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FM
Former Member

A SALUTE TO INDIAN GUYANESE

May 15, 2019 News, Kaieteur, https://www.kaieteurnewsonline...-to-indian-guyanese/

By Donald Ramotar, Former President

May 5, 2019 marked the 181st year since Indian indentured labourers set foot on the soil of the then British Guiana. It was a Saturday, but I am sure that when they saw the conditions that they had to dwell and work in, their hearts must have been heavy.

Slavery was just about to be officially ended and Indian indentured labourers were brought in to fill the vacancy that was being created by the freed African slaves.

It should be recalled that slavery ended due to the coming together of many factors. Firstly, the resistance, reflected in the revolts by the enslaved against the system; secondly, the work of the Humanitarians in the UK, the Anti-Slavery society, which produced people like Buxton and John Edwards Jenkins, among others.

The combination of those struggles made slavery as a system too expensive to continue. Therefore, it had to be replaced with a system that would be cheaper. The colonial power struck on the scheme of indentured labour.

True, the indentured were not completely owned by the plantations forever. They were contracted for five-year periods. However, they had to live in the logies, and they had to find their own food and clothing.
In reality they were owned by the plantation for a specific time.

A new form of slavery

The colonial power did not only exploit their labour in the cane fields, but set-up shops to sell them food, clothing and whatever else they could afford. The plantation owners were freed from supplying these necessities, which they had to during slavery. From their meagre earning stores like Bookers Stores flourished.

Indian labourers, like the enslaved before them, were beaten in the backdams. Jenkins, in his book ‘The Coolie’ and other writers in that period, described the dehumanisation that those people had to endure.

Tied to post, stripped naked, male and female, were flogged with the whip often.

The ‘Coolie’ according to narrative of the period, was either at work, in hospital or in jail. While in jail he was often forced to work for free on the plantations.

Like the slaves before them, the Indian labourers did not only cut and load the canes, but had to dig the canals. Walter Rodney, in one of his epic works “A history of the Guyanese Working People 1881 – 1905” noted that, “When Indian indentured labourers were added to the Guyanese population… they had to face up to the steady work diet of mud and water in the maintenance of dams and the cleaning of trenches.

“For a long while, Africans remained the specialist shovel men, but a report on the digging of the new canal aback of the Plantation Annandale in 1895 drew attention to the…fact that the task was accomplished by Indian immigrants…”. In the process they had to move hundreds of thousands tons of water logged clay with shovels.

At times of low prices of sugar on the international market, the planters solved the problem at the expense of the bound Indian indentured labour. Wages to them were cut.

In the same book, cited above, Walter Rodney brought attention to a notice signed by the attorney of Non-Pareil plantation, Harry Garnett, informing the workers that their wages were being cut.

Here is how it read in part “Owing to the exceedingly LOW price of SUGAR…it is absolutely impossible for us to pay the OLD RATE OF WAGES and carry the estate on; I am aware that even the Old Rates were a reduced rate, but under the circumstances there is nothing for it but to still further reduce all round…” (September 1896).

Obviously those repressive conditions forced the Indian labour to resist and resist they did. In 1872 the Indian labourers at Plantation Devonshire Castle on the Essequibo Coast went on strike and protested against low wages.

The police opened fire on them; seven were severely wounded. Those described as “ring leaders” were punished. They were whipped and jailed.

In 1873 workers at Skeldon, Uitvlugt and other areas struck, protesting low wages and the importation of cheaper labour from Barbados. For this, three of the leaders were given five-year jail sentences, of course with hard labour, inevitably in the cane fields.

In 1879 riot broke out at Plantation Skeldon, again protesting low wages. Sixteen workers were badly injured and were hospitalized.

In 1894 strikes and protests occurred at Plantation La Bonne Mere, Success, Leguan, Farm and Skeldon. Once more, they were brutally suppressed. Identified leaders were fined, flogged and jailed.

In 1896, the cut in wages due, as noted above, to the fall in international price led to disturbances at Non-Pareil. Police shot and killed four workers and wounded eleven others.

