propaganda press! boycott Carifesta X

Tara Singh: A dinosaur of Guyana’s “Apan Jhaat” Era - And enabler of racism and Indian supremacy in Guyana
Part I
The Guyanese polity is being emasculated by the following socio-political malignancies. (I) Rabid PPP racism and the government’s arrogant demand to govern unchallenged as an ethnocracy; (II) Pervasive racial discrimination against African-Guyanese; about 40% of the population, and (III) Reprehensibly bad PPP governance; a penchant for theft and corruption, flaunting the rule of law as well as a derision for social justice and equality. The consequence is an inexorable movement towards further political instability, congealed racial polarization, social degeneration and economic stagnation. The confluence of these dynamics renders the country ungovernable.

Amidst this decay of the social order and threat to black survival, PPP leaders engage in delusional denials that racial discriminate is nonexistent. After 15 years in office, they parrot their 28th year PNC rule mantra as a sinister crutch for a revisionist schema to eviscerate black contribution to Guyana’s development. An example of their revisionism is their reference to Cheddie Jagan as the “father” of the nation. He is not. Forbes Burnham undeniably is. Burnham brought independence to Guyana. The PPP must not be allowed to rewrite history. We must block them at every attempt.

Discredited PPP representative and dinosaur of Guyana’s “Apan Jhaat” era of racism, Dr. Tara Singh, is an obdurate executioner of racist revisionism. He has metamorphosized from a relic of the culture of hate to a political hooligan who is equally incapable of competing in the arena of rational ideas without inciting racism. A vestige of Guyana’s 1960’s civil (race) war, Singh is an innately dishonest and immoral creature, who has injected his insidious brand of bigotry into Guyana’s contemporary politics like a cancerous poison in the bowels of a nascent national polity.

His evildoings include conspiracies with the Office of the President and the state-owned Guyana Chronicle newspaper to attack me and other African Guyanese leaders, while vehemently denying us the right to respond. Their refusal to publish the views of Afro-Guyanese is a manifestation of the PPP’s oppressive, ethnocratic governance. They usurp the resources of the state for the sole benefit of the Indian collective and practice their philosophy of “Apan Jhaat” - Indian supremacy - African hate. But why are they afraid to publish the views of Africans? African Guyanese pay taxes. They must use their ingenuity and innovative genius to force a change of course.

Renowned Austrian sociologist, Friedrich Otto Hertz, said that “At the heart of racism is the religious assertion that God made a creative mistake when he brought some people into being.” Singh’s actions proves Hertz’s theory. A proven racist, cloaked as a self-styled Indian nationalist, Singh is head of a racist group called the Indian Caribbean Council, of which the sole qualification for membership is race. While there are legitimate reasons for ethnic identity and the preservation of ethnic culture, the purpose of Singh’s group is not cultural empowerment. Rather, it promotes racial supremacy and Hindu sectarianism in a multi-ethnic, multiracial society. This brand of racial fundamentalism has, in some countries, burgeoned into forms of religious extremism.

Similar racial, extremist groups exist in America as well, although they are mostly reserved for Caucasians. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) comes to mind. In order to understand the nefariousness of Tara Singh’s brand of fanaticism and the danger it poses to social justice and racial equality in Guyana, one only needs to observe the workings of the PPP in Guyana. Their objective is to promote Indian supremacy and to effect the diminution of the role and influence of non-Indian Guyanese. It is this PPP trademarked bigotry that fuels Singh’s fanaticism and desire to spawn a cross-border racial axis that is rooted in the evil philosophy of ethnocracy.

Singh has been defender -in -chief of, and has praised, Ronald Gajraj and Roger Khan for their atrocities. The two allegedly ran the Phantom death squad which has executed over 400 African-Guyanese young men, with impunity. These murders have never been investigated. Singh is an advocate of their mercenary behaviors and has openly embraced Gajraj’s alleged agenda of paid assassination of African Guyanese.

He is a narcissist whose ethnic triumphalism mocks the African murder victims of the Phantom death squad. He insults their families and boasts that the killing of their loved ones cannot be proven in a court of law, being so certain of the official protection afforded the perpetrators. For those families and their community, Singh’s embrace of the evils of Gajraj’s death squad must carry a consequence and certainly must weigh like an albatross around his neck.

He lives comfortably in Queens, New York. Those who suffer the consequences of his despised philosophy are the poor in the depressed communities of Guyana. They, the African Guyanese collective, and the Guyanese people as a whole, must hold people like Singh to account, using every avenue of the law and legitimate civil action to bring them to justice. In Rwanda, enablers, accomplices and agents provocateur of crimes against humanity, who used the state media and other medium to enable genocide, also found themselves at the feet of justice under international law.

