Dear Editor,
Burnham banned a lot of food items that affected the dietary choices of many Guyanese. But there continues to be masqueraded by some Indian-Guyanese this notion that Burnham’s ban of wheat flour was a direct attack on Indian-Guyanese and was a deliberate denial of an Indian-Guyanese dietary staple. This is a classic example of how political propaganda repeated enough times becomes dogma. Fact: Indian and African Guyanese both consume wheat flour on a regular basis in copious amounts. Fact: African-Guyanese eat roti too. Did the perpetrators of this nonsense somehow believe African-Guyanese never eat roti, ate rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner and never used wheat? Have they looked at bread lines in front of the bakeries in George-town under Burnham? The PPP peddled this mumbo-jumbo to Indians that somehow this problem was only an Indian problem. Every ethnic group in this nation struggled with the ban on wheat flour. Amerindians use wheat flour too. In fact, the contraband trade particularly in Berbice and Essequibo enabled Indian-Guyanese more access to wheat flour than Africans during the days of the Burnham ban.
It is time grown people stop parroting foolishness. Burnham was unequivocally wrong to ban these items. Even the argument that he wanted to strengthen local home-grown producers (which would have benefited the farming sector dominated by Indians) does not fly because he banned first and then attempted these changes rather than trying the changes to ensure they worked and then banning items. Further, how did Forbes Burnham expect success of a ‘produce local’ agenda when Africans were disinclined to produce to begin with or were pulled by him from their farms to become administrators?
When was the infrastructure for the production of anything broken? When the brainpower had fled? Did he expect the 43% of the population who were the major food producers whom he denied electoral choice to voluntarily sign up and sing Cumbaya?
They either left or didn’t care or saw their farming operations decline because of Burnham’s policies. So, Burnham’s so-called visionary agendas of Feed, Clothe and House the Nation were delusions of grandeur. On paper, perfect. In the reality that was Guyana in the 1970s to 1980s, garbage. Couldn’t work in a Guyana of that time facing those problems. It is the same socialist nonsense Cheddi Jagan would have shoved down the throat of this nation with similar effect since a major portion of the population would have done exactly the same as Indian-Guyanese did under Burnham.
Burnham did not believe in or know of pilot projects and controlled testing, a feature of the current PPP administration. Armed with the brazenness of power he did what the hell he felt was good in his socialist mind for Guyana. Never consulted the minds of Guyanese. His support for these hare-brained ideas was scant.
The majority Indian-Guyanese population was largely sceptical of and rejected his policies. There was a significant portion of African-Guyanese who similarly rejected his policies and conduct as Walter Rodney discovered. Burnham’s only realistic hope of achieving these delusions was by forcing them onto the people, which he did time and again with spectacular failure. We all know Burnham wrecked Guyana but Indian-Guyanese should have the decency, dignity and honesty to admit that the ban on wheat flour did not only affect them, it affected everyone including Amerindians, Africans, Chinese, Portuguese and Caucasians. Everyone suffered with the ban of wheat flour. Not just Indian-Guyanese.
Yours faithfully,
Michael Maxwell
