Dear Editor,
Abu Bakr’s February 5 letter in SN, ‘Have the ex-ROAR members of the AFC influenced its thinking?’ says Indian-Guyanese fear of African-Guyanese is not a dominant reason why Indians vote race. Mr Bakr points to key factors such as racial affinities, the sociology of migration, settlement and group-identity creation, counter-identity, etc, but dismiss racialized fear as being of the same level of importance. Khemraj Ramjattan, presidential candidate of the AFC, says Indians should not fear Africans. Mr Bakr is wrong while Mr Ramjattan gets it right. That Indian-Guyanese fear stems from several foundations. Firstly, Guyana had racial strife in the early 1960s. That left a generational scar.
Secondly, the PNC’s excesses and its actions between 1964 to 1992 magnified Indian fear. Thirdly, the PPP highlighted and exaggerated the PNC image and played on Indian fear for political gain. Fear magnification by the PPP helped to keep Indians in the PPP camp.
Fourthly, election season is fear season in Guyana. Fifthly, on a fundamental sociological and psychological level, more Indians (primarily in rural areas) view Africans with fear than Africans view Indians with fear. That basic psyche spills over into politics and politics plays a major part in sculpting this fear. Finally, crime escalates fear among all Guyanese but particularly among Indians for various reasons. Increasing crime around election time increases Indian fear which increases the likelihood of Indian ethnic voting.
Now that we understand the underpinnings of Indian fear of Africans, the question is whether Indians should really continue to politically fear Africans in Guyana. Let us look at the reality here. We have had uninterrupted ‘Indian’ political power for 18 years. The ethnic strife of the 1960s is now more than 45 years old. An entire generation has sprouted since those dark times. That bastion of fear to Indians known as the PNC has been out of power for 18 years. Frankly, they are unlikely to ever return and they provide more comic relief than fear in recent past. Indeed, we have had outbreaks of violence such as the prison break crime spree and the retaliatory response from the convicted drug kingpin.
But by any objective measure the PPP and by extension Indians have ruled without any forceful, sustained threats to its power as feared in 1992. The African-dominated armed forces have obeyed the will of an Indian majority and of democracy for the past 18 years. A sizeable segment of Africans have migrated in droves from the militancy of the PNC to the moderate multiracial pastures of the AFC. They did it before with the WPA. On a sociological and psychological level, the fear factor is lessening. The nation’s youth is mixing more inter-racially. Crime has come in all colours since 1992. The pre-1992 landscape of mostly politically encouraged crime, petty crime and minuscule organized crime has morphed into a raging beast of drug cartels, mafias, gun traffickers, money launderers and crime syndicates.
All this happened under the watch of those who said they would watch over Indians who religiously voted for them. The rise of organized crime in Guyana has come with the loss of security, safety and law and order of all Guyanese, including Indian-Guyanese. This loss means more fear. More fear means easier cajoling of the fearful into the political corral.
So what remains in Guyana that accounts for current Indian-Guyanese fear that translates to ethnic voting?
The primary culprit is the PPP. It has the power and resources to craft instant fear in bottom houses. It is time we stop fearing each other and start fearing those who tell us to fear each other. We can’t tell people to simply forget their fears accumulated over a generation.
But we can ask them to sacrifice that fear for hope and change. Indians don’t have to love Africans or Africans love Indians for this nation to move on. We don’t need a lovefest for this nation to heal and prosper.
We need some good old-fashioned Mahatma Gandhian truth. We’ve given fear the chance for 50-plus years and it left us broken. It is time to give courage a chance. We cannot become a civilization that vanished for the sake of not trying. We need a system of tolerance enforced by the rule of law, equality and justice and fuelled by education. We have 83,000 square miles of abundant riches. Are we going to watch others who have moved beyond fear come in and take it from us?
This country cannot realize its potential without the two main ethnic groups coming to terms with the necessity of unity in some form, however tentative. Each group brings strengths and weaknesses to the table. It is how we must work together to burnish the strengths and address the weaknesses that will make us a true nation.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
