Dear Editor,
With characteristic bluster and half truths, the General Secretary of the PPP in his Press Conference last Thursday, discussing their Party’s Congress, found it necessary to spend much time accusing the PNC of promoting racism.
A clear case of the “pot telling the kettle he bottom black.” It is a clumsy attempt to deflect from the present issues that manifest the mis-management of our vast resources and the insinuation of a subtle regime of apartheid supported by corruption.Let me briefly share my knowledge and the facts related to this demonic situation of race and racism. A matter which, if not dealt with honestly and objectively can bring only pain to our country now blessed.
I grew up in Charlestown and before I was born, my father established during the decade of the 30s, the only drugstore to serve the communities of Charlestown/ Albouystown/ La Penitence/Ruimveldt, situated at the corners of James and Barr Streets. The drugstore served as the hospital, a centre for the exchange of ideas, offering of advice and peace making.
From childhood, I spent many hours in the drugstore and developed a healthy, harmonious and loving relationship with all the people and never experienced the slightest bit of racism or prejudice. The Wongs, the Chins, the D’Aguiars, the De Santos, the Paltoos, the Ramsaroops and the Defreitas were all one family. Occasionally, my father was asked to settle disputes mainly between Muslims and Hindus, never between any other groups. Many family members got the impression that my father, as they say, seemed to like Indians more than the other groups. That is my background. That is what influenced my responses all the days of my life.
My father was known for his honesty and kindness and people would leave their money in bits of paper and cloth with him for safekeeping. This led to him establishing the First Indigenous Bank in Guyana, the People’s Benefit Scheme, where people in the south of Georgetown banked their money. I saved two Ledgers available for anyone to examine.
Because of my parent’s popularity when Daniel Prabudass Debidin sought political leverage he invited my father to chair a well attended Meeting at St. Thomas’ School in Ketley Street, opposite the home of my Godmother, Carmen Gibson who was, for me, my second mother. Her husband Cyril Gibson’s mother was an Indo Guyanese and father, a Caucasian European. The children Shirley Chin, Junior Gibson, Lorna and Gomes,we all grew up as one family. Not a tincture of race or ethnicity influenced our abiding love for one another.
At the Meeting where my father took me, Debidin broke off to address in Urdu- Hindi the Indians in attendance. My father understood a few words in Urdu-Hindi and took me by the hand and walked out of the Meeting. We understood that he was telling the Indians present to support him because he was an Indian. It is there this destructive, nasty phrase “Apan Jatt,” had its beginning.
After leaving Queen’s College, I began working with our two Titans, Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham, moving around getting people from the waterfront, estates etc. interested and telling them that as a result of the Waddington Commission, . for the first time in history, people got a right to vote evvel they were twenty-one years old, known as the Universal Adult Suffrage. Previously you had to qualify to earn the right to vote, either based on your salary or value of property you owned.
In spite of the bombardment of anti-communist leaflets, the Burnham-Jagan led PPP emerged victorious. Dr. Jagan being the leader of the Parliamentary group and Mr. Burnham being the Chairman of the PPP. This was in the heat and height of the Cold War. After a few months in office, the British suspended the Constitution on the grounds that Dr. Jagan and his Ministers were taking Guyana into the Communist block. The British Government dismissed the six Ministers, Jagan, Burnham, Dr. JP Latchmansingh, Lawyer Jainarine Singh, Ashton Chase and Sidney King (now Eusi Kwayana). The three Js -Jane Phillips-Gay, Janet Jagan and Jessie Burnham were the first females to enter our Parliament and were part of the victorious PPP Parliamentarians.
Differences on how to deal with this troubling situation led to the split of the PPP into two factions. When the split occurred the prominent Indo Guyanese including Dr. JP Latchmansingh and Jainarine Singh came out in support of Burnham, whilst some of the Afro Guyanese leaders such as Bowman and others supported Dr. Jagan. This is the irony if not mystery of how history followed. So we had a PPP Burnhamite and a PPP Jaganite. Allow me therefore to make this indisputable point., race had nothing to do with the distinguishing character of the two parties.
After the 1957 Elections, the PPP Burnhamite faction met and decided to end this charade of the two PPP entities and named the group, the People’s National Congress, a combination of the names of the major parties in India and the African Gold Coast colony, now known as Ghana.
By then, certain elements , the Jaganite PPP ignited this call to vote race “Apan Jaat.” This spread like wildfire, swift and destructive . An example, Sydney King contested the lower East Coast Constituency. King was very popular among the people in that community. He refused to be a Candidate for both the Jaganite and the Burnhamite factions, and contested as an individual.
The PPP Jaganite introduced a relatively unknown political personality, Lawyer Balram Singh Rai, an Indo Guyanese. The Burnhamite PPP did not field a Candidate to avoid votes splitting. On beating the drum of Apan Jaat, Rai defeated Sidney King. by a narrow margin. It is therefore ludicrous, absurd and untruthful for this PPP leadership of racism. It is the PPP that started this destructive business of race in our local politics. This continues unabated to this day. Whatever, you may think and say of Forbes Burnham, he was no idiot, but a man of vision and perspicacity.
