There was “The Inaugural Caribbean Festival of Arts as Prism” recently held virtually, in which someone thought I might have had something to say.
This is what I would have said: PM Forbes Burnham conceptualised Carifesta 1 as early as 1966. Being President of the WI Student Union in England, and member of the League of Coloured People, the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress papers had deepened his perspective. As for multi-racial/ethnic British Guiana, he had written his sister in 1945: “I feel strongly about the Indian attitude, but the time has not come to antagonise a large section of the community before I am ready.”
In Guyana, the rural-based and unlettered Indians were beginning to knock on doors jealously guarded by the Coloured/African urban elite.
At Independence in 1966, I was in secondary school when the ethnic cleansing of 1300 Indian Guyanese occurred in the “Wismar Massacre”, and sinking of the Sun Chapman with 43 African Guyanese dead was still raw. The designated “National Hero”, the flag with the Garveyite and Ethiopian African colours, made the national motto of “One People, One Nation, One Destiny” more of a threat than anything else. Burnham’s disbanding of the ethnically-balanced SSU formed by the departing British, and his firing of Major Raymond Sattaur, its designated head, were disturbing. The blatant rigging of the 1968 elections, wherein friends from my village’s African section, underaged like me, voted, personally convinced me of the denial of the political rights of Indian Guyanese, following economic rights in rice.
For several reasons, 1969 was memorable for me. Even though from the countryside, I had done my “A” Levels in 1969-70 in Georgetown, and after teaching for a year at Bush Lot Secondary, WCB (1970-71), I taught at Central High School in 1971-72. I could observe firsthand the goings on of the urban elite that determined the fate of Guyana. There were two noteworthy political initiatives in 1969: Dr Jagan’s declaration that the PPP was now an “orthodox” political party, and the formation of a radical political group, RATOON, at UG by primarily African Guyanese intellectuals. This was new: the PNC was being opposed by individuals it assumed it “owned”.
In early February 1970, Eric Williams grappled with Black Power protests that by end of April had precipitated an armed revolt by young army officers. I remember following the developments on my “pocket radio”. Between 16-26 February, Burnham had gathered intellectuals from across the Caribbean to a “Caribbean Writers and Artists Convention”, to plan a pan-Caribbean Conference, which was to be Carifesta 1. He then moved to pre-empt similar Black Power reactions here by supporting Stokely Carmichael’s RATOON/ASCRIA-sponsored visit in May for a seminar on Pan Africanists and Black Revolutionary Nationalists. A group of us students walked out of a meeting at Queen’s when Carmichael insisted that Indian Guyanese should organise separately. RATOON and the newly-formed Movement against Oppression (MAO), that grounded with ghetto youths, disagreed with Carmichael, but not ASCRIA.
The shooting of Joshua Ramsammy in October 1971 signalled the PNC’s decision to “take on” the radicals violently, and further darkened the mood in Georgetown. The very politicised staff room of Central High, with Rudy Luck at the head, swirled with conspiracy theories that pointed to a PNC “big one”.
The Police investigation went nowhere: in Jan 1968, Burnham had constructively fired the first Guyanese COP, Felix Austin, and replaced him with the more pliable Carl “Bolo” Austin.
It was against this background that Indian Guyanese boycotted Carifesta 1 when Burnham contemptuously dismissed the recommendations of Indian leaders and organizations in Guyana – Hindu, Muslim and Christian – and used funds specifically designated for the Indian Repatriation Fund to construct the Cultural Center. This boycott was successful, even though, in the end, Dr Jagan caved in.
Gora Singh and his mother Rajkumari Singh, and some artistes affiliated with her, participated – but to great opprobrium from the community they claimed to represent. I got to know Gora very well later in NYC, and he claimed (in writing) that while most performances were filmed, his was not, and Indians overall were peripheralised.
My regret then was that even though Trinidad’s Sundar Popo had come out with his genre-originating chutney song, “Nana and Nanie”, in 1969, it was blanked. Unlike what he had done for “Pan” and “Tamboo Bamboo”, Eric Williams and the PNC studiously ignored subaltern Indian cultural creations. From the discussions and planning sessions in Guyana, Taan, Biraha, Quaseedas and Qawalis singing, for instance, was not seen as “cultural”. Gora and troupe were encouraged to perform “fusion” forms.
I left for NYC on Sept 16, the day after Carifesta 1 ended. As Martin Carter (who also boycotted Carifesta 1) said, it was a “dark time”.
