Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter, ‘Flawed criticism of Cheddi Jagan,’ SN, Feb 21. It is always interesting when you read these types of propagandistic angles, and the condemnatory words the writers use to describe the views of others. Those very descriptions apply to their assessments too. The letter-writer was responding to M Maxwell’s criticism of Jagan’s legacy and Maxwell’s work was referred to as nonsense. Yet, ‘Flawed criticism of Cheddi Jagan’ is not only a nonsensical panegyric of Cheddi Jagan but an extremely silly description of the non-existent virtues of Dr. Jagan.
First, the writer denies any embrace of racial politics by Cheddi Jagan and barefacedly refers to Jagan’s early reliance on non-Indians like Sydney King (Eusi Kwayana). What a major fault in the essay. Eusi Kwayana has literally dozens of essays that accuse Dr Jagan of playing the race card from the fifties onwards. I will not dwell at length on the argument that shows the race content of Jagan’s politics from the fifties onwards. It is not necessary to do so and for one fundamental reason – the organization of East Indians was to Dr Jagan what water is to a plant. One should not dignify any polemic that puts Dr Jagan and the PPP above race.
You can take a book and quote what you want from it. This is what the letter-writer did. Use is made of Stephen Rabe’s book, US Intervention in Guyana: A Cold War Story. The very Rabe on the back cover describes Jagan as a politician popular among East Indians. Rabe goes on to tell his readers where he got his source materials from – the archives of the US Government. The archives of the Russian Government remain closed to Western academics doing research on the Cold War. I guess Guyanese will have to wait longer to find out how servile Cheddi Jagan was as a puppet of Soviet hegemony. Finally on Rabe, he had some unflattering comments on Jagan. As for the Cubans, I doubt they would ever open up their archives for that period. Maybe not until the Communist Party is removed from power.
Next, is Clem Seecharran’s Sweetening Bitter Sugar. What the letter-writer left out was the chapter where Seecharran exposed Jagan’s treachery and even remarked that sugar workers were too fond of the Booker boss, Jock Campbell and that led Jagan to undermine Campbell. Moses Nagamootoo has an interesting story that he should tell the person who wrote that letter about Seecharran’s book launch. Clem Seecharran (we were contemporaries at MacMaster University) and David Dabydeen are good friends so Dabydeen came to Guyana for the book launch. Dabydeen failed to get Mrs Jagan to accompany him because Mrs Jagan was hostile to the book which she claimed was an unfair portrayal of her husband.
The letter-writer made no mention of the October 2011 publication of two huge volumes on Dr Jagan, The Indelible Red Stain by Mohan Ragbeer. I reviewed this book during the Christmas period (2012) and what a shock I got when his nephew telephoned me to say the author was in Guyana. We talked over the phone. Ragbeer literally demolished Jagan’s legacy in his work. Readers should note that Ragbeer literally grew up under Jagan as his big brother was one of Jagan’s early advisors in the late forties and early fifties
The tall tales of Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham will go on once there is a country named Guyana. Those who admire them will be selective in what they tell us. Those who hate them will adopt the same attitude. The problem with the historiography is Burnham. He appears as the perennial culprit and Jagan as the permanent angel. All that is changing as more and more scholars and elderly Guyanese write. Some of the virtues of Burnham are coming out, and many of the unpleasant dimensions of Jagan’s long career are emerging.
Finally, the letter-writer requested that his/her name not be published. We can easily understand that. When you write the puerile, nonsensical stuff that is contained in that letter, then you surely don’t want people to know who you are. Sadly, look today at the people whom Jagan nurtured in politics and who were his protégés. I say most unashamedly, give me Burnham’s choices any day. With the exception of one or two they were just better people.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
