We have to devise collective responses that acknowledge historical wrongs without generating present day hatreds

Dear Editor,

 

Swami Aksharananda’s critique of my view in an interview of 4th March with SN that “ ..we Guyanese have to move beyond the history of the PNC”, comes as no surprise to me.

But there is an impression I want to clear up first. The impression is given that I want a waiver of the PNC’s accountability for what transpired in the 1973-2005 era. This is far from the truth. Anyone reading what I said there will see in very explicit terms my statement: “It would be nice if the PNC came out publicly and apologise for past misdeeds or give an expression of regret. However, if it does not, I will never become enslaved by history and hence allow the PPP back in Government to continue its 10-fold worse scampishness and corruption for another 5 years.” I even went on to state that choices have to be made within these hard political realities as we live in. And since I believe that the present APNU is not made up of those who authored and perpetrated those misdeeds, we are compelled by necessity to move on and not get stuck in that era of some 40 years ago.

If we want to get stuck with history, I want to ask the questions – “Where should it begin and where should it end? Why should we not get stuck with the era of Jagdeo’s massive corruption and cronyism, and his destruction of the financial architecture of Guyana?

As I have said on other occasions, we have to move on from the degeneracy of a time when our ballot box was raided and from a more contemporaneous time when our Treasury is raided, to the dynamic of genuine democracy and financial accountability. This was one of the considerations and purposes behind a shift of my personal stance on a coalition with APNU. Believe me, there were others of an equally serious character. But those will be for another interview.

Swamiji’s thesis of only wanting East Indians to remember the ugly days of PNC has an inherent danger in it. It is a vision of vengeance rather than a state of forgiveness. And it has the conservative purpose of urging certainty and continuity of a regressive PPP Government for another term in office.

Our memories must not be made manipulable to present interests. And worse still, they must not be used to stoke fires of resentment and revenge. The challenge for all of us today, including men in saffron robes, is to devise collective responses that acknowledge historical wrongs without generating present day hatreds and resentment. We all can just perhaps be a people who can rebuild!

But such rebuilding will take forgiveness, love and wisdom, values I expect to be in abundance in men of the cloth. They, of all, must be the ones who least make the past continue to torment us. Not a cavorting with the beast as seemingly appears in Swamiji’s articulation. Stepping out of the wave of rage, and welcoming the wrongdoer into the circle of humanity with the purpose of reconciliation, hard as it is for men like me, is the business of religious leaders and educators. But then again, (and it is deliberate that I spell it with a ‘z’), in this democrazy we have here in Guyana, we have religious leaders and religious leaders; educators and educators!

I observed that Swamiji quoted a number of philosophers in his piece. I just wish to quote a teacher who uses commonsense and who appreciates the need to remember but also the need to forgive – Martha Minow – in a Gilbane Lecture at Brown University 1999 entitled “Breaking the Cycles of Hatred: Memory and Repair”. She suggests as follows:

“We each may not have control over what we come to remember, but we each can play a role in shaping what we work to recall. I remember a story about a cynical young man who came to town determined to discredit the local sage, a man renowned for his wisdom. The youngster decided to summon all the inhabitants and hold a bird in his hand, and say, “Wise man, is the bird dead or alive?” If the sage responded that the bird was dead, he would open his hand and let the bird fly away. If the sage responded that the bird was alive, then the young man would choke it to death. With all the people in the town assembled, and bird in hand, the young man called out, “Wise man, is the bird dead or is it alive?” The sage wisely responded, “The fate of that bird is in your hands.”

Disappointingly, Swamiji reminds me of the cynical young man rather than the local sage.

I want to repeat and apply Martha Minow’s wisdom to Guyana. The fate of our fate is in our hands. We find a flawed only partly remembered country. We all must have a hand in what we come to remember so we can transform both the present and future which awaits.

 

Yours faithfully,
Khemraj Ramjattan
AFC Leader