The Tribune

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”

― Rabindranath Tagore (Indian philosopher and poet)

ONE of the jarring realities the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed here at home is the degree to which the relationship of The Bahamas to the 21st century is tenuous.

We are mostly stuck in a previous century, a fundamentalist cul-de-sac and a neo-colonial mind-set, largely unaware of and indifferent to seismic geopolitical, scientific, technological, economic and cultural shifts that are upending our narrow nationalism and provincialism.

The mental slavery paralyzing and polluting our national consciousness include an entrenched belief in and subservience to white superiority, that whatever is culturally or physically produced in a majority white country, especially America, is automatically superior.

This mental slavery also includes a myopia and limited appreciation of the extraordinary potential of The Bahamas.

It includes a slothful comfort by a mostly cosseted elite who are schooled in certain professions but largely uneducated in other areas, unaware of history and current events, basic science and sociology, and often incapable of critical thinking and happily anaesthetised by material comforts.

Our quality of success is largely measured in the luxury cars we own and the fine threads we wear and not in the books we read, or ongoing learning, or pursuits of culture and the life of the mind.

After the announcement of the generous donation of 20,000 vaccines from the Government of India, there was a burst of ignorance from some asking questions like: “Why are we getting vaccines from a poor country like India?” and “Why aren’t we getting our vaccines from the United States?”

Many of us are still prone to trekking to the Big House to get something from Master. Our plantation mind-set is deeply rooted in our mostly closed consciousness.

Because vaccines have been hoarded mostly by wealthier states, it has proved difficult for The Bahamas and others to purchase vaccines, especially smaller states. We should thank India for its generosity, which also includes vaccines to other Caribbean neighbours and developing countries.

Entrenched

Comments like these about India, often made by those with tertiary degrees, are a part of an entrenched worldview that looks mostly to white majority countries as superior. It is also a worldview ignorant of shifting geopolitical sands and the history and legacies of other countries.

With approximately 1.3 billion people, India has more people than all of Africa combined at 1.2 billion. A nuclear power, with a vibrant aerospace industry and sophisticated universities and tech-hubs, India is in the top five of the world’s largest economies.

There are more engineers in India than the entire population of Caricom, with about one and a half million engineers graduated annually in the country and approximately 3,000 engineering schools.

The Serum Institute of India, whence we are getting the 20,000 WHO-approved vaccines, is the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world, having begun operations in 1966. The Institute has produced a variety of vaccines that are used globally including in Europe and North America.

Former US President Bill Clinton has praised pharmaceutical manufacturers from India who produced generic HIV/AIDS drugs which were considerably cheaper than similar drugs from the United States. India is the main source of our HIV/AIDS drugs.

Pharmaceuticals from India have saved millions of lives globally. By volume, India is the third largest producer of pharmaceuticals.

There is a joke of US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping arguing about who’s in charge globally. Smiling, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi responds:

“Well, this I know: the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Net. App, MasterCard, DBS, Novartis, Diageo, SanDisk, Harman, Micron, Palo Alto Networks, Reckitt Benckiser and IBM are all of Indian birth or heritage. So, you tell me who is running the world?”

India has produced some of the most brilliant mathematicians, poets, scientists and thinkers in the world. Yet some Bahamians are querying vaccines from India!? Some seem to have forgotten the number of Indian teachers, doctors and engineers who have contributed to our national development.

There are four great offices of state in the United Kingdom: Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary.

Rishi Sunak, whose parents were born in Africa and whose grandparents were born in India, is the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a potential contender for leadership of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, is Ugandan-Indian.

Sadiq Khan is Mayor of London. He is a Sunni Muslim, whose grandparents migrated from India to Pakistan after Partition.

Experiment

A thought experiment: Given the choice between a white American with a few million proposing an investment project in the country and an Indian billionaire, who is a Sikh, proposing a project, who would most Bahamians likely prefer as an investor?

The white supremacist dominated world is changing fast, though such supremacy remains virulent and powerful and will likely last for many years.

