. Close up. You can invent the caption to that shot.
Gokarran Sukhdeo emerged; it may seem, on the political scene literally out of nowhere. Few things are known about this strange man whose words glowed like his skin, who maintained a most un-Guyanese reticence about his political craft. It was as if he had dawned on the present to shine in the future, while his past existed only in other people's imagination.
But his brilliance, his intellect, his scholastic performance last week in his epistle on racial voting - there is no doubt.
Sukhdeo came to attention as a flourishing writer, sharp suave and self-assured, with a stiff creole accent to match his kaki trousers and short sleeves. Besides his prize for Literature, his tenure as an "Economist" at the Ministry of Agriculture; and his musings posted on the Guyana Journal, who was he and what he made - no one precisely knew. And for his political ideas - mystery swirls around him like mist at a Himalayan sunrise.
For all that can be surmised, Gokarran Sukhdeo is crudely awakened into his present position on "racial voting" in Guyana; or he rode into it on a white charger with nothing behind him but the sun silhouetted on the horizon.
Ah, the legend that is built up around this man's thesis on race is almost impossible to separate from culpable fantasy to a mind that is just awakened from a constant state of vegetation. In hospital terms, our hero has risen from a coma.
And it is decades later.
Gokarran Sukhdeo chose not to "take advantage" of Dr. David Hinds' "knowledge of history." Instead, like a classical warrior, he opted for the question of racial voting. In other words, his retort is premised on the idea that there is no point trying to judge a mighty river by its source.
See what I mean? Our hero is a coma patient convulsed by racial stimuli. And history is not on his side. This is what makes the screenplay so intriguing - so Hollywood.
So after star boy Sukhdeo checks out, he goes about his survey on racial voting. This is all new stuff to him. Like a madman, he meets and asks Gary, Tom, Dick and Harryram, even the illiterate Paapi. He reviews his own history; and in a sample of 6 persons, he discovers … tada …. - no one voted racial. Good for the six of you.
Dr. David Hinds, et all, submitted that Guyanese have always voted racial. Poor historians, they were, they tried to illustrate via of historical events that race has been, and still is, an important component of our electoral behavior. They have shown that race has become an intrinsic layer of Guyanese social, political and cultural fabric.
To put it simply: race is the Guyanese dilemma. The coolieman/blackman syndrome is the predicament.
Again, history has been the tool to gauge this behavior. And if Sukhdeo didn't take advantage of history, then he could have checked with his own "education." That would assume, of course, a refresher's course on Guyana's history; from the days of the Political Affairs Committee, to the PPP's 1953 victory and to the eventual break up of the PPP along racial lines to the rule of Forbes Burnham, the racial riots of the 60's, etc. etc.
All the way to present day! All the way to the current administration of the PPP/Civic and its nemesis: the PNC/R.
Gosh, there so many markers of racial animosity in Guyana's history. But the screen writers for the Sukhdeo's character purposefully omitted that out of the script. So our hero Sukhdeo is coming in from the cold into the drama - and with a little bit of arrogance and lots of ignorance to keep the entertainment high. Sounds like a scene from a daytime soap opera. But this is how drama is built.
The plot thickens when Gokarran Sukhdeo seeks refuge in a "Faustian" obsession - of his own kind. He ponders, "If Indians are voting racial, how come thirty of the thirty four parties are trying to cut into the Indian electorate? How come the PPP/C won 52 percent of the electorate at the last elections when Indians account for only 44 percent of the population?"
Stop. I mean pause. Rewind and playback. Did you hear that? That's the sound of a man working on his own absurdities. "Indian electorate" followed by the "PPP/C's 52 percent of the electorate!"
The logic flows: if there is an "Indian electorate" isn't there racial voting here? Isn't that largely the reason for the 52 percent victory? Isn't the Indian vote (with the exception, of course, of the magnificent six) that makes the "Indian electorate?" Isn't there a cause-and-effect concept at work here?
