Dear Editor,
Indeed, in an earlier letter, I did not name the parties that sought funds from the CIA for its destabilisation campaign against the PPP, but that does not mean that I am not willing to name them.
Mr Nazir’s historical beliefs (‘Guyana Revue article on Janet Jagan was instructive’ SN,17.6.2009) cements my views of the guinea pig nature of our politicians and what a high cost they are to Guyanese. Mr Nazir can hold onto his historical beliefs, but I will nevertheless refer him to page 130 of Stephen G Rabe’s 2005 book, US Intervention in British Guiana, a cold war story, which makes exhaustive use of all declassified documents on Guyana as well as the private archives not researched before to draw conclusions. I quote for easy reference:
“The CIA settled on Jai Narine Singh and Balram Singh Rai to lead the new Justice Party. Jai Narine Singh asked the United States for $75000 a month in campaign expenses to be deposited in the Royal Bank of Canada. In conjunction with the British, the CIA also helped create a political party for Muslims, the Guiana United Muslim Party or GUMP led by Hoosein Ganie.” The original source of the information is the Memorandum of conversation between Jai Narine Singh and William B Cobb of the US State Department dated June 16, 1964 as well as the minute of the meeting of the Colonial Office (POL 19 BR GU, DSR, NU) with Duncan Sandys on the new political parties in British Guiana, dated February 25, 1964.
Nazir’s statement “as far as I am aware” can be construed to be either that Mr Nazir has limited awareness or that he is hoping that the declassified CIA documents are all that there is to historical accounts of what happened in Guyana. There are numerous other archives if you are determined enough to find information.
There have been no published accounts of evidence of communist funding for British Guiana or the PPP until after 1969.
The accusations of funding were all part of the destabilisation plot with no evidence to back it up. Cheddi Jagan in 1969 joined the international Communist Party because he said he felt cheated by the British. Thereafter, the PPP transformation into a rigid communist party began. If Mr Nazir is willing to provide the funding, I will take a trip to the Soviet archives to search out any links of funding for the PPP pre-1969. Casting aspersions comes easily to us.
We use words like “were believed to have enjoyed” to suggest relationships, which may never have existed or which we cannot prove. The animal that the PPP became post-1969 is another story of equal interest.
No one can deny that Balram Singh Rai was cheated by Dr Jagan and the PPP. The closest explanation that seems to fit the scene of what happened was given by Rakesh Rampertab in 2005 and fits within Ernst Halperin’s (1965) investigations. Halperin found that Rai, then the Home Affairs Minister and a very respected member of the Indian community, had been elected chairman of the PPP in 1962, but Dr Jagan declared the results of that election null and void and forced through the re-election of Brindley Benn as the chairman of the PPP at special meeting packed with reliable Jagan supporters.
It is no wonder that Donald Ramotar could not find any evidence of rigging. There was none. It was the hijacking of the process. Jagan acted in the manner he did because of the loss of Sydney King and Rory Westmaas earlier due to ideological differences (all of them communist to different degrees) and the potential effect of the loss of these prominent Blacks (after the split with Burnham) on the elections results. While not a racist at heart, Dr Jagan, according to Halperin (1965), switched over to a policy of racism and appointed prominent Blacks to his cabinet.
Halperin said Dr Jagan had a difficult time getting the Indians to accept Benn’s chairmanship of the party and Mrs Jagan called a meeting of the pandits to get them to support the party in return for a promise of policy of support for Indians. This is no doubt how the demonization of Blacks took place – in the struggle for power and as a vehicle of Apan Jhaat. My father told me that Blacks were ‘Ravanas’ (the demonic race whom Lord Rama fought against). This, he obviously got from the pandits campaigning for the PPP, as my father at the time, was not considered religious much less spiritual. Rai, an Arya Samaj, resigned from the PPP in disgust. One would have expected that if Jagan desired a multi-racial party, as he very well may have, he could have counselled Rai in this direction. But it appears that the relationship between Jagan and Rai was not without its own dynamics and friction, and indeed a larger force may have been at work.
Now onto Mr Nazir’s grouse on the caste system in Guyana. Logic will tell you that what operates in Guyana is a class system and not a caste system.
The Indians who came to Guyana were forced on their voyages to eat from the same utensils and use the same facilities.
This is unheard of in the caste system in India. The voyage to Guyana was the beginning of the breakdown of the caste system for Indians in Guyana.
Their lives in crowded logies went a step further, as did their lives as plantation labourers with no distinction. But what went one step further in some cases was the intermarriage between Indians and Blacks.
There remained no caste system to speak about after all of this. For more information on this, read the work of retired Professor Raymond T Smith who studied Guyana; Halperin and others.
The only remnants that were brought forward into modern Guyana was that of the Bramhins being seen as the only ones with a divine right to read the scriptures, and even this is being overturned on its head.
