The Middle Passage

by V. S. Naipaul

  Mr Burnham is the finest public speaker I have heard. He speaks slowly, precisely, incisively; he makes few gestures; his head is thrust forward in convinced, confiding, simple but never condescending exposition; he is utterly calm, and his fine voice is so nicely modulated that the listener never tires or ceases to listen.

  The manner conceals an amazing quickness, all the more effective for never revealing itself in an acceleration of pace or a change of pitch.

  ‘Burnham!’ a youth shouts as he cycles past. ‘Mister to you,’ is the reply, the voice so even that it is some seconds before one realizes that the words are not part of the speech. ‘You lie! You lie!’ someone calls from a passing car. This is not dealt with at once. Burnham completes the sentence in hand. ‘And,’ he continues, the car now diminished in the distance, ‘as that jackass will never understand …’ The timing has been perfect; the crowd roars. Someone in the audience starts to object. Burnham ceases to speak. Slowly he swivels his head to gaze at the offender, and the bright light plays on a face that expresses fatigued yet somehow tolerant contempt. The silence lasts. Then Burnham, his expression now one of annoyance, turns to the microphone again. ‘As I was saying,’ he begins. His reputation in British Guiana undoubtedly accounts for part of his success. His speeches are known to be entertaining and the crowds come to be entertained, as this New Amsterdam crowd undoubtedly was; a large, good-humoured, mixed crowd.

  Unfortunately Mr Burnham had little to say. He indicated a general disapproval of what was going on, without documenting his case effectively. He spoke of the need for education, and promised to establish an economic planning unit when he came to power. He spoke of Mrs Jagan, his former associate, as ‘that little lady from Chicago, an alien to our shores’; and he played indirectly though not the less unpleasantly on the racial issue. ‘I warn the Indians … Jagan has said he wants to gain control of the commanding heights of the economy. The commanding heights. Let me translate for you: your businesses, your land, your shops.’ To the Negroes in the audience the message was clear.

  In 1953, after the British Guiana Constitution had been suspended, I heard both Mr Burnham and Dr Jagan speak at Oxford. Though power and responsibility have brought about certain changes, Dr Jagan remains what he then was. The same cannot be said of Mr Burnham. In 1953 he spoke, however uncertainly, like a man with a case. In 1961 I felt he had none. What had happened in the interval? What caused the Jagan—Burnham split of 1955?

  In British Guiana it is almost impossible to find out the truth about any major thing. Investigation and cross-checking lead only to fearful confusion. Dr Jagan blames Mr Burnham’s opportunism; Mr Burnham, he says, was badly advised by West Indian politicians. And it is true that after his election victory of 1957 Dr Jagan sought a reconciliation with Mr Burnham. On the other hand, in his Georgetown chambers, where he more or less repeated the arguments of his New Amsterdam speech, Mr Burnham – in private a man of such charm that one almost regretted that he was a politician – said that his ‘political demise’ had been planned by the Jagans even before the 1953 elections. Reconciliation was therefore out of the question; besides, Dr Jagan was ‘a Stalinist’ and Mrs Jagan not an intellectual. This, however, does not explain Mr Burnham’s failure, granted his great gifts, to provide constructive or stimulating opposition. My own conclusion, for which I can offer no evidence, is that between these men, who have shared an important Guiana experience, there remains a mutual sympathy and respect stronger than either suspects, each perhaps regretting the other for what he was.

  However, the rift exists, and it has divided the country racially, creating a situation which reflects, as in a mirror, the Trinidad situation: in Trinidad the Negroes are the majority group, in British Guiana the Indians. With almost one half of the population contracting out of the self-government experiment, the country is dangerously weakened. Racial antagonisms, endlessly acting and reacting upon one another, and encouraged by the cynical buffoons who form so large a part of the politically ambitious in every population, are building up pressures which might easily overwhelm the leaders of both sides and overwhelm the country; though British Guiana, because of its physical size and the isolation of its communities, can better withstand disturbance than Trinidad.

