Dear Editor,
The Stabroek News editorial of March 27 captioned ‘First-comers’ states, “One has the impression that the public’s familiarity with the history of this country is not as great as it used to be – all except the period since the Second World War, that is. Those seven decades are subject to endless recitation, at least one version of which forms the premise on which a whole political creed has been constructed. In contrast, a certain degree of vagueness attends the period before that, and confrontational debates are on occasion prosecuted on the basis of some very dubious historical data”.
It seems to me that even with this post-Second World War period, familiarity with the country’s history certainly appears questionable, and I am not referring to anyone’s version of the history of that period but to factual information which is easily verifiable.
In the March 26, 2016 edition of the state-owned Guyana Chronicle, embedded within the article ‘Local Gov’t elections… BV‒ the community that has won the right to govern itself’ are four bullet points of facts considered to be “Firsts for BV/Triumph”. Unfortunately, the last of these which states “BV is the only village to have produced three ministers of education, namely Ceciline Baird, Vibert Mingo and Dr Henry Jeffrey” is inaccurate. It is an indelible fact of history that BV has produced four ministers of education, the first being Balram Singh Rai.
Mr Rai was born on February 8, 1921 at Beterverwagting Village. He attended Beterverwagting Government School (formerly Bethel Congregational School), after which he proceeded to Modern High School in Georgetown, from where he matriculated. Now in his 96th year, he resides in London, England. He is a Barrister of the Middle Temple, England, where he passed the 1952 Hilary Term Bar Examination with honours and was placed first among all overseas students. Earlier he had secured the LLB degree with honours from London University in 1952, as an external student.
In fact, Mr Rai was the Minister of Community Development and Education in the PPP government of British Guiana during the 1957-61 period. As Minister of Education, he abolished the system of “dual control of schools” by government and Christian religious denominations thereby allowing Hindus and Muslims of the country to secure employment in teaching positions in Christian denominational church controlled schools, a barrier that prevented their employment under the earlier system of dual control. As a result, serving teachers of the Christian faith were also able to move laterally on appointment and promotion in and between Christian denominational schools. He was also responsible for building government secondary schools in the countryside which were the first to provide free secondary education starting in 1963. Additionally, Mr Rai’s ‘History and Culture Week’ policies and programmes for the Ministry of Education in regard to enhancing the latent potential of the liberal arts and sciences enabled the country to move progressively from a colonial state circumscribed by the motto Damus Pettimusque Viccissim (We Give and We Take in Return) to a higher state of independence and freedom, engendered in the new motto of ‘One People, One Nation, One Destiny’.
The foregoing is not all the accomplishments of BV and Mr Rai. Any proper, unbiased study of local history at the time would reveal that Balram Singh Rai also helped to secure independence and freedom for Guyana from the British government. He was a PPP delegate at the British Guiana Independence Conference at Lancaster House, London, England, in March 1960, and through his erudite political, legal and diplomatic presentation, the British government was persuaded to agree to vest responsibility for the police in an elected minister of the PPP government, to promulgate an internally self-governing constitution for British Guiana, and to discontinue British rule in the colony soon after a general election in 1961. Mr Rai was the minister in whom responsibility for the Police Force was then vested in April 1960, soon after the British Guiana delegation returned to Georgetown. Thus Balram Singh Rai of BV became the first Minister of Home Affairs. Later in a PNC government, Mr Vibert Mingo of BV was appointed Minister of Home Affairs. Thus, another historically wonderful ‘first’ for BV, being able to claim two Ministers of Home Affairs – Balram Rai and Vibert Mingo. It should be noted as well that the Geneva, Switzerland, based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) on page 37 of its October 1965 ‘Commission of Inquiry into Racial Problems in the Public Service’ endorsed the remarkable achievement in 1961 of the Minister of Home Affairs (Balram Singh Rai) in dealing with the sensitive matter of racial imbalance in the Police Force.
As Minister of Community Development, Mr Rai was a pre-eminent trail blazer in local government reforms as he took steps to give the people in the rural areas a greater degree of responsibility in the management of their own affairs. This was done, among other things, by raising country districts to village district status and by such other means as the relaxation of Local Government Board control over the award of contracts. Previously there were villages with partly nominated councils and country districts with wholly nominated councils. This hybrid system was abolished and all members of the re-constituted councils were elected to provide for wider representation to villagers.
For additional information on the remarkable achievements of Balram Singh Rai in the history of BV his native village, I would like to refer readers to Patterns of Progress, The Story of Achievement in British Guiana 1957-1960. The booklet was published in May 1961 by the Government Information Services (GIS), then of 30 Hadfield Street, Georgetown, and printed by the BG Lithographic Company, La Penitence.
Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, under whose portfolio the responsibility for the Guyana Chronicle falls, may want to see that Mr Rai is not subjected to revisionist history in the state-owned newspaper which wipes him out from the picture of Guyana’s history. He may also wish to take steps to reverse the unjust denial of a parliamentary pension to Mr Rai. Surviving members of an older generation may remember Mr Nagamootoo as one of a number of young activists in the Letter Kenny/Whim/Nigg/ Bloomfield area in Corentyne, Berbice who stood on the side of the 1964 Justice Party of Balram Sngh Rai, Haji Ramjohn and Jai Narine Singh.
Yours faithfully,
Harry Hergash
