I know for a fact chap that you subscribe to this Hindutva Vision of Guyana and Guyanese Indians.

Don't run away from it now. You are a fraud and a liar. Always have been.

your response is a red herring . . . doesn't address my question

OK, let's be fair.

If you are marketing Guyana as an investment destination, you would probably say what Dev said.  It has nothing to do with Hindu triumphalism.

Interesting that Dev has investments with Bobbie.  I was wondering why he went silent for so long.

seriously . . .?

a presentation made on behalf of Ashni Singh, Minister of Finance

like i said, i saw u coming a mile away

Caribny, fact-check - most of the 80,000 Indians in Uganda in 1972 were not Ugandan-born and they were employed by the British.

Redux, "solution" and 3rd reich (as you so delicately put it) together are not a stretch.

Thanks to Shaitaan for pointing out that I certainly do not endorse the trite that Ravi Dev pitched. I was merely putting in context the marketing optic. I also wondered who in the current PPP would endorse something like that that smacked of purist racial tack. I also looked at the math and the "hindu" emphasis, knowing full well that Muslims make up about a quarter of Guyana's Indians (and some Blacks I should add).

Why are you insisting on crucifying this poor chap hey?

The reason why some of us here would contextualize to the point of excuse Dev's speech is because none of us actually believe there is some vast Hindu conspiracy afoot to Hindutva Guyana.

It's almost kinda funny to watch some of ya'll go nuts over 1 dude who chose to appeal to Hindus at a Hindu conference with Hindi investors.

I wouldn't have done it but I'm not gonna rip my shirt up over it. It has zero implications for Guyana. All it may mean is that Ravi Dev has some peculiar ideas shared by almost no one, not even his former friends.

Do you think Caribj et al can understand the reason we don't take any of this seriously is because we don't share this Hindutva vision of Guyana nor do we know anyone who does? Nor do we believe Guyanese Indians are in any danger of going Hindutva anytime soon? Or that we know Ravi Dev likes to give a good speech to get some applause? Especially to "talk up" Hindu brotherhood since no such thing really exists?

Anyone who knows anything about investments would know that Dev's presentation was lacking. His speech only tells of what others are doing.

Indians from India are not gullible-mostly they would bleed Guyanese dry. And that is what the invitation is all about. Come and use Guyanese-make money from their labour. 

To me, the Government paid Ravi's expenses for a vacation. He now is in the company of Jagdeo as a free rider on the backs of the poor.

There was no merit in his words. The PPP has no concept of investments. For them, make no effort let foreigners do it for the country.

I think the PPP has largely failed to attract meaningful foreign investment apart from the few scams that are fleecing the country.

PPP used to be known as the 10% govt.  They want 10% before they will talk with you.  I have a friend who bought some investors who were interested in getting into trash collection but the govt people were not very helpful or cooperative.

Our foreign service embassies don't seem to be in the business of securing investments.

You can't blame Dev for trying.  We don't have to criticize everything the PPP does.

I think he should have addressed the forum and seek investments. But what is the point of saying Guyana is your land in the context of Modi. That land belongs to everyone born there. Why the paranoia and insecurity?

Do you think a black man can go to SA and say there are options for Africans to come because we are sixty percent and we will provide you the lead in to wealth? Ravi should be saying that Guyana has potentials. There are Hindus and Christians and Muslims living in harmony and the nation strives arduously for multiculturalism. Selling it as a Hindu paradise and using examples in crony capitalism is not the way. 

I'm not sure why you're looking at me to explain or defend Dev and his speech. I have no greater insight than you do. I haven't spoken to him in ages (like 10 years) since we no longer saw eye to eye on tings.

I was just telling redux not to crucify Jay.

Why are we worrying about this right now.  Let's work to get the Coalition elected.

Send donations in.  Mobilize friends and family.  We must first get rid of the PPP Kleptos before they thief out the whole country. Then we will do a reset of national development.

Guyana is not predominantly Hindu. That should not be the selling point. Its selling point should be the availability for innovative industries, its location to the world prime markets and the fact it is deemed and open society. To be selling religious and ethnic identity as a benefaction in our multicultural world is selling an expectation that is counter what plagues them in their world, castism etc. We should be selling all of Guyana not an ethnic identity. Knowing who is selling this as "goods" is also telling. Ravi, never cared for multiculturalism. He touts a segregationist society living under some delusional social group formation called unity in diversity. What is meant by the term among social scientists is not what he means.

