A secret about Father Malcolm Rodrigues revealed only now

Dec 10, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – I had an email exchange recently with Moses Bhagwan, one of the WPA leaders of the optimistic era in which I revealed to him what I did with the book he wrote, a copy of which he sent me.

Since that correspondence, I have written in this page what I did with the book. It is not a volume on politics but a family portrait. After I saw what Bhagwan became after March 2020, I did not care to have a book on the historical evolution of Bhagwan’s family tree.

What relevance was that book to my studies of Guyana’s political past and its present sociological and cultural currents? I gave the book to a personal friend, Mike Khan, who was the former CEO of the Georgetown Hospital.

Mike has one of the largest private collections of volumes on Guyana and books written by Guyanese. Mike is getting on in age and those books should be bought immediately. The list is very long and Mike will be unable to reproduce it.

The list is with the Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony and I appeal to Minister Anthony to please do a meticulous search for the list. The buyer will need to see that piece of paper. Mike’s collection is good. You have to see it to believe it. Back to Bhagwan.

Here is what Bhagwan wrote to me in October this year after I informed him I parted with the book; “You have scorned a country’s ancestry by in effect burning a book.” I did not burn the book nor did I scorn my country’s ancestry. I wanted nothing to do with Bhagwan any longer so I was no longer interested in keeping a book about his family tree.

I told him the reason is that all that he and other WPA leaders taught me when I was a very, very young man they had now turned their backs on. I say boldly now that the only person from the seventies that I could back on who was part of the WPA in the 1970s and who have remained steadfast to the sacred values of liberation, justice and human equality is Father Malcolm Rodrigues.

He was the invisible WPA activist. He could not join a political organization because of his status as a Catholic priest but he was right up there in the leadership of the WPA and his presence was as electrifying as any other WPA leader including Walter Rodney.

Malcolm through the phenomenal courage of his superior, Bishop Benedict Singh brought the Catholic Church into the struggle to remove the Burnham dictatorship. Through his fantastic charisma, he brought dimensions of the Guyanese society that the PPP, civil society groups and the WPA could not have done.

He brought the Portuguese community, the elite clear complexioned classes as distinct from the Creole middle class and the powerful Catholic Church into solidarity with the stream of activities against Burnham.

I lost contact with Malcolm as the 21st century arrived in Guyana. Malcolm by this time was gone from political activism and was posted mostly in the interior of Guyana by the church. Then I met him in January 2012, and that was the last time I spoke to him and saw him.

My UG contract was terminated by the Ramotar presidency in December 2011. The weeks that followed saw media attention given to my dismissal and a strike on the campus for my reinstatement. I saw a letter in the press from Malcolm condemning the dismissal.

It took me by surprise because by 2012, Malcolm had completely gone from any kind of political discourse in Guyana. He was in Georgetown at the time so I went to see him to thank him for his words of support.

The conversation went on for longer than I anticipated. I know I could not write on what he told me so I kept it undisclosed since January 2012. He is dead and the world needs to know how he felt about politics and the WPA.

I could never every acquire even an infinitesimal attempt of replicating his cynical facial expression as I asked him one question after another. Malcolm had become tragically disillusioned with the PPP leadership, his WPA colleagues and politics in Guyana.

He felt that part of his life was completely gone and that he did not want to remember it or talk about it. This was the famous liberation theology priest with his signature black beret fighting the Burnham dictatorship and ending up in the police station where he was almost sexually assaulted.

He left me sad but I continued in politics knowing that the optimism of the will must always override the pessimism of the intellect (taken from Antonio Gramsci).

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