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Selected Articles by Shri Ravi Dev, Guyana

Please scroll down page for articles:

    (1) Part of the Caribbean Establishment Has Always Been Hostile to Naipaul - Ravi Dev
    (2) Naipaul's Books Deal With The Effect of Imperialism on the Cultures of Colonised Peoples -   Ravi Dev
    (3) Mr. Bakr Played Ducks and Drakes - Ravi Dev 
    (4) Guyana Must Have Stability With Justice - Ravi Dev
    (5) We Cannot be Complacent About the Security Forces and Indian Security - Ravi Dev
    (6) Culture and Politics - Ravi Dev
    (7) Lies and Silence: The Final Nail - Ravi Dev
    (8) Learned Helplessness - Ravi Dev
    (11) PPP: Trends in futility - Ravi Dev
    (12) Balancing of the disciplined forces can be achieved under the right conditions - Ravi Dev
    (13) I attempted to identify the proximate causes for the African responses that target the Indian masses - Ravi Dev
    
Shri Ravi Dev voting at the Saraswat Primary School, WCD in 2001 General Elections, Guyana 

(14) Africans were never classified as Sudras - Ravi Dev
(15) ROAR argued for affirmative action - Ravi Dev
(16) The constitution was amended in 1999 to cater for a commission on the disciplined forces - Ravi Dev
(17) State and Societal Violence Against Indians in Guyana: The Ethnic Security Dilemma - Ravi Dev
(18) It was not Indian labor that defeated African attempts to wrest higher wages from the planters - Ravi Dev

■ Part of the Caribbean establishment has always been hostile to Naipaul

Author: Ravi Dev, MP & Leader of ROAR
Source: Stabroek News, 12/19/01

Dear Editor,
Mr. Bakr's letter captioned "Naipaul has become the stubborn incarnation of the worst of a past generation" (2.12.2001) took the local discourse on Naipaul to a new level one to which I hesitated to sink, even though Mr. Bakr had taken a pot shot at ROAR. Can you take someone seriously who fulminates about Naipaul's "maledictions" then sneers that the latter's Nobel was greeted with "disgust", that he is "intellectually inadequate" and a "good minor talent" to whom the Caribbean had just wished "good riddance"? I had decided to shrug off Mr. Bakr's jaundice as an idiosyncratic "De Gustibus..." and all that, until I saw him being congratulated by Mr. Frederick Kissoon (Faculty of Social Sciences, UG) and Mr. Dave Martins (Big Bamboo, Merrymen).

Now this is quite a spread of support, to say the least, and I realized that Mr. Bakr's profuse use of the royal "we" to authorize his anti Naipaul loathing was not a mere affectation absorbed while in exile in the land of Louis IX, but possibly the signification of a wider Caribbean orientation. This possibility certainly deserves a response, if for nothing else than when Naipaul is identified finally as "this East Indian" who is fortunately pass? and over the hill, the "we" receives the cryptic valedictory warning: "there are others among us".

Redemption
Mr. Bakr announces that coming "after Garvey, or CLR James or Jean Price Mars and Aime Cesaire", Naipaul could not possibly be "offering any original insights" in his critique of Caribbean society. So why all the brouhaha and gnashing of teeth on Naipaul? Mr. Bakr reveals that while "we (there's that word again) were offered hope and redemption" by the afore mentioned gentlemen, Naipaul cynically proposed "deliverance...in flight". Now it's of more than passing interest that Mr. Bakr chose those particular four Caribbean pioneers, whose social commentaries are deemed so profound and all encompassing as to have preempted any modification or elaboration much less refutation by one such as Naipaul.

Each of these stalwarts were focused throughout their lives on the definition and deliverance of the souls of African folk: Garvey with his "Back to Africa Movement", James struggling with his Trotskyite Black Power oxymoron, Mars and Cesaire with Negritude. Whether through a lapse of omission or a sin of commission, one finds in their emancipatory musings nary a concern for the other peoples inhabiting our winsome islands. Where was the Indian content, say, in the message of " redemption and hope" for "us"? Not so coincidentally all of these giants are now being deconstructed for their exclusivist and essentialist formulations. Even Cesaire has come under severe fire from his fellow Martiniquean and young lion Chamoiseau for (among other transgressions) ignoring Indians (yes, Martinique has Indians from India, and yes they are also in "delusional flight") in his Negritude notes of blood and soul. And more to the point, isn't this what Naipaul bitterly protested in The Middle Passage (1962), when he quoted the Jamaican writer John Hearne to reject "the sentimental camaraderie of skin which provides the cheap thrill of being African"? But of course Naipaul is unqualified and incapable of "offering any original insights".

As he mentioned in his Nobel speech, Naipaul is not enamoured of giving lectures, but in 1975 (seventy five years after the first Pan African Congress) he delivered one to the First Conference of East Indians in the Caribbean. He warned Indians against any easy essentialism: "I don't think there is any magic in any racial inheritance" and "the problems of the Indians are no different from the problems of everybody else here. I don't think it is possible for any one here, of any community, to seek the camouflage of some larger cultural entity, because that again is only a form of 'dropping out'". Wasn't the retreat into Negritude a form of "flight"? One can always create hope but how lasting has been the redemption?

Incorporation
While Naipaul has spoken candidly of his desire to escape from Trinidad because it did not provide the environment to sustain what he wanted to be since he was ten a full time writer he has never advocated "flight" for anyone else. He proposed that we create our own culture and not live in a borrowed one which forces us to play the "Bongo Man" role (sorry Mr. Martins, ting a ling a ling). In 1962 he had advocated the devolution of real responsibility to the people in positions and their measurement by the standard of efficiency, "to bring political organization to the picaroon society". We still have not heeded that advice and we are still paying the price in cons and scams.
In 1975, in the lecture mentioned above, Naipaul emphasized that we have to "arrive at some understanding of all the strands of our upbringing. And we have so many strands here, on this island in the New World. We have to acknowledge them all." He quotes Mommsen, the German historian of republican Rome: "The history of every nation... is a vast system of incorporation." Naipaul's "we" incorporated all the peoples of the Caribbean, not just one master race. In his Nobel speech, Naipaul confirmed what I had written earlier in this discourse, that he traveled to Africa, to India, to the non Arab Muslim world and South America to better "understand... all the strands of our upbringing."
I have been reading Naipaul since I was a boy in the sixties and I have never ceased to be amazed at the hostility directed at him from the Caribbean establishment. Several worthies even lobbied assiduously through the seventies and eighties to deny him the Nobel. My conclusion is that some resented his refusal to subsume his writings to the mélange of ideologies which swept the region in this century anti colonialism, Black Power/Negritude and Marxism, all of which ignored the Indian as a subject and his insistence on including the Indian as a Caribbean subject. There is an element of racism in this view since Naipaul's success on the world stage ensured that a more authentic, inclusive Caribbean was presented one that included all the peoples but was yet rejected. Some of the outpourings after Naipaul's Nobel, including Mr. Bakr's effort, led me to believe that this tendency is alive and well.

Others, I feel, did not appreciate the distinction that Proust makes, and Naipaul quotes approvingly in his Nobel speech, between the writer's innermost self, the secretions of which goes into his books, and the social self that engages in interviews and conversations. Naipaul has written that the Trinidadian "is a natural eccentric, if by eccentricity is meant the expression of one's personality, unhampered by fear of ridicule or the discipline of a class". Naipaul is a real "Trini" by this definition and, as Lamming suggested, he sometimes plays an Ole Mas in his social life.

Let us not get too caught up with the Ole Mas, let us reflect on the secretions of the ferocious and disciplined self that has dared to write back to the Empire and the world about all of "us" subalterns, as subjects and not objects. Let us eschew "maledictions" as we work to build a just and equitable society out of our picaroon beginnings.

Yours faithfully, Ravi Dev, MP, Leader of ROAR.

■ Naipaul's books deal with the effect of imperialism on the cultures of colonised peoples

Author: Ravi Dev, MP & Leader of ROAR
Source: Stabroek News, 11/28/01

Dear Editor,
I thought Mr. Frederick Kissoon's opening observation that "all the writings in the local press in praise of Naipaul have come from East Indians (sic)" was the most interesting in his polemic, "Naipaul completely ignores the effect of Imperialism on culture". [SN 11-16-01]. Firstly, the explanation he proffered for his observation - that Indians are looking for a hero - leaves Mr. Kissoon open to charges of racism, by his own criteria. After all, if he adjudges Naipaul to be racist for saying that "Africa...is not a very literary land", what is he, if he claims that the Indians of Guyana cannot evaluate and praise Naipaul on literary grounds, but only gravitate to his success to satisfy a psychological deficit? Indians can feel but not think. Every Caribbean Indian whom I contacted, (worldwideweb!) and had read Naipaul, reacted to him positively because he described a world that they could resonate within. They were humans in Naipaul's Caribbean world, they were real, they existed, they mattered. They were not the caricatures in what mostly passes for "Caribbean Literature". Naipaul, through his literary
genius and the force of his commitment to his craft, was able to place this multiracial, multicultural, more real Caribbean on the World-map of literature. This is why Indians praise him.

