Forbes Burnham: Granger’s vulgarisation of history

Aug 09, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – Once I have a keyboard, Forbes Burnham’s evil hegemony over the hapless and helpless Guyanese people I will record. Actually, one of the things I would like in life as time waits for no one, is to do a history of Burnham’s post-1968 rule. It will take a lot of research but if I have time and I am funded, it is the first scholarly desire I have.
Former President David Granger, speaking on Burnham’s death anniversary last Friday, committed some outrageous, atrocious, egregious and insane distortions of Guyanese political history by his commentary on Burnham at the mausoleum in the Botanical Gardens.
Granger observed that Burnham “placed great emphasis” on equality of ethnic groups. Such a statement is filled with asinine fictionalisation. Under no other president had the chalice of ethnic poison became a bottomless pit than under Burnham. It was under his rule that almost 99 percent of Indian Guyanese felt that Guyana had no place for them and that its president, and his party were treating them as second class citizens.
I respect my university training so I am not going to classify Burnham as an anti-Indian racist but to the average Indian, he appeared in their eyes as racist. Could you blame them? If Burnham was not racist, there was an ocean of policy directions that directly impacted on Indians. These implementations made Indians feel that they were special targets for the government of the day.
The banning of split peas and flour is a story that Burnhamite aficionados joyfully cite to disprove Burnham’s discrimination of Indians. They argue that African Guyanese were equally devastated by the flour ban. Let us say that was a sociological reality, it does not dent the argument that Indians lived in fear of Burnham and those that were unfortunate to leave both legally and through backtrack routes lived a life of permanent depression.
Burnham’s hegemony impacted Indians directly. It was a diabolical act to suddenly declare UG education free and those who entered UG as fee-paying students had to now do compulsory national service (NS). Governments cannot operate with such bestial insensitivity.
It meant your education was doomed if you chose not to do national service. The decent, democratic way to go was to allow those who entered prior to NS to finish then those coming in can chose to do NS. How can you take Muslims and Hindus and just throw them in a situation where their diets and cultural sensitivities are ignored? Burnham was unmoved because he was instinctively authoritarian.
How could Indians have felt safe under Burnham when his party was paramount to all state institutions thus the party of their choice, embodying a majority of the electorate, would never be elected. Let’s examine aspects of realpolitik to prove a case of Burnham being a diabolical monstrosity.
Burnham reasoned that the PNC and Africans would not win state power because there was an inbuilt demographic factor that favoured the PPP. So he adopted the methodology of rigged elections. But rigged elections and the use of appeasing politics are not related.
Burnham was in charge of the state. His control of power was tight and ubiquitous. Under such a condition, power was secure. He couldn’t lose it. Why then flippantly toss civil society and the opposition aside and rule without even a modicum of consultation?
Burnham had to know that the External Trade Bureau, Land to the Tiller Act, Acquisition of Land Act, compulsory national service, paramountcy of the party were policies that would have deleterious effects on ethnic relations. Why not seek compromise on each situation by entering into a bargaining situation with your powerful opposition which embodies the support of more than half the population and is of a different ethnicity from the supporters of the ruling PNC.
Why not bargain with Jagan and see what Jagan would approve in exchange for what he wanted you to drop. Maybe Jagan would have approved of banned foreign food in exchange for relaxation of compulsory NS at UG. Burnham did nothing of the sort. Burnham believed in absolute power and that mentality drove him to excessively insane directions that were unnecessary. He was an obsessive narcissist who believed he was special.
It took Walter Rodney to bring him down to earth. Rodney turned him into the emperor wearing new clothes as he addressed his subjects from the balcony of the Bank of Guyana. But Burnham was inpuris naturalibis (stark naked) on the balcony. If evil had ever come to Caribbean politics, it came with Burnham. He was an evil man determined to get his way or destroy Guyana. History must go on to record the evil endowment of this monstrous failure.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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