In 1899 strikes were widespread at Melville (Wakenaam), Golden Fleece, Blairmont, Goedverwagting, De Kinderen, Mon Repos, Cane Grove, Success, Cornelia Ida and Nismes. The main cause was low wages. Those strikes also occurred widely in 1900. In 1903, the strikes assumed widespread proportions affecting all the estates once more.

In 1905 sugar workers from the East Bank walked towards Georgetown to give solidarity to striking waterfront workers, while raising their own plight of low wages and terrible conditions of work and living conditions.

They were stopped at Ruimveldt and police opened fire on them killing eight and wounding fifteen others. One hundred and five were convicted of rioting and punished in various ways.

In 1912 the Manager, R. E. Brassington shot and killed a worker at Plantation Friends. Later that same year during a protest, a shot fired from the Manager’s house at Lusignan injured Nankoo, a worker on the estate.

The next year, 1913, police shot and killed fifteen workers and seriously injured fourteen. This occurred at Rose Hall, Canje.

In 1924, sugar workers from the East Bank once more marched towards Georgetown to join striking workers in Georgetown and once more they were stopped and shot at Ruimveldt. This time thirteen sugar workers were killed several others injured.

From 1935 to 1939 the dissatisfaction with wages and working conditions led to the struggle for the recognition of a union. The MPCA, then led by Ayube Edun, a distinguished Trade Unionist, won recognition for that union to represent them.

In 1948 the strike which began as a protest against the changing of the system of work evolved into the demand for the recognition of the union of the workers choice, GIWU. By then the workers had lost confidence in the MPCA which was recognised after the strike of 1939 after four workers were shot to death and four others seriously injured at Leonora.

In 1964, many workers died in a general strike in the industry fighting for the recognition of the GAWU. Kowsilla, a female sugar worker, was run over by a tractor driven by a scab. She was cut in half. Many others were injured.

Mr. Harry Lall and Philomena Sahoy rose to prominence as President and General Secretary of the GAWU.

That recognition did not come in 1964. It took many other struggles to force the sugar lords and the government to hold a poll in 1975. The GAWU won with more than 95% of the votes cast. Recognition was finally wrested from the Sugar Producers Association and Government in 1976.

The struggle of Indian Guyanese since the first arrival in 1838 benefitted all the peoples of our country. While many of the protests began due to local issues, they quickly developed national characteristics and made a hefty contribution in advancing the cause of the nation as a whole.

The strike at Leonora in 1939 that saw the unionization of the workers was of great importance in the evolution of our trade union movement as a whole. It was the most important event in promoting Trade Unionism since the 1905 Water Front movement that gave birth to Trade Unions in Guyana.

The strike and struggles of 1948 developed into the call for political independence. The workers and the masses recognized that the brutality would continue and get worse while colonialism existed. Sugar workers were in the forefront in the fight to end colonialism and for freedom for all our people.

The battles from 1948 to 1976 for union recognition were not only for sugar workers benefit but for industrial democracy in Guyana.

The 177 days strike in 1977 was for the protection of a fundamental trade union principle; the right of collective bargaining. Here the cause of workers as a whole was being taken up by sugar workers. The PNC government had reneged on their argument to pay public servants $14 per day. The sugar workers fought courageously for 177 days to defend this principle.

The struggles from 1905 and 1924 were for the unity of the working class. It was Indian indentured labourers at the time with no central leadership, that took the initiative to push for working class unity, crossing all artificial barriers of race etc.

The fight for democracy began long before the advent of our present day political parties. Those positions were ably represented by people like Ayube Edun and others as they tirelessly worked to wrestle concessions from the hands of the colonial powers.

The British Guiana East Indian Association (BGEIA) was the first organisation to raise the call for universal adult suffrage. At that time the ordinary working people of all races in this country did not have the right to vote.

This was a demand to get working people involved in the establishment of the government. It was an important early call for workers and farmers to influence political developments.

That struggle was won by the PPP in 1953 under the leadership of Cheddi Jagan, a son of Indentured labourers.

The real reason for the disturbances in the 1960s which culminated the ethnic cleansing of Mackenzie, now Linden is often masked by some historian still infected with a colonial mentality as a racial problem. It was not.

