Dear Editor,
There is no need for persons to conceal their identity, or assume one, in making comments about me. Vassan Ramracha, my latest adviser, does not beg to be noticed. The letter writer has successfully kept his or her name even by accident out of public view. Clearly a person not without some information, Citizen Vassan Ramracha made some reasonable arguments and also some loose errors.
The kind people who allegedly “eulogized” me as a “nonviolent sage” or as a saint are not only generous but risky. It has nothing to do with me, and Citizen Ramracha should do all possible to dispel any suspicion or assumption of any false status I enjoy. He will be following in the footsteps of Blameless Mrs Jagan, who in an interview with Frank Birbalsingh said of me,
“He’s trying to be a black Mahatma, but he really isn’t because the Mahatma didn’t have hatred and viciousness.”
The Ramrachas should read their scriptures. The word “black” was part of her comment, not mine. How well she understood Gandhi!
It is true that I am one of those fools who try to be perfect in the example I set. And keep trying. Of course I have not succeeded. That is my only connection to sainthood. I know people I have called saints, including political women, living in Guyana right now. I do not see anyone “eulogising” them.
I did not deny what I have said, or done, or written. I had asked Mr Dev to quote me correctly and not report me. When he quoted my statement it became clear that he had doctored my statement. (My response is in SN, October 11.)
I ask Citizen Ramracha, as I successfully asked Mr Dev, to report correctly. He names some Indian persons I have known well. I can ignore the frequency of visits to the homes, none of them being people of the upper middle class. I hope the gossip does not embarrass any of them. I do not know whether he had in mind that my visits were at mealtime.
I must join issue with Ramracha. I was never a political “player.” I was a very serious political person. If I had been a “player” I would not be in so much trouble.
I ask Citizen Ramracha to investigate again whether those fires after the funeral of the Sealeys caused any deaths. A death at that point in late May1964 so soon after Buxton’s first casualties, would not fly from my memory. The newspapers reported the fires which, though hurtful to the victims and their sympathizers, were to me not as final as the Sealeys’ lives. I know some would argue this point. Citizen Ramracha shows evidence of enough resources to search the press of those days, still existing. If a death occurred as a result of those fires, I will have to revise my whole version of the course of 1964 in Buxton. The press would not ignore a fatality any more than ignore a man (me) chained to Rev Seopaul’s memorable metal fence with a poster reading “Partition or Death.” I know that the Wismar pogrom took place very close on the deaths. I know that in 1980, Mrs Jagan whose government had conducted an Inquiry into the Wismar and issued a report, told a crowd at Leonora during the 1980 election campaign, boycotted by the WPA, to “ask Sydney King [my original name] what he did at Wismar in 1964.” I challenged her publicly to reveal what I did, with no fear of action for libel. She was dumb. No, I was not a player as some may be in politics. I was very serious.
I knew what my state of mind was about those fires. They taught me something about the ritual of the culture On the fires, please see my letter in SN of October 11.
The newspapers reported fully. If they report that anyone died there that night, I will accept them as a primary source, but that is not my knowledge or my recollection. Even the fires left their imprint on me, much more a fatality. When I wrote about the fatalities in Buxton in1964 I consulted an Indian source and the result is in my writing. That source had reminded me of the deaths of persons passing in vehicles along the public road. I duly included these as village crimes. I had omitted them earlier.
My taking charge of the defence did not involve fires which I would not see as defence but as counter-offence.
For the benefit of Citizen Ramracha. I have not waited for anyone to call on me. Of my own free will I wrote in the popular and free Caribbean Daylight of New York a short series of three articles, ‘Guyana’s Race Problems and my part in them.’ I wrote them because I thought that activists of my generation had that duty. So far as I know, it was seen as madness, a waste of time. I do not remember whether there were comments on them or not. One small paper in the Washington DC area, the Rodneyite reprinted them in two instalments.
Before that, in 1978, in a public lecture in Georgetown I apologised for my handling of the race issues in the sixties, repeat in the sixties. It was a one-person conversation. No one else had any cause to apologise, I take it. Perhaps that is why it did not continue. And it will not continue now. It seems cowardly that people who commanded armies and make budgets and distributed the county’s resources have got off without any such questions as are now posed to me. I await Citizen Ramracha’s findings on the death he so confidently alleges. I though, have to find a way of making known the course of things.
Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana
