At the turn of the century, middle-class Indians, mainly second-generation attorneys-at-law bonded with working-class and peasant Indians in the struggle for improved education, more fruitful usage of agricultural lands, and better environmental health facilities; a manifestation of intra-ethnic class solidarity; this solidarity within Indian village settlements promoted the welfare of Indians and simultaneously gave credence to the persisting resistance effort.

Parahoo, a prominent cattle owner and butcher in Berbice actively supported the welfare of his Muslim brothers and sisters; large Hindu landowners also in like manner advanced the welfare of Hindus; and educated Indians in the IAG lent considerable support to their fellow Indians during indentureship.
This thing about promoting welfare might not have been what it seemed to suggest; it was the middle-class way of fortifying its material base through land-purchasing aspects, particularly for those Indians who had long service on the sugar estates who became drivers, and were cattle and rice farmers; and where middle-class Indians largely used these opportunities to exploit other Indians in land purchases and rentals.
For instance, Rumburran and Gundoora, purchased seven estates in Berbice; then sold some of the front lands making over 100 percent profit; they rented the backlands at $2.88 per half-acre plot. There were the cases of Sukhanut at Leonora, a rich shop owner and an ex-driver; Edun, head driver, cattle farmer, and provision farmer of Philadelphia; and Chand Khan, a driver and cattle farmer at Philadelphia. In fact, these were really privileged people. And these were only five cases among many of Indian middle class excesses against the working class.
A class is only as strong as its material base, meaning that a middle class defined by its fragility and infantilism, would be motivated to reinforce its material base to sustain its dominance; and if this meant exploiting its own ethnic group, so be it. This middle class had control over the means of mental production, so that the working people who lacked the means of mental production became subject to it. Similarly, African and Portuguese proprietors also extended welfare to their respective ethnic groups, and utilized similar dynamics of exploitation.
Unmistakably, in the last quarter of the 19th century, Indian workers and peasants initiated an active resistance effort that was not matched by the emerging local professional Indian middle class; this middle class was urban-based and were socialized to accept planters’ values; they easily complied with the plantocracy’s norms; a behavior quite distinct from the behaviour of rural Indian workers and peasants. The Indian middle class tried its hand at establishing the ‘East Indian Institute’ in 1892, in order to forge enhanced ties with each other, and to be increasingly supportive of the colonial ruling class; it died a natural death; for good reasons, too; for some alignment of this urban Indian middle class with planters implied some disavowal of rural Indian working people’s concerns. But the educated Indian middle class became the chief beneficiaries of the emerging political opportunities.

Relating to Jagan, I will now look at a laundry list of the colonial and fragile Indian middle-class political manoeuvrings, and their consequences for shaping Indian political evoluton:

1. Ramdeal was the first Indian to win a seat in 1892 in the Cumberland District of Berbice.
2. Phillip Daniel Guyadeen in 1908 sought a seat in the Combined Court and lost.
3. Prabhu Sawh, an affluent storekeeper in Georgetown unsuccessfully sought permission to place Indians on the official electors’ list, as only 0.6% of Indian males from a total of 51.8% of adult Indian males were included in the electoral list in 1911.
4. An Indian was appointed a member of the local authority of the Sheet Anchor County District.
5. Edward Luckhoo, a solicitor, elected Mayor of New Amsterdam.
6. Indians fully represented in local authority districts in the villages founded by Indians and those set up by the Government in lieu of a return passage to India.
7. Indians approved a Resolution of Dissociation against the recall of Governor Egerton by Africans and Coloured groups.
8. The British Guiana East Indian Association (BGEIA) established in 1916 had no mass following; it functioned within the middle-class and not the working people’s interests.
9. C.R. Jacob was elected to the Legislative Council in 1935; and Ayube Edun was nominated to that Council in 1943. Both organized the Manpower Citizens’ Association in 1936. They addressed working people’s issues, but had no mass following; with no mass foundation, there was indeed a political vacuum, as workers’ issues were largely unresolved.