The attack on Indians and the violence meted out against them at that time was a colonial project in which the PNC collaborated to create conditions to prevent Guyana from becoming independent.

An examination of that period would show that the police, headed by a colonialist, Peter Owen, was used to protect those who were creating the riots and not the victims of the violence. The record would show from 1962 to 1964 very few arrests were made during the riots in Georgetown and Mackenzie. However during the strikes on the estates hundreds of workers were jailed. Indeed so glaring was the partisan nature of the colonial police that they made it illegal for anyone to have and expose the PNC terrorists X13 plan that was discovered when a raid was made on the hotel room of a PNC terrorist.

In the post-independence period the PPP at first, later joined by other forces, fought for the restoration of democracy at the heart of which was ‘one person one vote’. That was necessary because it was lost due to rigged elections practised from 1968 until 1985.

Today, the signs are that this behaviour of rigged elections is being prepared by the APNU/AFC once more.

We can go on listing the contributions Indian indentured labourers and their descendants made to agriculture, industry, business commerce and culture as being very significant and laudable.

While we recognize these sterling contributions, we must not ignore the desperate plight which Indian Guyanese have had to confront from the time of their arrival 181 years ago.

From that time Indians have been the most discriminated against in Guyana. This was first done by the colonial powers who treated them as second class citizens. Later they became objects of abuse by the undemocratic PNC regime and now by this PNC-led regime.

The PNC was first supported and protected by the Colonial powers to prevent Independence. When the PNC took power in 1964 they adopted the positions of the old Colonials and ruled in a similar manner. While all our working people suffered greatly Indian Guyanese suffered doubly, as working people and because of their race.

Under successive PNC and PNC-led regimes racial and political discrimination against Indian Guyanese continued unabated. This was again evident in May 2015 when the APNU/AFC took power. The public service has been systematically cleansed of Guyanese of Indian origin.

The vast majority have been dismissed simply because they are Indian Guyanese. They are the victims of a vicious regime that promotes and practices racism as a political weapon.

The APNU+AFC regime has trampled on the Constitution and the fundamental human rights of all Guyanese but of Indian Guyanese in particular.

The shutting down of sugar estates in which some 70% of the employees were Indian Guyanese, with no real justifiable reason, is a reflection of the way all Indians are treated in our multi-ethnic society. The leadership of the Government has made a mockery of our national motto.

Since the arrival of Indians on our shores they have been deliberately barred from some sectors of the society. This is in the public service and in the security sector. This is not an accident but a deliberate, racist policy, continued from the time of colonialism.

They were denied places in the security forces in the colonial times because they worked in the most important section of the economy, sugar. The colonial masters did not want them there since they were brutally exploited in the fields and factories in the sugar industry.

Today they continue to be excluded because the colonialist before and the PNC now, succeeded in creating fear in the African-Guyanese population. The message is that Indians are a threat to their jobs and well-being.

It is the old tactic of divide and rule. A small elite, in colonial times a white elite, and now a mainly Black elite live the ‘good life’ at the expense of both Africa and Indian working people.

All Guyanese, including the Afro-Guyanese population, must fight against all forms of racial discrimination. This is necessary, not only because racism is morally wrong but also because in the final analysis the whole country will suffer the negative consequences of such a policy.

There is no way that any government can discriminate against one section of the population without hurting all people, including those they claim to represent. Fighting to end all discrimination is in the interest of all oppressed, unemployed, underemployed and poor people in Guyana.

Racism robs our nation of the skills of almost half of our country’s population. It condemns us to poverty and is a great waste of human resources.

Now is the time for all decent minded and democratically inclined people to take a stand to rid our country of this great scrooge, this impediment to progress.

On the occasion of the 181st anniversary of Indians’ arrival we should redouble the efforts of making the slogan, coined by the then Minister of Education Brindley Benn, of One People, One Nation, One Destiny a reality!

Replies sorted oldest to newest

Ray posted:
Nehru posted:

Bharat Mata Ki Jai.  WE WILL OVERCOME!!!

wha ayuh gon overcome...ress yuh rass

We shall overcome some day!!! Sing aloud Riff. The Monsters called the PNC will NOT deny us of our freedom, our RIGHTS and our humanity.

