On May 26, 2002, thousands of people celebrated Guyana's political Independence. Among those thousands were some who wished Guyana was a state in India. On the other hand, there were many more thousands who wished Guyana was a country on the African continent. Unfortunately, there are very, very, very few who wished Guyana to be Guyana.

It is impossible to convince those who wished Guyana to be otherwise. Regardless how you phrase, coin or bluntly put it, the two former wishers will not be convinced. Tell the Indian dreamers that Indians have murdered "dem mattie" Indians by the thousands prior to the creation of India and Pakistan, and you will hear their explanation that those Indians were madmen. Tell them Indians brutally murdered Indians in the Indian state of Gujarat, and they will shrug you off with reasons better than Einstein would.

Tell the Africans that during the days of the slave trade, African tribal chiefs’ slave traders were responsible as much as the white slave traders for the unspeakable dehumanization of the African people shipped to the western world, and they will definitely brand you a racist. Tell them that African tribal leaders in Rwanda and Burundi are murdering African kiths and kin or that Africans are enslaving Africans in Sudan, and they will surely tell you that is all propaganda.

The people, who were least pleased on May 26, are those very, very few who want Guyana to be Guyana. They are the ones who know the political history of their country. They know exactly how and why the seeds for racial division were sown in their land, and so the story goes.

More than fifty years ago, British Guiana's masses had no means of advancing their causes. They were looked upon as an incapable people unable to plot their social, economical and political lives. Their needs were placed in the hands of British and local aristocrats. Colonialism in the British Empire context was the pot of gold. Colonials, including those in British Guiana had to be kept subjugated, their mentality must remain unchanged. This intellectual retrogression made them behave like trained mules or dogs. That was the primary objective of the aristocrats with regards to the British Guiana (BG) masses.

In the mid 1940's, a new breed of intelligentsia was emerging in BG. They were constantly looking over their shoulders where they continued to recognize the unfair treatment of the masses. This new breed of intelligentsia knew first hand what a people who controlled their destinies could achieve. They also knew that the pittance the British doled out to them were less than what they deserved. The intelligentsia traveled and lived in developed countries, and knew that human beings needed to be better treated than the then prevailing conditions in BG.

One such man was C. B. Jagan. He was elected to the BG legislature in 1947, and thereafter never gave his back to the BG masses. He knew first hand what suffering and subjugation the masses were undergoing, for he himself lived under those conditions. He began organizing the masses, and led the fight for Universal Adult Suffrage, which was won. The masses fight for chartering their own destinies had begun.

The underprivileged masses sensed hope in their future. When Universal Adult Suffrage was won, they prepared under their banner, the PPP and its leader C. B. Jagan for the chartering of their destinies. The ethnicity of an individual was absurd to think of. All were in the same boat and were heading for the same shore – the control of their own destinies. It did not matter whether you were Indians, Africans or ‘dougla’, or any other race. The fact that the underprivileged were organizing in a common cause, i.e., to charter their own destinies was what mattered. And so in the 1953 polls, the united class of Africans, Indians, dougla and other races battered the rich aristocrats.

But, the aristocrats were not to be outdone. The aristocrats read the results of the 1953 General Elections with extreme anxiety. Great Britain depended on her colonies more than ever before to repair the damages Hitler's Germany inflicted on her in WWII and to simultaneously maintain the high British standard of living. Hence, the tactic to prevent the colonies that were seeking self-governance was conceived: divide and rule.

Hindu/Muslim India is the most glaring example of ‘divide and rule’ tactic by the British. In their inner circles, the aristocrats took into consideration of the fact that it was impossible to keep a mass of people uneducated and fooled for long. They figured that if the Guianese masses, like India, was allowed to organize, they would demonstrate to other colonies and the rest of the colonial world that colonial rule is a farce. That in hindsight was the least of their troubles. What they feared most was that with a united mass and its tremendous natural resources, an independent Guyana driven with such a massive show of support behind the PPP banner, Guyanese would substantially raise their living standard to great heights, capable of surpassing that of developed countries. An aristocrat would not bear the notion that a people whom he deemed inferior could prove him wrong. And subsequently, the aristocrats collectively planned tactics and strategies, setting the wheels of division, so to speak, that is until today the prime reason why Guyana remains racially divided and underdeveloped.

The colonists and their local backers agreed that if they could successfully use religion as a dividing tool to set hundreds of millions of Hindu Indians against Muslim Indians in India about five years ago (1940/41) to prolong colonialism, why not try race to divide Guianese of African and Indian descents?

That was easy. The British secret service agents, the M16's, were crack psychiatrists. They were able to deduce that all organizations, whether political or otherwise, are made up of a group of individuals. Each of these individuals has his/her own psychological make up, which are placed into four general categories. Firstly, the way an individual sees himself; secondly, the way he/she sees others; thirdly, the way others see him or her; and finally, that part of an individual that is equivalent to the aircraft's black box.

This black box was what interested these experts. They figured that the sum of the first three was somehow imbedded in the last – the black box. No matter what, even on his/her deathbed, an astute opportunist will never express his true feelings. They knew he or she would continuously demonstrate his/her true colors through subtle preferences. This device proved extremely effective against the Hindu and Muslim Indians in India, and was worth trying in British Guiana.

