Lives of the famous
Editorial
Stabroek News
March 28, 2003
The deaths last year of prominent Guyanese such as Balwant Singh of the medical profession; Paul Singh of the academic community; Akbar Khan and Charles Fung-A-Fat of the legal profession, and former President Desmond Hoyte, and the recent deaths of Joseph Chin of the business community and Joseph Pollydore of the labour movement, have left a void not only in society but also in the public memory. Soon, the relatives and friends of some of these persons, all of whom made outstanding contributions to public life and the Guyanese nation, will also pass away leaving little to be remembered.
One way of learning from the rich experiences of the lives of famous Guyanese would be by the publication of autobiographies and reminiscences. Though closely related, and often confused with each other, memoirs and autobiographies (and biographies) belong to separate classes and serve different, though equally useful, purposes. Writers of autobiographies are concerned largely with themselves. Writers of memoirs are usually concerned with important historical events in which they have played key roles, or have observed closely, and seek to record, describe or interpret those events.
There has been so much to write about in this country over the past half century that one would expect a surfeit, rather than a shortage, of memoirs. Sadly, though, this country's tenuous literary tradition of writing in this genre has produced relatively few works of substance.
It is true that three of our presidents left books which provide some insight into their thoughts, if not their lives. Cheddi Jagan's The West on Trial: The Fight for Guyana's Freedom, perhaps, is the most comprehensive, but Forbes Burnham's A Destiny to Mould: Selected Discourses of the Prime Minister of Guyana and Desmond Hoyte's Guyana's Economic Recovery: Leadership, Will-Power and Vision are also extremely important historical documents and statements of public policy.
The practice of officials publishing their speeches and addresses as individual monographs or as collections was successfully adopted by three foreign ministers - Shridath Ramphal, Rashleigh Jackson and Clement Rohee - who have left many useful sources of information about Guyana's international relations from the 1960s to the 1990s in that form. In sport, Clive Lloyd's Living for Cricket and Rohan Kanhai's Blasting for Runs record the achievements of the country's two most outstanding cricketers.
In other fields, Edith Brown's, Life Story of Andrew Benjamin Brown; David Chanderbali's, Kayman Sankar: the Ultimate Rice Magnate; Derek Goodrich's, The Words and Works of Alan John Knight; Eusi Kwayana's Walter Rodney; Joycelyne Loncke's Norman E. Cameron: The Man and his Works; T. Anson Sancho's The Green Way; Clem Seecharan's Bechu: Bound Coolie Radical in British Guiana; Denis Williams's Giglioli in Guyana; Anne Walmsley's Guyana Dreaming: The Art of Aubrey Williams, are among the better known biographies.
But so many others who have made outstanding contributions - Peter d'Aguiar in business; William D'Andrade in finance; Rupert Craig in civil engineering; JOF Haynes in jurisprudence; Charles Nicholson in health, and Boysie Ramkarran in politics, for example - are in danger of being forever forgotten unless someone researches their lives and writes about them. These famous men are now all dead, of course, but their work, however substantial, has never been documented, much less disseminated to the public at large.
The Administration's thoughtfulness in establishing the Cheddi Jagan Research Institute is a commendable contribution, not only to the commemoration of the President's life but also to the collation, preservation and dissemination of his work. Dr Jagan, like Forbes Burnham, Peter d'Aguiar and other ministers and persons in public life, accumulated an extensive collection of addresses, articles, interviews, lectures, occasional publications and speeches. All these form part of the historical mosaic of this society and economy and should be preserved and published.
Recently, former Foreign Minister Rashleigh Jackson took a commendable first step by writing a series of recollections on his experiences in the field of international relations for the Sunday Stabroek. Hopefully, they will flower into full memoirs and be published for use by students of the Foreign Service Institute.
Future generations have much to learn from the experiences and achievements of the past. Autobiographies and memoirs are a good way of recording such information for posterity.
