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Jun 18, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
As a person trained in history, I always regret when history-makers die and leave incoming generations with no paper on which to read their inner thoughts. One day, I hope to put my essays, started since 1988, in published form in a small effort to let future Guyanese know what their country was like before they were born.
Two historical points interest me and I have written enough on it. If I fail in my attempt, I have asked my daughter to accomplish that feat for me.
The two nuances of contemporary Guyana that I believe must be analysed are the contents of the sixties which was presented to my generation from a PPP perspective only. There has been some small movement in the revisionist realm to correct the PPP’s distortions on how the sixties played out.
Secondly, the seminal role of the WPA in confronting post-colonial authoritarianism in the Third World, but particularly in Guyana, needs to be stressed within a comparative context of the PPP’s long activism.
My theory is that the WPA was the pivotal actor that undermined Mr. Burnham’s stronghold on the state thus creating the circumstances that led to the return of free elections.
My condolences go out to Pandit Gossai and his family. I never met him. I wanted to, but I do not socialise outside of UG and media friends of mine, so our paths did not cross. I wanted to have a chat with him on religious people being in close relationship with governments. Foremost in my mind was why he left a string of successful Mandirs in the US to work in the Office of the President.
I wanted a formal interview with him so I could have published his thoughts on the issue. I guess that is that. In relation to Ranji Chandisingh, well this is a huge blow to the recording of Guyanese history.
Before he died, Mr. Chandisingh was a living curiosity of absolute intrigue. Young people in Guyana would not know about him. But if he had written a book, no doubt they would have found what he had to say, absorbing. Ranji Chandisingh should not have left this earth without writing about his political life.
The facts are too dear to our desire to preserve the historical record for him to have done that. I once invited him to address my class at UG in the early nineties and when I asked him why he left the PPP to join the PNC after being so high in the PPP and after having written so many condemnations of the PNC when he was with Dr. Jagan, he simply said, “I saw things differently at that time.”
This of course didn’t explain much. A few years ago, in the Shell Shop on Vlissengen Road, he came up to me and referred to something I had written (not about him). I requested an interview but he declined. Then I urged him to write about that period in his life. He gave off an intestinal smile as if he were incapable of a broad laugh and walked out. I never laid eyes on him again.
He appeared to be a man who lived a very private life. It is very difficult to comprehend the psychic transformation of Ranji Chandisingh and former PPP Minister in the sixties, Balram Singh Rai.
Dr. Baytoram Ramharack who wrote a biography of Singh (“Against the Grain: Balram Singh Rai and the Politics of Guyana: Chakra Publishing House, Port-of-Spain, 2005) wrote of the time-consuming efforts he endured to get Singh to talk to him. It was clear from what Ramharack wrote that Singh had refused requests from countless other scholars for an interview.
These were powerful players in Guyanese history; these were men who made history; these were men who were courageous, daring and pioneering in their days. Then suddenly after their careers were over, they became reclusive and effused to yield to pleas from the historians to record their fantastic contributions.
When Ramharack approached Singh, he was in his early nineties. Singh is still alive. Sadly, Chandisingh is dead. I plan to talk to Mrs. Joyce Hoyte on any political discussions her husband had with her that she would like to share with the Guyanese people. We need to know why Hoyte didn’t change the Constitution before the 1992 elections.
Now for the third time on this page, I urge “Kit” Nascimento to pen his thoughts on what really went on in the sixties. This country’s recent history needs to be put in shape. Chandisingh could have done that. But others who are getting on in age, should do so right away.
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