The legacy of Dr. Cheddi Jagan emerges for consideration in March every year, the month of his birth and of his passing. Dr. Clem Seecharan’s book, “Cheddi Jagan and the Cold War 1946-1992,” has provoked some discussion this year. Dr. Seecharan is an historian of modest accomplishments who wrote mainly about cricket, until he was commissioned to write “Sweetening Bitter Sugar,” a work in loud praise of a colonial sugar baron, Lord (Jock) Campbell, who inherited Bookers, a sprawling conglomerate, in “Bookers” Guiana, after an inauspicious stint as a failed student playboy. Seecharan promoted Campbell as a politically liberal and a progressive business oligarch by juxtaposing him against Jagan, the implacable, dogmatic, communist ideologue who opposed the “progressive” Campbell at every turn. The story is told that Jagan’s “communism” led to his own downfall and disaster for Indians. Seecharan is a prominent purveyor of this old, enduring, anti-Jagan narrative which survives among, and is propagated by, a small group of Indian professionals.