With China and India emerging as superpowers, the traditional hegemonic and colonial powers of the United States and Europe, steeped in the history of slavery and white supremacy, are under challenge, convulsing those who fear the loss of dominance and hegemony.

There is no divine right of any country to rule the world. The United States of America will remain a superpower but any arrogance and hubris that it must remain the leading superpower will be superseded militarily, technologically, economically and intellectually.

Indian and Chinese talent and expertise are critical for the flourishing of American and European universities, technology companies and other sectors.

The Oprah Winfrey interview with British Prince Harry and Meghan Markle is about much more than celebrity happenings.

The interview, which landed as a series of bombshells in the British Monarchy and House of Windsor concerns questions of race and white supremacy and a changing world order in which non-white countries are outstripping white countries which have dominated the global order for centuries.

It is not just a question of whether racist queries were made about the Queen’s great-grandchild by a member of the Royal Family.

The questions for the Monarch include: the systemic nature of racism in the UK, and the Monarchy, including its relationship to the Commonwealth and to the countries of which the Queen remains head of state.

A telling cultural fact and comparison: more than 60 percent of Commonwealth citizens are 29 years old or under compared with Prince William who is 38.

The mostly black, brown and younger people of the Commonwealth will not be pleased if either Prince Charles or Prince William, both of whom will serve as head of the Commonwealth, are revealed to have uttered racist comments. Nor will a continuously diversifying Britain be pleased.

Following the Winfrey interview, Queen Elizabeth released a statement which read in part: “The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. Whilst some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.”

While this may be intended as a temporary placeholder, it is quite inadequate. The charges are more than “concerning”. What is meant by “recollections may vary”? The notion that allegations of racism will be dealt with “privately” will be not go down well with many around the world.

The movement to replace the British Monarch as head of state in Australia, New Zealand and Barbados was previously gathering pace and will likely accelerate given the claims made by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Although, in a conservative Bahamas, afraid of change, we are likely to be one of the last countries hanging on by our scratching fingertips and knuckles to a foreign head of state and the Privy Council. We certainly possess an ironic and convenient sense of genuine nationalism.

Leaders in Barbados, Jamaica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines have expressed interest in removing the British monarch as head of state.

Embedded

A provincial and colonial worldview and fear of change is deeply embedded in the consciousness of many Bahamians, including leaders in various areas of national life, who fail to appreciate the opportunities of a more expansive worldview.

The commentary on social, print and broadcast media, including sometimes from some academics, as well as the level of debate in the political and civic arenas, suggests how paralyzed and frightful we are intellectually and culturally.

Intellectually, we are often stunningly ill-informed about basic world and other facts that many educated people, opinion leaders and journalists around the world have at their fingertips.

A friend whose child is in high school laments that his 15-year-old son understands basic human biology better than the nonsense and ignorance the former sees regularly in WhatsApp and Facebook posts by adults much older than his teenage child.

Among the reasons The Bahamas has fared generally well during the pandemic is because of the leadership of Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis, who was determined to take strong measures and not to pander.

The other vital leadership that is steering us through the pandemic is Dr. Merceline Dahl Regis. Without her experience, training, competence and no-nonsense leadership the country might have been in a considerably worse position, especially compared with some of our Caribbean neighbours to whom we are often compared.

Former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham recruited her from the Bahamas Diaspora to return home to serve as Chief Medical Officer beginning in 1997.

Mr. Ingraham and Dr. Dahl Regis enjoyed a shared vision of national development that dramatically transformed public health. Without that vision and those investments we would have been significantly less prepared for the current pandemic.

The National Immunization Cold Storage Facility in New Providence, the brainchild of Dr. Dahl Regis and others, took several years of planning. Today, it can store the several hundred thousand vaccines which will help to arrest COVID-19.

The Bahamas desperately needs more talent, with open and expansive minds and world views to move an often moribund and closed society forward.

Just as we were better prepared for COVID-19 because of Mr. Ingraham and Dr. Dahl-Regis, how are we preparing for future opportunities and threats, and the potential and opportunities for a more dynamic and open economy and society?