Nehru
Nehru posted:
Ray posted:
Nehru posted:

Bharat Mata Ki Jai.  WE WILL OVERCOME!!!

wha ayuh gon overcome...ress yuh rass

We shall overcome some day!!! Sing aloud Riff. The Monsters called the PNC will NOT deny us of our freedom, our RIGHTS and our humanity.

Overseas hero, why don't u book a flight to Guyana and sing dis tune. Dem Guyanese people looking for lil inspiration. Ow bai, guh nah. 

Sheik101
Nehru posted:
Ray posted:
Nehru posted:

Bharat Mata Ki Jai.  WE WILL OVERCOME!!!

wha ayuh gon overcome...ress yuh rass

We shall overcome some day!!! Sing aloud Riff. The Monsters called the PNC will NOT deny us of our freedom, our RIGHTS and our humanity.

Yall Indos like to turn the other cheek. ..always like Martin Luther King and Mahatama Ghandi...

why yall cowards cant be like Walta Rodney and Malcom X and sing a new song...like BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY....maybe then yall gon get some RESPECT, no?

V
Demerara_Guy posted:

A SALUTE TO INDIAN GUYANESE

May 15, 2019 News, Kaieteur, https://www.kaieteurnewsonline...-to-indian-guyanese/

By Donald Ramotar, Former President

 

Donald Ramotar is no historian like Rodney and Jagan.

I once did a term paper on this topic, out of curiosity, a year ago. I think Donald made some fundamental mistakes....maybe the historians here can correct me...

1) It was not the BGEIA that first advocated for universal adult suffrage. There were other organizations and political leaders like Critchlow and other African leaders who formed the first labor union (I believe) and who advocated for adult suffrage. The BGEIA, and later the PPP took on this challenge.

2) Ramotar paints a history of the race problem as if the Europeans are to be blamed for perpetuating this problem in Guyana. Thats what idiotic Marxists do...he ignores the 28 years and the 23 years when both the PNC and PPP perpetuated the problem and neither party mde serious attempts to solve the problem.

3) He provides a bias view of history which paints the PPP and its leaders as the saviors of Guyana...and the PNC totally to be blamed for the current problems between Indos and Afros...

jes my 2 cents....

V
Demerara_Guy posted:

A SALUTE TO INDIAN GUYANESE

May 15, 2019 News, Kaieteur, https://www.kaieteurnewsonline...-to-indian-guyanese/

By Donald Ramotar, Former President

the cleaning of trenches.

“For a long while, Africans remained the specialist shovel men, but a report on the digging of the new canal aback of the Plantation Annandale in 1895 drew attention to the…fact that the task was accomplished by Indian immigrants…”. In the process they had to move hundreds of thousands tons of water logged

The attack on Indians and the violence meted out against them at that time was a colonial project in which the PNC collaborated to create conditions to prevent Guyana from becoming independent.

An.

The shutting down of sugar estates in which some 70% of the employees were Indian Guyanese, with no real justifiable reason, is a reflection of the way all Indians are treated in our multi-ethnic society. The leadership of the Government has made a mockery of our national motto.

Since the arrival of Indians on our shores they have been deliberately barred from some sectors of the society. This is in the public service and in the security sector. This is not an accident but a deliberate, racist policy, continued from the time of colonialism.

They were denied places in the security forces in the colonial times because they worked in the most important section of the economy, sugar. The colonial masters did not want them there since they were brutally exploited in the fields and factories in the sugar industry.

Today they continue to be excluded because the colonialist before and the PNC now, succeeded in creating fear in the African-Guyanese population. The message is that Indians are a threat to their jobs and well-being.

It is the old tactic of divide and rule. A small elite, in colonial times a white elite, and now a mainly Black elite live the ‘good life’ at the expense of both Africa and Indian working people.

All Guyanese, including the Afro-Guyanese population, must fight against all forms of racial discrimination. This is necessary, not only because racism is morally wrong but also because in the final analysis the whole country will suffer the negative consequences of such a policy.