  On Sunday morning we drove east along the Corentyne coast to Port Mourant, Dr Jagan’s birthplace. Port Mourant is a sugar-cane estate of flat, hideous vastness, miles long and miles deep. The people are proud of the vastness, and believe too that Port Mourant produces the finest Guianese. They are only slightly less proud of their cricketers than they are of Dr Jagan. The house of Joe Solomon, who miraculously threw down the last Australian wicket in the tied test match at Melbourne, was pointed out to me more than once by people who had known Solomon ever since he was a boy.

  The population of Port Mourant is mainly Indian, and Dr Jagan was going to open a Hindu temple that morning in one of the workers’ settlements: white wooden houses set about a rectangular pattern of narrow asphalted streets. We found a large crowd of men, women and children, dressed mainly in white, waiting on the road and in the scuffed grounds of the new, white-washed temple. The temple was of concrete. I thought it heavy and inelegant, as so many Guianese concrete buildings are; but it was interesting because, though Hindu, it was clearly Muslim-inspired. Muslim architecture, as formalized and distinctive as Muslim doctrine, can be more easily remembered than Hindu, and more easily reproduced. Apart from a few simple Hindu temples, the mosque is the only non-Western type of building that most Indians in Trinidad and British Guiana know.

  Dr Jagan was welcomed without formality by his brother Udit, a tall, well-built man who still works on the estate. Udit wore a blue shirt, and his khaki trousers were folded above his ankles; he was barefooted. Mrs Jagan introduced me to her mother-in-law, a short, sturdy woman in white. She wore the Indian long skirt, bodice and orhni. Her son had inherited the features which, on her, were a trifle heavy. Her manner was simple, patient and self-effacing. As soon as she had greeted her son she withdrew. Dr Jagan and his wife were garlanded. Then on the threshold of the temple Dr Jagan made a very short speech about the importance of self-help and his pleasure at opening a building which was an example of that. He cut the ribbon – West happily blending with East – and helped to take the image inside. We took off our shoes and followed. The concrete floor was covered with linoleum in three widths of different patterns and colours. Men sat on the left, women on the right. Mrs Jagan sat next to her mother-in-law. A gentle young brahmin with shoulder-long hair brushed back flat, and a frogged white silk jacket, acted as master of ceremonies. A middle-aged singer of local renown, accompanying himself on the harmonium, sang a Hindi ballad he had composed for the occasion. Its subject was Dr Jagan; the words ‘nineteen fifty-three’ occurred often, and in English. At the end some people, including myself, started to clap.

  ‘No! No!’ cried a blue-suited, bespectacled man on my right. ‘This is a temple.’

  The clapping instantly died down and many of us tried to pretend that we hadn’t been clapping.

  The brahmin urged us to cooperate.

  Dr Jagan spoke again. It made a change, he said, to hear songs of praise. The temple was a fine building, and a good example to the people of Guiana, who needed to practise self-help. In spite of all that had been said to the contrary, his party guaranteed religious freedom; his presence was proof of that.

  ‘Say a few words in Hindustani,’ the blue-suited fanatic whispered in English. ‘They would appreciate it.’

  Dr Jagan sat down.

  There was another song. Then, to my surprise, the secretary read a report on the temple’s activities; this was necessarily very brief, but it was too much for the women, who began to chatter among themselves.

  ‘Silence!’ the fanatic called, jumping up.

  The brahmin urged the people to cooperate and called gently for order.

  The fanatic rose to his stockinged feet to move the vote of thanks. He began with a Hindi couplet
and chastised us at length for desecrating the temple in the very hour of its opening by clapping. Then he spoke about the Sanatan Dharma, the faith. Staring hard at Dr Jagan, he said: ‘The Hindus of this country will fight for their religion. Let no one forget that.’ Dr Jagan stared straight ahead.

  Immediately after the ceremony Dr Jagan was besieged by people talking about land. The rest of us put on our shoes and went to an old wooden shed that adjoined the temple, and there we were fed on halwa, chipped coconut, bananas and soft drinks. We went out to the car and waited in the hot sun for Dr Jagan. The crowd around him was growing, and his attempts to step backwards to the road were frustrated. The chauffeur was sent to get him away. The chauffeur, a small man, worked his way into the crowd and disappeared. Someone else was sent. ‘Is always the biggest crooks who hold him back like that,’ Dr Jagan’s mother said. She had prepared lunch for him at home; she was impatient to take him off; and it was hot in the car. Eventually, after many minutes, Dr Jagan freed himself and came out to the road, some people still at his heels.

