Remembering Cheddi Jagan
by Dale A. Bisnauth
Beginning with his own “The West on Trial,” there is a considerable bibliography on, and, by, the late President Cheddi Jagan. That material is more than adequate to enable the modern historian to construct the saga of a bare-foot boy, born to Indian indentured immigrants, who rose to the pre-eminent position of President of the Republic of Guyana. In his life-time, he was dubbed by many of his supporters as, “Awee Mahatma.” Friends and opponents alike are agreed that he is the “Father of the Nation.” My feeling is that he would have been dismissive of both claims. Such was the modesty of the man.
The written and oral material on Dr Jagan provides a multi-dimensional prism through which to look at, and marvel, that such a man – statesman and fine human being – shared our common dust and transformed it from a mean little place, to a country where decency and hope might still be possible. While too many people have shaken the dust off their feet as they exited Guyana, Cheddi Jagan remained committed to Guyana. That he did, because he believed that this land was worth the struggle, that being Guyanese was a thing so desirable as to merit the sacrifice, is as commendable as it is scarcely believable.
In C.J’s breast must have throbbed with terrible, all-consuming passion the heart-beat of a consummate patriot. That this erstwhile periphery of Empire, this Mudland threatened by swamp in heavy rainfall, and burnt-brown in drought, this society broken by shame and human perfidy, and characterized by raw hate and exploitation of man by man, could breed a person such as he, must indeed signal that still out of this country, could come greatness and heroism; that being Guyanese is a matter of great pride. This, we can learn from Cheddi Jagan.
In my imagination, I can envisage him standing there some time in the past, in times marked by simmering race-hate that could vent itself in open violence, in times characterized by dangerous political pettiness that was going to be a threat to his life’s vocation, with that characteristic smile that was the window to his soul. There he stood, like a shining beacon, beckoning the rest of Guyana, with a characteristic flailing of the arms like windmills, to catch up with him, if it dared, if it can.
And to me, that challenge is still there. But it is not a call to imitate him, except in spirit. To imitate the unique is vain. It is vanity to try to walk in his shoes. But a call is there, nonetheless. It is a call to learn of, and from, him. Not to copy him detail upon detail, even if that were possible; but to learn from him how best to continue the work that was his life, how to carry his baton as it were, in our stage in the relay-race, to build a modern society in which people matter above all things, a truly human and humane society.
Cheddi Jagan has taught this nation that revolution or radical change is born of the passion for humanization; that without that intensity of concern for the well-being of humans, whatever else parades as revolution will, in all possibility, devour its own children. People-centrism characterized Dr Jagan’s politics. So, too, did the life-style of truth. In politics, he refused to be the hypocrite (that is, in the etymological meaning of the word, “mask-wearer”). While his opponents vacillated from one “principled” position to another, as they reckoned the political game demanded, C.J. remained constant in an ideological position that put people first.
One can only surmise where Dr Jagan came by his supreme commitment to people, by his simple yet profound belief in people, when the first stirrups of the revolutionary would be born in him. When was it that the human in him would seek to break out from “being cramped to “being free” for himself and for his people? It might have been on the sugar plantations at Port Mourant where the teenager worked, co-opted by his parents, to help support a large family. Was it there that he developed an abhorrence for colonial domination in the world of sugar? Was it there that he first experienced the vicious, iron-clad operations of class oppression with overtones of racism, as the white oligarchy distanced themselves socially and spatially from labourers? Maybe it was in the United States where racism manifested itself at every turn and of which he was a victim; maybe it was a tailor working for an establishment that was exploitative of the poor, or as a peddler of “quack” medicine in the slums of Harlem, for a small commission; or as an elevator boy working the graveyard shift from midnight to 8:00 am; that he came consciously to commit himself to the welfare of the common folk, for the rest of his life.
