Enter the Political Kingdom - Stabroek News

stabroeknews.com · Feb 22, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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By Moses BhagwanEditor’s note: In April, Ian Randle Press (Kingston, Jamaica) will publish Enter the Political Kingdom, a memoir authored by the veteran teacher, lawyer, community and political activist Moses Bhagwan, who will turn 91 this July. It is edited by Nigel Westmaas, Alissa Trotz and Sasha Panaram. Historian Clem Seecharran has written a thorough and detailed response to the book, so lengthy – 75 pages – that it could not be included alongside the other two forewords by Horace Campbell and Vanda Radzik, and will be published as a standalone pamphlet or in a collection of Seecharran’s work with Peepal Tree Press in 2027. He describes the book as “a very fine work, beautifully written, very revealing and a study that will be a major contribution to our political history…It traces Bhagwan’s roots as one of the fathers of the independence movement in Guyana who served as a leader of the Progressive Youth Organization (PYO) of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP). His formation of the Indian Political Revolutionary Associates (IPRA) and his association with the African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa (ASCRIA) represented his efforts to bring about authentic, multiracial unity in Guyana. Bhagwan’s ‘homegrown socialism’ attempted to speak to Guyanese people as they charted a new existence prior to independence in 1966.” It was the late social activist Andaiye (one of the original editors) who first encouraged Moses to gather and publish his writings over more than seventy years. Moses began jotting accompanying notes alongside the collecting, and it soon became clear that he was writing a standalone memoir; his past writing will be published separately. Enter the Political Kingdom has twenty-two chapters divided into five sections: Early Years and Education; Formative Years and Political Awakening; Turmoil and Activism; Advocacy and Global Pursuits; Political Associations and Activism. With permission of Ian Randle Press, we share Moses’ preface with the readers. The book will be available for purchase by May 2026, and Ian Randle Publishers can be contacted at [email protected].All history is contemporary in the sense that history does not write itself, but instead it is written by the Historian. At its brilliant best, it is a blend of Art, Science and Poetry which create a perception of Truth as seen through the eyes of one observer. —Benedetto Croce I am completing the manuscript of this book with my 89th birthday, July 10, 2024, just behind me. The book comes to you my good reader as a gift package. As you unwrap it you encounter the title: Enter the Political Kingdom. You will wonder. I entered that Kingdom when I was twenty-two years old. The idea of politics leading into a Kingdom came from the African freedom fighter and President of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. Jesus Christ had said to the multitudes: “But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33). Nkrumah armed his people in the movement for independence of the Gold Coast (later renamed Ghana) with a rallying cry: “Seek ye first the political kingdom…” In 1957 Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham borrowed it from Nkrumah and used it at a Bourda Green meeting. I was there. In this book, follow me and I’ll walk you through the corridors of power in the political kingdom. You are reading this because I was one of many combatants at some level in the political leadership of British Guiana/Guyana. I have been persuaded that it will be useful to add to the existing literature of political reflection. I have always been averse to emphasizing my presence in a personal way, to write or talk about myself, but one cannot, as Leon Trotsky said, write an autobiography without writing about oneself and in doing so declaring one’s sympathies and antipathies. For the political activist, writing an autobiography in the context of a contradictory conflicted country like Guyana, rooted in unrelenting opposition of contending powers and interests, is a hazardous enterprise. Mark Twain, celebrated American author had written: “If the truth were known about all of us, everyone of us will deserve a hanging at least once in his lifetime.” I am committed and I am warned. My autobiography seeks to wrest from the past tremendous historical events with which I have been familiar and in which I had been engaged as a political activist. Our times in Guyana are not rich in the production of political memoirs. But there has been no end to research on the lives of political leaders and a few political biographies are available. There is of course, Dr. Cheddi Jagan’s The West on Trial. Dr. Harold Drayton’s An Accidental Life may not strictly fall in this category because he was not prominently active in local politics but in his book one could see how profoundly political, not merely academic, he was. Mr. Clement Rohee, a Minister