 

1.  I do not recall Ramotar or the PPP writing any commentary on Afro Guyanese other than a condescending attitude to these "poor victims of slavery" or alternatively damning them as violent savages committed only to raping, robbing and killing Indians.  Left to the PPP we would bge ignorant of the strong contributions to the development of Guyana that was made by Guyanese of African descent.

So why does the PPP describe itself as "multi-ethnic" and then give such a one sided analysis of Guyanese history?

And then none other than Rohee screamed that his daughter wasn't racist when she described blacks as "low class people".  He did not see where the racism in that comment was.

2.  The PPP showed no consideration at all for selling its bauxite companies knowing full well that the result would be massively unemployment of the majority African labor force.  To this day they admit no guilt and scream that former bauxite workers have nothing to scream about.

3.  Ramotar completely shyts on the recollections of the 1960s which Afro Guyanese will have, including peddling the lies about X13 when in fact it was the PYO which killed people on the Son Chapman. Showing no interest in admitting that there are many other perspectives of this era than those that he adheres to.

Having insulted Afro Guyanese who then screams that Afro Guyanese ought to condemn discrimination.  100% of the discrimination that he describes is that suffered by 100%.  100% of the post colonial discriminations that he describes he blames Afro Guyanese for.

Yes he will cloak his blatant bigotry and HATRED of Afro Guyanese by ranting about "working class solidarity" but where was the compassion for the bauxite workers after 2000 when Jagdeo dumped them into starvation?

FM
yuji22 posted:

One people one nation one destiny. 

 

Of course in your world only Indians are people.

Look at you and Skeldon screaming honor killing of any family member of yours that brings disgrace if they marry a black person.  Look at the endless screams of "blacks are a scourge", "black man lazy", etc. coming from your poisonous finger tips.  And the issue is you don't even see this behavior as racist, whereas you scream that my commentary about this is.

You view blacks just as did those whites in Jim Crow USA and apartheid South Africa.

FM
VishMahabir posted:
Demerara_Guy posted:

A SALUTE TO INDIAN GUYANESE

May 15, 2019 News, Kaieteur, https://www.kaieteurnewsonline...-to-indian-guyanese/

By Donald Ramotar, Former President

 

Donald Ramotar is no historian like Rodney and Jagan.

I once did a term paper on this topic, out of curiosity, a year ago. I think Donald made some fundamental mistakes....maybe the historians here can correct me...

1) It was not the BGEIA that first advocated for universal adult suffrage. There were other organizations and political leaders like Critchlow and other African leaders who formed the first labor union (I believe) and who advocated for adult suffrage. The BGEIA, and later the PPP took on this challenge.

2) Ramotar paints a history of the race problem as if the Europeans are to be blamed for perpetuating this problem in Guyana. Thats what idiotic Marxists do...he ignores the 28 years and the 23 years when both the PNC and PPP perpetuated the problem and neither party mde serious attempts to solve the problem.

3) He provides a bias view of history which paints the PPP and its leaders as the saviors of Guyana...and the PNC totally to be blamed for the current problems between Indos and Afros...

jes my 2 cents....

This fecal nonsense written by Ramotar just shows why I call the PPP the Indo Nazi.  It confirms that when 4 years ago they called themselves the "coolie people party" (Rohee confirmed this based on comments made by Jagdeo) this is their thinking.

1. The BGEIA was an elitist Indian organization that wanted dominance of Guyana by encouraging more Indian indentures to arrive.  They painted lies attempting to hide the harsh conditions that indentures lived under as India wanted to ban this based on reports of adverse working and living conditions.  The BGEIA didn't care a gif about Indian indentures aside from wanting to use them as they attempted to dominate Guyana.

2. While Critchlow started by helping workers in the Afro dominated menial jobs in GT and elsewhere he soon began to help the estate workers to establish their own trade unions.  No credit given to him for that.  So bad that the PPP even wanted the Critchlow educational institution to fail by not funding it.

