The distinctiveness of East Indians
East Indians constitute more than half the population of Guyana and more than a third of the people in Trinidad & Tobago, yet they are perceived as distinctive. Naipaul captures this exceptionality of the East Indian quite well when he said that “…to be an Indian was to be distinctive.” It is a distinctiveness that means something alien, something different.

However, planters sought after this distinctiveness in labor long before the slaves were freed. William Burnley, a Trinidadian planter in 1814 saw the need for a distinct group of laborers. Burnley felt that a new breed of laborers must be “…healthy and free, with habits ready formed, and sufficiently numerous to stand unsupported and distinct from our present population on its immediate arrival.” This distinctiveness embraced not only the culture, but also could be discerned through the conflict of interest between the East Indian and African, from the beginning of indenture. The East Indian entered the sugar plantation where the majority of the labor was African. The East Indian was bounded through contract to accept less pay than the African. This was the genesis of the perceived African derision being heaped upon the East Indian. This distinctiveness, in many ways, sustained a division between the African and the East Indian. The division was functional for the planters because it was intended to prevent a cross-ethnic revolt.

The East Indian’s distinctiveness produced numerous negative stereotypes held by both major groups. The African saw the East Indian as mean and cunning, and wanted to take over the country. On the other hand, the East Indian perceived the African as thriftless and irresponsible, with a contempt for the land, and taking up a hedonistic way of life.

The distinctiveness of East Indians was symbolized, too, through their supposed alien culture. Public revenues, mainly custom dues, financed East Indian immigration from India. Africans were not happy with this situation and that is why they felt that this ‘alien’ culture was favored by White planters. An African organization said in the early 1900s that “…the race to whose detriment the coolies were being introduced were made to contribute to the cost of a scheme of immigration designed either to supplant the Negro or to coerce him into service with the planters at a wage inadequate for his proper maintenance.” This perception of the East Indian’s favored alien culture provided the genesis of ethnic insecurities between these two groups; these insecurities, indeed, have negatively impacted East Indian participation in the society at different moments of this country’s history. These insecurities, in a large way, have not only impacted the East Indian experience in Guyana, but may have very well become part of this ethnic group’s way of life today.

Participation in the public service
In order to improve race and ethnic relations, we need to assimilate and understand the comprehensive features of this East Indian experience, including ethnic insecurities. Some of these may very well be dislocation from India, massive burden of labor in the Caribbean, ethnic victimization in the post-colonial era, and migration to the metropolitan centers. These characteristics generate a double marginalization, as Naipaul would say (Birbalsingh 1997: xv). First, there is marginalization via their relationship to a subservient American and Euro-centered Creole-Caribbean condition. Second, there is marginalization via their ‘outsider’ status as East Indians in the Caribbean. This dual marginalization was evidenced by data presented by Dwarka Nath. According to Nath, up to 1921, East Indians achieved very little. In 1931, East Indians comprised 42% of the population but included only 8% of public servants and only 7% of teachers were of East Indian ethnicity. However, this marginalization did not end in 1931.

The findings of a study on East Indians in the Caribbean showed that East Indian participation in the public sector suffered considerably during the PNC rule. In the late 1970s, participation of East Indians in the public service was far from spectacular. With 29 Ministers, seven were East Indians and 20 were Africans. There were 29 Permanent Secretaries, with 2 East Indians and 25 Africans. Heads of Personnel Departments were classified as five East Indians and 17 as Africans. Among the 139 Heads of Divisions within Ministries, there were 19 East Indians and 102 Africans. All nine heads of higher institutions of learning were Africans. Four out of five multilateral schools had African heads and no East Indian as a head. With 25 Community High school heads, five were East Indians and 19 were Africans. Fourteen Africans and six East Indians constituted the ethnic composition of education officers.

Today, while this discriminatory situation in the public sector largely has been eroded, the participation of East Indians in some critical areas still needs to be addressed. The University of Guyana has 40 East Indian Faculty members compared to 140 African Faculty members in the Faculties of Agriculture, Arts, Education, Health, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and Technology.

