Dear Editor,
In his September 5, 2010 column in another section of the press, Mr Ravi Dev has called me ‘Elder Kwayana,’ and says that I am the eminence grise of Buxton – the grey eminence.
One dictionary defines the French phrase as “ person who wields unofficial power esp. through another person and often surreptitiously or selfishly.” Mr Dev takes great care with his diction, if not with his accuracy. It is a column in which he is attacking Dr David Hinds for his views on recent events in Buxton.
I am at present writing on race, and in the course of it I respond to some of Young Dev’s previous findings. But I am quoting them in his own words so that readers will know what I respond to. I am well aware of what I have said and written, but most of today’s readers may not be certain whether to accept Young Dev’s argument or not. He has taken on the mantle of letting the people know where the most negative political ideas come from. He recently accused the writer Mr Abu Bakr of wishing for Guyanese Indians a “final solution.” Then he made the finding that this idea was a “mirror image” of mine. On September 5 Young Dev returns to my scriptures in order to instruct Dr Hinds by using my bad example.
He writes: “During the riots of the 1960’s, the latter declared that he adopted the role of organising the ‘defence’ of Buxton against what he concluded then to be the hostile surrounding Indian communities of Annandale and Lusignan.” By “the latter,” he means me,
Until Young Dev quotes for his readers my statement as I made it, and tries to control his habit of convenient ‘close reference,’ I shall make one remark, not even dealing with what he claims. The remark is that I once had to ask Mr Dev whether what he had written was all he knew of Guyanese Indians. Now I have to ask whether that is all he knows of the patterns of the “riots of the sixties.” Again, I remind him kindly to quote my words. Another writer, Mr Oscar Ramjeet, also in response to David Hinds, made a number of unfavourable judgments about Buxton and its people. He is entitled to his opinion, however offensive. Neither of them is entitled to falsify the time and place of public events, however long ago they took place.
Mr Ramjeet, a former Guyanese reporter, much younger than I, alleged that the riots of the 1960s started in Buxton. No one living or dead has ever claimed like Mr Ramjeet that the disturbances of the sixties started in Buxton. Two authorities are blundering even without consultation. It shows the power of embedded stereotype. Somehow, Young Dev’s rendering of my statement is a “mirror image” of Mr Ramjeet’s astonishing falsehood.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
