Dear Editor,
I welcome Ravi Dev’s pointed question (Letter SN, April 4, 2022) related to a section of my article titled “Summarizing the 1856 Angel Gabriel riots of 1856” (SN March 20, 22). Before I respond to Mr. Dev’s query, I take this opportunity to acknowledge Frederick Collins’s letter (April 1, 2022) which I missed on account of its heading, and which had to be pointed out to me by a friend. Mr. Dev focuses on a specific sentence in the entire article while Collins provided a wider response to the Angel Gabriel piece. I hope Mr Collins’s query might be answered in the course of this letter but like his salute to the imaginative potential of art, I would like to reiterate my deep appreciation for Errol Brewster’s masterful depiction of Orr.
But back to Mr. Dev’s request for my source to the following quote: “One report stated that ‘Creoles, sometimes accompanied by East Indians and African immigrants, broke the windows and door of shops, consumed or dumped barrels of liquor… and that women and children were especially prominent in the raids.’ In many instances houses were burnt and/or ransacked and property stolen.”
The quote came from page 24 of a chapter by Mark Doyle titled “The Angel Gabriel in the Tropics: British Guiana 1856” (in Doyle, Communal Violence in the British Empire: Disturbing the Pax, 2016). Doyle’s footnote for the said passage cites Monica Schuler’s work.
Monica Schuler’s chapter, “Liberated Africans in 19th Century Guyana” in the volume edited by Brian Moore et al, Slavery, Freedom and Gender: The Dyna-mics of Caribbean Society (UWI Press, 2003) mentions Indian participation twice although referring to the same incident. It states “…African, Barbadian and Indian immigrants participated in the attacks.” Schuler’s quote is supported by Footnote no. 64 “CWM (Council for World Mission), BG-Dem, Rattray to Tidman, 25th February, 1856.” Later she writes: “In West Coast Demerara, Barbadian men allegedly instigated raids on shops, but perpetrators included women, children, Africans and in some cases East Indians.” This latter quote is supported by Footnote no. 65: “CWM BG-Dem, Scott to Tidman, 19th May 1856.” I hope these citations satisfy Dev.
There are however matters arising from Ravi Dev’s question and other comments in his letter. First, it is interesting how, in terms of race relations past and present – there appears to be a tendency to prise out, from the historical record, material for contemporary use. But I guess this is how it should be and is indicative of the uses of history. As my philosopher friend Rohit Kanhai would often state “the present is history.”
In this specific case/debate, there are two broad notions of African-Indian relations. One notion, which I would term the “optimistic” version, attempts to depict Black –Indian relations with the broad brush record of complete amity, that is, modern advocates (which I suspect stems from tactical usage of the notion for present political purposes) who insist there was little to no enmity between Africans and Indians in Guyana until the modern period of the 1960s. The other train of thought appeals to the notion of incessant – if not endemic – conflict between the two groups. In my view neither of the two positions is definitive as a description but on the record of interactions between the two groups historically and contemporarily, conflict would seem to be more represented as the dominant trend. Given his surprise at one episode of apparent Indian solidarity with Africans (especially for potentially nefarious purposes in a riot), Mr. Dev appears to suggest, with complete certitude, that Indo Guyanese held some unitary or ordered responses at the time. Why would Indian Guyanese, given the long haul of history and so many complex and different interactions with people of other races, even if mostly antagonistic, not have one moment of “unity” over an issue of an opportunity during a riot? The fact that Guyanese of African and Indian descent would often be in conflict with local and metropolitan colonial governments should come as no surprise. The history of Indian indentured resistance to colonial conditions (inclusive of riots and rioting) is well documented in secondary and primary sources. In fact I came across in my newspaper files this report of an incident against another gangster Governor (this time Governor Hodgson) in the Daily Argosy of July 21, 1914:
“Whilst his excellency the governor was returning from a motor drive up the East Bank road on Sunday afternoon, his car was mobbed by a motley crowd of East Indians of Grove village interspersed with a few blacks, with the intention of putting forth to his Excellency the grievance about ‘the thrash house breaking down’.” As the people thronged the car with uplifted hands and sticks the driver slowed down, but as those in front of the car dispersed, he increased the speed and left the crowd behind.”
In the case of 1856, might Ravi Dev concede that there might have been a moment or two when a section of one race (for one reason or other) acts spontaneously, along the lines of the dominant group? Why would this be unnatural even if, as Dev correctly points out, the Indian indentured labourers might not have held the same type of contradictions with the Portuguese? Dev is correct, even if he did not put it this way in his letter, that Indians “banked their savings in Portuguese shops.” But some Africans also held good relations, including economic, with Portuguese. As was pointed out in my article, many African Guyanese did not join in the riots at the time against the Portuguese. For example, villages such as Victoria and Bagotville did not partake in the riots, according to the Governor’s Dispatches. As Dev would know, riots are not necessarily mono-causal. In point of fact the evidence in Guyana demonstrates (as in other places around the world) that rioters might well use the main motive for the revolt (in this case alleged Portuguese shopkeeper practices) to explode in anger at other deep seated and unaddressed problems.
Then there is the issue of the negative perception of riots. In his famous text “Domination and the Arts of Resistance” (with which Dev will be familiar), James Scott pointed out the multiple ways in which human beings revolt from below. In the case of Africans, their experiences with racial slavery and global white supremacy, practiced locally, forced them to respond in different ways, and sometimes forcefully, to colonial oppression. But this did not mean that Africans were any more socialized to violence than any other group in Guyana or elsewhere. Indeed, we can repeat Martin Luther King’s famous and eloquent aphorism “riots are the language of the unheard.” Is Mr. Dev invoking a generalized distaste for riots across time, in spite of their possible righteous displays given the horrors of the colonial system? I hope that he is not suggesting that all riots are negative and that only some groups are predisposed to rioting.
Coincidentally, my next historical submission to the Stabroek News is titled “A Profile of the British Guiana East Indian Association”. I look forward to Ravi’s rigorous scrutiny.
Yours sincerely,
Nigel Westmaas