  Dr Jagan’s mother and the family of his brother Udit live in one of the workers’ houses across the main road from the compound of the estate senior staff, which is fenced around with wire mesh and guarded at the gate by a watchman. The workers’ houses, standing on stilts, and sheltered by many fruit trees, give the impression of being choked together. Each house, however, stands on a fair amount of land: the feeling of oppression is created by the maze of narrow, dusty, improperly drained tracks between the houses, the fences on either side of the tracks, and above all the trees, rustling in the wind which carries the smell of cesspits. Yet it was easy to see why the Jagan children are always eager to come down to Port Mourant to stay with their grandmother. For a city child there would be enchantment in the flat, well-swept dirt yard, cool with water-channels and low fruit trees.

  The house was a simple one, roughly built; and inside bright with fresh paint that had been applied to old, unpainted wood. In the small drawing room there was a set of morris chairs on the uneven floor; a photograph album and an untidy stack of old American pulp magazines rested on a small centre-table; the walls carried no decoration apart from some Roman Catholic calendars. There was no sink or running water; so we used pitchers to wash our hands out of the window of the dining-area. Constantly encouraged by Dr Jagan’s mother, we ate. The food was good, indeed extravagant. It completed my exhaustion. I couldn’t face the afternoon sports meeting, to which the Jagans were going, and asked whether I could rest. Udit showed me to a tiny bedroom that led off from the drawing room. The hairy wooden walls had been painted cobalt; and, below a picture of Christ, I went to sleep.

  It was night when Udit awakened me. Mrs Jagan had gone back to Georgetown; Dr Jagan was in New Amsterdam. I was to spend the night in Port Mourant. Udit, a grave, kindly man, offered me a pitcher of water to refresh myself, and then took me for a long walk along the main road, bright with shops and new cafés and busy with the Sunday evening cinema crowd. We talked about the diversification of agriculture in the region; Udit told me that cocoa was being introduced. About the contrast between Udit and his brother there was nothing startling; it can be duplicated in many West Indian families who, with an imperfect understanding of the concept, comically described themselves as ‘middle class’.

  After dinner Dr Jagan’s mother showed me the photograph album. It had been extensively rifled. The only photograph of interest was one Dr Jagan had sent back from America while he was a student: a studio portrait by an unimaginative photographer of a dazzlingly handsome young man looking over his shoulder, not unaware of his looks: not the face of a politician or a man who was to go to jail for plotting to burn down Georgetown. If she was proud of her son Mrs Jagan didn’t show it. She scarcely spoke of him; and when we closed the photograph album she became much more concerned about my family and about me. I smoked too much; I was damaging my health; wouldn’t I like to try to stop? And drinking: that was another bad thing: she hoped I didn’t do much of that. While we spoke, Udit’s children brought out their school books and worked at the dining table by the light of the Petromax pressure lamp. The house was wired and had bulbs; but the electricity supply was in the hands of various entrepreneurs in the settlement who ran small generating plants; and it seemed there was some trouble about the arrangements. Earlier, someone else had told me about a field clerk who was too ‘stuck up’ to extend the services of his plant.

  Dr Jagan was to return to Port Mourant in the morning, to address a public meeting in the Roopmahal Cinema on the working of the land resettlement scheme. When I left for the cinema Udit’s wife asked me to get Cheddi to ‘come and take some tea’. The request had to be deferred, for Dr Jagan was already on the cinema stage, with a whole row of government officials, Negro, Portuguese and coloured, seated behind him on folding chairs. The administrators wore suits; the engineers khaki shorts and white shirts.

  Questioners were being invited to speak from the stage, and over and over Dr Jagan explained to people who had applied unsuccessfully for land that applications had been carefully considered and preference given to the neediest. At last the landed started climbing up to the stage. They stood correctly, their shirt sleeves buttoned at the wrist, holding their hats behind their backs, and spoke softly, as though sensing the hostility of the landless, who made up most of the large audience. Some objected to government interference; some didn’t like being told where to pasture their cattle; some objected to the proposed limitation of holdings.

