By Ryhaan Shah
There are plausible reasons to rewrite history chief among them being that new evidence might surface that could lead to different analyses and conclusions about past events. However, more often than not, the past is revised for personal or political gains. Such revisionism is a tool used by authoritarians to try and manipulate their people, oftentimes with dire results for their country.
Both Hitler and Stalin used propaganda shamelessly to portray themselves as glorious and popular leaders. To consolidate their power and the terror that went with it, only their version of events was published and disseminated.
However, there is too much evidence in personal papers and official documents in the archives of Germany and Russia for their accounts to be taken seriously by historians. Their propaganda only exposes them further as dictators who lied to their people in order to manipulate them and to cover up their venal brutality.
The writer George Orwell said, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history”, and another writer Arthur Conan Doyle stated, “What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.”
Historians agree that as soon as there is a purpose or agenda attached to a historical account, that analysis becomes tainted. The motives for such rewrites can be driven by academic ambition and financial gain since new radical theories can make an intellectual impact and can sell books.
It was Orwell again who observed that “he who controls the past, controls the future, he who controls the present, controls the past.”
This phenomenon of trying to control history itself is not only used by authoritarians. Japan, in a move to try and whitewash painful events and clean up its image of its recent past, actually influenced the content of textbooks to downplay its global aggression in the 1930s. This became a national scandal and the book was rejected by many school boards.
We can learn not only from historical facts but from how the history is being told and by whom, and this is the Guyana experience whenever the PNC speaks about President Forbes Burnham. Burnham was an ambitious man and a shrewd politician who was caught up in global political events that presented him with opportunities to fulfil his personal and political ambitions.
What the PNC actually project about their founder/leader is a two-dimensional whitewashed image that hardly does justice to a complex historical figure. A good analysis from an unbiased historian who can place Burnham within the context of his times would provide a better understanding about the ideas and convictions that drove him to follow the path he did.
In the PNC’s revisionist account, they leave out the rigged elections that kept him in power of which there is undisputed documented evidence. They leave out the violence, the party paramountcy, the racism, the bare shop shelves, the denial of press freedom, the state-sanctioned thuggery that led to the murder of Father Darke, and all the evidence of the PNC’s hand in the assassination of Dr Walter Rodney.
Claiming to be the party that ushered in independence, the PNC omits the skulduggery and CIA-funded racial violence that rocked Premier Cheddi Jagan from office and placed Burnham in power to satisfy American Cold War interests. Again, there are numerous records that exist about these events which are viewed by many as a national betrayal. There is no new evidence that changes the Burnham story.
Rather, each time the PNC attempts its revisionism, letters to the press only emphasise the truth with their corrections. Perhaps, the recent commemoration of the party’s 59th anniversary was kept low-keyed to avoid this.
That Burnham intended to uplift African Guyanese into being educated, progressive and into acquiring wealth is undisputed. His policy of institutionalised racism failed to make any headway but since his ideas on cooperativism and reviving village economies are still championed by African Guyanese leaders, he could have been motivated by a clear understanding of his supporters and their needs.
Reducing him to a two-dimensional figure is a clear disservice. Burnham lived large and with flamboyance, and he never lacked originality. Even his opponents were disarmed by his wit and charm.
The PNC faithful, however, appear to lack the courage needed to face the truth about the party’s past. This could probably only have come from Burnham himself. Only he, perhaps, could have accepted it all and taken the sting out of it with a signature witticism.
