Huge gathering at the observance of life, work of the late Dr Jagan

Babu Jaan, Port Mourant, Berbice, hosted a huge gathering of Government officials, their families, friends and supporters of the late Dr Cheddi Jagan, as the annual observance to remember and honour his life and work, took place on Sunday, March 23 this year.
Throughout March 2025, a series of activities will be held to mark what would have been his 107th birthday.
Against the backdrop of this annual memorial event, the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) leadership delivered a resounding message of confidence and unity as they look ahead to the 2025 General and Regional Elections.
The event also featured tributes from the Progressive Youth Organisation (PYO), the Women’s Progressive Organisation (WPO), and the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU).

Life and Times
Born on March 22, 1918, Dr Jagan founded the PPP and was a pioneering figure in Guyanese politics.
He passed away on March 6, 1997.
Dr Jagan was born on March 22, 1918 on a sugar plantation in Port Mourant, Berbice, the son of indentured sugar workers. His parents had arrived in the then British Guiana as young infants with their mothers from the district of Basti in Uttar Pradesh, India. Both of his grandmothers came as indentured immigrants in 1901 and were “bound” by five-year contracts to different sugar plantations in the county of Berbice.
Jagan attended primary school and two years of secondary school in his area. At the age of fifteen his father decided to send him to Queen’s College, a Government secondary school in the capital city of Georgetown, about one hundred miles away. There he boarded with three families.
In Georgetown, Cheddi found life very different from life at home where poverty had been intense and he often had to stay home from school to work in the rice fields and to cut and fetch canes. He also helped his mother keep a kitchen garden and to sell produce from it.
His mother allowed him to keep a part of the proceeds for his share of the work. Cheddi Jagan wrote that he learnt the elements of finance from his mother and acquired any of his leadership qualities from his father, who was bold and flamboyant.
Dr Jagan left for the United States (US) in September 1936 with two friends and returned to British Guiana in October 1943. He lived in Washington D.C for two years and attended Howard University, taking a pre-dental course, worked two summers in New York and spent the last five years in Chicago, Illinois at Northwestern University.
On August 5, 1943 he married Janet Rosenberg, whom he had met only six months before, at a simple ceremony at the Chicago City Hall without the consent of parents on both sides. Their only wedding photo was taken in a 25-cent photo booth that shot automatic photos.
In October 1943, he returned home. His wife Janet, arrived in British Guiana just before Christmas of 1943.
In 1947, the first elections since World War II (WWII) were held. Janet and Cheddi Jagan ran as independent labour candidates—Janet contested in Georgetown, while Cheddi campaigned on the East Coast of Demerara. Janet lost to John Fernandes, a businessman and Catholic, who leveraged the rising fear of anti-communism, a tactic increasingly used by the plantocracy. However, Cheddi was declared the winner in his constituency.
By 1950, the PPP was established.