3. Anyone reading his piece of fecal racism would think that the elites in GT entertaining themselves to the exclusion of others were all Africans instead of the tiny mainly Indian elites.  One would think that Africans didn't suffer all manner of abuse from all the post independence political parties, and therefore as bad (if not worse off) than the Indian population.

But the PPP is a Indian Rights group so I expect no better from them.  They will sell blacks snake oil, and spread panic about blacks to Amerindians as they know that they cannot win anymore just based on the Indian vote.

But the PPP is now as racist as they once accused ROAR of being.  It turns out that ROAR won that battle in the end.  The PPP doesn't even pretend to be multi ethnic in its interests since 2015.

Ramotar screams about Africans being made to feel "unjustifiably" (so he says) of the PPP.  Why wouldn't they when they read his lies and the fact that he shyts of the black population.  No attempt at balance.  No attempt to reflect that maybe Guyana has perspectives diverse as its ethnic groups and geographic regions and social classes.

But its good that he wrote this piece of Hindutva drivel, just in case anyone thought that the PPP was trying to change its hostility to blacks.

FM
VishMahabir posted:

Yall Indos like to turn the other cheek. ..always like Martin Luther King and Mahatama Ghandi...

why yall cowards cant be like Walta Rodney and Malcom X and sing a new song...like BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY....maybe then yall gon get some RESPECT, no?

You have no idea what you're talking about. Indos are not oppressed because they're timid but because they don't know how to unite for the greater good. I know some coolie bad-men that would make you shiver.

A
Nehru posted:

Animals will be Animals. Those who are still suffering of Slavery will forever feel inferior!!!

And Indians who suffered from being treated as slaves, did not feel inferior ?

Bai, go talk to you Nana how 'nice' the British were to Indian Indenture Labourers.   

Tola
Baseman posted:

Cribby my brother, your analysis of the piece is longer than the piece itself.  Peace!

Carib subscribes to the belief if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshyte.

A
Baseman posted:

Cribby my brother, your analysis of the piece is longer than the piece itself.  Peace!

A piece of Peace is indeed a Peaceful Peace.

Powerful stuff, me gotta include it in my ongoing memoirs. 

Tola
Tola posted:
Baseman posted:

Cribby my brother, your analysis of the piece is longer than the piece itself.  Peace!

A piece of Peace is indeed a Peaceful Peace.

Powerful stuff, me gotta include it in my ongoing memoirs. 

If Caribny is a historian then he is piss pot of a historian. He better off taking lessons from Kean.

Prashad
Prashad posted:
Tola posted:
Baseman posted:

Cribby my brother, your analysis of the piece is longer than the piece itself.  Peace!

A piece of Peace is indeed a Peaceful Peace.

Powerful stuff, me gotta include it in my ongoing memoirs. 

If Caribny is a historian then he is piss pot of a historian. He better off taking lessons from Kean.

Trying is better than waiting [or complaining] fa a fish to jump in you girgerra. 

Tola
VishMahabir posted:
Nehru posted:
Ray posted:
Nehru posted:

Bharat Mata Ki Jai.  WE WILL OVERCOME!!!

wha ayuh gon overcome...ress yuh rass

We shall overcome some day!!! Sing aloud Riff. The Monsters called the PNC will NOT deny us of our freedom, our RIGHTS and our humanity.

Yall Indos like to turn the other cheek. ..always like Martin Luther King and Mahatama Ghandi...

why yall cowards cant be like Walta Rodney and Malcom X and sing a new song...like BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY....maybe then yall gon get some RESPECT, no?

Respect for the dead, in the case of malcolm and Walter gone too soon. I suppose too impatient for for power.

S
caribny posted:
But its good that he wrote this piece of Hindutva drivel, just in case anyone thought that the PPP was trying to change its hostility to blacks.

Cribby, calm yuhself down bai before yuh buss a blood vessel. The article was a salute to indoGs. What else you expect the man to write about?  Indos were indenture from 1838 to 1917, a total of 79 years and Blacks were free people all that time and yet they didn't improve their chafe in life.  How is that the Indos fault? I think you barking up the wrong tree, you should be having this fight with the white man who enslaved your people 

FM
Tola posted:
Baseman posted:

Cribby my brother, your analysis of the piece is longer than the piece itself.  Peace!

