Freddie seh like we one love bai Ronan that coolie peopkle rich and control 95% of de ecanamy. Hey hey hey.
My problem with Indian academics writing about African Guyanese
One of the most exasperating features one encounters in this country are persons, including academics, pondering on the enduring predicaments of their country and do so claiming that they are offering ideas and analyses in genuine attempts to solve the country’s problem without realizing that they too embody the very problems they want to see go away.
Nothing changes because their writings perpetuate the very negatives they want to dissolve.
The Stabroek News columnist, Shaun Samaroo, comes to my mind. He lifted himself above the fray and pontificated on all of Guyana’s social and political setbacks but he was part of the problem.
He masked his support for the PPP and appeared to be genuinely concerned about Guyana. He was exposed when he wrote that Guyana can never have a future without the leadership of what he classified as two brilliant Guyanese – Frank Anthony and Priya Manickchand. Immediately, the other half of Guyana saw him as an Indian supporter of the PPP which he was. The Stabroek News soon parted company with him.
The reincarnation of Samaroo is a frequent letter writer, GHK Lall. Like Samaroo, he lifts himself above the mundane backwardness of Guyana but on reading him you see he is part of the tragedy. There is a secret about GHK Lall that he needs to be confronted on.
How did he become chairman of the Gold Board and can he tell us why he chose that particular building in Queenstown to be the board’s head office, and what purpose and whose purpose that structure served during the 2015 election campaign?
Now we have the academic Dr. Ramharack writing on the ethnic security dilemma in a letter titled, “Ethnic Security Dilemmas underline urgent need for Government of National Unity.” He uses the plural for dilemma but Ramharack is really concerned with the security predicament of Guyanese East Indians.
Echoing his fellow academic’s sympathy for the ethnic security cul-de-sac of Indo- Guyanese (the list includes Indian academics who should know better), Ramharack expounded on the African domination of the police force.
He writes; “There is a real fear among Indians regarding the disciplined forces. Indians remember all too well Desmond Hoyte’s references to “kith and kin”, the promise of “slo fiah, mo fiah”, and the violence against Indians on January 12, 1998, documented by the GIFT report. Balance in the disciplined forces implies that a targeted-outcome should be established rather than a quota system.
Then Ramharack exposed himself like Samaroo and GHK Lall. He becomes suspect and questionable. In other words, intellectual analysis was replaced by ethnic tribalist instincts. Here is Ramharack’s dismissal of the fears that African Guyanese have of being dominated by another ethnic group which has most of the country’s wealth at its disposal.
I quote him; “I cautioned Dr. Hinds that it was dangerous for Africans to spread the myth that rich Indians control the Guyanese economy and that many Indians were engaged in the narco-trafficking economy. Dr. Ramesh Gampat, citing UN figures, had previously debunked the myth about the wealthy Indian controlling the economy of Guyana.”
I don’t know where the UN got its statistics from. I don’t know anyone writing on wealth distribution in Guyana has debunked the fact that rich Indians control a huge percent of the economy. I would be interested in knowing how the UNJ researchers acquired their statistics and what methodology they used.
I would also like to know why Dr. Gampat found those statistics useful to cite. I don’t know Dr. Gampat and I hope and pray he is not operating within the same framework of Ramharack.
It is academic banality to polemicze on the ethnic security dilemma of Indians and the fear they have of racial control of the security forces without situating the ethnic security dilemma of African Guyanese in the same context.
No researcher can conclude that wealthy Indians do not have a predominant hold on the Guyanese economy. A class analysis of Guyana would reveal that there is a seriously poor Rural Indian peasantry and an Indian proletariat that are as poor as African Guyanese.
But it borders on propaganda to say that in terms of possession of wealth, Indians and Africans stand near to each other. That is an alternative fact and alternative facts are asininities. Do Guyanese know that there is a curious economic secret of this country? Among the tiny Portuguese population, there are some that have larger land holdings than 80 percent of the total African community of Guyana.
The discussion of the ethnic security dilemmas of Indo- Guyanese and African Guyanese need to be highlighted by genuine nationalists not Guyanese driven by a racially conscious mentally.
