Dear Editor,
Balram Singh Rai will be 100 years old on February 8. Rai was an iconic political figure, dating back to the pre-independence years. Together with Ashton Chase and Eusi Kwayana, he is one of few political leaders still alive from the 1947 era when he supported the brash young radical Cheddi Jagan in a successful bid for a seat in the colonial legislature. Rai was an attorney and a devout member of the Arya Samaj Hindu faith. Clem Seecharan recalled how Rai was viewed in his Berbice village of Palmyra, 12 miles away from Jagan’s birthplace in Plantation Port Mourant: “he was an icon…brilliant, fearless and confident…a true ‘Kshatriya…After Jagan, Rai was certainly the most popular Indian leader in the colony”.
Rai rose to political prominence in 1957 after winning a seat to the colonial legislature as a PPP candidate by defeating Sydney King (Eusi Kwayana) in a close election for the Central Demerara constituency. He served as Minister of Education (1959-61) and later, as Minister of Home Affairs (1961-62). As a PPP minister, he respected cultural diversity, advocated for the liberalization of local government and promoted “balance” in the police force through targeted Indian recruitment. He played a major role at the historical 1960 Constitutional Conference in London where the issue of self-government was discussed (other delegates included Cheddi Jagan, L.F.S. Burnham, W.O.R. Kendall, Brindley Benn, Jai Narine Singh, Robin Davis and Rahman B. Gajraj).
During his tenure, dual-control of Christian-run schools was abolished. On February 16, 1962 (“Black Friday”), when British Guiana was in the throes of anti-budget demonstrations in Georgetown, led by Forbes Burnham and Peter D’ Aguiar, Minister Rai oversaw the crisis while every other PPP minister, including the Jagans, went into hiding. Mr. Rai countermanded an order by the police commissioner to shoot protestors if warranted. Had this happened, British Guiana would have descended further into a state of ethnic strife. Mr. Rai’s term as Guyana’s first Home Affairs Minister was short-lived after Dr. Jagan asked Governor Ralph Grey to revoke his ministerial portfolio in June 1962. This was subsequent to Mr. Rai, who was Deputy (Vice) Chairman of the PPP, being expelled by Dr. and Mrs Jagan, because of his refusal to retract his public statement that the Jagans manipulated the PPP elections for Party Chairman.
Rai challenged a popular African Guyanese and former Minister of Natural Resources, Brindley Benn (father of current minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn) for the post of Chairman at the PPP’s Congress in 1962. Rai’s complaints about the electoral irregularities to then Attorney General Fenton Ramsahoye evoked the cryptic response: “Comrade, why worry. The party works in devious ways.” Together with another PPP stalwart, Jai Narine Singh, Rai later formed the Justice Party, but could not secure enough votes to win a seat in the 1964 elections. During the 1964 elections, he warned his supporters that the imposed Proportional Representation system would result in the PPP being excluded from government. Rai remained incorruptible, migrating to the UK in 1970. He rejected Burnham’s entreaties and lucrative offers, even as some of the PPP’s brightest Marxist theoreticians, including Ranji Chandisingh, accepted Burnham’s carrots.
Sultan Mohammed, in a recent letter (KN, 1/27/21), noted that Brindley Benn left the PPP in 1968, formed the pro-China Working People’s Vanguard Party and became a fierce critic of the PPP for 20 years. He was welcomed back into the PPP in 1992 and was rewarded with the position of High Commissioner to Canada and a national award. The PPP was, after all, the party of science, with history on its side. Mr. Rai was not a believer in scientific socialism, and his Chairmanship of the PPP, from Jagan’s perspective, would have presumably denied the multi-racial character of the party if the top two positions in the party leadership were held by Indians. Rai was too ethnic for Dr. Jagan. His aspiration to become the Party’s Chairman was doomed from the get-go, and his historical association with the PPP had to be erased.
The Pensions (President, Parliamentary and Special Offices) Act, Chapter 27:03, enacted in January 1970, provided for pension to legislators who were sitting members of the National Assembly on or after May 26, 1966. The Act also provided for pensions to legislators who had served in 1953 or after, thus providing for former legislative service to be counted for purposes of computing pensions to qualified legislators. Balram Singh Rai served as a legislator from 1957 to 1964. He remains today the only Guyanese minister who was denied a parliamentary pension. Despite previous correspondences and conversations on this matter with Forbes Burnham, Desmond Hoyte, Sir Shridath Ramphal, Sase Narain, Cheddi Jagan, Roger Luncheon, among others, this issue remains unresolved. It is not that Mr. Rai, now under hospice care in England, seeks to benefit from his pension, but as Ralph Ramkarran noted (SN, June 7, 2015) the government’s magnanimity in recognition of the social injustice perpetrated against one of its own ministers “would go a long way in correcting egregious historical omissions” like that of Mr. Rai’s.
Sincerely,
Baytoram Ramharack