Dear Editor,
In his letter, ‘The repression of the Critchlow Labour College is a serious cultural assault on the working people of all sectors’ (SN, December 4), inter alia Mr Eusi Kwayana, alludes to a discussion we have been having over the past few months. Referring to my “talented and over confident but also ignorant analysis” of some of his writings, he asserts that “a guilty party does not mean a guilty race.”
He is referring, I believe, to my citation of a passage from his 1962 work, Next Witness, where he states clearly that the PPP was the guilty party in initiating racial violence in 1961.He intended to expose, “[‘the coward’] Jagan’s racial insolence and his cold-blooded organisation of the East Indians for the conquest that has always been their dream.” He concluded: “The [PPP] Government, the guilty party in the matter of racial conflict, wished to hide the truth [about 1961] because it wants immediate independence under a constitution, which will leave it free to strangle the breath of the African people and the minorities, to create here an East Indian State, to plant the East Indies in the West Indies.”
But Mr Kwayana ignores even from the quoted passage his assertion re East Indians, that it was “their dream” to conquer” and “strangle the breath of the Africans and the minorities.” He also ignores my references to his statement that that between 1961 and 1971 he “was inclined to blame Indians in general” and between 1961-64, his position was that “Indians attacked. Africans retaliated.” In fact when he re-released his 1962 text in 1999, he admitted that it was written at a time “when I [Mr Kwayana] had lost confidence in the Indian leadership. I blamed the supporters [Indians] for supporting injustice on racial grounds.”
It was these words explicitly about Indians and Mr Kwayana’s stubborn insistence in the present on regurgitating his claims that racial political murder in Guyana began with the murder of one Felix Ross – who he claims was a supporter of the PNC – after the 1961 general elections by PPP supporters that has led me to suggest that Mr Kwayana is implying that maybe there is a guilty race in Guyana – Indians.
Mr Kwayana further claims that I “ignore years of [his] public activity and play games with words trying to read the atmosphere of half a century ago from how things strike them today as they write.” I confess that like the rest of humanity (as I have repeatedly asserted) I can only write from the present…as does Mr Kwayana. It was precisely because we all look at the past from our present problem space with an eye towards our horizon of expectations that I have been trying to figure out what kind of future Mr Kwayana envisages for Guyana, for him to dig up his 1962 Next Witness in 1999.
Mr Kwayana suggests that I “ignore [his] years of public activity and play games with words trying to read the atmosphere of half a century ago.” While I am younger than Mr Kwayana, I must remind him that I also lived through the time he cites and well remember its atmosphere. However, I have taken care to look at the public record (imperfect as that may be) so as not to be accused of fatal subjectivity. I am just concerned over the impact of the unreflective regurgitation of old vindicationist narratives, couched in the garb of revolutionary romance, in our fragile present.
I have never ignored the yeoman role that Mr Kwayana has played in the history of our country and the record is replete with my acknowledgement of that role. I have personally benefited immensely from the exchanges I have had with him, publicly and privately, over the years.
I hope that he can accept that I have a deep and abiding respect for him.
Yours faithfully,
Ravi Dev
