Cliff Rajkumar on Biography of Surinamese Guyanese Alice Singh written by Dr Ramharack

Dear Editor,

As a young man, I loved to read and would enthusiastically seek out non-fiction books, which would enlighten and inspire me on the struggles, progress and accomplishments of those few remarkable and socially conscious pioneers who have selflessly dedicated their lives to the upliftment of our forebears as they strived to unshackle themselves from the negative and demeaning stereotyped challenges of colonialism.

I would rummage through the few bookstores in Guyana and was always perplexed by our Indo-community’s abysmal lack of authorship. It was rare to find any book or reading material that chronicled the significant contributions of people like Alice Bhagwandai Singh, Prashad Nagar, and Jung Bahadur Singh. The rigours of Indentureship and the struggles for survival deliberately kept our forbears mired in the plantations with the stigma of being uneducated “coolies”.

Longing to break from the negative societal image, it was not until the 1960s that a brave new breed of ambitious and forward-thinking stalwarts like yourself and others from our generation who dared to courageously venture out into the coveted world of academia to change the derogatory “coolie” type cast which had come to characterize the Indo-Guyanese community, as a fallout of the detestable indentureship system.

Indeed! It is refreshing to see that scholars like you are now changing the disparaging perceptions and labels which had come to characterize our community by bringing to life and the public domain the altruistic contributions of those noble and selfless Indo-Guyanese champions who dedicated their lives to motivate and uplift us from the scourge of unjustified insult and backwardness.

It is our duty to do our part and support the reframing of our glorious ancestral history by authentically chronicling the legacies of all those noble souls and social reformers who have helped us to brave the challenges of prejudices and prove our civilizational competitiveness…on a level playing field.

Thank you Dr Ramharack with kudos for being a game-changer for all of us…from the Indo-Guyanese diaspora.

Cliff Rajkumar