Secondly, one interesting corollary question arises from Mr. Kissoon's observation - why were African Guyanese indifferent (forget praise) to Naipaul's Nobel? Re-read Miguel Street, see which Caribbean person will not break out laughing in recognition; re-read The Middle Passage, see which Caribbean person wouldn't furrow his/her brow in thought. Is it because the Indian in the Caribbean is still an exotic? Another corollary question is why was it primarily liberal Indians - notably Mr. Kissoon - and SN (I was told it was a liberal Indian with a Phd. in Literature; let's know, it will help this discussion) who bashed Naipaul? Commenting in 1962 on the rivalry between Indians and Africans as to who was most racist, Naipaul offered a remarkably percipient answer: "This particular rivalry is conducted by the liberal-minded, who will not be denied the pleasure of appealing to their group to show more tolerance towards the other group."

Imperialism and Culture
Mr. Kissoon incredibly claims that Naipaul "does not want to see the organic connection between imperialism and culture", when every single book by the man is concerned with the brutal effects of imperialism on third-world
peoples and their cultures. Naipaul, however, as a creative writer, avoids jargon and buzzwords like the plague: "Imperialism is a word of abuse used by scoundrels," to avoid examining particular circumstances for their contingencies and contested histories and get away with empty, fatuous sloganeering. We must also examine ourselves today. In post-colonial jargon, which Naipaul particularly abhors, he has "abandoned meta-narratives as explanatory devices - they are totalizing". Naipaul insists on being a writer who seeks understanding of his world specifically through the art of writing. He prefers to let the big story be told through the accumulation and imbrication of the experiences of real people in real situations in, of course, his inimitable prose, tone and style. To illustrate why Naipaul avoids jargon, let us ask what would "Imperialism and Colonialism" mean in Guyana and Trinidad? Mr. Burnham, Dr. Jagan, Dr. Williams probably, and Mr. Kissoon certainly, would accept Prof. Edward Said's definition: "imperialism means the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory; 'colonialism' which is almost always a consequence of imperialism, is the implanting of settlements on distant territory." These learned gentlemen therefore railed for most of their lives at the depredations of the British or the U.S. in our affairs.

In these countries after independence, however, the "specific political, ideological, economic and social practices (of imperialism and colonialism) continued" not only from outside as Prof. Said noted, but from the new African ruling parties. To ordinary Indians, for instance, the internal imperialism/colonialism - labeled racism - superceded anything that was coming down from abroad. Indians were excluded from any meaningful role in governance, employment opportunities were restricted, schoolbooks were rewritten to wipe out their history and contributions, the stated policy was to wipe them out physically through miscegenation, their cultural expression such as music over the airwaves was miniaturized etc. etc. In fact most Guyanese Indians saw their salvation in escaping to the external "imperialists", which they did, including most of the relatives of the gentlemen named above. Naipaul's technique would have captured a larger slice of reality by recording an accretion of the small things in the lives of the people. Maybe some of our tragedy may have been averted through greater understanding.

Critic and Writer
I am happy to have afforded Mr. Kissoon the occasion to display his awesome knowledge of Prof. Said's thesis on the interplay between imperialism and culture. However he was tilting at windmills in more ways than one. Nowhere in my admittedly prolix letter did I favourably or "unfavourably compare Edward Said with Naipaul." Mr. Kissoon should re-read my letter. There's an important point he missed in my riposte to the "white-man's nigger" categorization of Naipaul by Prof. Said. Incidentally, Prof. Said is a literary critic while Naipaul is a creative writer; the former species usually sifts through the entrails of the latter's creations, whether through exegetical, hermeneutical and other ritualized techniques, or, as Mr. Kissoon would have it, through a proctoscope. While ontologically, the world they both consider may be the same, epistemologically they are worlds apart and consequently any comparison would be jejune.

Mr. Kissoon is dismissive of any 'truth' (SN's original word) Naipaul may unearth because he is not like "Aristotelian thinkers who filter history and culture through political lenses". Mr. Kissoon thus casts by the wayside a veritable host of thinkers and writers even while his mentor Prof. Said rummages through their leavings in search of "epiphanies and truths."
Naipaul obviously understands the impact of politics on individual lives, each of his books ruminates on this. But his writing, he asserts, is for "self knowledge (which) should not be a kind of political assertion...if...it becomes that, it is corruption...it can imprison, and in certain circumstances, it can lead to nihilism." Mr. Kissoon would know of what Naipaul speaks because of his personal knowledge of Messrs Bernard Coard and Forbes Burnham who filtered their truths only "through political lenses". Although in my own practice I too filter my truths through political lenses, I always find it a sobering reality check to consider truths garnered through different but principled approaches, such as Naipaul's. It doesn't mean that his truth is necessarily deeper but that if we, unlike Naipaul, - and that is his right - want to intervene directly in the political process, we should try to discover to what truths most people resonate - and it certainly is not only political. It is up to us to use Naipaul's insights or discard them if they are validated or not by our own experiences.

Yours faithfully, Ravi Dev, MP, Leader of ROAR.

■ Mr. Bakr Played Ducks and Drakes

Date: Dec. 31^st, 2001
Source: Unpublished

Dear Editor,

  First Mr. Bakr played ducks and drakes with over 2000 words ("Walcottian words", crooned one calypsonian/culturalist-in-exile, with more profundity than he intended) around the issue of Naipaul's fitness for the Nobel in Literature. [SN 12-2-01]. Even though he pronounced on all sorts of "maledictions" supposedly committed by Naipaul to make him a most unsuitable recipient, "racism" was not in the litany of enumerated sins. Now in his riposte to his critics, [SN 12-21-01], Mr. Bakr has had to fall back on the hoary shibboleth first conjured up by some Caribbean intellectuals - that Naipaul is "racist". We're back where we began.

If patriotism is the last resort of a scoundrel, then the shrill charge of "racism" has become the first refuge of the insecure in the third world - the mantra of exculpation from all responsibilities. Mr. Bakr is to be commended for holding off the reflexive retort until his second missive. Many voices have been cowed and stilled by the chilling effect of this "racist" tag, but to his credit, not Naipaul - he has refused to play the game of political correctness. He insists on "performing the artist's fundamental role: he presents the world as he sees it without fear of consequence."    

Testimonials
Like most of his predecessors, Mr. Bakr tenders not a shred of evidence to buttress his allegation. Either he believes that raising the decibel level, stridency and frequency of his charge are substitutes for reasoned argumentation or he follows the recently departed Senghor in conferring rationality only to Europeans and wallowing in "soul". In lieu of evidence, Mr. Bakr proffers testimonials. Mr. Dereck Walcott is trotted out: soul is supposed to validate any assertion, even though Walcott has confessed he's only half soul.

Carryl Phillips, novelist, neighbour and friend of Walcott has reported, "Even as far back as 1965, when Walcott had interviewed Naipaul in Trinidad, Walcott had reached a conclusion that did not exactly flatter his fellow writer" and went on to mention Walcott's 1987 "most eloquent assault of Naipaul's novel The Enigma of Arrival. However, like Mr. Bakr, while Mr. Walcott had charged "Naipaul's repulsion towards Negroes (sic)", he amazingly pleaded: "to cite examples would reduce the critic to the role of defender or of supplicant, would expose him to more of Naipaul's scorn."  And I suppose we're now to say "good riddance" to Naipaul, preferably much as Achilles did to Hector.

  Mr. Bakr also quotes, as proof positive, from (in his words) "Michael Gilsenen, a white American anthropologist writing in the London Review of Books" who denounces Naipaul for not really understanding the subjects of "Among the Believers", much as professional Orientalists had flayed Edward Said for having the temerity to write Orientalism without the proper "academic" credentials. Mr. Gilsenen's academic methodology, of course, confers omniscience in discerning the reality of his subjects' lives and validates his pronouncements. But more interesting is Mr. Bakr's assertion that he "cannot applaud the European public's embrace and promotion of Naipaul" while he is more than willing to applaud and promote "a white American's" rejection and denunciation of Naipaul. Where is the logic or consistency of  this statement? We know into whose breast reason has not flown!

Mr. Bakr's abandonment of rationality reaches its nadir when he flagellates Naipaul for being "the West's post-colonial mandarin" (testimony of Maya Jaggi, past editor of Third World Quarterly) and then contraposes this charge with quotes from novelist Amit Chaudhuri who asserts that Naipaul's "reputation has been in decline" during the 90's, and he was "an embarassment to the British Literary Establishment." Either Naipaul is the Mandarin or an embarrassment. Or is it that Mr. Blair's plebian "cool" Britain has confounded Kipling and moved from the West to meet the East?         