At that time and unto this date, the Indians outnumbered Africans in Guyana; thanks to the machinations of the plantocracy and wiles of our erstwhile masters, who provided the ships to transport large numbers of Indians as Indentured labourers to Guyana, to replace the labour of the freed Africans on the cotton and sugar plantations.
Therefore why should the PNC, according to the analysis of the PPP and others, seek to fan the flames of racism. The truth is the PNC has always sought to win over non-Africans into its ranks The top brass of the PPP did everything to tear asunder these efforts and have for generations used this imperial system for their political advantage.
The murder, mayhem and maginot lines particularly in the Coastal belt was the handiwork of trained PPP terrorists who assumed this was a pathway to Power, Progress and Prominence. This hostile environment caused Sydney King to establish the African Society for Closer Relations in Independent Africa (ASCRIA), He also called for the partition of our country as a solution, where Afro Guyanese and Indo Guyanese would have a Government of their own.
Because of the concerns of many citizens who were being victimised and their families traumatised, many felt partition was a feasible solution particularly, with PPP activists shouting “awe pon top,” When Sydney King proposed that the country be partitioned into zones as a solution to our racial difficulties, it was appealing to many.
At a Meeting with PNC Executives, Burnham in his usual persuasive eloquence said partition was not the solution and I remember saying at that Meeting, we must not allow frustration and fear to be the foundation upon which to build our nation-state but rather we should strive to bring all of our people on board to fend off the tricks and stratagem of Massa. This should be our position if we are to bequeath to our descendants a great, peaceful and prosperous nation-state.
This represented the position then and now of the People’s National Congress. This was and remains the position of the PNC. The rest is history. How therefore the PPP Top Brass can continue this rhetoric that the PNC is playing the race card? Later when I write my biography I will look at the harmful effect racism is still having in our country and for that matter, the harmful but unnecessary damage in countries in every continent.
I heard for example, the PPP Top Brass saying what a wonderful thing they did at Mocha to facilitate new road construction and other half-truths about our backlands and our frontlands, now being economically viable. Not a single word, not a single sentence to explain the deafening silence on the question of African ancestral lands and forms of reparation.
Let me make it abundantly clear, this letter must in no way suggest that my earliest childhood experience of love and respect for other groups has in any way been diminished . Today, some of my best friends, my most cherished acquaintances are of Indian, Chinese, Portuguese and Amerindian stocks. It will be invidious for me to call names., but the families at Pouderoyen, Windsor Forest, Parika, Essequibo Coast, East Coast, Corentyne are all testimonies to my love and regard. Persons who are of another ethnicity.
I am proud, notwithstanding the devastating impact and deculturalisation of slavery of my heritage. The Prophets and the Holy Books tell you, “ you cannot love your brother unless you love yourself.” Every group, religious or ethnic possess admirable qualities, for example, I have advised members of my own race that they can do well to practise deferred gratification, a characteristic I have admired in my Indo brothers and sisters from my days in Albouystown.
The trouble or rather the cancer consuming the PPP is their perception of other people. They must look inwards and for the sake of our country try to overcome this debilitating condition. To those who now benefit from the largesse of the PPP Government they must know they are only getting a small slice of the cake. To my friends who are getting relatively small slices of the cake, they and us should note the quartet really in the captain’s bridge in Guyana is mono-ethnic.
FInally, the PPP must put an end to these sordid lamentations of accusing the PNC of racism and all ill that faces our society. We cannot build a country if those in Office continue unjustly to use their well oiled, well funded propaganda machine as a battering ram against others.
I heard in the strange and improper award of contracts, the braying of the PPP top brass defending breaches of our tender procedures. on the pretext that these illegalities and improprieties are okay because they were trying to help Afro Guyanese. A complete non sequitur, total absurdity and the hallmark of indecency.
The PNC I know never ever sought to use race as a tool. Having said that, I believe that what the PPP is doing is a clever ploy to shift attention away from their plan, because of migration of large numbers of their traditional supporters. They recognise that to rely on what has been their traditional base and a few self seekers that the demographics are rapidly changing out of their favour. Hence, this recent attempt to bring in health workers from Bangladesh – not new. In 1962, the PPP attempted to bring in large numbers from the communist state of Kerala, India. Patriots must stand up to this anti-national attempt
I end this letter to paraphrase and share the dream of Martin Luther King Jr, entoned at a speech at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial (Aug 28, 1963). Let me adjust one paragraph by saying I have a dream that one day the children of slaves and former slave owners, the children of indigenous people and the children of indentured labourers would be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.”
I have a dream and pray that the independent media will not be beaten into submission
Yours truly,
Hamilton Green
Elder