Tomorrow’s the death anniversary of Cheddi – as he was known by all – and will be commemorated by many. But, if the truth be told, mostly from his side of the aisle who’ll make the trek to Babu Jaan. Sadly it’s another reminder of the entrenched divisions in our country. Time hasn’t healed the 1950s split of the national movement as we keep regurgitating it ‘round elections time – which is around the corner!
So what’s different about Dr Jagan? First, there’s the dualism in his early life, plucked as he was from his ‘country-babu’ Port Mourant surroundings, to the elite Georgetown post-war bastion of privilege that was Queen’s College. In the 1930s, class and colour were sharply coincident and young Jagan would’ve had many a lesson in local social distinctions, in addition to the rural-urban one.
His departure for the US was also unusual since most of his contemporaries with professional aspirations would’ve moved on to the UK. It’s rather ironic that Jagan became a Marxist while studying in the US – the great bastion of capitalism! But maybe not really – since, as Marx predicted, the contradictions of capitalism is greatest in such locales. Especially living among the poor and powerless when Jim Crow still ruled the south where he was studying in a black University, Howard.
Unlike later immigrants from Berbice to the US from the seventies onwards – Jagan didn’t focus on accumulating money for “the house and car”, but on paying for his education. His perspective on life, therefore, was more dispassionate and he was deeply affected by the social and economic barriers to blacks and the poor. When 30 years later he referred to blacks as being at the bottom of the ladder, he was harking to his experiences from the thirties. But he was lynched by local blacks!!
When he returned to Guyana in 1943 with his even more radical Jewish wife, WWII was in full swing and the Americans had discovered Guyana with their creation of Atkinson Field – now CJIA. As a dentist, and his wife seen as “white” — Jagan could’ve easily followed the path of other colonial professionals and tried to climb up the social ladder by becoming an “honorary” white.
But he didn’t. He identified with the toiling masses and was convinced their lot could only be improved by radically changing politics. This radicalism would be provided by Marxism – which had penetrated even staid Oxford University in England where T&T’s future PM had just finished his PhD thesis, “Capitalism and Slavery” under that influence.
Unfortunately, unlike Williams, Cheddi moved from Marxist ideas to taking Moscow as his model – when the Cold War had changed the political equation.
He bet on the right horse in the wrong race!!
…and forward
They say those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. So what lessons can we learn from Cheddi’s career?? Right off the bat, we can see that it doesn’t matter in Guyanese politics whether you are “racist” or not. Once your supporters are from a particular ethnic/racial group, you’ll be daubed with that brush! And how did that happen??
And the answer, of course, is Forbes Burnham!! Jagan had laid the groundwork by mobilising the up-to-then disenfranchised poorer Indians and Africans via the PAC and getting elected to the Legislature in 1947. But when the about-to-be-launched PPP made room for the just-returned Forbes Burnham, he demanded leadership or nothing. And split Africans from the PPP when he departed.
Some say Burnham was more “moderate” – they forget he was even more radical than Jagan in his pronouncements when he first returned!
His “moderation” was purely opportunistic and tactical – as history proved. And split Guyana forever.
…at Mash
Why is it Mash in Berbice gotta be a week late?? It inevitably ends up looking like a weak, shallow imitation of what already happened in Georgetown. And when you consider the GT event’s a weak, shallow imitation of T&T’s Carnival, that’s pathetic.