Most Heads are Africans in all three types of school - nursery, elementary, and high. Only in elementary schools do East Indians show some competitiveness with Africans for Headships. In the People’s National Congress (PNC) Administration, it was not unusual to find on average that 70 percent of the Regional Education Officers (REDOs) were Africans. Today, the ethnic imbalance has been narrowed to the point where about 50% of REDOs are Africans, followed by East Indians with 40%.

East Indians predominate in the senior positions of School Heads and Deputy School Heads only in Regions 2 and 3. Africans occupy these positions in Regions 4 through 10. The magnitude of Africans in these senior positions, therefore, is higher than that of East Indians. Some schools only have an Acting Deputy Head partly because currently no Teaching Service Commission exists.

Most school heads in Regions 2, 3, and 6 are East Indians, while the majority of school heads in Regions 4, 5, and 10 are Africans. East Indian school heads are found in the largest majority in Regions 2 and 3. African school heads predominate in Regions 4 and 5.

Paradoxically, education once covertly denied to East Indians, subsequently, became the instrument of social mobility for them on a grand scale, especially in the medical and legal professions. For instance, today, Guyana has 295 medical practitioners, 148 (50.2%) are East Indians, 107 (36.2%) Africans, and 40 (13.6%) Others. Among the 50 Medex personnel, 21 (42%) are East Indians, 26 (56%) Africans, and 1 (2%) Others. Among the 9 Sick Nurses/Dispensers, 5 (55.6%) are East Indians and 4 (44.4%) Africans. With 8 Optometrists, 3 (37.5%) are East Indians, 3 (37.5%) Africans and 2 (25%) Others. Judgeships of East Indian and African ethnicity are shared equally between the two groups. Among Magistrates, 2 (27%) are East Indians, 8 (72%) Africans, and 1 (1%) Others.

Compare the current situation with 1926 when only 9% of the medical practitioners were East Indians and in the period 1906 through 1925 when a mere 21% of barristers and solicitors were East Indians. This atrophy impacting East Indian participation in the public service in the early years after indentureship, also, characterized their involvement in the sugar and rice industries.

Participation in sugar and rice
The East Indian domination of the labor market on the sugar plantations was secured through public revenues used to finance East Indian immigration. By the end of the 19th century, the sugar industry was totally dependent upon East Indian labor. African exodus from the sugar estates also facilitated East Indian dominance in sugar. Today, their dominance in sugar is still felt. In 2002, sugar export earnings totaled $22,405,873 billion.

This dominance in sugar later evolved into developing the rice industry. It first started with East Indians utilizing land leased on the abandoned sugar estates coupled with their acceptance of small plots of land at the end of their indenture contract, an offer intended to lure them to remain in the then British Guiana. By 1931, the acreage cultivated in paddy superseded the area planted under cane.

By 1964, the new PNC/UF Government abandoned the PPP’s program for the rice industry that started in 1957, a program that provided enormous gains for rice farmers. East Indians believe that this new program discriminated against them. After 1964, there was a reduction in the guaranteed prices for rice purchased by the Rice Marketing Board. Considerable financial losses also bedeviled the rice industry. The Rice Marketing Board reported losses of $4.3 million in 1964/65 and $2.8 million in 1965/66. Compare the profits of $839,734, $613,055, and $98,906 made in 1961/62, 1962/63, and 1963/64, respectively, during the years of the PPP Administration. Rice lands under cultivation increased from 136,990 acres in 1957 to 316,000 acres in 1964, and declined to 242,277 acres in 1970. In 2002, rice export earnings totaled $8,501,691 billion. These atrophies impacting East Indian participation in both the public service and in sugar and rice, also, were contoured with ethnic alliances.

Ethnic alliances
A history of humiliation resulting in the identity of social and economic conditions for both African slaves and East Indian indentureds on the sugar plantations, force the conclusion that slavery and indentureship were the same phenomenon (Cross 1980:4; Rodney 1979:36-39). This similarity sowed the seeds of subsequent ethnic alliances.