I think we may all be missing the point here.

I suspect the Indian elite here is morphing into a distinct center of power with it's own agenda. I don't think Freedom House drives the agenda anymore. Years ago this kinda speech would be unthinkable by the representative of a PPP Minister. Freedom House would go nuts. Now I suspect Freedom House takes orders from another center of Indian power.

I'm not shocked that this Koch Brothers type development has occurred. I just didn't know our nouveau elite had transformed into such an independent entity as yet where they set their own agenda and set about making it into a reality. I think I've underestimated this new elite.

The elite obviously doesn't trust the PPP to protect their ill gotten gains and new positions atop Guyana so they're doing their own thing. The PPP is now a subsidiary of the elite.

alyuh need to stop playing the Guyanese people for fools

against all common sense, people like u would have us believe that Ravi Dev, employee/partner? of Dr5 ex-presidente, standing in for Minister Singh, just let fly some off-the-cuff stupidness

i wonder where y'all think the PPP, not a party known for its thinkers and intellectual heft, gets its policy prescriptions and its vision from?

lemme give u a hint: crooked business people and race hustling ideologues like Ravi Dev

in fact, everything we know of this Jagdeoite PPP regime's activities comports with the fundamentals of abee Hindutva godfather's presentation to his kinsmen

keep sticking y'all head in the sand with this silly pretense . . . i started a thread on this not-so-curious phenomenon a few days ago.

https://guyana.crowdstack.io/topic/i-...and-election-rigging

See my post above yours. I'm willing to agree in part.

If the numbers are available, I want to believe that Hindus are the most marginalized group in Guyana, except Amerindians. The PPP has only one Hindu in its government. It is a govt of mainly Christians and former communist/atheists.

The way you hear some of these Kean Gibson disciples talk you would think Guyana is under some Hindu Reich where we have Hindu domination.

A poor downtrodden segment of the Indian population is always some people's go to scapegoat.

Well...I have always said the book is not a serious piece of academic work. Anecdotes don't make academic contributions.

TK, this is really not informative

who are the people who now own Guyana?

the fullahs, the afros, the remnant portuguese . . . who?

You mean people with "Hindu" names?

I know I can infer information because there are not that many Hindus outside Bobby who the PPP made rich. Rural Hindus have remained poor. There are many non-Hindu business people who became rich owing to Jagdeo. Roger Khan was also Christian. Their numbers have declined due to migration, insecure pandit leadership, opportunistic dharmic Sabha leadership, mental and intellectual abuse from PPP, American Christian proselytizing. That don't seem like a hegemonic group.

is the hegemonic group Indian, African or other?

The hegemonic group right now - the oligarchs - nurtured by PPP are mainly a few rich Indians (most non-Hindus) and several notable non-Indians. 

i take your point TK

which leads to this question, are the majority of ordinary Hindus aware of this and, if they are, is the regime correct in assuming that they don't care as long as the face of the hegemon is Indian?

These simple rural people are used and psychologically abused Redux. They can't know it.

isn't that our failure, on some level?

I have tried my best given my limitations.

There were some palpable economic nonsense in Ravi's presentation about bauxite and gold. Guyana's gold earnings topped out at around half-billion US dollars in the best year of the 5 year (or so) stretch after it overtook sugar as the premier foreign exchange earner. Of all the bauxite types Guyana had a monopoly in calcined bauxite used in the kilns of iron and steel factories and came up against alternatives. And he certainly abused the notion of abundance of this resource when you have the world's highest cost per ton given the overburden.

So no Caribny, I am not excusing Ravi Dev's pitch at all.

No apologies.  You are blaming the PNC (black people) for Ravi Dev's unwarranted bigotry, when Ravi Dev is merely a continuing saga of Indian bigotry that was around long before the PNC had any interest in beating Indians.

It was the intension of certain Indian groups to turn Guyana into an Indian colony in the early 20th C by encouraging more indentureship so that the Indian population would outnumber the Creole.  The BGEIA were also fully interested in Indian domination in the 1950s.  So don't dishonor yourself by blaming the PNC for these attitudes. 

In fact these were the attitudes which bound the mulatto and the African middle class together, despite their distaste for each other.

