WHY DO I ADVOCATE FOR CELEBRATING BURNHAM?

Aug 16, 2016 Letters

---

Dear Editor,
Much of what follows formed part of a note I wrote and published on Facebook on May 17, 2016. I replicate it here with certain modifications for your kind publication after having read P.D. Sharma’s letter published in Stabroek News on August 11, 2016, titled “No Assessment of Burnham can stand if it ignores his election rigging.”
I will not hesitate to say at the outset that I find Sharma’s letter repugnant, disrespectful and encompassing a bundle of hastily put together thoughts unaccompanied by even the slightest hint of any serious thinking. Even the very title serves as a distasteful preface which sums up the deficient thinking of its author. I cannot in good conscience allow this latest addition to the untiring tirade to malign Burnham to go unanswered.
Sharma’s bias is evident early on. He offers that any brave soul who dares to pronounce upon Burnham risks his own honour and credibility. And that’s what obtained during the Burnham era is ‘as well-known as is unsaid- and unsayable.’ Tell me, wherein lies the objectivity? Sharma goes on to say that any researcher or historian who approaches a treatment of Burnham without bias engages in an act of courage more than he has a command of insight or discovery. When Sharma speaks of Burnham’s vices he speculates about their truism; but reference to his followers’ articulation of his virtues is absent any acknowledgement of truism.
Sharma does not stop there; he suggests that someone critiquing Burnham is likely to compromise his research, intuition and training in his effort to not excite the wrath of Burnham’s hero worshippers. Sharma’s most offensive statement is his reduction of the genius of Burnham to ‘the perpetuation of self, party and people via fraudulent means, especially when others might have won under free and fair circumstances.’ To determine that the full or fundamental essence of Burnham is confined to rigged elections is gravely offensive and an exhibition of not even an elementary command of our history. Or alternatively, a comprehensive command of that tarnished aspect of our history which brands Burnham as nothing more or nothing less than a demon. It is this kind of intentional, disingenuous and convenient skirting of our history which right-minded people of any extraction must collectively guard against.
I propose to write comprehensively and objectively about Burnham and his times and neither this brief treatment here or my recent poem calling for him to be celebrated in a massive way at our past independence celebrations should be received as even nearing a comprehensive treatment of this monumental man.
My remarks here are inspired only by the comments my poem has evoked. I have never met the man. As a matter of fact I was just shy of 3 years old when he passed. If I were to content myself with the media collage of Burnham and what I’ve learnt in school, my impression of the man would be most distasteful. Yes, school has done nothing more than thrown at me a few small paragraphs enveloping a brief academic treatment of the man. While school did not strap him to the cross and nail him in lieu of the thief next to Jesus, the patent lack of celebration of this man was evident. It was the media which alerted me to the importance of this great man. And yes, I say great man.
The media have killed Burnham countless times. This for me begged the question, ‘why go to such lengths to kill this man very very dead?’ This naturally persuaded me to dig through the clutter. Burnham’s critics have been and are many. A foremost critic of Forbes was Rodney, whom I admire deeply as well. My research has revealed both virtues and vices. Suffice it to say that the gravity of his vices does not outweigh his virtues.
The PPP has over the years consistently and vigorously celebrated Jagan while simultaneously, and with perhaps a tad more vigour, decried Burnham. This sustained defamation of Forbes has invited no robust defence from the party which he founded. As a matter of fact, the PNC has done nothing distinct to preserve the legacy of Forbes. This, in my humblest estimation, is a travesty of the highest order. This complicity on the part of the PNC is unforgivable, and its patent silence on this issue over the years is perhaps more forensically damaging than the sustained efforts of Burnham’s opponents. The past 50 years have been nothing more than elevating Jagan to sainthood while demonizing Burnham; so much so that Burnham who died in 1985 is still being held responsible for woes in 2016. And the corollary of this has been to amplify superficial biological differences rendering our major races socially, politically and economically incompatible.
My call to celebrate Burnham is not an African nationalist call. I think you guys have come to know me well enough to be mindful that I have a permanent distaste for divisive rhetoric and actions. But my call is indeed nationalistic; yes, a call for Guyanese nationalism. While we may not agree with everything Burnham did, and of course some of us may feel more passionately than others about what we perceive to be his sins, we absolutely can’t dilute the fact that he is a giant of our independence struggle. And to celebrate this climactic independence without a proper recognition of his role in securing our independence would be the zenith of ingratitude.
The call is not for the PNC within the coalition machinery to suddenly come alive to the virtues of its founder. It is simply a call for us as a country- us as Guyanese brothers and sisters- to acknowledge in a collective way that a 50 year old Guyana could not have been possible without Burnham. Of course no acknowledgement in this vein can disregard the role of Jagan and the many others who have fought alongside our two now severely polarized leaders to secure our national identity. I singled out Burnham in my call because it is only him who has been singled out in our decades-long condemnation. It is time we learn to analyze our leaders and national contributors dispassionately.
Ronald J. Daniels

---

---