UG: A personal insult to Forbes Burnham which must be stopped

Oct 01, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I am not a fan of Forbes Burnham. As a Guyanese citizen engaged in social and political activism and a trained academic writing on my country’s history, I cannot bring myself to be an unqualified admirer of Burnham. He had vision, was a transformative thinker, and a fighter against White domination of Guyana.
But he had power instincts that took on ugly dimensions the consequences of which are still visible in this land.
As someone who writes on contemporary Guyana, I see nakedly foolish things said about Burnham that are simply not true and these things when repeated tells you more about the fools who echo them rather than the man they are writing about.
On every occasion when the history of UG or people once gloriously associated with UG is being written about, certain observers cynically (and perhaps with a touch of racist mentality) remind us that Forbes Burnham as Opposition Leader once referred to the establishment of UG as “Jagan night school.”
This nasty distortion of Guyanese history is sickening to those who study history. Jagan founded UG when he was head of the government in May 1963. The next year after birthing UG, Jagan lost the government and Forbes Burnham headed it. Burnham became in charge of UG in December 1964. It meant that the Jagan administration had a mere year and a half in shaping UG.
The factual data put Jagan as the founder of UG. The factual data show that Burnham made it into a great institution. The University of Guyana then is a baby of both Jagan and Burnham. As Opposition Leader, Burnham did sarcastically call it, “Jagan’s night school.” It essentially catered for part time students who attended in the evenings and only a handful of subjects were offered.
Burnham took up the offer to relocate UG on lands donated by Bookers at Turkeyen. By 1973, Burnham created a phenomenon out of UG for which extensive praise must be given to him. More faculties were offered. High class professors from all over the world, literally all over the world, descended on UG. The labs were on par with any other university.
Sugar money was bountiful as the Rastas would say and Burnham poured saccharine dollars into UG. By 1975, UG was as good as many of the world’s universities. By 1975, UG and UWI were on equal footing.
The history of UG is the history of Jagan founding it and Burnham making something out of it. No historian is worth reading if he/she pontificates on UG’s history and omits the seminal role of Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham. One wonders what really the reason is to keep repeating Burnham’s words of “Jagan’s night school?
Are such people ingrained racist? Are such people irrational Jaganite fanatics? Are such people deliberately bent on falsifying Guyana’s history? Are such people so poor intellectually, living as tenth rate citizens in other countries after running away from Guyana, that they are stuck in a time zone that belonged to the seventies?
Let’s look at that insult – Jagan’s night school of which the latest repetition comes from one of the first UG graduates, Harry Hergash in Canada. Writing a eulogy in a letter to this newspaper on Dr. Harold Drayton who died recently, Hergash in looking at the early role of Drayton in the establishment of UG, didn’t fail to remind us of the sarcastic words of Burnham. It was unnecessary and irrelevant (and irreverent) but Hergash probably couldn’t help himself.
Opposition Leaders in the world say crazy things just for the sake of opposing. All opposition figures at one time denounced positive things the government of the day did. Why keep lamenting on Jagan’s night school when the very Cheddi Jagan, when in opposition, rejected many essential institutions Prime Minister Burnham gave Guyana?
Research would show Jagan rejected the NIS. Today, the NIS constitutes one of the most priceless institutions in this country whose demise would have dire consequences for almost ninety percent of the people of Guyanese.
Jagan rejected the Sugar Levy in 1974, voting against the legislation in Parliament but never touched it when he became president in 1992. His successor Janet Jagan never touched it. President Jagdeo retained it. All three presidents made use of the Sugar Levy.
Jagan denounced government taking over of the Chronicle under Burnham. Jagan, his wife and their handpicked underling, Bharrat Jagdeo, used the Chronicle as a floor cloth in ways Burnham never did. When one condemns Burnham for referring to UG in 1963 as Jagan’s night school, it denies the great role Burnham played in the rich life of UG.

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UG: A personal insult to Forbes Burnham which must be stopped

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