Bøker av Clem Seecharan

Cheddi Jagan is arguably the most controversial political leader in the history of the English-speaking Caribbean; the first politician of Indian ancestry to lead his country, and the only leader in the Region who embraced the Soviet system

Clem Seecharan has written a useful documentary history of Bechu, the first Indian to testify before the Royal Commission in 1897.Now who was this Bechu? He was, in Seecharan's words, "an indefatigable gadfly," who in letters to the local press revealed the conditions of Indian indentureship: poor wages, sexual exploitation of women by overseers and managers, and the virtual impossibility for Indians to obtain justice because of the collusion between colonial authorities and the planters. This knowledge we owe to economic historian Alan Adamson who "discovered" Bechu in the 1960s. Yet the man himself remained somewhat of a mystery, something Bechu himself seems to have cultivated. Seecharan has now filled a number of lacunae in our understanding with this two-part volume. The first section focuses on Bechu and the British Guianese environment in the late nineteenth century, while the second part includes letters and memoranda by Bechu (and reactions to them by local opponents).

Multiple constructions of India, as homeland, have been central to the shaping of Indo-Guyanese identity. An imagined India has continually woven into the Indo-Guyanese consciousness a rich, elevating perception of self. In Mother India's Shadow over El Dorado, Clem Seecharan reconstructs the circumstances surrounding the development of Indo-Guyanese nationalism.

Examines Jock Campbell's role in the shaping of British Guiana towards the end of Empire. Campbell was a reformer whose Fabian social beliefs drove him to secure major benifits for sugar workers in the 1950s and `60s. Clem Seecharan explores the fascinating interplay between Campbell's programme of reforms and the doctrinaire Marxism of Guyana's charismatic politician, Cheddi Jagan.