The wide support for Prakash Gossai is a testament to this. I have not read the work of Dr Kean Gibson but I intend to when I have the time.
The dynamics of Guyana have been such that one can easily mix the injustices of the class system with those of a highly negative caste system.
All things white being of superior value and all things Black being of very low value was replaced in British Guiana with a struggle for representation and clashes between two dominant ethnic groups.
The causes of these clashes were never the caste system, as this was basically stillborn. Politics empowered the races to feel better about themselves, but the reason for the disquiet among the two major ethnic groups, in the words of the Waddington Commission Report, was when Indians, earlier apathetic about Guyanese politics, began to “compete for positions which they had not hitherto sought.” This, the report says, “stimulated the other races into closing their ranks” (Halperin, 1965).
Yours faithfully,
Gitanjali Persaud
Keep on writing Ms Persaud. I’m cutting out and pasting clippings of your view of history in my little notebook.
why?
Always interested in different perspectives of history.
because there is this question as to who really started the race lagacy of guyana politics.
Ms. Persaud is a clever writer, but we are equally clever readers; not only of what is written, but what is not written.
That said, when the writer says, “There have been no published accounts of evidence of communist funding for British Guiana or the PPP until after 1969,” please read that to mean that the accounts may well exist but they have never been declassified and published. Jagan did get help from the commies, but since the commies deal in absolute secrecy, don’t hold your breath waiting for declassification fo information they have on Guyana pre-1969.
Gitanjali no published accounts from before 1969 does not mean that KGB money was not funnelled into GY.
Gitanjali has taken a view of providing published evidence. But in knowlegde based arguements, grey knowledge and local knowledge/literature also adds up to inform a roboust position….implicit plus tacit knowledge presents an informed position. The world of research has long left implicit knowledge behind as the only source of evidence.
However your presentation is well articulated. Freddy, again I must say, you owe this young woman an apology…be man enough to admit that she was worth the investment in getting into UG. Oh I think she did a masters…same certification like you now. Do the honourable thing man!
I like this article Gitanjali,but the one you penned about your Guruji and tried to paint a rosy picture of him i totally disagree with,what Brandon said about the KGB could be true,the KGB and the Israeli Mossad are very different from the CIA.The CIA has to answer to the Senate Intelligence Committee and the president and they leave a paper trail,the other two i mentioned doesn’t really have to,so some things may not be recorded in the KGB’s archives but i believe the PPP received money from the USSR.Read:(Safe for Democracy)by John Prados.
Evans, that may be – but not when all of this grey and local “knowledge” is a fabrication as part of a covert operation. The US was determined that there will not be another cuba in its backyard and that was the end of it for Jagan, by whatever means necessary, and whether the threat was real or imagined.
Let me clear that the USSR funded the PPP and started the PPP.
The British and American was right that the USSR had interfer in the Politics of Guyana.
More so Dr. Cheddie Jagan was not a democratic in any sense of the word he was a dictator that headed the PPP just as the parties in Cuba(Castro) and the USSR. (It was Dr. Walter Rodney that saved his life in politics—which was misanalysis by Dr. Rodney—and he warned aganist this.)
Had guyana been an Island we would end up just like the people of Cuba–like the working people of Cuba and USSR( poor, indentured to the system and waiting for handout from the government)
I have not heard so much baloney until I read about it here.The PNC had more communist funding in Czeckoslovakian arms, barter goods of soap and trucks from East Germany,communist tractors from North Korea, Russian Ladas,and Yugoslavian heavy machinery.
And what is your point.
Burnham had sought to open up South-South trading…..so as to bypass the Capitalists to our North…..and to get around the money strangulation……he entered into barter agreements……remember…..Capitalists Northern Countries…..told us what they’ll pay for our raw materials….and also ‘told’ us what we had to pay for the finish products….this is the reason they made great successful efforts to squash this trade….
Caesar Agustus, you’re the man. The balance sheet of Soviet aid will show that Forbes Burnham got more than Cheddi Jagan. In addition to the items you mentioned, don’t forget the Russian helicopters. Jagan never got a single helicopter from the Soviets although he really needed one to conduct Party work from Matthews Ridge to the Rupununi. Mr Burnham flew up and down Guyana on those big birds. I commend the book “The Mitrokhin Archives” (Part Two), written by a former KGB boss, who never mentioned Jagan but said the Soviet leaders believed Burnham was a real socialist.
All of this stuff here sounds very interesting and counter productive to building unity among the racial and ethnic communities. Indeed, this explains why Guyana is a divided and failed country today.
These revelations here by Gitanjali are before my time, however, it appears that the innocent Guyanese people were rolally shafted, conned and divided with the slick hands of betrayal and selfish ambitions.
