Dear Editor,
In his response to my letter challenging the ethnic distinction in the CWC brochure Devanand Bhagwan confesses that the only distinct African expression he ever experienced in relation to Guyana is the Christmas masquerade “long lady”, seeing some women dancing African style, and postscripts that with the assertion that quote, “African drumming is also becoming more noticeable”. Well how about that eh? Mr Bhagwan, since the now musical instrument that we call a drum had its origins in Africa, how facetious is that last reference. And this is someone who is asking me to provide evidence of a distinct cultural link between Africa and the Caribbean. Well golly Mr Bhagwan, what more important nexus can there be between geographical spheres than the very people found in both places. Basically, Mr Devanand Bhagwan’s response to my position can be analogized with a demand that the indigenous peoples of the Americas provide evidence of their presence in order to impeach their challenge to an ethnic assertion glorifying European presence in the Americas. A Guyanese who is an apparent media personality, and who can only relate to the African presence in Guyana through images from masquerade bands during Christmas Holidays, and some women dancing in a particular style cannot be schooled by the likes of me, or anyone else for that matter on things that are positively African. Mr Devanand Bhagwan obviously belongs to that unique group of thinkers with the perspective that what they do not know or have never seen does not exist, especially when the subject revolves around challenges to notions of ethnic supremacy.
In what is something of a ‘serendipitous coincidence’, or maybe just fate playing “got ya” tricks on those who seemingly can locate anything else except that which is positively Africoid, Vibert Cambridge, Ph.D. of the Department of African American Studies at an Ohio University had his letter captioned “The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas” published in the same queue with Mr Bhagwan’s. The subject matter of this missive, more than anything I can do or say, illuminates the skewed reasoning of the Devanand Bhagwans, and reiterates my previous comments that people will go to extraordinary lengths to play down or minimize things that are positive about African History, the African Presence, or just about anything having to do with the contributions of Africans. I wonder, can there be any significant cultural linkage in the fact that our shared dietary staple had its origins in the same place as most of the ancestors of Africans in the Americas? There is an assortment of foods and their preparations, religious styles of worshipping, and endless other manifestations of the link between Africans in Guyana and West Africa that occur daily under the very obvious ethnically stuffed up nose of Mr Bhagwan, and this has been going on from time immemorial. The acquisition of knowledge requires active endeavours and the absence of a subjective strainer.
Mr Devanand Bhagwan’s evidence of a primacy in the manifestation of an Indian Culture as compared to others include forms of worship, clothing, generally expressions of a distinct link between Indians in Guyana and the Caribbean and their motherland. And this is something that needs exploring, because, (a) it exposes those who are predisposed to making comparisons without taking into consideration the variables that affect outcomes and, (b) let’s just say for the sake of this argument and the “ubiquitousness” that persuades Mr Devanand Bhagwan towards his conclusion. Of course one will find a greater expressions of Indian-ness among Indians in the Caribbean and diaspora than African-ness among Africans in the same locations. Indians were brought to Guyana and the rest of the hemisphere culture intacto. Africans were not. They were violently and brutally separated from language and everything else that humans needed to maintain their sense of self worth as a group. That is why he carries the name “Devanand Bhagwan” and I carry the name “Keith Williams”. How spurious and inane is it to advance an argument that because of forceful deprivation in terms of the link between origins and nomenclature, the expression Devanand Bhagwan should have primacy over Keith Williams in a brochure highlighting an international event in a shared nation. Like I said, you can bring the cow to the creek, you cannot coerce it into drinking the water.
My father’s family is from the Victoria/AnnsGrove/Golden Grove region of Guyana, and I, throughout my lifetime have always experienced a sensation of deja vu whenever I see images of women and others in their living environment in Ghana, in Sierra Leone and other parts of West Africa. My memories of my paternal grandmother and other adult family members who resided on the East Coast, how they dressed, their stature, the smell of the food they cooked, and including the innumerable Brer Nancy and Tiger stories that I later learned were retained from their African Culture, are sufficiently distinctive to link me with the origins of my ancestors. It is not necessary for Mr Devanand Bhagwan to know of them, to experience them, or for me to prove them to him to make them valid, sustainable and existent. I can sit down and converse informally with friends from those regions, and talk about growing up, and discover shared experiences in how things were in our households and communities. It is absolutely preposterous for Bhagwan to demand proof from me that there are links between Africa and the diaspora other than Haiti. Anyone who purports to be informed and fervently in pursuit of information, and who claims ignorance of the African presence and its manifestations in Brazil, in Saint Lucia, in Cuba, in Guyana and in every part of the Americas cannot be schooled in this area because it is evident that is not what they are about. And I am not of the temperament to stroke these kinds of ethnically inflated egos.
If there is a detection of indignation in my letter it is absolutely justified. I get tired of the “I have a black friend” connotation intrinsically evident in Bhagwan’s assertion, “I personally have made several attempts to highlight African Culture, and express great appreciation for the African Heritage in Guyana, through my television programmes, radio, interviews, etc”. With the barely thimble full of knowledge resident in Mr Bhagwan’s head of African cultural expressions and manifestations in Guyana and the Americas those attempts have to be very brief. Guyana is a land of many peoples, all with distinct and manifested links to origins elsewhere. The argument that a movie industry’s proliferation of one group’s cultural patterns and linkage, or someone’s ignorance of such patterns and linkage being manifested in another group, justifies the former’s primacy over the latter in a publication highlighting something national is ludicrous and an example of where runaway hubris can take one. These straw arguments are becoming more prevalent day by day.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
