The politics of Guyanese revolutionaries: Revisionist notes on racial instincts

Aug 29, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – There will be one tantalising question after the historian reads this column. That person is bound to say, “Freddie, there is a contradiction in your analysis that must be explained.”
That contradiction revolves around three Guyanese East Indians – Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine, Dr. Josh Ramsammy and Mr. Moses Bhagwan. It will take a separate article to elaborate on this contradiction which can be logically explained. I have treated this lacuna before in relation to Roopnaraine and Bhagwan. I have not done it for Ramsammy, the reason being, he was far more a principled, morally guided activist than the other two Indians. Because of space constraint, please Google my condemnatory articles on Roopnaraine and Bhagwan. I will just add a few notes on them below.
This analysis here argues that the African Guyanese leaders in the WPA, in the 1970s, nurtured deep, Freudian desires of majority African rule but sublimated these cravings under Rodneyite politics. Many of them were already committed Africanists when they joined Walter Rodney. Pay attention to some of their names – Eusi Kwayana, Omawale, Andaiye, Sase Omo, Abysinnian (Andaiye’s brother), Ohene Koama, Kwame Apatha.
These African names should not lead to a faulty analysis. African Guyanese in the WPA leadership who retained their Christian appellations were also driven by their Africanist ideologies. What unites those with African names and those with English names was the historical perspective that Guyana should be ruled by the descendants of African slaves. Their politics were shaped by a certain type of praxis that was opposed to the PPP simply because the PPP was the vehicle for Indian ownership of the government.
The enigma is Rodney himself. But discussion of his role in this analysis has to come after I offer my revisionist perspective on the WPA leadership in the seventies. One of the theories in Guyanese sociology was that the birth of the Jagan-Burnham camaraderie, named the PPP, at the beginning of the 1950 rendered both invisible and dormant, the ethnic strategies of political leaders for their own political future. The theory goes on to argue that after the constitution was suspended by British military invasion in 1953, circumstances were born that allowed these ethnic instincts to come to the surface. The rest is history.
I am applying here that sociological paradigm of the original PPP to the WPA of the 1970s. I am contending that the urban African leadership of the WPA was not really interested in a multi-racial shape of power but saw Rodney as the vehicle to replace a mentally unstable, authoritarian, narcissistic Black leader – Forbes Burnham – with a Black leader who had global respect.
How do the three Indians fit in? Roopnaraine was an Indo-Saxon who thought the average Indian was socially inadequate for modern Caribbean society. He accepted he was part of western, middle class Creole society in Guyana. Roopnaraine never considered himself a Guyanese Indian but a British citizen. Bhagwan joined the WPA because his implacability to Cheddi Jagan dominated his personality. He saw the WPA as replacing Jagan. Ramsammy was by far the better human. As an idealist, he wanted multi-racial governance.
Space limitation will prevent further elaboration but just as the British invasion allowed ethnic instincts to come to the surface, the long years of post 1992 PPP rule made the invocation of ethnic yearning in the WPA to become a reality. Today in Guyana, some of the purist anti-Indian racists are certainly not in the PNC and the PNC has never had such insane anti-Indian leaders as we see in today’s WPA.
Burnham was certainly not a racist for me. I would say Ronald Waddell had deeper racist thoughts than Hamilton Green. His common-law wife, Bonita Bone-Harris was one of the top leaders of the WPA. Look at the nature and shape of the politics of the WPA in the 21st century. The Afro-centricity is graphic.
David Hinds, Tacuma Ogunseye, Dr. Nigel Westmaas, Karen DeSouza, Desmond Trotman, Clive Thomas, Dr. Maurice Odle, Tabitha Sarabo-Halley, Dr. Alissa Trotz, Kidackie Amsterdam, Deon Abram, Keith Branche, among others, have nothing multi-racial about their praxis that you can detect. The signs are overwhelming that these people see themselves as African Guyanese and are comfortable with taking sides in society in which ethnic competition is the only game in town. I was shocked by the ethnic make-up at the funeral service at the Conference Centre for Andaiye. The attendees were 99 percent African. None of the more than a dozen guest speakers were Indian. No one from the PPP was invited to speak. Finally, about Walter. What would he have become? I think he would never have succumbed so insanely to diabolical race-baiting. There was too much class consciousness in him.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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