THIS week, supporters of the late Dr. Cheddi Jagan will remember the man who was one of the principal leaders of Guyana’s Independence movement. In a Guyana divided by ethnic and party loyalties, Jagan’s name and political identity have come to be associated with one side of the divide. He was of Indian-Guyanese extraction and was the longtime leader of the PPP, but his importance to Guyana and the Caribbean reaches beyond those confines. It is in that context that we feel our political leaders are better understood.

Dr. Jagan grew up politically with Guyana’s decolonization movement of the post-World War 11 era, but he was born three decades before, on March 23, 1917. As the son of indentured labourers, his early consciousness of socio-economic deprivation was formed by the experience of plantationhood, which shaped social relations for the majority of the Indian-Guyanese community. He would attend Queen’s College in Georgetown, and come into contact with the mostly African-Guyanese urban community. That experience would help to influence his later comfort with Guyana’s multi-ethnic character.

Like most brilliant students of his generation, further studies took him abroad; but unlike many who naturally proceeded to England, he instead went to the USA. The years there would have a lasting impact on the future Jagan. He studied dentistry, but it was as a student of politics that he would remember the USA.

He became an ardent student and follower of Marxism at a time when that philosophy held sway among many young people who were concerned about colonialism, racism, imperialism, and the general condition of the poor. Dr. Jagan also met his future wife and political soulmate, Janet Rosenberg, while studying in the USA.

Armed with an ideology and a drive to make a difference in the lives of the downtrodden, Jagan returned to Guyana in 1943. After taking some time to familiarise himself with the politics of the then colony, and flirting with a few of the existing organisations, he and his wife, along with Ashton Chase and Jocelyn Hubbard, formed in 1946 a political organisation called the Political Action Committee (PAC), which began to comment on the politics of the day.

The following year, Dr. Jagan ran for, and won, a seat in the legislature — an accomplishment that proved to be pivotal in his political evolution. To understand the Jagan of those formative years, one has to get a sense of the political environment. The late 1940s was a significant period in Guyanese and Caribbean politics. After the famous popular uprisings of the 1930s and the subsequent reaction of Britain, the era of Limited Self Government was gradually introduced to the region. This included the introduction of Universal Adult Suffrage and the attendant limited participation of local representation in the Executive branch of government.
Jagan would use his voice in the legislature to intensify the agitation for full independence and for improvement of the lot of the poor.

In January 1950, the PAC was transformed into the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), whose leadership included the core of the country’s political leadership for the next three decades — Jagan and his wife Janet, Forbes Burnham, Sydney King (Eusi Kwayana), Ashton Chase, Martin Carter and Boysie Ramkarran, among others. The PPP, in 1953, won the first election held under adult suffrage, and Jagan became Premier of the country. A collision of forces led to the overthrow of that government after a mere 133 days in office, the constitution was suspended, and the PPP was eventually split into two factions, mainly along ethnic lines.

When the constitution was restored and elections were held, Dr. Jagan’s PPP won two successive elections — in 1957 and 1964 — and he again became Premier. His politics during this period underwent significant change. He became more and more wedded to orthodox Marxism as a guiding philosophy, but on account of the country’s politics of ethnic division, he also embraced the politics of ethnicity. This sometimes uncomfortable duality would remain his overarching praxis for the rest of his life.

The loss of power, in 1964, to his archrival Forbes Burnham and his PNC party, coupled with the trauma of three years of ethnic disturbances and violence in the latter years of his rule, would banish Jagan to the political opposition for the next three decades, but did not diminish his status in the country’s politics. He continued to preach working class liberation, Marxist transformation, and at times working class unity. His grip on the Indian-Guyanese community was shaken during those years, but was never loosened.

Some have contended that during this period he had made tactical errors, which in turn led to the consolidation of power by the PNC. When the PNC eventually lost power in 1992 and Dr. Jagan was returned to office, he was not the same uncompromising ideologue that many had cited as a severe weakness of his in the earlier years. Gone also were the party stalwarts of the 1960s. Many had left over differences with Jagan, and some had died. Jagan now led a party of mostly younger activists, who were not as politically grounded as the earlier cadre, and lacked Jagan’s idealism. His five years in office, 1992-1997, were not marked by any outstanding achievements; but when he died in March 1997, he left a legacy that has not been diminished two decades later.

Despite the degeneration of the party he helped to form, and which he always led until his death, his reputation as an able and tenacious leader has remained intact. We avoid the tag of Father of the Nation not because Dr. Jagan is undeserving of it, but because it reduces its subjects to demigods. Dr. Jagan was a formidable force by all accounts, but he was not a demigod. He made his fair share of errors, but none can doubt his commitment to a free Guyana in which the poor and the powerless are lifted up.

Guyana can be proud that it gave itself and the world the gift of his life, his times, and his body of activism and work.