Dear Editor,
Due to obvious reasons, my efforts to share teaching moments with readers in Guyana and the readers of Guyana’s media have encountered some setbacks. The prevailing atmosphere in public affairs discussion has become highly charged and predominantly focused on proving and disproving arguments, leaving little room for reasoned discourse and the valuable lessons derived from experience. This writing is part of my response to the decade’s long effort to reinvent encouraging human experiences and show the past as not a one sided malice of one people or community against the other. In this writing, I am relying on historical facts printed since the last years of the 20th century in my book, Buxton Friendship-In Print and Memory. In particular, the facts, will be found in a guest chapter written by my late friend Rampersaud Tiwari and circulating in the public space for decades.
Buxton Friendship is a union of two villages founded by self-emancipated Africans from several nearby plantations soon after the founding of the pioneer village, Victoria (Northbrook). Buxton-Friendship has the reputation of being an African village, as its origins proclaim, but some new historians stop there and try to render it as a place in which other ethnic groups were in peril and experienced prolonged indignity and repression. In these circumstances, I did not trust myself as an African born in a neighbouring plantation to write or interpret the experience in Buxton of the visible Indo Guyanese minority. Mr. Tiwari, who lived in Buxton until the racial conflicts of the 1960’s, gladly undertook the task of speaking from the location of an Indo-Guyanese in a situation that had become extremely disquieting as well as a minor focal point in the Cold War.
According to the author, Mr. Rampersaud Tiwari, Indians began to settle in Buxton in certain labour circumstances in the 1890’s. The teaching lesson at the heart of the present writing surrounds Mr Seepaltan, described by his grandson as an indentured immigrant from the United Provinces of India. Mr. Seepaltan was born circa 1890, came to Guyana at the age of 7, and died in March 1964. When I began to know Mr. Seepaltan, I was a youth, living in Buxton (backdam side), not the choicest part of the village for most people. Mr. Seepaltan was a resident of Buxton front, next to the Atlantic Ocean and later to sea wall and sea defences. Teenage boys from Buxton and Backdam side mingled, mainly in games of cricket. Apart from cricket, Buxton had four primary schools, some of which had a significant number of pupils of Indian origin, officially registered as East Indians. These pupils would be male and female sitting in the same benches, taking the same classes and playing the same games. Because of the control of all the schools by Christian denominations, East Indian teachers were rare but extremely visible.
I am seeing Mr. Seepaltan now as he went about his affairs in the village, whether near his residence, a regular working class cottage, or milling among villagers at the village market or the post office, or the health center. Readers can learn about Mr. Seepaltan’s interest which I did not know at the time as recorded by his grandson Rampersad Tiwari. However, there are things that I can speak about at first hand. Mr. Seepaltan was of medium height. He carried himself with dignity. I remember him on several occasions wearing his Hindu dhoti without apology and answering those of us who greeted him. His granddaughter said he always wore his dhoti except when he was going to his farm. In the chapter written by his grandson, there is mention of Mr. Seepaltan using parts of the company canal closer to the outfall koker that emptied into the Atlantic Ocean for his morning rituals. Readers will notice that his grandson claims that Mr. Seepaltan turned that part of the company canal into his own river Ganges for his daily prayers and ablutions.
Now for the teaching lesson. My friend Rampersaud Tiwari passed away in Toronto, about the middle of last year, months after he no longer lived by himself, but with his offsprings and was therefore temporarily without a telephone. Our frequent monthly conversations had come to an end in this way, but his offsprings were very concerned about it and as soon as she could, his sister called me from Toronto to tell me of his new situation. There was a plan on their side to furnish him with a telephone so that he could call me and resume our conversations. Before these arrangements could be made, he passed away in his sleep at the age of 91, ending my last living and active link with the Hindu world he never left.
In reporting about his passing, his sister reminded me, although I did not need a reminder, that she attended my evening classes at county high school. She then narrated the dramatic circumstances of her grandfather’s last days. That morning Seepaltan awoke and continued to feel unwell. Against the wishes of his wife, he decided to go to his farm in the backdam to get bamboo so that the family could have a ‘work’ for the restoration of his health. Finally, his wife produced a saucepan with his meal and his son decided to accompany his father into the backdam to be close to him. The journey by boat or canoe to his farm in the backdam was between five and six miles and he got there and began the day’s work. His bed was close to that of his friends, Bildad Howard and Walter Abrams, two veteran Buxton farmers.
At midday in the heat of the sun, the farmers rested as was their custom. On resuming work after the midday meal, they noticed that Seepaltan was motionless. His son found that his body appeared lifeless. And generally the three of them presumed him dead. His son, Shiwprasaud and his friends Billdad Howard and Walter Abrams (farmers) placed his body in the boat and they paddled the sorrowful journey back to the point where he had boarded in the company canal near to the ocean. This time his life was spent and he had to be lifted to his home. Bildad Howard and Walter Abrams were fellow farmers in the community and Seepaltan was their friend who was active in the affairs of farmers and other public issues in the village.
It is to be presumed from what is known that Seepaltan was an advocate for the end of dual control of schools (viz church control of schools) and other matters affecting Indians and poor people. He had also been a member of the Buxton branch of the British Guiana East Indian Association along with Molvi Khan who outlived him by many years and also of the Indian National Congress, an organization founded by Hindus in Buxton Friendship to campaign for Home Rule for India, a campaign in which I had the honour to take part as an associate member. Seepaltan Ji was cremated at the Good Hope foreshore in a ceremony conducted by Pandit Ramsahoye Doobay and Pandit Sama Persaud.
Sincerely,
Eusi Kwayana
