I am first and foremost Guyanese
Dear Editor,
There it is. Again. In the straightest, most easily understood language. It is what comes first for many people. It is what stirs pride, perhaps rightly. As for me, I must go my own way, as I can only be of one way first, and that way only. Nothing else.
I am Indo Guyanese. That was the simple, dignified, memorialization in a public letter from the esteemed Ms. Ryhaan Shah. She is well-satisfied with her identification; the memories it evokes, the passions it stirs, and the messages it conveys: searing. Powerful. Far reaching. I recognize her insistence and sacred right to so do. I wish it were different. Different through an awareness of what she represents, her times and contexts, notwithstanding national and personal histories. Of the latter, I know naught; it is better that way.
The similarly singular Dr. David Hinds was identically proud to articulate his steadfast identification as an Afro-Guyanese a little while back. Above all else, there is where I stand, this is the priority of my projection. Sterling in attributes, lasting in significance, and just as soaring, like Ms. Shah, in the psychic elevations and spiritual profoundness to which such grand personifications lift. It is about suffering, feeling and sharing, and extending through articulation of the deeply held, the powerfully driving. No nuance. No swerving. No avoiding. Only embracing. Once again, I wish that it were not so. Meaning that in the scale of emotional intensities, such foremost ethnic identification was slightly less in the weightiness of its pull; and that the magnetism of its attraction was more toned and tempered to the cadences of local existence.
As this is written, I cannot help but associating what were/are spirited personal representations with my awareness that both Ms. Shah and Dr. Hinds are moving presences in two intensely ethnic-based entities. In this instance, the personal and the organization are indivisible and inseparable. The potency of such relationships can neither be minimized nor ignored. Neither can the implications of such relationships, regardless of how sturdy the compartmentalization (if any) of paramountcy of ethnicity over that of country. In addition, the visions and thrusts of such ethnic-powered agencies are self-explanatory; they cannot be otherwise, or else they lose relevance. Something must give; something suffers. In this instance, the whole is subject to the demanding tyrannies of the partial; the pyres of the tribal; and, the cleavages of the separate.
If what is foremost is that ethnic identification, then Guyana is secondary. It may be a matter of the slightest degree only; but it is enough, no matter how minute. I submit this, because in the raging furnace that is Guyana, what ought to be the superseding clarion call of country inevitably wilts and fades before the higher ideal, the greater psychological connection of ethnicity by the fact of its very supremacy in the scheme of personal considerations.
In my book, I am content with being Indian. I have been gifted with kindnesses through deep contours of strains American. Yet having said both of those, I now say this before all unflinchingly, unambiguously, and unalterably: I am first and foremost Guyanese. I am nothing else. It is the surging sums of my parts, my essences. It is the beginning and end of me, with nothing else mattering. All the rest are subsidiary. I am Guyanese. No hyphen, thank you. No dual local identity. No binding strings, other than that of the navel. To the land, be it near to it or from far from it. I don’t think that there is much more I wish to say on this. For me, it is enough.
Yours faithfully, GHK Lall