You bet. By now the villains are creeping up on our mega-star. They are closing in like hungry hyenas, organized and well coordinated. The thing about movie screenplay is that the hero gets a beating in the beginning and evolves into a celebrated character toward the end. He does this by dismantling his enemies; foil their plots, save an entire town from obliteration and fades into the ending credits.
The playwright did none of this for the Sukhdeo's character. In the winding down scene, against the back drop of a mental institution, Sukhdeo beats himself up thoroughly by messing with his own head. It's a scene almost out of "Lethal Weapon," where a depressive Briggs (Mel Gibson) sucks the barrel of his 9mm contemplating whether he's now his own worst enemy.
We see there is no careless frenzy in his staging, only a sort of deadly logic. He screams like a madman for the long view. He swings for the fences in terms of bold reform: "National unity" - and he propounds that if the PPP/C wins -"with an even greater margin" - they should share power with a "party or parties that represent Black people."
So now we do have racial voting. Black people are voting for their black party or parties. And more Indians are expected to vote for the PPP/C. Our hero just said so; and if he's the star of the show, then he's right.
But what's your position really on this, movie star? This is where the script gets chaotic for the purpose of special effects and the sound stage. One moment the hero is on the side of the righteous and the next he's ganging up with the villains to beat himself. Did he not know that he's supposed to be my hero? Come on Sukhdeo, you can do better than this.
But in an earlier take, we see some pretty images of our icon as a tough minded, kick-ass action hero in a grittier mood; with down angles as the camera concentrates on his whiff of Moses' "chronic hemorrhoids."
There is a firm sense of screen geography as he flings himself into action that energizes the movie's opening sequence. Here it is where our hero displays his impressive ambition and cunning.
Dispassionately, his strength, his divinity ransacks elements from all kinds of myths, classic and modern. He detects an "impersonator": this is not the fella who'd take his people to the Promised Land!
There is something more. Even though he doesn't like to admit it, Sukhdeo is privately giving considerable thought to his mental framework. He admires Dr. Hinds' "obsessive sincerity," meaning Hinds' conviction that Guyana's problem can be solved if people are "educated and persuaded to abandon racial voting."
Racial reconciliation is a good start, you might say. But that's not where the drama is; it is in the surprise: the sudden blossoming of Sukhdeo's self-contradiction.
And to some point, Sukhdeo checks in with reality by recognizing the new kids on the block, the "Trotman/Ramjattan" team struggling to capitalize on this racial deadlock, hoping that Guyanese "will cross the racial divide."
And just as sudden as he surfaced, the mystic submerges into the darkness again. Here's how: he characterizes these endeavors as being "based on an erratic premise, an untested one, an assumption only."
Remember, the wise one has just come out of a coma. The mystery of his condition has served him well, and as he rises dizzyingly to the pinnacle of his performance, it is his lost years that attract more attention.
So he missed out on a lot of history. And he missed out on the daily headlines that presented the empirical evidence. He missed out on the fact that racial antagonism was experimented, tested, developed, expanded and expounded by both racial camps as they were led by their leaders; and it did not work for the development of Guyana.
Now the maharishi begins to revise his thinking and wraps the wire around his cage. He asks most fraudulently: what if they (Dr. Hinds and cohorts) wake up tomorrow morning and discover that they are all sincerely wrong? …. What if … that people actually vote not for race but for the party they believe can best look after their welfare?
The "what if" scenario on racial voting is Sukhdeo's fantasy escape valve from the issue. You can't challenge the fact of reality with a "what if." You can't prove existence by means of non-existence. Reality is reality, and that's that. Racial voting is a fact of Guyanese history.
The "tomorrow" Sukhdeo projects is the language of the evangelical crusader. "Tomorrow" by coma standards can very well mean next millennium. Come to think of it, given the wars fought on this ground based on race and all its successive social turbulence and mayhem, coma might be the perfect state of mind.
With the help of a luminary composer like John Williams, the orchestration can be a smooth movement from placebo to panacea in A minor, with a soft refrain as the image of our hero fades into a big sleep.
And maybe, just maybe - the day after tomorrow will be a brand new awakening. Come again, oh holy one.