A piece of Peace is indeed a Peaceful Peace.

Powerful stuff, me gotta include it in my ongoing memoirs. 

I honestly believe that Cribby is a good man wrapped in a sour attitude!

FM
Drugb posted:
caribny posted:
But its good that he wrote this piece of Hindutva drivel, just in case anyone thought that the PPP was trying to change its hostility to blacks.

Cribby, calm yuhself down bai before yuh buss a blood vessel. The article was a salute to indoGs. What else you expect the man to write about?  Indos were indenture from 1838 to 1917, a total of 79 years and Blacks were free people all that time and yet they didn't improve their chafe in life.  How is that the Indos fault? I think you barking up the wrong tree, you should be having this fight with the white man who enslaved your people 

Brilliant.

Bibi Haniffa

Cribby can't contribute anything positive to Guyana or even his own race. All he is adept at doing to generating anti-Indian sentiments to feed those insecure and gullible Afros who wants to place the blame on someone else. 

Billy Ram Balgobin
caribny posted:
VishMahabir posted:
Demerara_Guy posted:

A SALUTE TO INDIAN GUYANESE

May 15, 2019 News, Kaieteur, https://www.kaieteurnewsonline...-to-indian-guyanese/

By Donald Ramotar, Former President

 

Donald Ramotar is no historian like Rodney and Jagan.

I once did a term paper on this topic, out of curiosity, a year ago. I think Donald made some fundamental mistakes....maybe the historians here can correct me...

1) It was not the BGEIA that first advocated for universal adult suffrage. There were other organizations and political leaders like Critchlow and other African leaders who formed the first labor union (I believe) and who advocated for adult suffrage. The BGEIA, and later the PPP took on this challenge.

2) Ramotar paints a history of the race problem as if the Europeans are to be blamed for perpetuating this problem in Guyana. Thats what idiotic Marxists do...he ignores the 28 years and the 23 years when both the PNC and PPP perpetuated the problem and neither party mde serious attempts to solve the problem.

3) He provides a bias view of history which paints the PPP and its leaders as the saviors of Guyana...and the PNC totally to be blamed for the current problems between Indos and Afros...

jes my 2 cents....

This fecal nonsense written by Ramotar just shows why I call the PPP the Indo Nazi.  It confirms that when 4 years ago they called themselves the "coolie people party" (Rohee confirmed this based on comments made by Jagdeo) this is their thinking.

1. The BGEIA was an elitist Indian organization that wanted dominance of Guyana by encouraging more Indian indentures to arrive.  They painted lies attempting to hide the harsh conditions that indentures lived under as India wanted to ban this based on reports of adverse working and living conditions.  The BGEIA didn't care a gif about Indian indentures aside from wanting to use them as they attempted to dominate Guyana.

2. While Critchlow started by helping workers in the Afro dominated menial jobs in GT and elsewhere he soon began to help the estate workers to establish their own trade unions.  No credit given to him for that.  So bad that the PPP even wanted the Critchlow educational institution to fail by not funding it.

3. Anyone reading his piece of fecal racism would think that the elites in GT entertaining themselves to the exclusion of others were all Africans instead of the tiny mainly Indian elites.  One would think that Africans didn't suffer all manner of abuse from all the post independence political parties, and therefore as bad (if not worse off) than the Indian population.

But the PPP is a Indian Rights group so I expect no better from them.  They will sell blacks snake oil, and spread panic about blacks to Amerindians as they know that they cannot win anymore just based on the Indian vote.

But the PPP is now as racist as they once accused ROAR of being.  It turns out that ROAR won that battle in the end.  The PPP doesn't even pretend to be multi ethnic in its interests since 2015.

Ramotar screams about Africans being made to feel "unjustifiably" (so he says) of the PPP.  Why wouldn't they when they read his lies and the fact that he shyts of the black population.  No attempt at balance.  No attempt to reflect that maybe Guyana has perspectives diverse as its ethnic groups and geographic regions and social classes.

But its good that he wrote this piece of Hindutva drivel, just in case anyone thought that the PPP was trying to change its hostility to blacks.