And of course Ravi Dev represents exactly the reason why Nagamootoo stated plainly in 2008, before he had any plans to leave the PPP, that he is a Guyanese by nationality.  You can now see where this playing that there is some pan National Indian identity leads to.  I suggest that YOU apologize to Nagamootoo for allowing yourself to be used as a tool by racists like Ravi Dev.

Yes Ravi Dev brings in hordes of Indians with an intent to displace black people, and you don't think that this will lead to a problem.  They already face discrimination from Guyanese Indians, and then Ravi Dev advocates introducing a whole new level of anti black racism in Guyana.  Yes a group of bigots led to believe that Guyana is just waiting to be colonized by foreign Hindus, with blacks just waiting to become a new group of Dalits.

You, rather than condemning that UNCONDITIONALLY, play your usual rant that ONLY the PNC is responsible for racism in Guyana.  Yes, you don't feel "comfortable", but its the PNCs fault.  Of course in your pea brain head the PPP did nothing to foster ethnic distrust in Guyana, so can be held blameless.

And this is another one who screams that blacks control Guyana, so the African elite must be obviously benefitting from the PPP.  Yes all those mansions owned by rich black people, who have the PPP trembling under their control.

Ravi Dev screams his Hindutva bigotry.  Makes NO mention of the fact that 65% of the Guyana is CHRISTIAN, and that 60% of the population doesn't have any identification of India.  No he tells them that most Guyanese are Indians and that Indo Guyanese are "their" people.  So if Indo Guyanese are "their" people, who are the 60% of  Guyanese who aren't Indians. DALITS to be treated like filth just like how the real Dalits are treated in India.

NOOOOO!!!!!

Jay you have been EXPOSED!!!

Kari FACT check these Indians were brought into Uganda in the 19th C to build a railway.  By 1972 almost all were BORN in Uganda.  Were they born in India they would have had INDIAN passports!

Stop your hypocrisy.  You have been playing around with this nonsense that Indians are a separate nation for several weeks now.  Ravi Dev just gives voice to this view.  You are "uncomfortable" but blame the PNC for this bigotry.

Ravi Dev is a modern day incarnation of a certain conservative Hindu type who have longed to assign Afro Guyanese the role of the Dalit!

You should UNCONDITIONALLY condemn that attitude, instead of finding reasons to excuse it.

Yes trying to unite Hindus in India with "their" people un Guyana.  By the way "their" people do not include the 60% who don't identify themselves as being of Indian ancestry.

MY God please button up your pants.  Your underwear is showing.

With people like you who dont seem to have a problem with Ravi Dev wanting Guyana to be turned into Indesh. I don't think so!  You will learn a lot when the PNC folks start being honest with you.

Right now they are laughing amongst themselves at your assertion that blacks control Guyana.

Here you have a man screaming that Hindus from India should go to Guyana because THEIR people are already there.  He stated that the Chinese are going to Guyana bringing THEIR people to work in Guyana.  He suggested that Indians should go to Guyana and told them that THEIR people are already there.

Do you think that "their" people include, Africans, Amerindians, mixed or other non Indian Guyanese, or Christian and Muslim Indo Guyanese. NO THEIR people refers to the 25% who are Hindu.  Of course he lies and claims that it is 40%.

Look,

The reason why almost no Indian on GNI feels the need to condemn Ravi Dev here is not because we all share some secret agreement among ourselves to tacitly support Hindutva....especially Kari the Fullahman and Me the Half Fullahman Half Hindu Catholic Atheist.

We just don't take Ravi Dev's speech seriously. It's not important to us because it represents nothing, signifies nothing, and promises no change in the future. Here was a private individual who articulated a rather eccentric view of history and reality with a dash of a couple lies.

As for the PNC being to blame for this. Perhaps I was not specific enough. What I was referring to is that the Indian elite seems to now be "active" as a third force in Guyana above the parties. Ravi Dev did not appear out of thin air. He was the fruit of a poisoned tree planted by the PNC post 1997. Just as you are the fruit of a poisoned tree planted by the PPP.

After Forbes and Cheddie returned from India, it was rumored that Forbes inquired from a pandit a set of words Nehru had said to Cheddi which Forbes overheard. It turned out, the rhetoric of the day, "If you own the land you own the country." 

Pretty well, Ravi is saying the same thing.