It has become trite to say we “inherited a state but not a nation”. With the vast majority of Guyanese having been arbitrarily dumped into Guyana over the last few hundred years to join the Indigenous peoples already here, we simply do not have the collective wherewithal to imagine a nation “looming out of an immemorial past”, as one theorist of nationalism proposed. We will just have to deal with the bricolage that we are; but, in the meantime, what do we do about the demands for a “national culture” implied in such a vision of a nation. President Irfaan Ali has called for a “One Guyana”, which we propose is grounded in “unity in diversity”.
This question about our “nation” has occupied centre stage in the political arena for quite a while; being the site of contestation of power in civil society as well the state. It has therefore precipitated a wider struggle than merely the “political”. Ever since the beginning of European colonisation, the model of the “nation” imposed on the Guyanese population has been for our peoples to “assimilate”, thus privileging “unity” over “diversity”. It has been the dominant model in modern times, and still undergirds the policies of most of the states of the world – now routinely defined as “nation states”. Its premises, now accepted as common sense, are that the people within a state must all share a common culture and values, so that they would feel a sense of oneness so as to better work towards achieving the “national” goals. The $64,000 question, of course, is who decides on what constitutes the “national culture” into which everyone is to be assimilated?
There have been several variants of the assimilationist school, ranging from the demand that individuals entering such a society jettison their “old” cultures and practise the new, to such individuals being told that they should intermarry with others from the “mainstream”, so that they physically disappear. The American “melting pot” remains the most famous example of the assimilationist school, even though their state, especially through its school system and its very explicit “Citizenship” examinations, couch their values to be assimilated in ideological, rather than “cultural” terms. In reality, for American citizens to enjoy the full rights of citizenship, they have to conform to the overwhelmingly British norms.
Sadly, the assimilationist project has worked only at the price of great suffering; and, even then, never very successfully. America has had to concede that instead of a “melting pot”, it has had to accept that it can only be a “salad bowl”. Britain has had to grant autonomy to Scotland and Ireland in cultural as well as political terms; yet, today, the battle literally rages on in England. In Guyana, while everyone was told to assimilate into British culture, there were always snickers from whites when “natives” talked about Britain as “home” – as was very common as recently as the sixties. Modern international norms of ‘equality’, ‘self-determinations’ and “cultural citizenship” of peoples militate against cultural hegemony being accepted by even “subordinate” groups. Witness the new militancy of our Indigenous Peoples.
It is an ironic fact the world over that multicultural societies are actually the norm in the so-called “nation states”. Each individual in such states is also a member of a particular cultural group, who would have different experiences from another belonging to a different cultural group. This is because our culture shapes and gives meaning to our life’s plans. And the mere participation of each member helps to change the culture itself. Out of this relationship between people and their cultures arises a sense of identity and belonging.
The question of whether “unity” or “diversity” should be privileged is partially a semantic one, caused by the conflation of “state” and “nation”. But, at the bottom, the dispute has to do with power, as it almost always does. Political unity and cultural diversity do not have to be mutually exclusive. Let us build “One Guyana” within the unity of diverse cultures.