In his citation of other testimonials to Naipaul's perfidy, Mr. Bakr is similarly disingenuous in making insinuations and creating innuendoes of "maledictions" where none exists. He dismisses Naipaul's contribution at the 1975 East Indian Conference by hinting darkly, "read what Deyal (a journalist) says of his encounter there with Naipaul…". All Deyal writes is that "in the midst of the oil boom" - sixty million dollars US flowed into T&T between 1970-1980 - he is given a TT$2000 annual budget to host a Government TV program and cannot afford Naipaul's TT$2000 fee for an appearance. Its part of the mentality of the "bush" that Naipaul excoriates, that millions can be spent on song and dance sequences but not even a pittance on serious literature. Interestingly, Mr. Bakr ignores Mr. Deyal's paean to the genius of Naipaul for capturing the nuances of Trinidadian politics in The Suffrage of Elvira. Isn't this what the Nobel is all about?

West Indian Culture
Mr. Bakr, however inadvertently put his finger on the dark heart of the Caribbean's claim of Naipaul's "racism" when he noted that no one has criticised "Sam Selvon, another successful Indian Trinidadian writer" as they have Naipaul. The crux of the difference in treatment is that Sam Selvon had accepted the supremacy of the African-European Creole culture pushed by the establishment (as by its present flag-bearer Rex Nettleford, Vice-Chancellor of UWI) as "West Indian culture" into which the Indian had to disappear, while Naipaul saw Indian culture as a valid "strand" in a West Indian mosaic. At the 1979 East Indian Conference, Selvon confessed: "to me the Indian was relegated to the countryside… by the time I was in my teens, I was a product of my environment…This creolising process was… so effective that one even felt a certain embarrassment and uneasiness on visiting a friend in whose household Indian habits and customs were maintained, as if it were a social stigma not to be westernized." In 1988 Selvon could say, "There are people who only know me through my work, and believe that I am black. I feel pretty good about that." In his writing one always knows that Naipaul is Indian even without his insistence that he was a Trinidadian of Indian origin. By his enormous success on the world stage he was able to almost single-handedly inscribe the Indian presence in the Caribbean on the consciousness of, at least, the world's intellegentsia. And this is what the mandarins of "West-Indian Culture" cannot stomach.

Mr. Bakr claims that while the (named) African Caribbean writers and Bob Marley preach "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery", Naipaul's message is "You will never achieve anything." Mr. Bakr's attention must have waned; one of Naipaul's messages is that you will never achieve anything if you only whine, blame others for all your woes and take no responsibility for creating concrete achievements.

Finally, I suspect that it would not matter to Mr. Bakr that when asked about the charges of "racism" after his Nobel announcement, Naipaul replied, "No serious writer would do that in his work because it's too foolish. I think I've written very sympathetically about Africa in a very hard way but full of pity and not seeing the easy way out." It would also not matter that Naipaul has written about India in the same "hard way". Mr. Bakr knows the Indian mind: he even has some Indian friends.

Sincerely, Ravi Dev, MP, Leader of ROAR

■ GUYANA MUST HAVE STABILITY WITH JUSTICE (Part 1)

Author: Ravi Dev
Date: 8-3-02

The story of human civilization has been a quest for a peaceful state of affairs, a stable state of affairs in societies where we, the ordinary citizens, could get on with the business of trying to live the good life. Even if we disagreed on just about everything, those of us who have had to live through the last few months in Guyana would have to agree that without stability there is almost no life much less the “good life”. With this (and thousands of years of recorded history in this area) as background, one would have thought that stability would have been right there on top of the PPP’s agenda after they were returned to office in 1992. I mean, to them it wasn’t just theory or lurking suspicions that the present instability and violence could be a flash in the pan; the PPP has a history of instability, disorder and riots being used to oust it from office in the 1960’s. They should know the drill by now.

While President Jagdeo may claim that he was born after the 60’s riots and so it’s not part of his history (I guess the use of history as an analytical tool was not on the curriculum at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow), the violent events on, and since, January 12^th 1998 should have made him and his other PPP cohorts sensitive to the need for stability in our dear land. Unfortunately, we all know from bitter experience that the PPP has done absolutely nothing to offer even the hope of stability over the past ten years and their recent sorry and pathetic performance should disabuse us of any hope that they will do so on their own in the near future.

What’s going on? Why has the PPP chosen only to play the blame game? (“Bad people are trying to do bad things to us and there’s nothing we can do.”) Why has it only wrung its hands and whined? (“Nobody likes us…Nobody likes us”) Why smack in the middle of the present crisis, did Ministers and top PPP functionaries scamper off to Trinidad, Florida, Brooklyn, Queens and Toronto, purportedly to inform overseas Guyanese about an impending coup in Guyana. (I don’t believe those nasty rumors which claim that they ran away so as to be out of Guyana on August 1^st. This new breed of PPP are braver that the crop of 1962 who went into hiding at the outbreak of violence. But one wonders where all the Indian PPP and Civic went because, unlike past years, they were nowhere to be seen at the Emancipation Day celebrations! ). Wouldn’t it be better, a frightened PPP supporter told me, if all these brave PPP big wigs had gone into the African communities here in Guyana, at this time of solidarity, and told them the same comforting messages they were purveying to the overseas Guyanese? Especially with the PPP having so much African support and all that, as the General Secretary recently assured him.

So we return to the PPP’s refusal to deal with the instability and upheavals in the streets (not to mention in homes and businesses) which always end up with their Indian supporters (they get their support from Indians but they are not an Indian party, according to the Romanian-trained General Secretary) murdered, beaten, robbed, molested and otherwise generally humiliated in various, sundry and always innovative, ways. What’s going on? Well, pronouncements from the recently concluded PPP Congress (and these are the most authoritative pronouncements, we were gravely informed – “This is the voice of the people – and the voice of the people is greater than God – who, in any case, doesn’t exist.”) gave credence to one popular theory.

More than a decade since the Communist bloc fell, the Peoples Progressive Party adamantly refused to alter its Constitution to remove its commitment and belief in the tenets of Marxism-Leninism as guiding principles for its activities, even though this was proposed by a few hardy souls, (with perhaps more bravery than discretion, if history is any guide). And what is the position of this communist ideology on stability? It views society as an agglomeration of groups who are locked in mortal combat – a battle in which there can only be one victor. And who are these warring groups? A put-upon, long suffering “working class” on one side and those nasty, blood-sucking capitalists on the other. Never mind that in Guyana, most of the PPP’s supporters are budding or aspiring capitalists – rice and cash-crop farmers (who are self-employed), sugar workers (who work for Guysuco, owned by the PPP government) or businessmen (who are unashamedly capitalists). The remaining unemployed PPP supporters are maintained by those arch-capitalist relatives who live in the USA –the home of capitalism. The voice of the people in Berbice, we were informed, declared that the PPP is still a working-class party. Contrary to the other comforting noises that the leaders mumbled, since these are principled men, we can be sure that the working class will be urged into battle against the capitalists, whoever they may be.

Now, Marxist-Leninists also believe that even if a particular conflict does not pit the working class against the capitalists, the conflict will bring out the “contradictions” in the society, which will expose the underlying more fundamental class conflict. I guess the PPP is expecting that after the present round of hostilities, the African and Indian working classes will see their common interests and unite – joining hands to break the chains of capitalist exploitation. If the PPP is true to its recently reaffirmed principles, it views the present conflict as positive because it will help lead to the “dictatorship of the working class”.

Another theory, a little more cynical and thus probably a little closer to the truth (Marx and Lenin weren’t idealists) is that ethnic hostilities in Guyana solidify the ethnic cleavages and (not so coincidentally) drive wayward Indians back into the PPP camp and Africans into the PNC camp. If numbers are the stakes, in keeping with Lenin, then any tactic is excused to “win”. The ends justify the means.

(Next week we discuss the utilization of the principle of justice to achieve stability.)

Part II

Last week we argued that more than anything, Guyanese need stability today so that they may get on with their efforts to create the good life for themselves. In the meantime the instability continues to deepen and expand. The terrorists, operating from the state-within-a-state that they have created in Buxton, have now taken to openly intimidating those few brave Africans who have chosen to speak out against the violence against ordinary, innocent Indian citizens. In a village where the Army and Police have manpower deployed twenty-four hours a day, the terrorists were allowed to openly burn down the house and two cars of Mrs. Chester who had shown indignation at the robbery of an Indian a while back. Who will now be the guardians of the law?

