Monday February 25, 2013
Kaieteur News
Page 5
Letters... Where your views make the news... Letters... Where your views make the news
IGNORANCE OR DISTORTION BY INTENT DEAR EDITOR, One would think that there’s a school of thought dedicated to historical and social distortion active n our national ethos when reading some letters in the media, perhaps it’s a result of an education and cultural system that has not addressed the topics of our differences which has failed and have fragmented into dogmas of bias and pure ignorance. The letter in Kaieture News, Monday Feb.11 by Devanand Bhagwan is such a case study. He commented on Freddy Kissoon’s reference to racist ideals and the racism of pigmentation as enforcing Indo-Euro Aryan myth supremacist ideals in popular culture.
What attracted my attention to Bhagwan’s commentary were his distorted arguments utilizing references to the Diaspora and continental Africans, as follows; the recent trend of ‘Bleaching’ was highlighted with intense detail, among Africans as if to negate the argument of advertising not using darker persons as argued by Freddie. These are separate topics. While in the same vein he ignored parallel trends that have been in practice for decades among Caucasians in trying to acquire the romantic ‘Tan’ of the dark and handsome hero in the romance novels, while in the popular culture of that same human variation ; the derogatory term ‘Dumb
Blonde’, is used to describe cousins across the street. Is Bhagwan merely trying to extract substance out of human social trivia? More important though, are the stockpile of stereotypes and distortions commonly used and intended to be absorbed as Historical and social fact, which lead to the racist prejudices that has become second nature in the mind set of Mr. Bhagwan for example; Ravi Dev’s mantra that had not Indians come to British Guiana that the colony would been a wasteland, when in fact every plantation , the majority of villages and townships were already in existence before Indentureship began, and Afro Caribbean, Africans,
Minister Gopaul does not have his fingers on the pulse of what is happening DEAR EDITOR, Old people say “moon does run till day ketch am”; I refer to Kaieteur News editorial of February 21, 2013 and a news item carried by Stabroek News on the same date. This is with reference to the Lamaha Gardens playground fiasco but more relevantly to the Paradise Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society where one man has been steadfast in pleading with the authorities to intervene to save Paradise Housing Scheme. I was present at two meetings - one where the Minister Gopaul attended and gave certain assurances with respect to a forensic audit of the Society’s affairs; and another where the Chief Coop Development Officer, Mr. Jabbar, displayed a degree of arrogance that was beyond belief promising that he would call a meeting within two
weeks to discuss a development agenda. Suffice it to say, that meeting was never called. It should be noted that this Society has been under the control of the CCDO since 2003, so there should be no surprise why this latest development has taken place. So why, may I ask, has the Minister’s undertaking not been honoured? The few details emerging in the Lamaha Gardens real estate deal suggest that the Minister Gopaul does not have his fingers on the pulse of what is happening in his Cooperatives Unit or he is being deliberately misled by his principal Cooperatives person. I say this because there is no other explanation that I can come up with for this inaction with regard to Paradise. I am inclined to argue that certain political considerations are at play but we can only wait and see how
the Lamaha Garden situation will play out because a few of my friends are taking long odds that a cover up and wrist slap will result after the GPSU’s land is returned. The people of Paradise deserve no less than a thorough review of the workings of their Cooperative Society in the same way that other groups have had their concerns addressed. People can’t just appear with not even two cents to rub together and suddenly flaunt ownership of cars, mansion and boutiques. There are already questions swirling about of millions of dollars unaccounted for and questionable land deals, but it is only God who can say when the authorities will get off their haunches and do something – anything for the benefit of the residents of Paradise Housing Scheme. Carmen Grandison
Europeans, Chinese also came as Indentured workers, contributing and enriching the Creole Culture of Guiana/ Guyana yet strange enough this did not occur to Dev. During the 2005 floods Vishnu Bisram in a letter on Feb, 3 2005 Stabroek News in response to Afro Guyanese allegations of discrimination declared, quote; “while AfroGuyanese are getting the bulk of the relief, I am told that some people who did not have three meals a day before the flooding now have many meals a day while supporters of the PPP were neglected. I was told that some people who did not have a mattress before the flood now sleep on a mattress.” Unquote: Only a state of mental illness could drive this kind of insipid reasoning and race hatred. Was Bisram in some macabre fit of delusion imposing the plight and grim reality of the oppressed Shudras of India which he most likely has a deep haunting subconscious historical memory off on AfroGuyanese? Bisram again travels down the irrational road of bigotry when he attempted to juxtapose on Jan 7, 2013 Stabroek News the use of the
Indian repatriation fund as a decision of the then PNC Government to build the National Cultural Centre as equivalent or poetic justice to Minister Frank Anthony’s decision to reconstruct Afro Guyanese history and redirect the 1823 martyrdom to the historically insignificant sea walls on this matter. Bisram obviously does not know or does not care that the post emancipation 1840’s onward taxation imposed on the young Afro Guyanese villages by the colonial authority to address drainage to their farm lands was redirected to assist in the programme of bringing Indentured labour. This resulted in the flooding in the villages and the forced abandonment of their lands and accustomed crops, thus the push to the gold fields and the public sector, and the culinary dependence on the imported food varieties of British Industry. The Cultural Centre is for the Nation including the Ind° Guyanese population who had no interest in returning to India, why is this still a topic of contention? simply, irrational racism.
Bhagwan moves onto Uganda, asserting that Uganda’s survival depended on the Asians who had migrated there during that Nation’s colonization by the British. The Dictator Idi Amin in his quarrel with the British [ former colonial rulers of Uganda from 1894-1962] over the sale of arms, decided that the Asian merchants planted during Uganda’s colonial past who had British Passports must give up their British status and become Ugandan citizens they refused and they were used as pawns and unlawfully deported to England, knowing that this was the then England of the Teddy Boys[ read Roy Shaw’s book]. Idi Amin came from the small Kakwa tribe and was insecure, he murdered and chased hundreds and thousands of other progressive tribal Africans out; On South Road in the late seventies a Ugandan Tailor practiced his trade and he sewed some tie-die shirts for me, he often spoke of his home land. Uganda [Land of the Ganda, the most populous Tribal group] is a geographic Continued on page 6