I am reading two books right now...

Rodney's History of the Guyanese Working People and Seecharan's Mother India...so my responses below are based on those two sources and what little I know about Guyana's history...

I make the following points...

1. The BGEIA was elitist, yes. But there was no other way that an Indo organization that represented Indians could have been formed without the elitists. Many of these so called elites were from rural areas who traveled to GT (and abroad) in search of opportunities. Many who were educated or returned from abroad settled in GT. The program of the BGEIA was broad and they made attempts to unite, protect and serve the interests of all Indos, in the city and the rural areas. For example, the founders of the BGEIA were from Berbice. Its program to register Indians to vote and fight for universal adult suffrage (for those over 21, elimination of property and literacy requirements, etc) were genuinely designed to help all Indians, just like African, Portuguese, and Chinese organizations that existed at the time. 

To suggest that the BGEIA was racist is simplistic and ignores the broader goals of the organization. Its goals mirrored those of the League of Colored People (of which Burnham was a supporter).

2. Nathaniel Critchlow was indeed the father of trade unionism. However, according to Seecharan, whatever assistance Critchlow provided to sugar workers in the rural areas was limited in scope. He concentrated his efforts in Georgetown organizing the stevedores, ship workers, hospital workers, etc. He does not have a strong record assisting sugar workers or rural Indians.

In fact, some would also consider Critchlow a hypocrite. All his life he supported universal adult suffrage. However, he took a 360 degree turn and opposed it, giving a ridiculous reason as to why. Critchlow opposed universal adult suffrage when he realized that too many Indians were entering the political space and were becoming eligible to vote. He felt a greater number of Indos who could vote was a threat to Afros. 

3. I dont disagree that the PPP is a de facto Indian organization. But we cant act like the other major organization, the PNC, is a multiracial organization either. 

4. I would not place too much faith on what Ramotar is saying. He is a simpleton, a Marxist ideologue, and probably the worst President Guyana has has. His "analysis" is biased in favor of the PPP.  

 

V
antabanta posted:
VishMahabir posted:

Yall Indos like to turn the other cheek. ..always like Martin Luther King and Mahatama Ghandi...

why yall cowards cant be like Walta Rodney and Malcom X and sing a new song...like BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY....maybe then yall gon get some RESPECT, no?

You have no idea what you're talking about. Indos are not oppressed because they're timid but because they don't know how to unite for the greater good. I know some coolie bad-men that would make you shiver.

Anti-Banta, 

...dont you have some shredding to do?

I see you are also an expert on Indos...you should keep hanging out with them Indo bad-men...

 

V
Tola posted:
Nehru posted:

Animals will be Animals. Those who are still suffering of Slavery will forever feel inferior!!!

And Indians who suffered from being treated as slaves, did not feel inferior ?

Bai, go talk to you Nana how 'nice' the British were to Indian Indenture Labourers.   

For a guy who is always looking out for the scholars from India who read GNI, this is a brilliant statement coming from you...

This is like saying that the slave master was "NICE" to the field slave....

 

V
antabanta posted:
Baseman posted:

Cribby my brother, your analysis of the piece is longer than the piece itself.  Peace!

Carib subscribes to the belief if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshyte.

So...you saying that Carib is all about BS?

I thought you had some smarts in you....try reading dem papers and books before shredding them...

Knucklehead...you aint funny.

V
Tola posted:
Baseman posted:

Cribby my brother, your analysis of the piece is longer than the piece itself.  Peace!

A piece of Peace is indeed a Peaceful Peace.

Powerful stuff, me gotta include it in my ongoing memoirs. 

Just having(a)piece is also nice

cain
Last edited by cain
VishMahabir posted:
antabanta posted:
Baseman posted:

Cribby my brother, your analysis of the piece is longer than the piece itself.  Peace!

Carib subscribes to the belief if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshyte.

So...you saying that Carib is all about BS?

I thought you had some smarts in you....try reading dem papers and books before shredding them...

Knucklehead...you aint funny.

How come you suddenly convert to a die-hard Guyanian knucklehead!

FM

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