Dr Walter Rodney was very concerned about the development of African people

Dear Editor,

I recently attended the screening of a documentary film titled W.A.R. Walter Anthony Rodney produced by Clairmont Chung.

The film was screened as part of the Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture Series during the Emancipation Day celebrations in Port of Spain, in August this year.

After viewing the film, I became more convinced that the academic and politician, Walter Rodney, was very concerned about African people in the Caribbean and Africa as well as in his own African culture and identity. He must be highly commended for embracing his ethnicity and not denying it as his political colleague, Rupert Roopnaraine.

I had expected that Roopnaraine would have complemented Rodney by having the same interest in Indian people, their traditions and identity. I was disappointed in Roopnaraine who did not learn a thing from his guru, Rodney.

The documentary featured interviews with Rex Nettleford, Eusi Kwayana, Clive Thomas and Rupert Roopnaraine. Former Indo-Guyanese WPA front-liner, Moses Bhagwan, was not interviewed in the film.

The film depicts Rodney as being preoccupied with the African Liberation Struggle. Was Roopnaraine involved in any Indian Liberation Struggle in Guyana or elsewhere?

Rodney was either affiliated to, or had established, the Black Writers Congress, Black Arts Movement and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

Was Roopnaraine either affiliated to, or had established any Indian literary group or Indian social movement?

In 1966 Rodney lectured in African History at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.

Was Roopnaraine ever interested in teaching Indian history or literature in Guyana or in the Indian Diaspora? The documentary highlighted Rodney’s classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). I would have expected that Roopnaraine would have complemented Rodney’s research with a book on the Unspoken Story of Indian Holocaust: the history of manmade famines in India during nearly two centuries of British rule (1757-1947) when 1.8 billion Indians died mainly of starvation.

What are Indian leaders and intellectuals like Roopnaraine afraid of, and always running away from, their own shadow?

Roopnaraine is now Minister of Education in a black-based coalition party – A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) + Alliance for Change (AFC). He is now in a partnership with a party that reportedly assassinated Rodney, his close friend and colleague, in 1980 when President Forbes Burnham was in power in Guyana.

As a Minister in Government now, Roopnaraine is more likely to sacrifice the interests and welfare of Indians in Guyana in keeping with his denial of his Indianess.

Sincerely,

Dr Kumar Mahabir,

San Juan,Trinidad and Tobago