Last week, we argued also, that stability has to be achieved with justice, or it will never be long lasting. The masterpiece of the preeminent political philosopher of the twentieth century, John Rawls, begins, in the first line of the first section of his first chapter, thus: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.” The lesson for us in Guyana is that, as we call for changes to deal with the problems we are facing, most of us accept that many of the rules governing how we deal with each other (institutions) have broken down. We recognize that we need new institutions. But what Rawls is warning us about is that if these new rules (institutions) are not grounded within a world view or philosophy that is itself grounded in truth, but is built on a misreading of reality, how can we expect the rules to guide us to effective action? And if the rules are not seen as just, how can we expect people to follow them?

The PPP’s Marxist-Leninist philosophy, which they just reaffirmed at their Berbice Congress, did not fall all across the world because the Russians and Rumanians and Germans etc. did not know how to make it work, as the PPP claims; rather it was a philosophy built on many false premises, many untruths. For starters, none of the Communist countries could consistently motivate their people to hit the levels of production necessary to match the Western democracies because their Marxist philosophy misread human nature. Only the expectation of private rewards provide the incentive for people to go the extra mile (whether for productivity, efficiency or creativity). Telling people that they are working for “the people” is a surefire way for economies to collapse - ask the workers of GUYSUCO about when they were under the Government management! In a similar fashion the PPP has always, and continues to make decisions about political problems based on totally false premises. Why should we be surprised that there is continued instability in Guyana when the proposals of the PPP come out of their fatally, flawed Marxist way of looking at the world?

For instance, the PPP, especially through its Moscow-trained President Bharat Jagdeo, the biggest vote-getter at their Congress (and we know that the PPP would not rig these things!) has been asserting that Guyana “does not have a race problem”. Now every Guyanese knows that this is the biggest crock of nonsense since the captain of the Titanic shouted, “All clear! Full steam ahead!” Yet the PPP says these things because its Communist philosophy tells it that “class is more fundamental than race or ethnicity”. I don’t even have to tell you what the people of Buxton and Annandale think of that statement. (After all, children also read this newspaper.) What we can be sure about is that given the PPP’s Communist beliefs, the rules that it will play by or introduce, are certain to guarantee instability. For rules, (old or new) to work, the people will have to believe, as Rawls warned us, that the rules are fair; that they are just. And no rule can be just is it is based on untruths about the reality it deals with.

The reality in Guyana is that people vote according to their ethnic orientation. Because of the ethnic population breakdown and the history of Guyana, this leads to what ROAR (through its predecessor JCD) labeled an “Ethnic Security Dilemma” in both the African and Indian sections of our community. The African dilemma is that if they go along with the rule that one more than 50% votes entitle a party to form the Executive, (and in Guyana it takes even less than this) they will be locked out of Governance forever, since the Indians are the majority. They have no incentive to go along with the system, especially when the coercive arms of the state – the army, the police and the civil service are all controlled by, in the words of Mr. Desmond Hoyte, their “kith and kin”. The PNC, of course, exploits this dilemma, without spelling it out, by encouraging extreme behaviour amongst its supporters, and falsely promising that it can deliver the whole pie to them.

The Indian dilemma is that even though, under the present rules, they form a numerical majority and their representatives (the PPP) can take office, the PPP does not have the power – because they cannot count ultimately on the civil service and armed forces, as they found out at Wismar in 1964 - to guarantee their supporters any physical security. It may appear that we have a classic Mexican stand-off: each side with its gun cocked and neither willing to blink. The PNC, however, has estimated that the PPP’s gun of just numbers, is ultimately loaded with blanks and has shown a willingness to pull its own trigger. But we know that if the PNC were to achieve office through force, or otherwise, the Indians will not give it the legitimacy that today the Africans deny to the PPP. We will have the same stand-off.

It should become obvious by now that we have to devise rules (institutions) to guide our political behaviour that addresses our security dilemmas. Only then will they have an opportunity to lead to stability. For they will be then grounded in justice for all. 

(To be concluded next week)

■ We cannot be complacent about the Security Forces and Indian Security

Author: Ravi Dev
Date: July 2002

My fellow columnist Mr. Freddie Kissoon, whilst attempting to rebut some charges made against him by Mr. Tacuma Ogunseye, made a statement which I believe needs to be explored, especially during these rather tense and threatening times. He claimed that, “ROAR and DEV believe that the security forces will never act professionally because they are Africans. I believe this is nonsense…”

Now, we have been talking and writing about the need to have the composition of the disciplined forces reflect the composition of our population for over a dozen years, and I am surprised that Mr. Kissoon would yet so grossly caricature our position. We have never said that the forces would “never” act professionally, but that if in an ethnically divided society the Disciplined Forces are overwhelmingly from one ethnic group, their professionalism will be tested during ethnic tensions that pits their group against other groups. This has nothing with our troops being ontologically “African” – it’s a structural condition and troops of other ethnicities placed in similar situations will be also be tested and may snap. We have seen this with West Pakistani troops losing their professionalism and killing one million Bengali Pakistanis in 1970, with Tutsi troops turning a blind eye and even participating in massacres in Rwanda and with Serbian troops turning rabidly against Muslims in Kosovo. The experience across the world has demonstrated with a vengeance that “professionalism” is too slender a thread to hang the fate of an ethnic community, in an ethnically divided society.

In Guyana ROAR is not the first to raise such concerns about the domination of our security forces by Africans presenting an ethnic security dilemma to Indians, to wit that even though the Indians are a majority they have to act as a minority because of the potential forces that can be raised against them. The PPP, especially Dr. Jagan, was vociferous about this in the 1960’s – it is only this crop of PPP leaders who are willing to keep the pall of Indian insecurity alive. Maybe because it ensures that Indians remain huddled under their tent. In 1994, Mr. Hamilton Green complained in the press that Dr. Jagan called for the disciplined forces to be balanced, during an address to GDF officers. After the riots of the sixties the British agreed that a balanced force was one mechanism to achieve stability. The Governor constituted a Special Services Unit (SSU) of one battalion strength that was ethnically balanced – those who question whether Indians would join the disciplined forces should examine why the British had no problem finding Indians of the very highest caliber, such as Major Sattaur. This unit, of course was disbanded by Mr. Burnham and the PNC as soon as they took over and we know how he constituted the new Guyana Defence Force (GDF). In 1965, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) accepted the destablising effect of an unrepresentative force and made recommendations for the PNC to balance the Police Force, by ensuring that Indians constitute seventy five percent of all new recruits until the imbalance was rectified. Let’s check Professor Danns PhD. thesis to find out what the PNC did if we don’t know.

The point we are making that no one ethnic group should dominate any state institution, especially in an ethnically divided society. If Indians were to dominate the army and police (lets say by some miracle), it will also lead to instability since some Indian politician (I call them ethnic entrepreneurs) will seek to exploit that condition as he feels emboldened in feeling that his kit and kin in the army and police force will turn a blind to his excesses against Africans. In the present state of banditry and terrorism the bandits have explicitly warned the police not to protect Indian businessmen who they have identified as the targets for piracy to extract booty to be shared in African communities. It is an open secret that money and goods from robberies are distributed in Buxton. How does Mr. Kissoon feel about the fact that the police are always just minutes late so that they do not have to confront the bandits. Is it just fear of superior weaponry? How about the Indian who was robbed on the embankment road (as reported in SN) in full view of an army patrol? How come there were no mass arrests during the beatings and molestations of July 3^rd in GT and even during the East Coast march when Indians were robbed openly? – and lets not even talk about Jan 12th. 1998. Mr. Kissoon should ask any sample of Indians if they feel secure about the Police and Army guarding them. This insecurity comes out of their long and bitter experience, Mr. Kissoon and it must be addressed.

But we do not have to only deal with theory and suppositions about loss of professionalism in the Guyanese armed forces. Let us quote from the official report of the Commission that enquired into the “disturbances” in Wismar on May 25^th 1964. “Conduct of the security forces on the scene. On the day of the disturbances at Wismar/Christianburg, there were fifty seven cases of assault including rape, which were treated at the MacKenzie Hospital. Two persons were killed and at least one hundred and ninety seven houses destroyed in addition to several cases of looting. With the single exception of Assistant Supt. Lashley, who in company with Lt. Wishart and a party of men apprehended and shot a looter who refused to halt when ordered to d so, no member of the Volunteer or Police admitted witnessing any cases of assault, rape, looting or arson….(However) a variety of allegations were made by witnesses against the security forces – the Police and Volunteers. These include bribery, partaking in loot, standing by and refusing to give assistance whilst rape and assault were being committed, to extinguish fires, supplying gasoline to arsonists and being politically partial by telling people who were beaten and stripped, to go to their political leaders.”

Our people, including the members of our Disciplined Forces, are no different from people anywhere - they are subject to the same strengths but also to the same frailties of all humanity. It could happen here again Mr. Kissoon – it’s a structural thing. Let us try to prevent this.