Singh is part of an ethnic cabal who advocates that the pass PNC government’s alleged misdeeds justify the subjugation of and discrimination against blacks. They attempt to use the most vituperative, repugnant and pseudo-intellectualizations to justify their hate. But the true basis of their reign of terror on the black population is innate hatred of blacks.

Singh, who does not know that I am of African, Indian and Portuguese descent, claims that I am a racist for exposing the culture of “Apan Jhaat.” But such is the psychology of a racist. The former racist South African President and apartheid leader Pieter Willem (P.W) Botha said that Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders were racist because they condemned apartheid. White racists in America thought the same of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Marcus Garvey, Medgar Evers, etc. It is natural for bigots to use the race card against critics, as they have no defense for their bigotry. However, we wear those labels as a badge of honor for the defeat of evil. Oprah Winfrey likes to say that the best deterrent to racism is excellence. My creed is to work even harder to expose racism.

In his dangerous yearning for an ethnic axis, Singh demonstrates a misplaced bitterness towards Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s and the PNM’s victory, in Trinidad and Tobago. The PNM’s resounding political victory over Basdeo Panday and the UNC in the last two general elections must be galling. On April 28, 2008, Singh called PM Manning a dictator and a racist. It is an outrageous charge. That this bigot can muster the audacity to call Mr. Manning a dictator and a racist, more so when he spews the fulminations of an ethnocractic cabal in Guyana, is repugnant. To him, any non-Indian who dares to defeat a perceived ‘Indian’ party or exposes fundamentalist racism is a racist.

Singh is ostensibly being paid by the PPP government’s Information Agency to engage in slash and burn politics to counter criticisms of the Guyana government as a racist in chief. He resorts to desperation and hooliganism as he defends the PPP hegemony and diminishes Guyana’s potential for racial harmony. But the latter can never be accomplished with racial dinosaurs like Tara Singh around. They pollute the conduits to national cohesion by bequeathing their reservoirs of hate, bigotry and xenophobia to new generations.

The PPP’s justification for its rampant racism and Jim Crow-like policies, is that the previous PNC government, which last governed Guyana 15 years ago, committed similar wrongdoings. They adamantly refuse to conduct an introspection of themselves or inquire into the merits and demerits of particular allegations. Instead, they act like uncivilized creatures, launching smutty propaganda campaign to vilify the victims. Their hatred is so profound that it doesn’t allow them to be of any help to Africans.

Defending the Pro Chancellor, Dr. Prem Misir, Tara Singh wrote in the Guyana Chronicle on April 28, 2008 that I launched a scathing attack on Dr Prem Misir of UG on the basis of “perception and innuendos.” But Singh is con. My observations about Misir were factal and are irrefuted. I criticized Misir for using his position of Pro-Chancellor of the University to demonstrate his proclivities for racial politics. I said that his prejudices are openly and recklessly promulgated by pen in the daily media as he enmeshes himself into his party’s ethnocratic politics.

I also observed that Misir’s conduct, when measured against any objective standard as well as the required integrity of other University heads in the region, is an unpalatable embarrassment to his colleagues in academia. He engages in offensive, ethnic revisionism and conclusions underpinned by an overt racist agenda which is unacceptable. Nothing in this is perception. Is Tara Singh telling us that the jaundiced, racist rhetoric, published in the state media under the signature of Misir are an illusion? I challenge Singh and Misir to identify a single University in the region where its head engages in divisive, racist politics.

In response to Singh’s infantile claim that Misir has written many books and that I am attempting to sully his character, I would ask; Is Singh aware that Hitler also wrote a book called “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle), which was a best seller, and that America’s best known racist and imperial wizard of the KKK, David Duke, also wrote a book?

Singh also regurgitated the PPP’s delusional claim that there has been no racial discrimination against blacks or marginalization of blacks as there is no evidence of such. The intellectual dishonesty that pervades Singh’s ethnic cabal is so palpable, that it is bewildering that they can stare you in the face and tell you the elephant in the room is a dog! And they believe that if they repeat this lie enough times, then the underlining problems will disappear. They govern by wishful thinking.

He has claimed that PNC, under Forbes Burnham, committed acts of racial discrimination against Indians, and rigged elections. However, Dr. Singh should remember from his association with the farming community that there were East Indians who benefited immensely, financially and politically, from Burnham’s economic measures regarding the substitution imported food. Additionally, many East Indians supported the PNC at the polls, including the 1978 referendum, and were privately encouraging the government not to change course. The country might have been better-off today in light of the impending food crisis.

One does not have to look very far for “empirical evidence” to support this fact. Indeed, I would look to Dr. Singh’s own writings for verification. In 1978 he co-authored a study which established that Burnham had garnered significant Indian support and that the PNC had mass support among Indians at the polls. Now that an Indian party is in power Singh has conveniently changed his tune. But was Tara Sing honest and credible then or is he honest and credible now?

