Indians and the army

The Beginning

As a colony acquired by conquest (from the Dutch) the British reorganized the “Burgher Militia” in 1806, a unit for each of the three colonies – Demerara, Essequibo and Berbice. The Indians that arrived after 1838 met not only a police force, but also an armed militia to keep them in line. The latter lapsed in the 1950s with the entrenchment and expansion of the GPF to monitor and control the Indians on the sugar plantations.

In 1878, however, fears of Indian rebellion (after the 1872 uprising at Devonshire Castle) precipitated the establishment of a Volunteer Force, which became the BG Militia in 1891. Indians were discouraged from joining. During WWII, the Militia became the British Guiana Regiment of the South Caribbean Force, and eventually some of its units became the BG Volunteer Force in 1948.

The Volunteer Force

Composed of a battalion of approximately 600 reserves and full time officers, the force buttressed the armed response of the government to what they defined as “internal problems”. The battalion was recruited by an urban-based selection board, which drew the troops from, and stationed them in, primarily urban areas. By 1963, manpower was organised into a battalion headquarters, a headquarters company and five rifle companies. The battalion headquarters and ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies were located at Eve Leary, Georgetown, and ‘B’ company, in New Amsterdam, Berbice. ‘D’ company was formed in Mackenzie in the Upper Demerara River in 1957 and ‘E’ company was formed on the West Coast Demerara in 1963.

It should not be surprising that the troops were overwhelmingly African, and this was heavily criticized by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) that investigated the composition of the forces in 1965. It was the rifle company of this force that stood by while the Wismar atrocities were committed on Indians on May 25, 1964.

The SSU

A PPP’s motion to form a “British Guiana Army” had been passed by the Legislature in October 1962, but was never assented to by the British governor. Instead, after the CIA inspired the ethnic violence of 1963, the British organized the paramilitary Special Service Unit (SSU) as the precursor to a representative Guyanese army. It was under the direct command of the governor. Not surprisingly Indian applications exceeded those of Africans and the SSU’s composition was balanced with equal numbers of Indian and African recruits.

There were no problems attracting Indians to this battalion, and, in fact, many of them had to be turned away, and applications came from some very qualified individuals. This concrete example should dispel all accusations that, “Indians do not want to join the armed forces”.

According to the CIA factbook, “The colonial government’s goal was for the SSU to evolve into Guyana’s army after independence was granted…The British government strove to ensure an ethnic balance within the SSU. Its reasons were twofold: Guyana was already racially polarized in the 1960s, and the police force consisted mostly of Afro-Guyanese. The British were successful in recruiting a balance of Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese cadets to fill the junior officer ranks. Indo-Guyanese were also well-represented among students at the Mons Officer Cadet Training School in Britain”

The SSU was commanded by an Indian Major Ramon Sattaur, a Sandhurst graduate, who served under the British officer Colonel Pope. Six persons were selected for officer training in England at the Mons Officer Cadet School. They were Pilgrim, Naraine, Morgan, Roberts, Budhu and Ishoof (3 Indo-Guyanese and 3 Afro-Guyanese).

Elite soldiers from all over the world were students at that prestigious military academy. All Guyana was proud when Naraine won the coveted Sword of Honour, and Ishoof won top prizes for marksmanship and military knowledge. He went on to lead military units in Guyana on two dangerous military operations – the New River Triangle Operations when soldiers from Suriname were driven out from that area, and the Ankoko Operations that repelled Venezuelan incursions into the Essequibo.

When Burnham came to power in 1964, his first act was to force the dismissal of Sattaur as Head of the SSU by bypassing him in the command hierarchy. Burnham made it quite clear that he wanted Major Price as the new chief of staff although Colonel Pope recommended Major Sattaur. He disbanded both the Volunteer Force and the SSU.