■ Culture and Politics

Author: Ravi Dev,
Source: Kaiteur New, 12-22-02

The present exchange between Ms. Jocelyn Dow, Ms. Rhyaan Shah and Mr. Freddie Kissoon on the implications of what Ms. Dow said at the “Panel Discussion on Power Sharing” in 2001, is interesting for several reasons. Today I’d like to comment on the implications for a “Guyanese culture” which is what Ms. Dow said she was talking about. So as not to misrepresent her, I will quote Ms. Dow’s written asseveration as it relates to what Ms Dow calls “Guyanese culture.”

“My intervention from the floor (which was not a throw-away remark) was that to give Burnham his due (speaking as a person who had fought against him), it seemed to me that in the 1970’s and 1980’s he had made some moves towards the evolution of a Guyanese culture. For me, those moves showed an attempt to deal with our diversity by recognising it formally, for example, through establishing Hindu and Muslim holidays and breaking the tradition of acknowledging only Christianity. Then I added that today when I turn on the T.V., I don’t know whether I am in India or Africa…I ended with an appeal that we try to deal with our diversity in a way that did not further fragment us. ”

There is a disjoint between the first and last part of the statement that illustrates, I believe, the position of Mr. Burnham, Ms. Dow and a large segment of Guyanese on what ought to be “Guyanese culture”. In the first part, there is an apparent approval of accepting “diversity” (adding Hindu and Muslim holidays) but in the second, frowning on some presumably “diverse” cultural expressions (Indian and African shows on T.V.) as not being “Guyanese” (they made Ms. Dow feel she was not in Guyana) and which evidently would “fragment us”. And therein lies the fly in the ointment. Let us elaborate on Mr. Burnham’s position?

Mr. Burnham advocated a separation of Church and State, not least because it allowed him greater autonomy of action over the State. Burnham nationalised the schools of all the religious bodies. State recognition of Hinduism and Islam as Guyanese religions simply diluted the old established Christian influence (which had external masters) while Mr. Burnham quickly moved to control the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim Anjumaan so that the new kids on the bloc offered no challenge. For instance, while Hindus could now “celebrate” Diwali and Phagwa as public holidays, that led to a performative contradiction, since some integral material ingredients to perform such celebrations were banned and as such illegal. Burnham insisted, as did his European “Enlightenment” tradition, that religion should be a matter for the private sphere. The furtive sharing of Mohanbhog by Hindus and that of Sirhnee by Muslims were certainly private.
Mr. Burnham had a totally different position on “Culture”, which he saw as ‘secular” as opposed to “religious”. While the ambiguities of such a disjuncture are legion, (and we leave them for another day) Burnham accepted the homogenising premises of the European “nation-state” ideal. He fervently opposed “multiculturalism” and summed up his position as “One People, One Nation, One Destiny”, which of course he would “mould”. The question, of course, was what would be the cultural practices that would define the “one nation” and to which all others would be assimilated. We can look at the record .

The symbols of a state signal its cultural orientation since these are expected to ensure that the people can identify with the state at an emotional level. The colours of our flag, chosen the National Arts Council, were the Garveyite pan-African colours black, green and red (which was already the PNC’s colours) along with yellow from Ethiopia”s green, yellow and red, which most African countries had chosen as their pan-African colours. A leading light of that Arts Council, Mr. A.J. Seymour, had advised an aspiring Indian writer Mr. Churamanie Bissundial to stop using Indian expressions and experiences and begin writing about “Guyanese”. The National Hero was Cuffy – the African slave who had fought the Dutch in Berbice almost seventy years before Berbice became part of a unified Guyana. The National Anthem has no hint of an Indian raga, much less any words. Mr. Burnham, like Ms. Dow, also had a problem with the Indian cultural fare over the airwaves. He mandated that on the Indian radio-shows that played Indian songs (through private sponsorship) there were to be included an equal number of English-language songs, presumably so that he wouldn’t feel that he was in India. There was no T.V. under Burnham and we may now possibly surmise why. Mr. Burnham also demanded that the “East Indian Association Cricket Club” change its name to “Everest”. (Some other “ethnic” clubs also had to change their names.)

However, Mr. Burnham accepted the African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa (ASCRIA) as its de facto cultural arm – until 1973, when its head, Mr. Eusi Kwayana, declared that Mr. Burnham had sold out to Indian and Portuguese bourgeoise elements. Mr. Burnham decided to modify the application of Marxist-Leninist theory, exposing himself to ridicule from orthodox quarters, to declare that Guyana’s economic model would be the cooperative - based on the Ujaama socialism of Tanzania. Mr. Burnham introduced Mashramani as the grand festival for Guyana, with its Creole Caribbean Carnival inspiration hardly masked by the allegation that it was about “cooperation” and taken from the Amerindians.

We may begin to discern the answer to the question as to what was to be the cultural content of the “nation”. And as to why Ms. Dow and so many others are discomfited at the gyrations and lip syncs of Hritick and Kareena et al on T.V. And you don’t even need subtitles for them nowadays. (To be continued)

 ■ Learned Helplessness

Author: Ravi Dev

Mr. Michael Saladin posed a question that we have been trying to answer ever since we heard that the PPP was going to hold a rally against crime: “Who are they rallying against? [SN 5-23-02 “PPP should move firmly against the bandits, not hold a rally.”] ROAR had planned a rally for “Action against Domestic Terrorism” a month ago and had asked for police permission on Monday May 13^th, for the rally to be held at Lusignan on Sunday May 19^th. Now, we (as a “one-seat party with left-over votes” according to the PPP) were planning the rally to remind the PPP – a 34-seat party with 53% of the votes, which enabled it to become the government of the country – that they had to wipe out the terrorists stalking the land. It was their job, and if they were not man enough for the job they should step down. So why is the PPP holding a rally?

This is not an academic question. There has to be something fundamentally wrong with a political system when the party in power feels it is necessary to protest a problem confronting the nation. Can you imagine President George Bush and members of the Democratic Party of the US marching against terrorism after the terrorist attacks there? Wouldn’t we see that as madness? Don’t you think that the American people would have risen up in unison and demanded the resignation of Mr. Bush? Why hasn’t this happened in Guyana? There are several reasons.

First and foremost, the PPP still does not understand what it means to be a ruling party – a party in government. They have been unable to shake off the “opposition” mentality that must have seeped into their bones (not to mention their consciousness) during their 28 years in the wilderness. Burnham did such a number on them – inculcating an overweening of ineffectualness and helplessness in their leadership - that today they are still marching against the PNC! It has become a reflex action. Will condemnation change the PNC? Mr. Hoyte has recently declared that a scorpion will bite because that is in his nature.

Interestingly enough, the PNC has never jettisoned its mindset of rulership and Mr. Hoyte must be comforted to know that the PPP still acknowledges his suzerainty. The followers of the PPP also, could not possibly really see the PPP as a ruling party. They could not possibly have any confidence that the PPP could fulfill the promises it made during the elections campaign. Or why else would they think that the PPP is achieving anything by “blaming” and “condemning” but really doing nothing to eliminate the terrorism?

The syndrome of learned helplessness must have arisen during the infamous 28 years (wasn’t it the PPP who taught us that all our ill began then?) when the PPP was able to show no concrete achievement for all their “critical support” and support for nationalizations of sugar, bauxite, and 80% of the economy. But a political party is supposed to do something. How else could they justify asking for funds and support? So the PPP took to marching and demonstrating. But here again, they were never able to show any concrete results from any of the marching, demonstrating or any other interminable activities they engaged in. Which one of the GAWU strikes (their most potent action) brought any favourable results?

So the yardstick was changed. The PPP stopped defining “success” based on results, in solving theirs or the peoples’ grievances. “Success” was now simply that people turned out to their demonstrations and meetings. Eventually some of their supporters wised up to the fact that the PPP was not serious about results and during the late seventies they moved over to the WPA of Dr. Walter Rodney, who they felt, at least had a strategy geared towards results. For the PPP, the “objective conditions” were never right and the bulk of their supporters were encouraged to believe that nothing could be done by themselves to change the situation. Words were supposed to explain their cluelessness: “The subjective could never change the objective.” This learned helplessness and defeatism reside in the PPP leadership to this day. The orientation of struggle was changed from an instrumental one geared towards producing results towards an expressive one where the actor feels good for simply showing up at a rally. He has done all that can be done, his leaders have praised him, and he can go home happy. Never mind that nothing has changed in the objective problem he was protesting and condemning. So this weekend, on Independence Day, the PPP will hold a “very successful” rally against domestic terrorism because they were able to bring out several thousand supporters. Even if they have to be bussed in and never mind that the terrorists will be continuing with their mayhem.

The most insidious effect of the PPP’s redefinition of “success” has been to foster a mindset in their supporters that avoids any linkage between means (actions) and ends (results) and that nothing is achieved but through struggle. The leave the PPP’s rallies and marches with only hatred for those who, they are told, are preventing them from living the good life. They then turn that hatred and anger on themselves – manifesting themselves in suicide, alcoholism and other self-destructive behavior.