  Dr Jagan: How much land you have?

  The Questioner mumbles. Whispers in the audience of ‘You see him? You see him? You see how quiet he playing now?’

  Dr Jagan: You have a hundred acres?

  Gasps from the audience, of astonishment, genuine and simulated, mixed with delight at the uncovering in public of a secret long known. The questioner flicks his hat against the back of his thighs and stares straight at Dr Jagan.

  Dr Jagan: And how much of this hundred acres you planting?

  The Questioner mumbles.

  Dr Jagan: Twelve acres. You have a hundred acres and you and your sons planting twelve. But I alone, man, with a cutlass, could do better than that. (Dr Jagan’s tone now changes from the conversational to the oratorical.) This is the curse of this country. So many people without land. And so much good land not being used, just going to waste. This is one of the things this government is going to put a stop to.

  The Audience hums with approval, which turns slightly to derision as the questioner, squeezing his hat, makes his way down from the stage, looking at the steps. Another questioner goes up and speaks for some time. The audience is still derisive and Dr Jagan holds up his hand for silence.

  Dr Jagan: Good. You plant your fifteen acres. You work hard on your land, you been keeping your wife and five children now and you don’t see why the government or anybody else should come and tell you what to do or where to tie out your cow. Good. We know you work hard. But tell me. Who rice-land your cows does mash down? And where you does pump your water out? In the next man land, not so? So what about him?

  The roar is one of approval for Dr Jagan’s cleverness in demolishing an argument which had at first seemed fair and unassailable.

  And so it went on, until the climax. This had been gigglingly prepared in the back seats by some of the landless who were perhaps also party-workers. A ‘character’, barefooted, in khaki trousers and shirt, his manner suggesting a slight drunkenness and also a comical hesitation, walked up to the stage, humorously applauded all the way. And once on the stage he delivered an impassioned and controlled oration on behalf of the landless. It was a performance of high finish, from the opening – ‘A uneducated man like me don’t know how to talk good’ – to the well-known local jokes and the devastating denunciation of selfishness and greed which was at the root of the troubles of Guiana. After he had finished there was nothing more to say. The engineer in white shorts had only to hold up maps and explain some technical d
etails.

  Even so, Dr Jagan was surrounded after the meeting and made to go over points that had already been explained. One man had a special complaint: the authorities were making him pay an omnibus licence for his taxi, and he wanted Dr Jagan to correct this. The taxi was in the yard of the cinema: it was a van, capable of seating ten.

  It was now past midday. We didn’t have time to go and take tea with Udit’s wife. Dr Jagan had to open a cassava factory in Georgetown at five; his son, waiting for us in New Amsterdam, wanted to get back in time for the matinée of a cowboy film. We started for New Amsterdam with some of the government officials, driving fast along the road, which was here asphalted and smooth. We heard a knocking. It persisted, increased; and the sound was familiar to me from an experience I had had just before leaving Trinidad. We stopped and examined the wheels. The front wheels were firm; those at the rear rocked at the push of a hand. Removing the left hub cap, we found all the nuts unscrewed, projecting evenly beyond the bolts with only a thread or so to go. It was very puzzling.

  ‘You’ve been seeing politics in the raw this week-end,’ Dr Jagan said to me over lunch at New Amsterdam Government House. ‘If you want to think at all, you have to go abroad.’

  Dr Jagan is all things to all men. For some he is to be distrusted because he is a communist; for others he is to be distrusted because he has ceased to be a communist and is just another colonial politician attracted by power. For some he is a racial leader. For some he is failing to be a racial leader. (‘I hate Cheddi,’ a well-placed Indian said to me. ‘The more I see him the more I hate him. One morning the Indians of this country are going to wake up and find that Cheddi has sold them down the river.’) And for others, as a Negro reminded me (it was a point one tended to forget), Dr Jagan represents a radical racial change: he is not white. The colonial system being what it is, many browns and blacks, brown and black but ‘respectable’, find this hard to forgive.