I WAS at the day of appreciation for Rupert Roopnaraine. I read all the emotionally slanted and misplaced panegyrics of the Stabroek News (SN). I read the ignorant opinions of Janet Bulkan on the SN. I read the barefacedly biased sociological distortions of the Mulatto/Creole academics like Alissa Trotz, Nigel Westmaas, Percy Hintzen, and others.
I could go on but my point is each time I see this repugnant caricature of people, places and events by those mentioned above, I think of my very first UG History class with Sister Mary Noel Menezes.
She taught a course named the Philosophy of History. Sitting next to me was the current Registrar of UG, Dr. Nigel Gravesande, Dr. Kimani Nehusi who at the time was named Francis Drakes and the former Chancellor of the Judiciary, Justice Carl Singh. Sister’s perspectives on history have made a lasting impression on all of us who were her students.
I graduated with a history degree from UG and from that moment my life was changed forever. I will never stop contributing to the education of Guyanese on what their history is. I can only speak for myself so I will say that each time I see attempts to miseducate the next generation of Guyanese, I will write. I owe it to me and the country I come from.
I read the outpouring about how good SN was and I say I will not allow the journalistic degeneracy of SN to go unwritten. I sat next to the former founder of the UK branch of the WPA, Leyland Decambra at Roopnaraine’s funeral. After the event, we went to German’s to eat and he said to me that he knows Roopnaraine well and based on what he heard at that day of appreciation: “Frederick, you must write.”
And so here I am writing to stop people from fooling Guyanese. Part five on Roopnaraine is forthcoming. I know 40, 50 years from now, just as people will read the glowing accounts of Martin Carter and Roopnaraine and others from their adoring fans, they will read my columns.
Do you know the past week, Ravi Dev submitted two letters on Rupert Roopnaraine to the SN and they were not published? This man is one of the foremost intellectuals in Guyana. In that week, GHK Lall and others have had more than four letters published. The problem seems to be the subject – Roopnaraine. Yet there are people who do not see anything wrong with this vulgarisation of SN.
I have done five items on SN in a series that began since its announced closure, and I know at an absolute level that those five pieces will fall into the historian’s hand. I know Dev’s analysis of the shortcomings of Roopnaraine will fall into the historian’s hand. I know the several columns I have done on Martin Carter will fall into the historian’s hand. That is how inescapable history is.
The Martin Carter enigma shows how easy it is to distort history if there is no counter-narrative. The Mulatto/Creole class (MCC) continues to eulogise Martin Carter and rightfully so for the brilliance of his poetry. A huge chunk of history is deliberately left out when the politics of Carter is omitted. The MCC has Carter as their favourite Guyanese. Nigel Westmaas wrote that he was Guyana’s deepest thinker.
But now and until all of them die (including Roopnaraine), they will not discuss even in a single line how a self-proclaimed Stalinist and staunch anti-colonial activist like Carter could spend most of his adult life working for the British colonial office in Guyana then at a senior level, the Booker empire where he was spokesman for the plantocracy.
None of the MCC academics want to touch that subject. None of them that love Carter will ever want to offer Guyana’s historiography an explanation as to why this ultra-communist that was far more Marxist than Cheddi Jagan ended up serving imperialist interest in British Guiana.
The MCC academics like Nigel Westmaas, who is smitten by Carter, is so contemptuous of opinions outside his own MCC circles that he will not even attempt an explanation as to why his hero was an imperialist servant.
Here is Westmaas writing in the MCC newspaper, SN, last Sunday. I ask all my readers to reflect on what Westmaas wrote and see how extremely and absolutely necessary it is for people to write in order to stop the distortion of history. Westmaas notes that the Guyana Chronicle attempts to shape historical interpretation (sic) to suit its political imperatives and narratives but not the SN. Which newspaper in the world, past and present have not done that? Has this man ever read an SN editorial since 2020?

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.