The greatest irony is that the PPP achieved success – being returned to office – through something they fought to prevent for almost half a century: the fall of communism. As President Jagan was honest enough to admit at their 1993 Congress, the PPP owed everything to President Carter. They can thus make a virtue of doing nothing and just surviving. But at what cost to their supporters? They are the ones who will have to throw off the PPP-induced learned helplessness, by refusing to go along with the PPP’s dangerous charade. 

■ PPP: Trends in Futility

Author: Ravi Dev 

 What does the PPP stand for? What is it defined by? Here is a political party that is fifty-two years old – older than the vast majority of Guyanese. One would have thought that age would bring wisdom but its actions in and out of office during those fifty-two years suggest that it only become more doltish with every passing year. Even its most fervent supporter snickered when, faced with the present wave of domestic terrorism that ripped apart the nation, the PPP decided to march against itself! Is it possible for a political party to fall lower than that? The answer is yes - history has shown that the PPP will find some way to sink to the task. One’s nature is shaped by one’s actions and the PPP’s nature can be glimpsed from considering a few trends in their actions that are discernable from that history. 

The PPP regime began with more goodwill from the ordinary Guyanese than any other organization before or since but today it stands reviled by its opponents and even many of its supporters. What happened during that time? Well to begin at the beginning, less than half a year after it won the first elections held under universal franchise, the PPP was unceremoniously dumped by the British because several of the top leaders didn’t have the tact, discretion or common sense not to telegraph their radical intentions to a reactionary ruler. That set the trend for PPP’s intemperate, if ponderous, rhetoric that we still find in their mouthpieces such as Dr. Forbes Roger Luncheon – of “we gon bruk dey back” fame.

After egging on and joining in with the Marxist radicals of his party to hurl barbs and threats against the colonial administration, Dr. Jagan overreacted and swung to the other extreme when he belatedly tried to address his “leftist” problem by expelling some of the offenders. The problem was that these fellows were all Africans, all young and very bright, who stood a real chance of giving Burnham a run for his money in any future contest to test the loyalty of the African segment. The split of the PPP may have occurred with the departure of Burnham, but the split of the Guyanese voters into Indian and African camps was assured when Kwayana followed his young African comrades out of Jagan’s PPP. Burnham had not carried any African of consequence with him in his walk out and he had very little support amongst rural Africans. The expulsions set the trend for the PPP’s insistence on ideological purity and loyalty, which has resulted in a continuous bloodletting through the years (Balram Singh Rai is one example; Khemraj, watch out!) leaving the party with a bunch of spineless yes-men. This may be all well and good for the PPP, but with them forming the Government, first in 1957 –1964 and then 1972 to yhe present, unfortunately all Guyana has had to suffer from their pusillanimity and lack of conceptual nimbleness.

The departure of Burnham also set in train another tradition – that of securing a loyal African to signal the PPP’s “multiracial” credentials. But the “right” candidate had to also be willing to play second fiddle – unlike Burnham. The first offer was to Eusi Kwayana (then Sydney King) to replace Burnham as chairman of the party but he put his principles ahead of ambition and declined. So it wasn’t that Dr. Jagan didn’t realize that he needed Africans leaders to capture the African vote when he expelled Carter, Westmas et al – it was just that he miscalculated with Kwayana. Kwayana was not willing to be a loyal “kikuyu”. Bridley Benn proved more pliable and amenable and he was followed by a long string of African face-men, the most recent being Mr. Sam Hinds. The tragedy, of course is that these yes men did not engender any confidence in the African community that they were being represented in the PPP. In fact the Africans in the PPP were considered as traitors and aroused great hostility within their community, which felt they were being manipulated and not credited with any “sense”.

Another PPP tactic that became a trend was to offer themselves as coalition partners to the PNC: especially after they came under fire from the PNC and concluded that they couldn’t cope – which became the norm for them. The PPP’s motto became “If you can’t beat them, join them”. Offers were made in 1962 and 1963 after the PNC and its allies had brought the PPP down to its knees with strikes, arson, bombings, beatings, robberies, murder and general mayhem. The PNC were not interested in being bridesmaids – they didn’t even want to be the groom. The PPP’s offer was spurned. The PPP repeated its coalition offer in 1977 after it had wooed the PNC with “critical support” since 1975. The PNC rejected the PPP once again, but was kind enough to suggest to the PPP that if the two parties were so close as to coalesce, why didn’t the PPP dissolve itself and join the PNC. While the PPP, as a party, did not take up Mr. Burnham’s eminently reasonable offer, half of the PPP Executive did. However that did not dampen the PPP’s ardour for a coalition: it was a trend.

In 1985, coalition talks were conducted in secret from the beginning of the year until Burnham;s death in August when Hoyte abandoned this initiative. Now we have to look at the circumstances in which the PPP conducted its coalition talks in 1985 to appreciate this coalition trend of the PPP when facing heat. During 1985 the supporters of the PPP – primarily Indians, were being targeted and hunted by the kick-down-the-door bandits to such an extent that Mr. Eusi Kwayana, described it as having a “flavour of genocide”. And the PPP held coalition talks. That’s a trend.

So what is the PPP? The PPP is a creature of hypocrisy and cowardice: afraid to face reality, even in accepting the nature of the conflict in Guyana. If a doctor has a wrong diagnosis and treats a patient, we can be pretty sure of the prognosis - doom and eventual death. Is this the fate of Guyana under this incarnation of the PPP? 

■ Balancing of the Disciplined Services can be achieved under the right conditions

Source: Stabroek News, 6/7/03
Author: Ravi Dev

Dear Editor,
I found the caption of the letter from Mayor Hamilton Green, purportedly in response to two of mine, rather contentious: “This nonsense of ethnic proportionality in all areas should be put to rest” (SN on 6-4-03). After all, I have never called for “ethnic proportionality in all areas” and in fact it was the good mayor who made such a call “if the government were to consider (balancing the disciplined forces) necessary”. Even I would never deign to categorise any of His Honour”s exhortations as “nonsense”, as the SN’s editor (?) has thus chosen to do.
Balancing of Forces
I have, however, long advocated the balancing of the Disciplined Forces as necessary to address the ethnic security dilemma of the Indians of Guyana, just as I’ve advocated the “balancing” of government to address the ethnic security dilemma of the African Guyanese. Until we address these two dilemmas, Guyana will never have stability: we can’t advocate one and not the other, as some would prefer. The Indian security dilemma is that even though they are the majority of the country, they have an existential fear of being physically annihilated. The fact that they only comprise 10-15 percent of the Disciplined Forces is the greatest contributor to that fear. Even if, as the mayor contends, Indians were not kept out of those forces, there would yet remain the necessity to balance to help bring stability to Guyana.
The Disciplined Forces are not just any old institution; they are institutions of the State - and key ones at that. Governments may come and governments may go but it is the State that assures our continuity and survival as an entity. It is imperative, therefore, that the institutions of the State be constituted in the image of the society that has created it - legitimacy and impartiality would be so much strengthened. These are always necessary values but even more so in a divided society as ours. And even further so in the Disciplined Forces, where resides the power that defines the State itself - the power to use the ultimate sanction of death on citizens. A second reason for balance is that not only does a grossly ethnically skewed Disciplined Force in a plural society induce fear in the underrepresented community - it puts tremendous pressure on those Forces to remain professional in situations of ethnic tensions. This is what I had personally told several officers of our Army when troops were first stationed in Buxton last year. They scoffed - but we have seen the reality since. A third reason, is one that several of my critics, paradoxically, have made - Indians have to bear their equitable share of defending this country externally and maintaining law and order within. A balanced Disciplined Force is a necessary first step, along with shared governance, in getting Guyana on course to peace.
Exclusion from Forces
The whole exposition about the historical reasons for the exclusion of Indians from the Forces was merely to show that group responses are conditioned by their history. I am sure that Mr. Green would accept that there is nothing genetic about Africans’ low numbers in the entrepreneurial community of Guyana today. Very early on, their foray into commerce was stymied by the preferences given to the Portuguese and Chinese in that facet of the economy. Mr. Green’s reference to “racial” categories of Indians to explain their low numbers in the Disciplined Forces of Guyana is certainly an odious and invidious imputation. Mr. Green has certainly not been reading Mr. Hackett’s interventions on the issue of ‘race”. We simply have to create the conditions for Indians to enter the force. Mr. Green would recollect that the British Governor had no difficulty in forming the Special Services Unit in 1964 with equal numbers of Indians and Africans.
On the proof of exclusion of Indians in the nineteenth century, which would have convinced Indians that the Armed Forces were not for them by the twentieth, (hence the irrelevance of all the personal anecdotes) may I remind Mr. Green of the following: Why did the British recruit mostly Barbadians in the Police Force - up to the 1870’s? Was it because the local Africans were genetically inferior to the Bajans? No. The policy was simply in furtherance of the British assumption that the newly freed slaves here would be rebellious and they wanted troops who would go along with their orders to shoot. After protests by Indians in 1869 into the 1870’s, Governor Kortright noted that there were over 60,000 Indians on the Plantations - with cutlasses in their hands and this presented a clear and present danger of an uprising. Armed police were recommended for the rural areas - local Africans became the recruits and Indians became the targets. The few Indian Policemen were suspect just as earlier, local African ones were: one head of police, speaking to a batch of new recruits that included Indians said, “If you see Coolies, your own race, breaking the law you must arrest them the same you would Black people.” The estimates for the Police force reflect the inexorable build-up: 1850 - $19,000, 1868 - $33,500, 1879 - $80,000, to deal with the Indian threat. The killings of Indians in 1896, 1903, 1913, and countless other strike-breaking violence reinforced the Indian exclusion and fear.
Wismar
The reason for the reference to the “Wismar Pogrom” was to emphasise the dangers of deploying an ethnically skewed force in an ethnic conflict. The phrase “Wismar Pogrom” is not mine, but from the Latin American Bureau in the book “Fraudulent Revolution”, sponsored by the World Council of Churches, that further reported: “The culmination of the racial violence...took place in the bauxite mining town of McKenzie-Wismar in May 1964. While the police and Special Volunteers looked on passively, the Afro-Guyanese engaged in an orgy of violence against the Indian community, involving rape, arson, beatings and murder.” Mr. Green reported this incident of 25-26 May 1964 in his book “From Pain to Peace” thus: “May 1964: Young Afro-Guyanese Buxtonian hacked to death; At Wismar there was an outbreak of racial violence - Indo-Guyanese were killed and hundreds of business places and houses demolished.” Mr. Green thus knows of the May 25-26 Pogrom yet he juxtaposes the later tragic Sun Chapman bombing of July 6th with the second round of Anti-Indian violence that followed.
This is the second time I am pointing this out to Mr. Green in a national newspaper. I can only wonder at the source of Mr. Green’s amnesia and pray for his recovery.
Yours faithfully,
Ravi Dev, MP, Leader of ROAR 

