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Apr 04, 2010 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev
There is no question that the citizens of a country must see it as a “common venture” even if they reject conceptions of “nation” that may be oppressive to existing diversities. “Nation” and “state” have to be disarticulated yet Guyanese have to achieve some commonality of outlook to survive, much less prosper in the modern world. The modern state is a reality and is the unit within which citizens act and which has sovereignty in the international arena, to deal with other states.
At independence, Guyanese inherited a state but not a nation, since the happenstance of their arrivals ensured that they had no common culture. The experience across the world has demonstrated that people do not identify with the state in a spontaneous, automatic manner – and that’s partially why Guyanese have clung to their ethnicities. The challenge would be to construct a “unity” of the peoples within the Guyanese state that does not seek to obliterate the diversities but is more receptive and accommodative of self-conceptions. One obstacle to such as unity is the refusal to accept that diversity is not the opposite of “unity” (“homogeneity” is) rather its opposite is “disunity”. The solution to the apparent dilemma is to accommodate diversity without fostering disunity. Federalism provides a framework for achieving this elusive goal.
Interestingly enough, Canada and Australia, two ex-British colonies, have taken the lead in redefining their “national” identity. They have both rejected the unitary “nation-state” model and chose “multiculturalism” as their ideology for unity. It is not coincidental that both these countries have federal arrangements of governance. In their understanding, multiculturalism is an official government policy that promotes cultural diversity, and the “national” is conceived as the space within which many (ethnically defined and even imagined) communities live and interact.
Taking our cue from these states, it is proposed that we demarcate our cultural sphere as a private one, and not to be used as the criterion for building the overarching unity we need in the public sphere. The Guyanese state would adopt the policy of multiculturalism as a Governmental policy response to a multicultural society i.e. a society that is culturally pluralist. The policy response, “multiculturalism”, must be distinguished from the societal condition of being multicultural. Most countries are multicultural but only a handful are multiculturalist. Multiculturalism must be seen as a set of principles, policies, and practices for accommodating diversity as a legitimate and integral component of society. This does not mean that the state has nothing to do with culture but that it does not privilege any one culture over others.
What is being suggested is that we move from the idea of a “national culture” as a site for identification to the shared practice of a political ideology as the basis for engendering such identification within the state. Rather than those who demand that all ethnic groups assimilate into Creole culture to become “one nation”, we propose that a feeling of “we the people” – of “Guyanese-ness” – can be engendered in the process of our conscious construction of a democratic state.
We situate this construction of a national outlook within what can be seen as a project of democratisation – the creation of conditions where we are all treated as one, equally, by the state. Because of our diversity, such conditions can only exist in a federalist state, where our diversities would actually be accommodated and encouraged rather than become the basis of invidious distinctions.
Equality of opportunity; human rights, encouragement of diversities, due process; justice and fair play and rule of law may seem dry compared to the warmth of the blood ties of “nation”, but they can engender the unity of public purpose and the recognition of individual worth where all can be proud of their common citizenship. Citizenship of Guyana has to become something that has concrete meaning to all of us.
It was the United States, made up of immigrants with diverse cultural backgrounds like us in Guyana, that first attempted to institutionalise this ideological definition of “national identity” when they announced ringingly in their Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
All Americans see these shared ideological values as defining themselves – their “Americaness” – their national identity. When they established as their motto E Pluribus Unum- out of many, one – they meant “one” based on ideological criteria. The ideological foundations were intended to become supra-cultural values that would transcend the specific cultural inheritances of the immigrant.
They succeeded to a great degree but unfortunately their founding fathers undermined the legitimacy of the ideological premises by implicitly assuming that British culture was going to undergird and suffuse this conception – they universalised the British cultural experience. This introduced the nation-state identity through the back door, which inevitably became repressive and has rightly been rejected by multiculturalist conceptions such as Afro-centricity. Universalism is never power neutral – its defenders always have a certain interest in it. We should not repeat the American mistake here and privilege any one culture.
For Guyana then, our ethnicities would be defined outside our “Guyaneseness” and to be African, Indian or Amerindian-Guyanese would not be contradictory in any sense. The first part of our identity would be specific while the latter universalistic. The “national” will now be a space where ethnic communities can live and share. To be Guyanese would be to share public moral precepts – norms, values and attitudes – rather than necessarily, shared cultural experience and practice. To the extent that they are shared it is to be lauded, but it must never be at the imperative to jettison one culture. A “good” Guyanese would be one who is loyal to this country and strives to practice the secular universalistic ideological values it extols.
Guyana is therefore at a critical moment where we are attempting to ensure that state power is equitably distributed amongst the several ethnic groups in our society, which is a precursor to the creation of the space necessary for such co-existence. Multiculturalism is not just about cultural practices: it is also a signifier of the power relations of the society. It is only when power is distributed equitably that the ideological values mean anything to the culturally embedded individual. This is the content of a national identity.
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