The colonialists did their homework and decided on a course of action. Like in India, political independence was inevitable, but the bragging rights of British rule will remain in tact: the concept that colonial rule is superior. Any colony aspiring for independence must be so bitterly divided, that the resulting damage inflicted on the differing parts of its social fabric must be permanent and irreparable. The M 16 intelligence agents, in coordination and support from the American CIA, penetrated the black boxes of the many leaders of the PPP, and concluded that their most suitable candidate to affect the divide amongst the British Guianese masses was Forbes Burnham. (Later, when the sister of Forbes Burnham, Jessie Burnham, quitted her brother's faction of the PPP, which Forbes Burnham renamed as PNC, she warned the masses to beware of her brother Forbes, who possessed an overwhelming desire for intense self gratification and aggrandizement.)

Forbes Burnham was from Georgetown, very brilliant and popular with a honey-coated voice that would mesmerize anyone who happened to hear his orations. Not surprising, this local orator was the most popular of the PPP leaders in Georgetown, and since Georgetown was the center of all political battles in the colony, it gave the aristocrats' plan leverage. They took cognizance of the fact that Forbes Burnham was very demanding, and had genuine aspirations to replace C. B. Jagan as leader of the PPP, whether by hook or crook. He had refused to accept the election of C. B. Jagan as leader of the PPP at the party's Third Congress held in Georgetown in March 1953. After his many attempts to conjure strategies (which in his later years would be the bedrock for rigged elections), he forwarded the names of Jai Narine Singh, and Hanoman Singh, names that were not agreed upon, based on service, for ministerial positions, following the massive victory at the 1953 polls. He tasted his first blood of arm-twisting success when Janet Jagan was dropped from the previously decided list and the erratic recent member and opportunist Jai Narine Singh was named.

In October 1953, under the first of the many pretexts to undermine any organizations of the British Guianese masses, the aristocrats suspended the Constitution because of a (non-existent) communist threat. This was in reality an aborted subtle colonial coup to replace C. B. Jagan as leader of the PPP and install Forbes Burnham. As mentioned earlier, Burnham, they discovered, had a pampered lawyer's sweet skin, and was an exceptional egoist. To satisfy Jagan, was to satisfy the masses, and to satisfy Burnham, was to appease an ego, so they chose the latter, the cheaper of the two.

In February 1955, with Georgetown as the venue, the stronghold of Burnham, the aristocrats convinced Burnham to stage a party Congress to elect new leaders of the PPP. Burnham began practicing his electoral manipulation tactics by announcing that on Saturday February 12, 1955, PPP Congress would be held at the Auditorium, and that on Sunday February 13, 1955, it would be held at the Metropole cinema. This was contrary to the Constitution of the PPP.

At a Special Executive Committee meeting on February 13, 1955, PPP Chairman Burnham allowed a motion by Clinton Wong to suspend the standing orders and a "No Confidence" motion against the then present executives. (Clinton Wong had a bitter grudge with the present executives because he did not secure a ministerial position after the PPP won the 1953 elections.) The "No Confidence" motion was rammed through by Chairman Burnham, despite the fact that 7 of the 13 executives voted against the suspending of the standing orders. The 7 who voted against the suspension of the standing orders walked out of the meeting. Hence, the man Forbes Burnham, who will never in his life again have respect for majority rule and democracy, along with other conspirators against the masses, took control of the PPP. This was the beginning of the end of the organized masses in British Guiana. Those who walked out of the Special Executive Meeting were left to put the pieces of the masses back together. The original PPP Constitution was reinstated, this time minus opportunists.

The British and Burnham sensed victory in splitting the masses and were expecting their rewards. It must be noted here that it was not an African split at the time because those collaborating with Burnham included Latchmansingh and Jai Narine Singh. The British sought to permanently erase those leaders who really cared for the masses by re-marking the constituency boundaries, in an effort to give Burnham's faction of the PPP the nod in the upcoming 1957 election. They were rudely surprised when Jagan's PPP won the 1957 elections. Later, in 1958, Burnham joined with the United Democratic Party and renamed his faction of the PPP, the PNC.

Forbes Burnham was not a happy man. He had projected that with the Indians in his party the masses will rally behind him and he should win easily at the polls. He was prepared to try patience and propaganda in the next elections. He did, and lost again at the 1961 polls. He decided it was time he must do something drastic. He proclaimed that if Guiana became independent under Jagan, the country would be a communist state and the Africans would be dominated by the Indians, while under him, an independent Guyana would be socialist. In his desperation to fulfill his life long dream to be supreme leader of Guyana, he organized his X-13 gang to terrorize the PPP government. His henchmen of the X-13 gang were reckless. They took the Indians for the government, and began terrorizing the Indian population. This, to the delight of the aristocrats, was the final nail in the coffin of the masses. Acute racial hatred sunk its roots in the Guianese political, social and economic psyches. Eventually, the M 16 and the CIA aided Burnham to form a coalition government in 1964 with Peter D'Aguiar.

That is the story those few Guyanese who wished Guyana to be Guyana know. The Indians and Africans in Guyana will never let that country rest, only Guyanese will.