Dear Editor,
My parents were indentured immigrants from Basti Jhila, Uttar Pradesh, in undivided India. I lived with them and other indentured immigrants on De Kinderen sugar estate West Coast Demerara. I often went into the sugar-cane fields with them and saw how they laboured in sun and rain for meagre wages. I also went with my parents to the estate pay office where they collected their weekly wages. Nothing of consequence in their lives on the plantation escaped my knowledge and vision, as I shared their experiences in struggle, sacrifice and survival. As a result, in tribute to them, I dutifully wrote a history of immigration from India to British Guiana and the Caribbean. I congratulate the columnist who wrote in the Guyana Review of May 28, 2009 for an excellent composition on Janet Jagan, which is generally instructive and could be of tremendous benefit to readers.
Ms Gitanjali Persaud claims that the (Hindu) caste system was annihilated in Guyana. I understand this to mean “utter destruction” of the system. She should tell this to Dr Kean Gibson who believes that the system is alive and kicking in Guyana. In the early ’60s, Dr Lloyd Best, a distinguished Caribbean academic, suggested that Dr Cheddi Jagan as Premier of British Guiana was running the government in a “Brahmanical” way. He repeated this statement in his tribute when Dr Jagan died in March 1997.
Ms Persaud also claims that people who were opposed to Cheddi Jagan received money from the American CIA. As far as I am aware, Balram Singh Rai’s Justice Party (JP) was financed exclusively from contributions by many public-spirited East Indians in Guyana who like me, Balram Singh Rai, Jai Narine Singh and many others were deeply concerned over the evils of the communist agenda of Cheddi and Janet Jagan.
I was a founding member of the Guyana United Muslim Party (GUMP) before I became a founding member of and candidate of the Justice Party of Balram Singh Rai and Jai Narine Singh in 1964. While I was a member of GUMP, I knew of no CIA funding for the party. The recipients of CIA funding are clearly stated in certain declassified US State Department reports. Balram Singh Rai’s Justice Party, Hoosein Ghani’s Guyana United Muslim Party and Cecil Gray’s National Labour Front are not named in the reports as recipients of CIA money. [Ed note: There is no suggestion in Ms Persaud’s letter that either the Justice Party or GUMP were recipients of CIA money.]
I am presently the leader of the United Muslim Party of Guyana, which is financed exclusively from my own personal earnings and by contributions from members, friends and well-wishers.
Ms Persaud would do the Guyanese people a great favour if she would research and divulge the many communist sources that funded the activities of the PPP. She may be able to tell of the financing for the many holiday vacations that certain senior members of the PPP were believed to have enjoyed in certain scenic resorts in Russia and other countries in Eastern Europe. She may also be able to tell of how much money the PPP collected from GIMPEX, GAWU, Cuba and the Guyana Rice Marketing Board.
The Justice Party and the Guyana United Muslim Party were cheated in the 1964 PR elections. Whenever the story is told, it would be an historic exposure of how the leadership of the PPP and its activists subverted the 1964 elections through voter intimidation. It is no secret that the party worked in devious ways to subvert the results of the PPP General Council elections in April 1962.
When Balram Singh Rai challenged the “rigging” of the April 1962 PPP General Council elections, he was expelled from the party; and later on, Burnham, Hoyte and Jagan each for his own reasons, denied him a national pension for his sterling services to Guyana. Balram Singh Rai had served his country with distinction as a civil servant, trade unionist, parliamentarian and government minister. He was a successful Minister of Com-munity Development and Education in 1957-1961 and the country’s first highly respected and effective Minister of Home Affairs in 1961-1964. Balram Singh Rai, a brilliant barrister, was also an architect of independence for the country when he was a PPP delegate at the 1960 British Guiana Constitutional Conference in London, England.
Ayube Mohamed Edun was one of Cheddi Jagan’s mentors in Guyana. Ayube Edun was a President of the Manpower Citizens Association (MPCA) and the first person to publish his views on a ‘Global Human Order’ under the leadership of men of wisdom. Cheddi Jagan was probably inspired by Mr Edun to publish his own version of a ‘New Global Human Order’ many years later.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Nazir