As with Africans under slavery, East Indians lived on the sugar estates within a framework that could very well be referred to as a total institution. Generally, a total institution pertains to environments such as prisons or mental hospitals, in which the participants are physically and socially isolated from the outside world (Tischler 1999:127). It’s remarkable that the East Indian way of life was not significantly impacted by a total institutional framework that invariably produces resocialization, intended to eliminate a person’s culture. Cultural similarity, especially in language and religion, among East Indian indentureds, could explain the minimal impact on their lives in a total institution. Keep in mind that by the beginning of the twentieth century, about three-quarters of East Indians in Guyana (then British Guiana) came from Uttar Pradesh in India. This ‘total institution’ lifestyle experienced by East Indians during indentureship, induced a forced type of ethnic cleavage whereby there was minimal social interaction between Africans and East Indians.

The years, however, after indentureship from 1917 through the 1950s, witnessed significant ethnic alliances between the major ethnic groups (Africans and East Indians), not only at the marketplace, but also in the political domain. Their early comparable experience during slavery and indentureship, notwithstanding a conflict of interest birthed through East Indian inclusion on the plantations, created the threshold for this union. During this period, too, many interest groups were formed, including the People’s Progressive Party, and the trade union movement in Guyana, among others; in Trinidad and Tobago, Captain A.A. Cipriani took over the leadership of the Working Men’s Association to promote social and constitutional reform for the working class of all ethnic groups; in T&T, again, note the workers` hunger march led by Uriah ‘Buzz’ Butler from Fyzabad to Port of Spain in 1935. Adrian Cola Rienzi founded and was President of two powerful unions - Oilfield Workers Trade Union, and the All Trinidad Sugar Estates and Factory Workers Trade Union. These were really serious attempts in T&T to unite the working class across ethnic lines.

In this era, as can be observed, some multiethnic mobilization to stave off colonial hegemony, occurred, first, between Africans and Creoles, to be joined subsequently by East Indians. Ethnic cleavage while then still a latent characteristic in the societal framework, was not a major driving force in institutional development, at least from 1917 through the early 1950s. The pursuit of a common goal to destabilizing colonial hegemony may have reduced any serious manifestations and consequences of ethnic cleavage in this period.

As mentioned earlier, Guyanese history is not inundated with racial conflict but ethnic alliances. But some politicians want us to believe that ethnic conflict pervades this land. Rodney makes the point that the case advanced of highly prevalent racial conflict in the society is inaccurate. This is what he has to say:

…my contention is that the case for the dominant role of racial division in the historical sphere has been overstated, and that scholarship on the subject has accepted without due scrutiny the proposition that Indians and Africans existed in mutually exclusive compartments. The problems of interpretation lie not only in the marshalling of the evidence, but, more fundamentally, in the historical methodology that is applied (Rodney1982: 188).

Let us now look at a few facts supporting this notion that Guyana’s history is not ridden with racial conflict.

The Commonwealth Commission commenting on the disturbances in 1962: “We found little evidence of any racial segregation in the social life of the country…East Indians and Africans seemed to mix and associate with one another on terms of the greatest cordiality…”

There is the alliance between East Indians and Africans under Critchlow’s leadership in the fight for better wages, and an 8-hour working day.

The union of ethnic forces against colonial hegemony is another case in point, e.g., the frequent criticisms launched by the Indian Opinion, the organ of the British Guiana East Indian Association, against the colonial government; Africans challenging the anti-education principles of the 1876 Education law; the demand for Indian languages to be introduced in schools; and the Court of Policy comprising members from many ethnic groups made crown lands available to both East Indians and Africans.

The emergence of institutional working-class unity in 1946 that became solidified in 1950 with the formation of the People’s Progressive Party and manifested by its victory at the 1953 polls.

H.J.M. Hubbard, a trade unionist in addressing whether Guyana is ridden with racial conflict said: “It is by any standards a remarkable fact that in a competitive semi-feudal society such as British Guiana with restricted social and economic opportunities and less jobs than potential workers, very few serious physical inter-racial conflicts arose between the ethnic groups constituting the population” (Hubbard 1969:27).