My sense is that he was honest then and that he is demonstrating his “duck-curry” opportunism by changing his opinions for political expediency to pander at the table of ethnic power. He prostitutes himself for a paycheck and has no moral or professional compass. He is like a dog with a bone who seeks another master with a new bone, and drops the old bone and runs for the new one, forgetting that the mange from the old bone has scared his mouth.

[The body of Donna Herod lies in Buxton where Guyana Police shot her once in the head. Her son and other relatives look on in horror. She is holding the lunch kit of her young child who she was taking home when murdered.]

On the issue of racial discrimination and marginalization, Tara Singh claims that there is no evidence of discrimination against, or marginalization of, Africans. His source is the conclusions of a supposed study by Dr. Prem Misir. Misir contends that empirical data disproves African marginalization in Guyana. Again, they are attempting to tell blacks that the 800 pound grey elephant in the room is a dog.

This is an attempt to condition us to think that there is no PPP racism; although Misir has now discredited his original position by being forced to admit that his study was a subjective analysis of what he calls “social marginalization.” This means that he deliberately ignored racial discrimination, which the PPP has employed as a political and economic noose around the necks of blacks.

The entire premise of Misir’s “so-called” study was fraudulent. Thus its alleged findings are bogus and lack credibility and academic fortitude. It is predicated on and designed specifically to countervail the argument racial discrimination against blacks, black marginalization and exclusion from the decision making process. It intent was to seeks or fabricate subjective indicators to undermine the discrimination argument. It is a dishonest premise and conceptualization that disacknowledge marginalization as a consequence of racism, racial discrimination and the PPP efforts to denigrate them as lesser race.

Moreover, Misir’ story was not genuine review of sociological investigation of marginalization. It contained no determinations or comparative analysis on marginalization among other social groups that are specific to gender, religion, race, sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, etc. This is so because he did not conduct a scientific survey among these groups. When pressured, he claimed that “Our findings focused on only social marginalization; and social marginalization has to do with examining the levels of ethnic participation in the occupational structure….I have been presenting findings addressing the ethnic distribution of participation in the public service.”

So, not only does he admit that the findings he has presented ignored prima facie evidence of racial discrimination, but that his so-called study is not a representation of a scientific analysis and holistic review of his own definition of “marginalization.” His alleged findings are noting but a cooked-up ethnic assessment of participation in the government service a fairly pedestrian exercise, and a sham that cannot withstand academic scrutiny.

For Misir’s education, a Pomona College study made the following sociological determinations about racism, which is the basis for discrimination and marginalization in society. The study found that:

“Racism is hating or disliking a group of people based on the color of their skin.”

“Making assumptions about people based on their race.”

“Intolerance or prejudice against another race.”

“Violence towards others based on race differences.”

Attitude, action, or way of life whose outcome oppresses people of color and benefits “White” people (other race), regardless of stated intent.

“A power system that disadvantages some races for the benefit of one or more others; buying into and making use of this system.” “Unfairly limiting, overtly or covertly, consciously or unconsciously, someone’s life chances on the basis of their ethnicity.”

“Racism is the institutionalized oppression of groups of people based on their race.”

“Institutionalized roles that accord wealth and status to some “racial” groups and not others.

Further, according to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the term “racial discrimination” is “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, national or ethnic origin, which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

Sociologists Noel Cazenave and Darlene Alvarez Maddern theorize racism as “…a highly organized system of ‘race’-based group privilege that operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of color/race’ supremacy. Racist systems include, but cannot be reduced to, racial bigotry.”

If Prem Misir genuinely wishes to investigate “marginalization” in Guyana, then I suggest that he must first determine the causations of this social consequence. I submit that PPP racism and racial discrimination has resulted in the marginalization of Afro-Guyanese. This practice is pervasive.

[Terrence McKenzie showing cuts and bruises on his back after being tortured by Guyana Police Force in Bartica. The Police used machetes (cutlasses) among other things to torture him]

It order to arrive at sound conclusions on this matter, Misir must first conduct an objective scientific survey among Afro-Guyanese to determine whether they have experienced or witnessed racial discrimination and/or believe it exists. He must then investigate specific complaints or instances of racial discrimination and the effect discrimination against blacks has on the society.

It is in the latter contexts that I argue that the PPP government is deeply engaged in massive social, economic and political racism in Guyana. It is this racism that inspires racial and political discrimination and has led to marginalization. Any number of scientific studies will validate this analysis.

Related propagandically in one way, shape or form. [Please leave your comments below]

• Arthur Raymond Chung - Guyana’s first president passes on
• Yesu Persaud has never been seriously innovative - People’s Progressive Party
• Cheddi Jagan’s dilemma & the PPP caricature of Guyana’s history
• Government’s perspective on the crime situation in Guyana