Or, was it that devastating occasion when the Enmore martyrs were slain, and he vowed that their sacrifice would never be in vain, not as long as he was alive and able to do something about it? Whatever combination of factors it was, Cheddi Jagan would base his struggle for radical change on class issues as he sought to unite urban Blacks and rural Indians in a pitched battle for self-governance, adult suffrage and economic and social justice.
In the twilight years of his life, the concern for the human shone through in the passion with which he spoke and advocated for: “Development with a human face,” “A New Global Human Order.” He declared: “Economic Development without Human development is unacceptable.” And he supported a positive response to liberalization and globalization, but not at the expense of the poor and the working class. In all things the HUMAN remained central, constant, unchanged!
We remember Cheddi Jagan best, by enshrining all our fellow Guyanese of every colour and creed, age, sex, status and derivation, in our hearts. Peace!
A fraternal salute to Cheddi Jagan
by Jeronimo Carrera (from Caracas,Venezuela)
This March 22, our Guyanese neighbours will be remembering with a naturally marked patriotic sentiment, the principal impellor of its national independence, Cheddi Jagan, one of the most eminent – and less known outside of his country – of the Marxist revolutionaries that in all of the twentieth century confronted the domination of the United States in our continent.
On this date in the year 1918, Cheddi was born, son of immigrants from India, who had arrived in the then British Guiana in 1901 under conditions of semi-slavery imposed by Great Britain on those Asian immigrants after the abolition of slavery of Africans. These origins indicate to us the magnitude of the obstacles that he had to overcome before culminating a glorious life, ten years ago, on dying in office as the President of the Republic of an independent Guyana on March 6, 1997, exactly 16 days before reaching the age of 79 years.
For me, his accomplishments in life are magnified with the passing decade after seeing his party remain in government, by winning in repeated elections. In fact, the People’s Progressive Party, known abroad simply as the PPP, has been able to preserve its unity and also its prestige among the people. A historical legacy that is comparable, on the global stage, to the example of Ho Chi Minh and his Vietnamese Communist Party.
I have had the good fortune of being a friend of Cheddi Jagan – whom I first met on a flight from Caracas to Havana to celebrate the 1st of May, 1960 - a flight on which I was accompanied by our unforgettable comrade, Eduardo Gallegos Mancera, and also during which we met the great Chilean Socialist, Salvador Allende – I could discourse extensively on details of his condition of a true communist, as I had been able to prove in various opportunities over long conversations we had in the forthcoming years, during his visits to Venezuela and mine to Guyana.
But I think it would be more interesting for today’s readers to know Cheddi’s own words in the following intervention:
“Comrades, we would like to thank you for your kind invitation to come here to participate in the discussions. For us, coming here is like coming home to a family united by an ideological community.
“Not only in theory, but also in practice have we become convinced that we belong precisely in this family. The repeated attacks that we have come under from the conservative governments of Churchill, Macmillan and Home and by the liberal administration of Kennedy, as well as the traitorous policies of the social democratic governments of Attlee and Wilson have demonstrated that only the international communist movement, in alliance with the democratic and progressive forces of capitalist countries and the liberating movements in the colonies and in the neo-colonial countries – in no way the conservative, liberal and social democratic leaders – can help the workers of Guyana (British Guiana) and of other countries to free themselves of imperialistic exploitation and oppression.
“Our presence here will give rise to new attacks, but that does not terrify us. We have long known the main weapon of the imperialists: anti-communism. We were attacked twenty years ago, when encouraged by the feats of the soviet people, carried out under the magnificent leadership of the Soviet Union Communist Party, we formed in 1946 the Committee of Political Action and in 1950, the People’s Progressive Party, which proclaimed national independence as its programme and raised the flag of scientific socialism. “(International Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties, Moscow 1969, Documents, Peace and Socialism Editorial, Prague 1969, p. 740)
Eternal honour to the memory of our comrade Cheddi Jagan!
(Published in the weekly La Razon, No. 635, Caracas, Sunday, March 18, 2007)
(Translated from the original Spanish)
