We should be candid about our history

Dear Editor,
It is insulting that Mr Bisram claims that the intent of his letter (‘The Indian and African experience has been similar,’ SN May 11)was to promote racial harmony when the substance was glaringly offensive and insensitive. Subverting history is no excuse for making a point. If Mr Bisram cannot accept the fundamental fact that slavery was a more dehumanizing experience than indentureship then his concluding clarion call for racial harmony is nothing but hollow bleating.

Mr Bisram then attempted to convey in a letter to Stabroek News dated May 14, 2009 that he did not claim similarity in his first letter. I will undertake the many instances where Mr Bisram attempted to emphasize his fallacious views and specifically to claim similarity between the Indo and Afro-Guyanese experiences. Mr Bisram said this in his original letter of May 11: “But one should not forget that Indians and Africans had a similar experience and a common history.

Their recruitment, the journey, and the conditions on the colonies bore many similarities to those experienced by our African brethren.” He specifically mentions (1) similar experience and (2) common history. He also mentions that these aspects bore many similarities: (3) recruitment (4) journey and (5) existing conditions of colonies. Mr Bisram then stated “It has been amply documented by scholars that the purpose for which Indians and Africans were brought to the Caribbean and the wretched conditions under which they lived were very much the same.” Mr Bisram’s statement affirms similarity with respect to (6) purpose and (7) living conditions. Mr Bisram also concluded that (8) conditions on ships were similar.

Mr Bisram’s letter of May 11 amounts to nothing but rampant generalization in search of an assertion of equality of experience. While Indo-Guyanese were subject to their own dehumanizing experience, Mr Bisram is intellectually dishonest in lumping both experiences together as virtually the same. There are at least eight areas or aspects that I have highlighted from Mr Bisram’s writings where cardinal differences in the two experiences are known. When he announces that, “These were the same conditions the slaves experienced,” he is again brandishing a deliberate distortion.

What I found striking in Mr Bisram’s letter is that although he stridently claims similarity of experience between Indians and Africans in Guyana the majority of his original letter highlights the Indian experience.

Given his erection of a false premise, anyone reading his letter and not knowing the truth would naturally assume that the Afro-Guyanese experience is exactly the same as the ample description of the Indian experience. Add the wonderful anthem for racial harmony at the end, any reader without any knowledge of the truth would believe Mr Bisram’s gospel to be the only credible version. Mr Bisram is not fooling anyone. He has written letters before; he conducts polls; he is reportedly an educator and fully knows how to acquire and analyze information before making public statements.
Given his background, this was nothing more than a calculated attempt at misrepresentation and distortion. It is a view commonly propagated by some known ‘academics’ of the Indian experience. Stabroek News should be commended for publishing Mr Bisram’s letter to allow right-minded citizens, both Indo and Afro-Guyanese, to confront Bisram’s tall tales and to set the tone for any other revisionists who plan to promote this version of history.

Indo-Guyanese did suffer a tragic dehumanizing experience during indentureship, but it differs in many respects and in terms of severity and intensity from the Afro-Guyanese experience during slavery.

It is time we properly learn our history and be ingenuous about it and hopefully this would teach us how to be candid about our future.
Yours faithfully,
Michael Maxwell