Balram Singh Rai should not get a national award

Dear Editor,

Here are a few observations of mine in relation to Ralph Ramkarran’s take on the split between Cheddi Jagan and Minister Balram Singh Rai that led to the expulsion of the latter from the PPP, thus ending his ministerial career in 1962 (Sunday Stabroek, June 7). Ramkarran wrote: “Although Rai had become a respected and popular figure by 1962, he could not have competed in the eyes of the leadership [the PPP] with Benn’s credentials…”

That analysis of Ramkarran is another restatement from PPP stalwarts on the cause of the split between Jagan and Rai. The academic, Baytoram Ramharack, in his book, Against the Grain: The Politics of Balram Singh Rai, offers an assessment that is quite different from Ramkarran’s.

Ramharack’s take is in sync with that of many other analysts. The story is much more complicated than Ramkarran’s thesis. After I grew up and became involved in my country’s politics, I dropped my intense admiration for Cheddi Jagan. As both a university mind and a political activist, I found severe weaknesses in Jagan’s leadership. There was much evidence available that Jagan was not this great man my parents and elder siblings made him out to be in our home.

I found out that not one PPP congress saw a straightforward election. Cheddi Jagan was always behind the scenes fixing things. One of Jagan’s obsessions at these congresses was to make sure that after voting there were African faces in the hierarchy of the central committee. Dr Jagan arranged votes that would allow Dr Roger Luncheon to be a big winner. This went on for several congresses.

Mr Ramkarran should know about these conspiracies because he bitterly denounced manipulation of the Diamond Congress in the letter pages of the Stabroek News a few years ago. Although it was positive thinking to have African faces in his party hierarchy, Dr Jagan was involved in a Sisyphean task at each congress to get such faces elected. The reason was simple – the PPP was an Indian party, embedded in rural constituencies and that made gravitation to it by African citizens an impossibility.

The popular approach on the Jagan-Rai split was that given the torrid racial violence in the sixties, Jagan found it strategic to have the PPP chairman come from the African Guyanese section. He therefore advised Rai against running. I think it was an understandable instinct from Jagan and in the interest of the country, Rai should have made the sacrifice.

In refusing Jagan’s request, it showed that Jagan was not the invincible monarch that he was perceived to be in the PPP. It was the same in the PNC with Burnham. Dr Rawle Farley and Llewellyn John were not afraid to challenge Burnham. Rai’s open defiance of Jagan did not go down well with Jagan because it diluted the aura Jagan had in the PPP.

What Jagan did was to campaign vigorously against Rai. Apparently Jagan’s campaign failed to persuade voters and both Cheddi and Janet Jagan manipulated the voting to give Brindley Benn more votes than Rai.

This was when the war broke out. I think Rai was annoyed with Jagan for both campaigning and manipulating the vote. The die was cast when Jagan tampered with the voting process. It made Rai feel invincible because even the great Cheddi Jagan couldn’t stop him from becoming chairman of the PPP.

Ramharack’s book is too partial to Rai (I believe Ramharack is an Indian supremacist and it has undermined his scholarship) and he omitted these details that I have listed here. Rai was too uncompromising because he harboured leadership ambitions. These ambitions hit the sky when Rai found out that Jagan couldn’t stop him from becoming second in charge of the PPP. I guess in the end both Jagan and Rai were justified in the course they pursued.

My own position was that Rai put his ego before country in that fateful period 1961-1962. He refused to give Ramharack an interview for Ramharack’s book. Rai never cared for country or history. And at his age (he is approaching late nineties), I doubt whether he will change. I wouldn’t support a national award for him as Ralph Ramkarran is suggesting.

Yours faithfully,

Frederick Kissoon