As part of the agreement for granting Independence, the British insisted that the composition of the entire state apparatus – including most pertinently, the police and army – be reviewed with the goal of making them representative of the country’s ethnic make-up. The ICJ specifically recommend, in reference to the Volunteer Force (since the PNC had not yet launched the army), 1) “that further companies of the Volunteer Force be established in areas where there were likely to be a large number of Indian Volunteers; 2) In each year for a period of 5 years, whenever the number of qualified applicants of constable or Cadet Officer level permit, 76 per cent of the applicants accepted should be Indian and 25 per cent from other races.”

The GDF

On November 1, 1965 however, Burnham created the Guyana Defence Force and went completely against the recommendations of the ICJ. The record shows that Burnham bypassed the officers of the SSU, sent some handpicked cadets to Mons Officers Cadet School in England, and, in the words of then Lt. Colonel Granger, one of the hand-picked cadets, “by mid-1965 they had started to return home in waves to help build their army.”

To fill the GDF infantry battalion being assembled, recruitment followed the standard Police/PNC practice in bypassing Indians. In the words of Prof. Ken Danns, “The sons and daughters of party activists or some party activists themselves are rewarded in the military service.” Not too many Indians qualified.

According to the CIA factbook, “The SSU was renamed the Guyana Defence Force in 1965. The transition to complete Guyanese control of the GDF began in 1966, shortly after independence was granted. Prime Minister Burnham, who also served as minister of defence, oversaw the transition. Major Raymond Sattaur, an Indo-Guyanese officer and graduate of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, was heir apparent to the British GDF commander. But perhaps because of ethnic considerations, Burnham selected an Afro-Guyanese officer, Major Clarence Price, as the new commander. After the 1968 election, Burnham began to purge Indo-Guyanese from the GDF’s officer corps. By 1970, Afro-Guyanese dominated both the officer and the enlisted ranks of the GDF.

The PNC attempted to both consolidate and expand the loyalty of the GDF by manipulating racial symbols and by materially rewarding loyal soldiers. Politically minded officers portrayed the PNC as the sole protector of Afro-Guyanese interests. These same officers also portrayed the opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) as an Indo-Guyanese organization whose victory would result in economic and political domination of Afro-Guyanese by Indo-Guyanese. In 1973, an aide to Forbes Burnham openly advocated that the GDF pledge its allegiance to the PNC in addition to its loyalty to the nation. This recommendation was made policy the following year. Although the recommendation was unpopular among career officers, disagreement was not voiced openly for fear of losing high salaries, duty-free cars, housing, and other privileges. Nevertheless, throughout the 1970s and 1980s an undercurrent of tension existed between officers who favoured a politically neutral GDF and those who favoured political activism.” Now-ex-Brigadier David Granger was one of those that favoured “political activism”.

This African-dominated pattern of recruitment continued as the PNC formed another GDF battalion in 1968 and embarked on a militarisation drive by forming two new armed forces – the Guyana National Service (1974) and the Guyana People’s Militia (1976). In all of these organizations, Africans dominated with ninety per cent of the manpower. By 1976, according to Prof Danns, Guyana had “Disciplined Forces” with a combined strength of 21,000 (from 2,631 in 1965) and its soldier to civilian ratio of 1:35, was one of the highest in the world. “The intake into all of the disciplined services is 90 per cent black, reflecting the widespread violation of entrance requirements exercised by leaders of the ruling party.”

After the 1992 elections that swept the PPP back into office after two decades of rigged elections, Dr Jagan did not seek to reorganize the army (or for that matter, any of the disciplined forces) on less partisan lines. Up to the 1997 general elections, the disciplined forces had their votes counted separately from the rest of the population, and the vote for the PNC invariably reflected the African percentage of the forces – in the ninety per cent range. In 1997, of the 5,900-odd votes cast, 5,300 were for the PNC. Institutional memory was not just a theory: Indians were faced with overwhelming military forces from which they had been systematically excluded.

Not much has changed for Indians with reference to the army.