■ I attempted to identify the proximate causes for the African responses that target the Indian masses

■ Africans were never classified as Sudras
Author: Ravi Dev
Source: Stabroek New 10/27/03

Dear Editor,
Now that the Disciplined Forces Commission (DFC) has completed its oral examination of my party’s submissions, I would like to clarify some inaccuracies and ambiguities contained in your report of my first appearance in front of the DFC. (SN 9/23/03) This was perhaps inevitable given the nature of the exercise, where one was questioned by six different persons over the entire submission and the thread of a particular argument get lost. I will try to clarify my party’s position on the justification for what we defined as the “inevitable affirmative action” that would have to be recommended if the composition of the forces were to reflect the composition of the population.
The major legal argument against the proposal was that it would be violative of Art. 149 (1) (a) “no law shall make any provision that is discriminatory either of itself or its effects.” Or 149D (1) “The State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or equal protection and benefit of the law.” That is in the first instance, the program would discriminate positively in favour underrepresented groups such as Indians and Amerindians and in the second instance would have an adverse impact on Africans who constitute the overwhelming majority of our Disciplined Forces. Our argument to justify the affirmative action was stated as follows.
Firstly, the special nature of the armed forces, as organs of the state, was noted. “The Disciplined Forces are not just any run of the mill institution; they are institutions of the State – and key ones at that. Governments may come and governments may go, but it is the State that assures our continuity and survival as a viable nation.
It is imperative, therefore, that the institutions of the State be constituted in the image of the society that has created it – legitimacy and impartiality would be so much strengthened. These are always necessary values but even more so in a divided society as ours. And even further so in the Disciplined Forces, where resides the power that defines the State itself – the power to use the ultimate sanction of death on citizens.” Hegel has talked about a “universal class” manning the State; in the Guyanese State such a universalism cannot only be done - it must seen to be done. The State organs will have to reflect the society.
Secondly, the existence of the state itself for the furtherance of the societal good – the public interest – was elaborated. In the furtherance of this public good, the people promulgate a constitution and the government directs the state through policies and programs in consonance with the prime directives of the Constitution. In modern democracies, under the liberal paradigm, equality of treatment and equality before the law of the citizens stands at the very top of the imperatives.
However, because each individual citizen or group of citizens are situated differently (according to specific criteria) governmental policies and programs will inevitably have a different impact on different citizens. Our tax laws are designed to extract a greater percentage of the income of the rich than the poor.
In fact we have decided that citizens earning below a certain threshold do not have to pay any taxes. While the rich may think that the law is discriminatory – they are not being treated equally - and it is, we accept it because we feel it is morally justified in furtherance of the societal good. In Guyana, our Constitution itself, while it promulgates equality and forbids discrimination, in Art. 149 has just changed from Art 29 the stipulation that “Women and men have equal rights…” to “Women’s participation in the various management and decision-making processes…” We accept these things because they are part of our general moral assumptions – they are right because they further our conception of the national good.
And this is the ultimate test that is used in both ethical and legal theories to evaluate state activity affecting citizens in society – especially when it is claimed that a particular affects some citizens differently. The task of the Government is to ensure that their differential treatment is not arbitrary and capricious and irrational – and that they further some societal good. There should be a correlation between the classification and the purpose of the statute so that citizens can presume the impartiality of the legislators. Thus even those adversely impacted may consider it an acceptable cost of achieving a larger societal goal.

Ethical Perspective
We explained at some length that even John Rawls, a most influential modern political theorist, who accepted the deontological ethical premise (that the “right” precedes the “good”) had to agree that in arriving at principles for constituting a society, one would have to first accept some skeletal (“thin”) idea of the “good”. In this sense we are all consequentialists who are committed towards living together as a society and would accept at a minimum that it is to everyone’s good that a prime cause of societal instability should be removed. For those more concerned about questions of justice rather than beneficence, one consideration that has to be placed at the fore is whether procedural equality should take precedence over the substantive equality that affirmative action implies.
We pointed out that the backward looking standard of compensatory justice was not being invoked by us. The focus is on the future – creating of a more stable society and public welfare for all Guyanese, since affirmative action rightly compensates for the loss of present competitive ability caused by stifled diversity. We alluded to the fact that most modern theories of justice could support affirmative action – especially in the restricted area of the composition of state institutions.

US Experience
In terms of governmental laws or actions that may have a discriminatory impact, in the West, the U.S. has had the most experience in dealing with the issue. I referred to the US Supreme Court’s “rational basis test”: a legislative classification may be upheld only if it bear a rational relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. More to the point before us in Guyana, however, is that there are certain classifications that the Constitution itself defines as being afforded specific protection against discrimination.
These are inevitably classifications that particular societies have in their historical development found to have been violated in such a sustained, pervasive and invidious fashion that they are universally held deserving of higher protection by society. The traditional ones are race, colour or creed, place of origin, political opinions and these are given a higher level of scrutiny to justify “legitimate governmental purposes”. In Guyana we recently increased the number of classifications that should receive higher constitutional protection to include religion, gender, age, sex etc.
Sexual orientation was adjudged as not befitting of this higher scrutiny. We should note however that even from within these favoured categories our Constitution explicitly (unlike the US) singles some groups for special (and therefore unequal) treatment. For instance, one ethnic group – the Amerindians were selected for specific benefits as opposed to other ethnic groups. Art.149G “Indigen-ous peoples shall have the right to the protection, preservation and promulgation of their languages, cultural heritage and way of life.” And so on.
The point is that even the “protected” classifications against discriminatory governmental action may be affected on occasions. In the US, the Supreme Court has determined that such occasions are “inherently suspect” and the legitimacy of such occasions should be determined by a higher level of review - “strict scrutiny”. The Court would consider: a) the purpose of the ethnic-specific (for instance) policy; b) whether the decision utilizing the classification can reasonably be expected to promote the purpose intended; c) whether the means are the least intrusive. In one very famous case, the Court decided that a University’s affirmative action program based on the need to increase racial diversity in the school was in valid furtherance of the “societal good”. In our case of having the composition of the Disciplined Forces reflect the population of the country, which would necessitate a policy mandating a higher level of intake of Indians and Amerindians into the forces or to set a goal of a higher percentage composition within a specified timetable, this would be singling out one group for special treatment.
We would have to determine by the strict scrutiny test whether the policy was constitutional. We believe it would be. There are some who have asserted that 197 (a) (5) (see below) is in conflict with Art 149 (b) (not to use ethnicity as a qualification for appointment to the Forces) but we believe that whatever contradictory directives exist in our Constitution, (and these are now legion) they can be rectified by our Legislature, once we agree on our societal goals.
Our legislature has already decided, in the matter before the DFC, that this body has to fulfil its directive embodied in Article 197A (5) of the Constitution:
“…to examine the structure and composition of the disciplined forces and make recommendations generally with a view to promoting their greater efficiency, and giving effect to the need in the public interest that the composition of the disciplined forces take account of the ethnic constituents of the population.” That is, its recommendations must be in furtherance of the public good. There is no ambiguity in the language.