However, at the threshold of the White colonialists’ departure from the Colonies, that is, from the 1950s to the present, saw ethnic competition between the major ethnic groups to fill the power vacuum and secure the legal-political stage. The ethnic division arising out of this ethnic competition was intentional and a subterfuge used by some politicians to secure political advantage along ethnic lines. That is, it is an invented racial antagonism not rooted in sustained racial and ethnic hatred, but political deceit.

This deception and pretense whereby racial conflict is presented as afflicting the total society, has had its institutional origins in the early 1950s. The split within the PPP in 1955 struck a blow to East Indian and African working-class unity. The unity became further strained following the People’s National Congress (PNC) loss in 1957. Dr. Jagan in his West On Trial earmarked 1957 PNC’s defeat as the beginnings of racial party politics.

Ethnic similarities
The difficulty in ethnic and race relations is that we tend to focus a lot more on the differences among us, and de-emphasize the similarities. If a person goes to a restaurant and observes an East Indian man sitting at a table with a non-Indian woman, that person immediately begins to wonder as to how an East Indian would be able to cope with this non-Indian. The person then starts to concoct all the negative stereotypes, associated with differences between them.

Yes, there are the manifest differences, such as, differences in culture. But if you write down the similarities and differences between the two ethnic groups, then in most cases, the similarities would outweigh the differences. Therefore, it is very significant that the education system in Guyana develops methods to disseminate ethnic similarities. Even the University of Guyana has not made enormous strides in this cultural dissemination process through engaging projects focusing on ethnic similarities. We need to make a special effort to relate to people who are different from us, even if they have a hard time interacting with us. We need to take that first step.

The obsession with ethnic differences and not similarities has driven people to believe that in Guyana as in all multiethnic societies, the achievement of a common culture or a common value system is the panacea for resolving race problems. Nothing can be further from the truth. The U.S. with a multiplicity of cultures, and it has a lot more than six, does not appear to have a common culture. People who are naturalized American citizens or Green Card holders in the U.S. generally comply with the legal requirements of the system, and still sustain their own cultural heritage and contribute to nation building of that society. Pluralism characterizes the culture in the U.S. A pluralistic society as the U.S. is a society that is comprised of many different ethnic groups. Anything other than pluralism may involve people assimilating another’s culture or diluting one’s own culture.

Where one group’s culture dominates a politically subordinate group’s culture to the point of eliminating the minority cultures constitutes a case of assimilation. This is a situation where the minority group divests itself of its own cultural make-up to take on the culture of the dominant group. Theoretically, in the Guyana situation, assimilation would involve East Indian people stripping themselves of their East Indianness to take on Africanness if that characteristic lies within the dominant group, or vice versa. Assimilation, however, can be ‘forced’ or ‘voluntary’.

Forced assimilation has not worked historically as we have seen in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, Kosova, and at different points in Guyana’s history. As previously indicated, a false focus is used to promote assimilation toward creating a common culture, since some people believe that this focus can reconcile ethnic differences. We must consider that appeals for national unity by dubious political leaders, invariably, have been structured on the basis of only the dominant ethnic group’s culture. However, a spotlight on ethnic similarities, even in the case of both East Indians and Africans, historically, has preserved and advanced each other’s culture. All ethnic groups here have to reduce their focus on differences, and picture the bridges, the coalitions they could form with their similarities.

We must respect other people’s culture, and understand that the cultures of the Amerindians, East Indians, Portuguese, Chinese, Africans, Mixed, can coexist. It is futile to bridge cultures, for cultures cannot be bridged. Would any ethnic group want to concede slices of its culture to a dominant group, where all these slices would together constitute an absurd ‘Guyanese culture’? These slices would not be given, and they are not necessary because this ill-conceived ‘Guyanese culture’ presupposes a condition of forced assimilation, manifest or latent, on minority groups by any dominant group. Cultures in Guyana do not have to be fragmented or diluted; these cultures have to coexist, for only relationships premised on ethnic similarities can be bridged. Only in this scenario would we have a Guyanese culture characterized by some form of pluralism. This is pluralist unity in all its glory. Guyanese should not accept anything less.