The big question henceforth is… How do the Guyanese electorate finally get rid of this stupid, outdated and irrevelant race-based ideology politics, which were deliberately imposed on them.???? Additionally, what a dumb legacy from a bunch of unlearned pathological minds???
The fix was in on Guyana because those so called great leaders at the time were immature petty politicians, who never honestly cared about the betterment of the society. They consciously engaged in a game of deliberate ethnic destruction disguised as party politics.
So is no ‘published’ evidence of communist funding for the PPP prior to 1969 supposed to be conclusive evidence that there was no such funding?
Excellent point Maxie! You have pointed out the problem of induction. In any case, the Soviet Union was not an open system and they never announced these things as is done in the great USofA!
By the way, folks, in the second or third best world of imperialism, which type of imperialism do you prefer? Soviet or American? Do most Guyanese migrate to Cuba, North Korea or the old Soviet Union or the US and Canada?
Tarron,Maxie
Indeed, no published evidence does not mean that there is conclusive evidence that there was no such funding. I am researching with an open mind, and have changed my perception of the PPP and the Jagans several times in the past few months as I get deeper. However, to date, I have not found anything that can substantiate the claims of funding from moscow and when I look at the totality of the destabilisation campaign, the charges of such funding is situated within this, on which there has been no evidence. In Guyana, especially, once an accusation is made, it sticks without evidence and becomes local knowledge. For example, everyone believes that Janet Jagan was the marxist and the stronger one on whom Jagan leaned in times of stress. This has been debounked by other researchers who found that it was Jagan who became the die hard (post 1964) and he got Janet to follow him into his turgid readings. Other bloggers have already alluded to what I have found – Burnham received substantial funding from the communist centres after he became a convenient communist. It does not fit that the funding for Burnham would be available and documented but that for Jagan would not be, a matter of a few years apart. We need to separate our emotions when we are looking at the issues. But what I found most instructive was Ramdass (1978) assertion that if Jagan and Burnham had formed a coalition government, it probably would have been a socialist dictatorship. I have no reason to doubt this view.
Gitanjali the statement that “if Jagan and Burnham had formed a coalition government, it probably would have been a socialist dictatorship” is absolutely accurate.
Jagan supported Burnham’s communist and socialist actions to the end, The nationalization of banks, and various private industries was something that was heavily supported by Jagan. Today when you look at what the PPP has become basically an elected dictatorship it clearly shows the leanings of this group of communists that all they really know about is communism and dictatorial rule.
This is a good article, now i know why guyana is the way it is, and i hope we get move beyond ethnic politics and get rid of both the ppp and pnc and put in people who are about building guyana.
And what is your point here?The world is level.I mean, how do you AMEN RA propose to get rid of them. I would like to see you set that example.Explain yourself.
Imagine all these years we young people were led to believe that Mr. Jagan was a pie and always fought for democracy and Cde Burnham was the wicked dictator. Now we are being told that Mr. Jagan didn’t rig his Party election but hijacked the entire process. Let the debate continue.
hahhahaha that is the illusion my friend that is the illusion, many indians who left the PPP actually saw Burnham as a moderate. But try telling that to my indian bretheren.
I figured this out as a school-boy, one of the silent ones who followed Dr. Rodney’s ‘talks’ closely. Let’s move on to more ’substance’. I have read them all. I remember going around peddling the ‘propagandas’, namely Thunder, Mirror and New Nation for 5 cents each and when they became too heavy, giving them away!! Now being curious in nature, I would sit and read them all word for word and believe me, as a 13 year old, I learned to combine, siphon and pull out facts from lies. All the talks and counter yaps from them all… simply unbelievable. I used to eavesdrop on conversations between leading members of the PPP, being a nephew of one of the KEY players of the Thunder I was basically unnoticed. I heard them all, Ranji, Moses Bhagwan, Balram, Paul Singh, Vincent Teekah, Haleem Majid, Boysee (he was the funniest). Boy! Did I eavesdrop!! The focus then was on ‘bottom house’ propagation. They were using reverse psychology even then, give them half and let them fabricate the other half! What a bunch the three generations from the 50’s right through to the 90’s have all been molded into! Now I am in a new era of looking in on the blind supporters and having my private laugh, believe me.. most of them do not have a clue!!
Sarkar, Could you get in touch with me please – gitanjalijgd@gmail.com.
Thanks.
Write a book, Sarkar, and publish it.
Sarkar that is the most amazing part of our society today, the blind following of people who are leading them off of cliff.
It would be helpful to the younger generation if u can share what you heard
I often wonder where is the REAL TRUTH?
Nothing such as real truth, just MORE truth.
Reader Colin.Wonder? Where?Up to now? What have you een doing al these years?How old are you to still be wandering around wondering?About what is truth.Truth is when you go into a dark room and switch on the light.