International Commission of Jurists (ICJ)
The SN report also stated that we were in favour of the ICJ recommended program of having 75% of new recruits be Indians for five years. We were merely asked as to whether we were aware of the ICJ recommendations and what we said in fact was that while we agreed on the “why” for affirmative action for Indians and Amerindians into the forces, we needed to work closely with the Forces to determine the “how”. The ICJ formula was too procrustean.
What was needed was to set the goal (“the forces should represent the population”) within a given time frame and then design various programs with the Forces to satisfy the goal. We need goals not specific quotas. One program we mentioned had been initiated by the first PPP government between 1960-1964, under the direction of the first Minister of Home Affairs Mr. Balram Singh Rai. He initiated a program that starting from the one third rate of Indian applications compared to Africans in 1958, Indians’ applications surpassed the latter in 1962 and 1963 and equalled it in 1964. The GPF accepted 239 Indians versus 432 Africans from 5,877 versus 9,081 applications respectively, that is 4.1% of Indian applicants versus 4.7 % of African applicants. Another program, which was examined by the ICJ itself, was the method in which the Special Forces Unit was constituted in 1964 by the British Governor to end up with equal numbers of Indians and Africans. The programs did not appeared to have been too intrusive.
We hope that our comments will spur greater discussion of the work of and recommendations of the DFC.
Our country has been presented with a historic opportunity to begin constructing a just state and society according to our own needs.
Yours faithfully, Ravi Dev, MP, Leader of ROAR.

■ The constitution was amended in 1999 to cater for a commission on the disciplined forces
Author: Ravi Dev
Source: Stabroek News, 10/4/03

Dear Editor,
In his letter, “Ethnic balance in the security forces is not an isolated issue” [30-9-2003] Mr. Sherwood Lowe notes that “the fact that one insecurity (Indian) is frontally being addressed… reflects the willingness of the PNCR, as the party most comfortable with the status quo in the armed forces, to put national interests above partisan interests.” While this is incontestably true, and the PNC must be commended by all Guyana, it is not the whole truth and gives the incorrect impression that no PNC (and African) interests are on the agenda of the DFC.
The fact of the matter is that back in 1999, subsequent to the Constitution reform process, Article 197A (5) had been added to the Constitution authorising that: “Disciplined Forces Commission may be constituted by the National Assembly… with power to examine the structure and composition of the disciplined forces and make recommendations generally with a view to promoting their greater efficiency, and giving effect to the need in the public interest that the composition of the disciplined forces take account of the ethnic constituents of the population.” The PNC voted in the national interest then.
In the subsequent four years since, even in light of the obvious problems in the Forces, highlighted by a wave of criminality unprecedented in our history, the PPP didn’t have the fortitude to constitute the already-authorised Disciplined Forces Commis-sion to recommend what was so obviously necessary to solve the problems.
They preferred to publicly praise the Forces, even while working around them; not appreciating that they were undermining the very integrity of the state that would have to be coherent no matter who was in Government, if we were ever to get anywhere. The PNC in the meantime, after 1999, began demanding an Inquiry into the Police Force to address what they defined as “extra judicial killings” and other issues concerning the GPF. Obviously Article 197A (5) was not intended to cover this eventuality, but just specifically the issue of ethnic balance in the Forces. It was for this reason that to address the PNC’s concerns, ROAR had supported a designated Commission of Inquiry into Police Operations under the Commission of Inquiry Act, Cap. 19:03 and a separate Disciplined Forces Commis-sion, as mandated by the Constitution, to deal with the issue of ethnic balance, which it had been agitating for since its appearance in Guyana.
It was with some surprise therefore when we saw, emanating out of the “constructive engagement” between President Jagdeo and Mr. Corbin the fusion of the two concerns.
What had to be done to accomplish this horse-trading hybrid was the Assembly actually had to amend the Constitution (Art. 197A (5)) to enlarge the ambit of the powers of Disciplined Forces Commissions to also examine, “any matter relating to the public welfare, defence and security” and to endow the Commission to “have all the powers and authority of a Commission of Inquiry under the Commission of Inquiry Act”! The added terms of reference to the DFC’s mandate specifically addressed the PNC’s concerns.
What makes this most obvious are the details of the terms of reference of the Commission where the PNC’s demands for the Inquiry into the Police Force are to be submitted within three months and the wider Inquiry, within six months. While this may seen as logical, it really is not. Issues such as ethnic balance, ethos of the GPF (less authoritarian) and decentralization are systemic issues which would obviously affect the symptomatic ones identified by the PNC – such as “allegations of extra judicial killings…increased public support…police/community relations…etc. While the Minister moving the motion accepted our critique (and hoped that the Commission would look at its work in a holistic fashion) in Parliament, his claim that the Commission could always revisit and revise the earlier interim report may become a bit sticky.
Mr. Lowe further claimed that, “Submissions to the DFC by ROAR…(only served) to ease Indo-Guyanese (sic) insecurities. This approach to the ethnic insecurity problem is short -sighted, one-dimensional and perilous.” It is obvious that Mr. Lowe has not seen our submissions, wherein we stated: “Any proposed solution to Guyana’s problem must address this fundamental fear of the African Guyanese: the fear of being swamped and subordinated by the Indians who form a numerical majority. Any proposed solution to Guyana’s problems must also address the integral experience of Indians: living under the fear of physical extermination.
From a policy standpoint, we can only begin by creating new institutions that offer incentives to both ethnic groups and their leaders, to move the situation from the present “win-lose” scenario to a “win-win” one. While, as we have pointed out, institutions will not encompass the totality of the responses of peoples, it is a beginning and the only option for politicians. Form can influence function. Other groups can attempt to change dysfunctional behaviour through other techniques. We can begin by making changes in the institutions firstly in the political system that structures the operation of the Indian and African Ethnic Security Dilemmas and secondly, in the composition of the Armed Forces that is at the root of the seminal Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma.”
We consider Mr. Lowe (a member of the PNC) from his sustained debate with us in the press on power-sharing, to be committed to the process of creating a just society and state in Guyana. We wish that he would not misstate the positions of others who may be just as committed to that end.
Yours faithfully,
Ravi Dev, M.P., Leader of ROAR 

Ravi Dev’s Paper at GIHA Symposium, 2003
■ State and Societal Violence against Indians in Guyana:The Ethnic Security Dilemmas

By Ravi Dev

Introduction
In an interview, the Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul, revealed one of the reasons for his unique style of writing and perspective: “I don’t forget my peasant origins…and that we were so unprotected, our family, people like us in Trinidad.” Naipaul, of course, is acclaimed as one of the most perceptive
writers in the English Language and in his search for understanding that “unprotectedness”, he has travelled to, and explored, many societies across the globe where Indians may have had some nexus. But even to a casual observer of societies such as Guyana, South Africa, Fiji, Malaysia, Mauritius, Uganda, Kenya, as well as Naipaul’s Trinidad, this “unprotectedness” of Indians is palpable. In each of those societies, Indians have been, and continue to be, the victims of mass violence from
other groups in those societies.

If violence is a constant against Indians, then the reason for their “unprotectedness” has to lie either in their culture or in the structural conditions of their new societies into which they were inserted or a combination of both factors – since these dynamically influence each other.
This paper attempts to offer part of the answer to the question of “unprotectedness” of Indians, by looking at the structural effects of state and societal violence on the Indian community of Guyana, into which, as with the other countries mentioned, Indians had been transported, generally as
indentured labourers in the nineteenth century.

British planters brought Indians to Guyana as “indentured servants” beginning in 1838. Between then and 1917, when indentureship was ended, 238,907 of them had been imported. By then, even though 65,000 had returned to India after the expiration of their contracts and countless thousands others had perished (their death rate was greater than their birth rate) they had become the largest ethnic group in the society. That society was deeply variegated since in addition to the indigenous Amerindians, the
Europeans had also brought in Portuguese, Chinese, West Indian Africans, and Africans to provide a “reliable” supply of labour after the abolition of slavery, which had utilised primarily Africans.

From the onset, violence was part and parcel of the immigrants’ reality. Firstly, Britain and the world, up to the nineteenth century, was a much more violent place than the present: the British inflicted an inordinate amount of violence on even their own citizens as they hurtled into their
“Industrial Revolution”. Secondly, Indians were a colonised people, whose country had been conquered by the British through violence and millions of them had bee