EVEN if we should accept the counter charge being made by a few African writers that they suffered equally under Burnham PNC’s food ban how does that nullify the  evidence that Indians were the intended target for  destruction and equalisation i.e. the existing Indian identity and culture was to be reduced to the perceived deprivation status of his black countrymen? That even after the inhuman suffering inherited by indentured servants from a colonial master which saved the sugar  industry they were still targeted for revenge when they were perceived as not having suffered sufficiently or even ‘equally’ like blacks. That this PNC deprivation objective sought to make Indians ‘equal’ if not to put them in their place. All this when blacks were entrenched in the civil service earning education while Indians were in the fields saving the sugar and rice industries. That this was all in harmony with Professor Rex Nettleford’s theory that blacks ought to be the natural inheritors of the departed British and no one else.

When one accepts that the PNC government situated its food outlets in PNC strongholds e.g. Melanie Damishina, Buxton, Victoria etc and required the Indian population to trek to subjugation for their sustenance, one cannot help but recognise the PNC’s true intentions. Why was absolutely no food outlets established in Indian villages? Is it coincidence or the PNC’s cunning strategy to subjugate its opponents?

With PNC black supporters being adequately catered to, how were they to become convincingly aware of the plight of their “other” countrymen? Many would cut into the food lines ahead of waiting Indians who dared not even protest for fear of retaliation. Shocking but true isn’t it? The allegedly Indian PPP chose not to make it a race issue because of their class convictions.

And even if it wanted to champion this issue it had no free press to speak its mind like everyone does today. Mirror, its newspaper, was deprived of its glass by which to reflect even itself. It had suffered a crushing humiliation. The police even seized my political literature. In fact the GDF harassed an Indian landlord at Zeeburg who asked us to leave even after he had agreed for us to sleep at nights. So the Vishnu Bisrams who dare to now speak their minds about yesterday get castigated for writing the truth. Just imagine how terrorising it was to live under the PNC government and speak out.  Maybe no guilty race but a lot of guilty people.

This notion by black apologists that all Guyanese suffered equally has no basis nor is it honest. The fact that a significant section of the Indo-Guyanese population were Hindus and vegetarians, resulted in the ban impacting on them deeply in their everyday lives. Strict adherence and confirmation to Hindu religious rituals that vegetarianism be a prerequisite for its conduct and observation (often one week in advance and subsequently) is still being followed even today. Even when meat became an indulgence it was done at Christmas, New Year and Muslim holidays and at weddings afterwards.

People were too damned poor to afford meat and make it a daily habit like dhall, rice, curry, roti and vegetables which were the usual staples. Blacks who were familiar and lived amongst Indians can verify these traditions. So much so that all, (including blacks) often walked off from the streets uninvited but were welcome at Hindus yagyas( crusades) and Indian weddings and had a  free vegetarian meal repeatedly for the many days of the function. In fact Hinduism’s at yagya specifically addresses the welcoming of an uninvited guest. Who can deny this fact? When will Dr Kean Gibson accept that she is wrong in her scurrilous, unjustified attack on Hinduism?

Yet my erstwhile colleagues, Abu Bakr, M. Maxwell, and Dr Kean Gibson etc would like us to believe that all suffered equally under the PNC government just because nowadays we are being reminded how Indians were brutalised for 28 years. Look how quickly some openly reject the evidence that daily staples used by Indians for the backbreaking sugar and rice industries were not targeted to drive them into subjugation. Note the brazen frontal attack on Hinduism by Dr Kean Gibson to destroy a people and examine how nowadays democracy and the free press allow many more to loudly complain that blacks are suffering nowadays under the PPP/C. Ironic?

No one it would seem has become so privileged in  complaints of suffering in today’s free press as is the daily criticisms from Fredrick Kissoon (sic) masquerading as a new born-again Rodney. Right? But he has earned that right? True?

So what can refute my validation to equally assert that Indians nowadays are also suffering equally alongside their fellow blacks under the PPP/C? Yes man. We are also suffering like you too my comrades. Things bad bad. Real bad I telling you.

So when  black people voted overwhelmingly in greater numbers for their own black PNC in successive elections and even gave them 23 seats to the PPP/C’s 28 in 1992, does this evidence show how ‘good’ their  punishment had been under “their” own black PNC government? No one can seriously believe that black people are suckers for suffering. A mischievous person can misuse this to assert that it is an addiction. I.e. the more blacks are made to suffer the more inclined they are to vote for their oppressors. I could never endorse such a reprehensible thought.

This notion that all suffered equally and the same is nonsense. I may however concede that one’s perception on the definition of ‘suffering’ is based on an  individual situation; that the means of measurement used  to assess ‘suffering’ using black philosophical criteria  can be different as it is different for Indians. This would significantly affect ‘equality’ amongst us.

So in applying the black philosophical criteria of “equality” to all suffering then I can justifiably claim that during Bajan, Portuguese, Chinese and Indian indentureship we all suffered the same as in slavery? Right?

Or all suffered or gained equally the same during the PPP/C 19 years in government comparing it with the PNC’s 28 years? Right?

In fact this black “equalization” of suffering would mean that a white woman in the USA who did not have the right to vote can validate herself as suffering equally with a black woman. Right? Or that a black Zulu tribesman or Indian/Chinese South African suffered equally and the same under apartheid. Right? Or that a poor white African suffers the same as black Africans even in Zimbabwe. Right? If Mr. Bakr and others like him concede all Guyanese did indeed suffer the same and equally based on the above examples then, it would be fair to concede that all suffered “equally” under Burnham’s PNC. This compromise suggests much introspection as a mind is a terrible thing to waste, we all know.

This would however put me in a predicament. Any compromising turn around in my previous conviction that Indians are even now suffering under the PPP/C become invalidated even as I may want to try a little ‘equality’ business.

How does one dismiss the progressive obvious evidence of apathy at the last three elections amongst PPP working-class supporters?  How would anyone demolish my   insistence that the defunct pro Indian ROAR found sustenance from Indian dissatisfaction with nothing to compare in the black experience during the PNC government?

Wouldn’t any such refutation that the WPA was a black rejection have to be reconciled with Dr Rodney’s proven mass multi-racial convictions and class appeal? This entire debate requires an acceptance that blacks deserve their share. It also requires that Indians and others also get their fair share. To accomplish this we need to stop attacking each other, accept the truth, shoulder our responsibilities, increase production and efficiency and move on.

Please hit me with your best shot. Especially, Dr Gibson. Waiting as I eat some dhall and roti with achar