Eric Phillips is known for providing yeoman service to the African community, but that does not license him to make egregious and outrageous statements

Aug 14, 2024 Letters

Dear Editor,

At the recent Emancipation Symposium, Eric Phillips, head of the Guyana Reparations Committee, and Executive Member of the African Cultural and Development Association (ACDA) stated that Africans are in a state of “total crisis” and “benign neglect” and that African political leaders should be “educated about our history and about an eye for an eye,” instead of “turning the other cheek.” Eric is known for providing yeoman service to the African community, but that does not license him to make egregious and outrageous statements.

Eric Phillips and the memory warriors are pushing the idea that it is the current state, and not just the previous colonial powers, which should provide reparations to Africans. Certainly, the Europeans are obligated to compensate descendants of formerly enslaved people for this historical wrong to humanity. However, equating the post independent Guyanese state with the colonial state, and demanding reparations from the current state, instead of equity, amounts to double dipping and political bullyism.

In the same speech, he makes the outrageous claim that “Indians and their acolytes own 97 per cent of economy.” He then drew reference to the British Guiana Colonization Scheme of 1919 as evidence for the origin of this grand design. The implication is clear. He told his unsuspecting audience in Buxton that Britain was prepared to have British Guiana become an Indian Colony. He had brought this issue up before, and on December 16, 2019 (Stabroek News), I responded to his fabrications:

“Eric extracted a singular event from the annals of Guyana’s history and deduced that a little-known British Guiana Colonization Scheme has influenced many [Indian] attitudes in today’s Guyana. There are two incontrovertible facts about the so-called ‘colonization’ scheme.  One, this scheme was part of a larger immigration plan initially supported by the planter class and some members of the British Guiana East Indian Association (BGEIA).  The plan to ‘colonize’ Guiana on behalf of India was not a plan proposed by Britain or India. Two, Britain never made any proposal “gifting” the colony of British Guiana to India (a colony Britain also controlled).  These are conjectures, easily refuted.”

“… the existing literature on the Indian girmitiyas (indentured laborers) to British Guiana, confirms that this “colonization” plan, part of an immigration proposal, did not materialize and did not receive serious consideration by Great Britain or British India.”

“W. Hewley Wharton (first Indian doctor) became the Secretary and JA Luckhoo (first Indian Guyanese legislator) was elected President of the BGEIA in 1919. Luckhoo and his colleagues initiated the scheme in an effort to forge closer ties with India.  These prominent Christian British-trained citizens could hardly be considered ‘extremists’. They were loyal British subjects. The immigration plan was seized upon by the planter class who viewed the scheme as an opportunity to address their plantation labour shortage, following the abolition of indentureship, at a time when the price of sugar was depressed. Attorney-General JJ Nunan, on December 5, 1919, in a meeting with the Secretary to the Government of India, explained that the plan was based upon the free immigration of Indian agricultural families to the Colony. India, in response, offered to send a number of deputations to investigate labour conditions in the Colony. Their findings were recorded in the Pillai-Tewary report of 1924, and the Kunwar Maharaj Singh report of 1925. Neither report considered the issue of ‘colonization’, but they addressed pressing issues like land settlement, repatriation, the political and economic status of Indians, the cultural needs of Hindus and Muslims and permanent Indian settlement.”

“The BGEIA wanted to secure ethnic balance and fair representation in government (goals they repeated at the 1938 centenary celebrations). The Negro Progress Convention (co-founded in 1921 by MEF Fredericks, a Buxtonian lawyer, and Theodore Nichols, a physician) called for the introduction of a similar migration ‘scheme’ to introduce Africans from West Africa and other parts of the West Indies into British Guiana. In December 1923, the Secretary of the NPC, EP Bruyning made it known that the proposed BGEIA immigration scheme was a ‘distinct act of discrimination’ against Africans who were entitled to ‘first consideration’.  Besides the NPC, Nathaniel Critchlow (also a founding member of the NPC), and his BGLU opposed the immigration scheme. Others in the BGEIA did too, but for different reasons. Francis Kawall (President of the BGEIA in 1923-24) argued that newly arrived Indian immigrants would make it difficult to bargain successfully for living wages. He suggested they concentrate on improving the living conditions of Indians already in Guiana. The immigration scheme was effectively dead by 1924-1925.”

The Colonization Scheme always included the recruitment of immigrants under new conditions, and as Dwarka Nath has shown, more West Indians than Indians, were admitted into Guyana at the end of Indian indenture.

Sincerely,

Baytoram Ramharack

• Baytoram Ramharack, Emancipation, Executive Member, Guyana Reparations Committee, symposium