Dr. Cheddi Jagan assessed this political scene in the 1940s; he saw planters and the political middle class were only interested in preserving the status quo; there was no mass-based party; and the working people’s interests and needs were excluded from both the Indian and African middle-class agenda. Dr. Jagan with Ashton Chase, Jocelyn Hubbard, and his wife Janet Jagan, then sought to fill this vacuum, bringing forth a new dawn in Guyana’s politics; the Political Affairs Committee (PAC), forerunner to the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), heralding the beginnings of the mass-based party and the articulation and resolution of workers’ concerns.
The PPP continued from where the PAC left off; unrelenting agitation for Independence became the number one item on the PPP’s agenda. This feverish campaigning prompted the arrival of the Waddington Commission; this was a success long in the making for the PPP struggle against colonial hegemony; a struggle that conceived and gave birth to universal adult suffrage; a struggle that designed the road map for Independence. The first election under universal adult suffrage happened in 1953 during the Cold War.
In the run-up to the 1953 election, Daniel Debidin, a Solicitor, was Leader of the United Farmers’ and Workers’ Party; earlier, he defeated John Carter to enter the Legislative Council in 1947; Debidin’s party subsequently evicted itself from the electoral contest and he ran as an Independent, obtaining 16.7% of electoral votes. Debidin’s problem was that his political vision focused only on middle-class Indians and not on working-class people in this multiethnic society.
Another middle-class Indian Dr. J.B. Singh who was in the Legislative Council for 21 years, contested the 1953 election. PPP’s Fred Bowman (with 42.3% of the votes) defeated Dr. Singh (with 26% of the votes) in an Indian-dominated constituency. General Secretary of the Man Power Citizens’ Association (MPCA) Sheik M. Shakoor lost his deposit securing only 411 votes. Balram Singh Rai, an Attorney-at-Law, was a National Democratic Party (NDP) candidate for the Central Demerara constituency in 1953; he lost his deposit securing only 421 votes. Rai became a member of the PPP after the suspension of the constitution in 1953.
The PPP won in 1953 bringing forth the first national unity government in Guyana that included Dr. J.P. Lachhmansingh and Jai Narine Singh as Ministers; the latter lost his election bid to the Legislative Council in 1947 and became a member of the PPP just before the 1953 election. After the PPP’s removal from office in 1953, Jai Narine Singh, among others, engineered the PPP split in 1955.
The colonial authorities constituted the interim government of the 1954-1957 years with mainly anti-PPP people from the middle class and elite groupings comprising such Indians as Rahaman Gajraj, James Ramphal, and Lionel Luckhoo, among others
There were many stalwarts such as Ram Karran and several Africans such as Ashton Chase who remained loyal to Jagan’s PPP. Ram Karran was with the PPP from the 1950s, becoming a Minister in the 1957 PPP Government that also included Edward Beharry; Beharry’s position was later rescinded in 1960 due to his anti-government position on the tax measures concerning the sugar industry. The PPP won the elections again in 1961. And its 1962 budget drew the ire of wealthy Indians, many of whom joined the United Force, such as Rahaman Gajraj, and Hari Prashad who became its Chairman. At this time, several well-known Indians opposed the PPP; these included Balwant Singh, Richard Ishmael, Hoosein Ganie, Abdool Majeed, an affluent Indian merchant and President of the United Sad’r Islamic Anjuman.
Rai was no longer a PPP member by the time of the 1964 elections. His Justice Party (JP) secured a mere 1,334 votes; and Hoosein Ganie’s Guyana United Muslim Party (GUMP) obtained 1,194 votes. Rai called for Indian votes on the grounds that the PPP was anti-Indian and anti-religious; one of Ganie’s handbills told the Guyanese people that “A vote for GUMP was a vote for Allah’. Guyana’s electoral history pointedly indicates that political leaders only focusing on their own class interests reinforced with blatant opportunism, and not the people’s interests, faltered at electoral times. Then there was Reepu Daman Persaud, a product of plantation labour, a PPP Member of Parliament for 40 years and founder of the Guyana Hindu Dharmic Sabha; he held the portfolio of Minister of Parliamentary Affairs; acted as Prime Minister  and as President of Guyana on several occasions.
Clearly, Indians were not docile during indentureship. Indians demonstrated a remarkable history of active resistance. Labour unrest that facilitated Indian solidarity also simultaneously was a remarkable method used for ensuring cultural persistence. The dynamic resistance to achieve and sustain cultural persistence and continuity created the ingredients for an Indian political evolution and mobilization. Indentured Indian working people, through their challenge to colonial hegemony, created the Indian political middle class; but that early political middle class idolized colonialism inimical to workers’ concerns; the later political middle class steeped in advancing its own ethnic group’s interests, blatant opportunism, and imperialist intrigue, also neglected workers’ concerns. The Indian political middle class has not delivered the goods; time for recreation of a new Indian middle class, to work in solidarity with Indian workers, and eventually reaching out to the working people of this country in sustainable alliances.

Footnotes:
i Reports of the Immigration Agent-General. (1880s).
ii Report on Commission of Back Passages. (1895).
iii Comins, D.W. (1893). Note on Emigration from India to British Guiana. Calcutta, Diary, pp. 20-35.
iv Potter, L.M. (1975). Internal migration and resettlement of East Indians in Guyana, 1870-1920. Ph.D. Dissertation, McGill University.
v Jagan, C. (1997). The West on Trial: My Fight for Guyana’s Freedom. Hertford, England: Hansib Publishing (Caribbean) Ltd.

*Previously published, now with revisions