Dear Editor,
In his letter on Balram Singh Rai (SN, June 11), Malcolm Harripaul wrote the following, “…Dr Ramharack did in fact spend time interviewing Rai in London.” Unfortunately, this statement is not supported by Dr Ramharack. In the “Acknowledgements” section of his book on Rai, Dr Ramharack was unambiguous in his description of Rai’s refusal to speak on his life and politics at all. Or contribute personal knowledge to the project.
According to Ramharack, the book was written without Rai’s essential contributions. Dr Ramharack wrote that when he met Rai in London, Rai told him he saw no useful purpose in his participation in the writing of his biography, and he refused to be make the essential inputs which a biography requires.
You can write a biography without the involvement of the subject, but it would enhance the final product if the subject was interviewed. Dr Ramharack said Rai’s role in the writing of the book was the sharing of primary documents. It is all there for Mr Harripaul to read; there is even a recent letter by Ramharack (SN, June 13) in which he wrote: “Rai has not commented on Guyanese politics since then [1970]. He has resisted attempts to contribute to a biography on his life…”
Dr Ramharack’s biography of Rai was done without the subject being interviewed. It is as simple as that. But there is more. You lose respect for Rai when you hear the reason he gave Ramharack for declining. First, the biography would serve no useful purpose to anyone and he doesn’t want to be accused of the embellishment of his role in Guyanese history. Secondly, he doesn’t want the PPP to accuse him of falsifying history.
You can decline to speak about your life but to give those reasons is really childish. Dr Ramharack was very loose with the word, ‘interview.’ After describing Rai’s refusal to be “interviewed” for the book, he went on to say he learnt a lot from the “interview” with Rai. What he meant by “interview” was the interview he had with Rai on his request to have Rai assist in terms of sharing knowledge in the writing of the biography.
Before I move off the subject of Rai himself, I re-emphasize my point that in the nationalist interest of Guyana, he should have seen the strategic wisdom of having an African Guyanese as the Chairman of the PPP given the race-heat Guyana was experiencing at the time. Secondly, Rai came across as having little interest in multi-racial politics, cultivating the image of an Indian first and foremost with a Brahmin background.
I agree with the overhaul thesis of Mr Harripaul that Rai’s popularity was as high as Jagan’s in the sixties, and that Rai saw Jagan as a foolish man running around embracing communism which no one at the time was interested in. Although Guyanese Indians were capitalistic and not interested in communism, once Guyana was afflicted by racial fever, Jagan’s longevity was protected by the race divide.
This is what kept Jagan politically alive. This is what saved him from losing his ascendancy to Rai and Walter Rodney. Guyanese from that era are now of advanced age (Rai is 95) and they and subsequent generations will never know what would have become of Jagan if there had been no race riots; perhaps Rai would have toppled Jagan. It is impossible to tell if Jagan would have been ousted in the fifties and sixties by equally charismatic Indians if he had not been insured by the race thing.
Rai’s chances were doomed from the beginning once Indians had to vote. They voted for the PPP as an alternative to the African-Guyanese party, the PNC. This explains Rai’s ignominious failure in elections even though he was the recipient of campaign money from the West.
It was the same with Walter Rodney. Rodney eclipsed Jagan from 1974 until his death in 1980. But my guess is if Rodney was alive and there was a three-way race between Rodney, Jagan and the PNC, Indians would have voted against the PNC by giving their votes to the PPP.
One of the simplest factors to understand in Guyanese history but yet to be written about is that if Guyana was not split along traumatic racial lines, many new dynamic parties with courageous Indian leaders would have replaced the PPP, because such competition would have showed up the intellectual poverty in Cheddi Jagan’s politics.
The 2015 election results gave the PPP a strong standing. They lost by one seat and five thousand votes. Not because they are a great party. There is nothing and has been nothing great about them. They achieved that strength all because of the permanent racial sarcoma that thrives in Guyana.
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