of the PPP Government has published his memoirs, My Story, My Song. Parliamentarian and former Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo has an autobiography in two parts, Fragments from Memory: A True Story of Love and Sacrifice and Dear Land of Guyana. The latest recovery of personal history is found in the autobiography of Dr Maurice Odle, one of the leaders of the Working People’s Alliance, An Eventful Life. In this autobiography the first part confirms the adage, the child is father of the man. I dare say you will be better acquainted with me when you read about my childhood seasons and experiences as an adolescent, those years of self-indulgent youth reveling in the joys of life. There may be many surprises in store for you, as you encounter me in the later sections, as a community grounded political activist. What awaits you, my interested reader, as you begin your journey through my recollections, are important episodes from the rocky course of the battle to bring an end to British rule. In the uneven struggle there were moments, we need to confess, that were rather despairing and inglorious. Formal independence notwithstanding, you will gather from my account that we have been and still are a restless insecure people in search of a common destiny and a clear and certain definition of the character and soul of a nation. We could not escape the perfidies of geopolitics of the region and may not be totally prepared to overcome the festering threat of Venezuela on our borders. We have suffered considerably from the failure of political leadership at critical moments and there has been no shared collective vision to realize the acclaimed magnificence of the province. There is included much historical material relating to the People’s Progressive Party and the People’s National Congress and the United Force. You will read of the beginning of violent racial conflicts; the divisions in the anti-colonial struggle and the rise of a dictatorship in an independent Guyana; a civil rebellion and the emergence of the Working People’s Alliance; and of Dr. Walter Rodney as one of the leaders of the opposition to the dictatorship; the proliferation of ideas and their continuing revision for the transformation of the Guyanese society; and finally, the assassination of Dr. Walter Rodney by an agent of the Burnham Government. The leaders, Dr. Cheddi Bharat Jagan and Mr. Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham, had raised our hopes and were our heroes in initial combat against colonialism and imperialism, and they wielded power at the highest level. But they were also the source of much miscalculation and tragedy, and deserve our critical analysis. I had intended to bring my autobiography to a close on the assassination of Walter, but found myself compelled to concede to the curiosity of many of the impact of his assassination on the movement and on the vitality and endurance of the Working People’s Alliance. Political struggles are not random and formless, and I have been given emphatic roles in many organisations, principally, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), the Progressive Youth Organisation (PYO), Indian Political Revolutionary Associates (IPRA) and the Working People’s Alliance (WPA). Like many prominent activists in the anti-colonial, anti-dictatorial struggles, I have been harassed, beaten, arrested, detained, and imprisoned, and lived under pernicious surveillance for most of the years I am writing about; no less under the colonial power as under post-colonial independence rulers. On one occasion a bomb thrown at me fortunately did not explode. My family shared the perils and uncertainty of my political life. The final chapter briefly deals with the impact of political conflicts on the family. I also in that chapter write about my wife Samia and sons Andre Yazid, Moen and Siddiqui Govinda. The chapter appropriately concludes with my special tribute to Samia, delivered at a memorial service after her passing. It is extraordinary that nearly five decades of my life in my native land have been given to liberation politics. For me it has not been a sacrifice but a discovery of myself and a sense of purpose, acquisition of self-discipline and self-empowerment. I bore in mind the exhortation of Mahatma Gandhi: Be the change you wish to see in the world. Since residing here in New York from 2004, I have not let go of the bond I feel for the oppressed, and at heart I will die a revolutionary. While I may have earned a public persona as a political activist, I am quite proud of my efforts in community activities, cultural promotions, sports and sports organizations, church matters and legal intervention, complementing my concerns for rights and freedoms of the people. Some of these merit a place in this account of my life; and I have found a place here for recording of this aspect of my public service. This is politics too. As a result of my long involvement in public service, I have learnt much about my country, its glorious landscape, spectacular diversity, bright, hospitable and industrious p