‘Enter the Political Kingdom’, a memoir by attorney-at-law and veteran political activist Moses Bhagwan, was launched on Saturday at the Georgetown Club.
Bhagwan, 91, described the book as a broad account of his personal, social and political life and the role law played in his political struggles.
The audience included persons from varied political backgrounds, among them former president and former PPP General Secretary, Donald Ramotar, Robeson Benn, Vincent Alexander and Nigel Hughes.
A minute of silence was observed for the victims of the MV Barima tragedy.
In brief comments on the tragedy, Bhagwan said the working life of the vessel had expired more than 30 years ago and that this alone constituted prima facie evidence of neglect or indifference by the state.
He recommended that citizens conduct “a people’s inquiry” alongside the Commission of Inquiry.
Asked by Kiskadee Watch what he meant by a people’s inquiry, Bhagwan said: “People should exercise vigilance over the official inquiry. That is, people must continue their vigilance and protestations, make certain that all the facts are ferreted out and there are no irregularities in the proceedings.”
Bhagwan, who delivered his remarks from New York via Zoom, said the book would not have been completed without its editors, Alissa Trotz, Nigel Westmaas and Sasha Ann Panaram, and the publishers. He expressed gratitude to them.
The book is also scheduled to be launched in Toronto on September 13 and Washington, DC, on December 9, and later in Atlanta.
Explaining how he came to write the book, Bhagwan said the reviews delivered by earlier speakers had largely answered that question. Trotz presented an overview, while Wazir Mohamed placed Bhagwan’s writing within its historical and political context.
Bhagwan said he began writing at the urging of his friend, poet Peter Jailall, who had observed that Bhagwan did not write about himself in his publication, ‘Ancestors of the River’.
“We gotta hear about you,” Jailall told him.
Bhagwan subsequently met Trotz at an event commemorating the life of Walter Rodney. During a later meeting in New York, he said, “I must have said something that impressed her.”
“So, Alissa went home and wrote me an email and said, ‘Moses, you must write your story so we can understand what has bedevilled Guyana.’ Interesting words, ‘what has bedevilled Guyana’, and God knows how many political devils, demons and dragons we have produced in Guyana until now. The political struggles from the 1950s were to exorcise these demons. That’s where the WPA comes in,” he said.
Bhagwan recalled telling Trotz, based on his experience: “If you leave a political party, the next day all your friends become enemies. That is because the political relation was superficial. It was not humane. Politics has this way of denigrating relationships. It is something very mechanical, contentious and very opportunistic.”
He said he missed “some” aspects of colonial times and the anti-colonial struggles. By this, he explained, he meant that although people lived in a society neglected by the British administration, they were united and discovering themselves.
“When the Hindu had a wedding, they sent out someone with a platter, with rice and flowers, and that person went from house to house and issued an invitation. I grew up in colonial times, and I cherished the memory of beautiful relationships. We honoured the Black postman. When he came at Christmas time, he left an envelope and we put money in it.
“There were a few Indian nurses. They were held in high esteem and loved because they performed one of the most fundamental things about human existence, bringing us into the world. My headmaster at Johanna Cecilia was a headmaster by the name of Mr Brown. He was Black and the whole community respected him. Life in those times in the political kingdom, there was no nirvana, because we were living a kind of undefined life. We were living by instinct.”
Bhagwan said the united struggle against indifference and neglect was engaging and exhilarating.
“That unity we had in the villages and country districts we brought to that movement for independence. What was interesting was that while we had the concept of village, we started to develop the idea of nationhood. That is unity at a broader level. We started to understand the neglect and indifference to the lives of poor people by the British administration. That is why I have written this book,” he said.
Because of his grassroots political activism, Bhagwan said, his use of language differed somewhat from that of scholars. “It is simply written and hopefully the working people can read it.”
Bhagwan was a member and Member of Parliament of the People’s Progressive Party. He later left the party, became an independent MP and subsequently joined forces with the Working People’s Alliance.
He obtained the first printing press for the Mirror newspaper from Che Guevara for the PPP. He was also imprisoned twice for his political activism—first by the British and later under the Forbes Burnham administration for the “illegal” distribution of the WPA pamphlet Dayclean.
Bhagwan said one of the important parts of his political life was becoming a lawyer, which happened almost by accident.
His Marxist background, he said, had taught him to take a superficial view of the law: that it was too expensive and that working people did not understand the language used by lawyers.
“The Marxist view is that it is part of a superstructure that serves the ruling classes, essentially. When I became a lawyer, I was in that contradiction of ideologically having reservations about law and about becoming a lawyer. But I needed that because I was getting involved in political activities and I needed an independent platform. I wanted an income that was independent of external forces to allow me to continue my political activism,” he said.
Bhagwan said an understanding of the law became useful in his activism and in advancing the principles for which he stood.
“For example, the slaves were able to use the Bible, which the plantation owners were using to subjugate mentally and spiritually the minds of slaves, and the slaves turned around and used the Bible against them. So, we started to use the law against the people who were using the law against people who were rising up in justification against the horrors of a new kind of regime,” he said.
In his remarks, Professor Clem Seecharan, who also reviewed the book on its back cover, described it as rich in historical detail and reflection. During a discussion of the book in London earlier this month, he said it was the best autobiography to have come out of Guyana.
Discussion