Dear Editor,
I’m not so much responding to this Sunday’s Kaieteur News Ravi Dev column (Mash and Republic Day) as I am instead offering comment on aspects for issues relevant to Republic Day and the Mashramani Festival which he raised therein.
I share these views both from a personal perspective and as a member of the Central Mashramani 2007 Management Committee of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports.
On the more personal level I must agree with the substance of Mr. Dev’s arguments on the central issue: that much more emphasis should be placed on the history and significance of the February 23 Republic Day. Why was that date chosen? What can we learn about and from the 1763 Berbice Rebellion? Who were the major players and how did their personalities and strategies determine the outcome of one of the Western Hemisphere’s first major slave revolts?
Also, I’m in sync with him on the need to educate the nation as to what it means to really be a Republic and not a Monarchy. (The “Mother Country” might have “agreed” with May 26 but we chose February 23). As recently as last Friday (2nd February 2007) and on October 27, 2006 in my Stabroek News Friday Frankly Speaking columns, I repeated my pleas for “the bacchanal to be balanced” with such activities as Republic Anniversary Debates, Book and Culinary Fairs, Cultural Festivals, Drama and History Seminars and other appropriate “cerebral” events.
Not to “please” or satisfy Mr. Dev do I mention the fact that Minister of Culture, Youth & Sports Dr. Frank Anthony has agreed in principle that indeed the Republic Anniversary celebrations should and must accommodate those exercises that teach and reinforce values and behaviour relevant to genuine Republicanism. In this regard, he plans to approach the Ministry of Education to fashion structured programmes relevant to Republicanism. And therein lies an associated issue.
Come Republic month, the Ministry of Education should spearhead the more informational, academic and intellectual elements of the anniversary celebrations. Thus the intended engagement with that Ministry. The Ministry of Culture has been tasked, from the inception, with the celebratory aspects of the festival. In this regard I must comment on a few of Dev’s pointed opinions – and insinuations.
He writes that “this festival is only kept going through government support”. Basically bordering on fact but it should have been mentioned that government benefits from many, many millions of dollars of sponsorship from the private sector-both local and overseas – based.
Dev then delves into the origin and perceived intentions (or result) of Government’s early patronage of the national commemoration. Whilst he is not explicit in condemning state support for the decidedly national celebration, he is of the view that “the Government sent the message that Mash was the Guyana way to commemorate Republic Day” – and that in a multi-cultural state, when the government selects a particular cultural expression as the official expression it explicitly privileges that expression to the exclusion of others”.
Now-Now Mr. Dev, would a government, especially this one which is relatively tolerant of all of the Guyanese cultural mix, deliberately seek to exclude some one ethnic group and its cultural preferences? How does partial financial support to revelry exclude any interested group? Theirs is the right to participate or to forego a particular type of public expression. No “privilege” is being explicitly favoured when all are free (and invited) to participate. Every group is, however, entitled to its “different perspective(s)”.
I would be the last to deem Ravi Dev guilty of any racist tendencies. I am however, concerned with his offering that: “there is more than a sneaking suspicion that the PPP is pumping so much money into Mash to take off the heat from African anger at its failures of governance
