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Thursday, January 23, 2025

'Silver-tongue' Winston Mahabir

by

20110904

To those who do not know or may have for­got­ten, Dr Win­ston Ma­habir was one of three peo­ple that Dr Er­ic Williams in­vit­ed to his home, on be­ing dis­missed from the Caribbean Com­mis­sion, to "dis­cuss his fu­ture and the way for­ward." Win­ston Ma­habir was al­so one of three Trinidad is­land schol­ars be­ing mar­ket­ed on the PNM plat­form as high-qual­i­ty can­di­dates for the com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion. Be­sides this, Williams had wooed Win­ston as the "In­do-Tri­ni poster boy" of stature to boost the "in­ter-racial sol­i­dar­i­ty" im­age that was one of the par­ty's ma­jor plat­form pranks.

Dr Ma­habir was al­so a dy­nam­ic or­a­tor whose nick­name (which he loved) was "Sil­ver-tongue." One re­calls him claim­ing that the po­lit­i­cal fare be­ing served from the PNM plat­form was "in­tel­lec­tu­al chick­en and cham­pagne." How­ev­er, the taunt com­ing from some sec­tions of the com­mu­ni­ty he was in­tend­ed to ap­peal to was the cryp­tic "right man, wrong par­ty." How­ev­er, af­ter an "ex­cit­ing ex­pe­ri­ence" in PNM's first Cab­i­net, he qui­et­ly, some say mys­te­ri­ous­ly, "left pol­i­tics to fur­ther my stud­ies in so­ci­ol­o­gy and psy­chi­a­try part­ly with a view of dis­cov­er­ing why I had en­tered pol­i­tics in the first place. And part­ly, too, "be­cause I was in­tent on analysing-from a dis­tance and away from the im­me­di­ate zone of his mes­mer­ic pres­ence-the na­ture of Er­ic Williams."

In Dr Ma­habir's In and Out of Pol­i­tics (po­lit­i­cal bi­og­ra­phy), he sug­gests that Er­ic Williams has been the sub­ject of wide­spread de­ifi­ca­tion and vil­i­fi­ca­tion. He fur­ther sug­gests that Williams's apos­tles have a du­ty to mor­talise him, to write about the man they knew, even if they them­selves are des­tined to be re­gard­ed by pos­ter­i­ty as note­less blots on a re­mem­bered name. Williams him­self seemed to think that he was "a bridge over trou­bled wa­ters." As we re­call, when Williams passed on he was sent off in a blaze of glo­ry, like a fall­en Ti­tan, where­as many a po­lit­i­cal stal­wart who has made a size­able con­tri­bu­tion has dis­ap­peared, like a peb­ble in a pond, "un­wept, un­ho­noured and un­sung," and in some cas­es bare­ly un­hung.

Fol­low­ing his own ad­vice, Dr Ma­habir tells us that Dr Williams-whom he de­scribes as "a friend and col­league"-has been the least un­der­stood leader in Caribbean pol­i­tics for more than 20 years. He is a durable amal­gam of en­er­gy and enig­ma. Wrote Ma­habir, "I have no hes­i­ta­tion in ad­mit­ting that he has con­sti­tut­ed a ma­jor in­flu­ence in my adult life. His bril­liance in­spired me when I was a uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent, his charis­mat­ic ap­peal fas­ci­nat­ed me in his cam­paign for pow­er; his im­bal­ance per­turbed me af­ter his achieve­ment of pow­er, and I felt in­se­cure in the shift­ing sands of his po­lit­i­cal at­ti­tudes."In­ter­est­ing­ly, Win­ston Ma­habir ac­knowl­edged that he had on­ly one ma­jor in­tel­lec­tu­al god­fa­ther whom he loved and hat­ed with equal pas­sion through many years and that man was Er­ic Williams, whom he first met in Cana­da.

I re­call Michael Man­ley say­ing that he was an in­ter­na­tion­al­ist or in­te­gra­tionist by choice but a Ja­maican by ac­ci­dent. Win­ston Ma­habir averred that it was at McGill that he es­tab­lished his iden­ti­ty as a West In­di­an as dis­tinct from a Trinida­di­an, and even more dis­tinct from a Trinida­di­an In­di­an. For the record, he found lit­tle in com­mon with the In­di­an stu­dents from In­dia. Ma­habir ad­mit­ted that he read Williams's Cap­i­tal­ism and Slav­ery avid­ly and with crit­i­cal re­spect and recog­nised, "Here for the first time was a top West In­di­an schol­ar tak­ing as his theme the his­to­ry of the West In­dies. Here was a black man con­ceal­ing the dag­ger of his raw rage be­neath a cloak of se­lec­tive re­search di­rect­ed against the white man's out­ra­geous ver­sion of his­to­ry."

Win­ston Ma­habir trea­sured Williams's friend­ship and claimed that Williams's three best friends in South were him­self, Dr Hasley Mc­Shine and Dr Mosa­heb. They sat­is­fied his "in­ward hunger" to the best of their abil­i­ty and when­ev­er he trav­elled abroad, he wrote them joint­ly, which, Dr Ma­habir claimed, could amount to a trea­sury of let­ters for a gen­er­a­tion of would-be bi­og­ra­phers and as­pir­ing PhDs. As I hereto­fore men­tioned, Win­ston Ma­habir was to fill the ab­sence of an In­di­an of his stature to lend some sem­blance of gen­uine mul­tira­cial sol­i­dar­i­ty, one of the most loud­ly pro­claimed pre­cepts of the PNM. Cometh the mo­ment, cometh the man. Ac­cord­ing to Win­ston, the time was ripe for such a man. De­spite his per­son­al faults and per­son­al­i­ty aber­ra­tions, he soon drove or­der in­to chaos, gave guid­ance and di­rec­tion to vague im­puls­es, syn­the­sised the se­cret long­ings for less­er men, and fi­nal­ly brought a tremen­dous par­ty or­gan­i­sa­tion in­to the 1956 elec­tion cam­paign, the ex­hil­a­ra­tion of which its par­tic­i­pants can nev­er for­get.

To cut a long sto­ry short, Dr Ma­habir had a rude awak­en­ing and was shak­en to the core when, PNM hav­ing lost the Fed­er­al elec­tion and with Williams's pub­lic po­lit­i­cal en­e­my num­ber one, Berti Gomes, get­ting in­to the Fed­er­al Par­lia­ment, Williams lit­er­al­ly went berserk at Wood­ford Square and launched a stri­dent un­be­com­ing at­tack on the In­do-Trinida­di­an com­mu­ni­ty, there­by em­bar­rass­ing the In­do-Tri­nis on his plat­form with his "hos­tile and re­cal­ci­trant" as­per­sions, and ren­der­ing re­dun­dant any fur­ther po­lit­i­cal use­ful­ness of the likes of Win­ston Ma­habir. Dr Ma­habir re­moved him­self from fur­ther fall­out, but, like Trinidad it­self, con­tin­ued to hope that Williams's es­sen­tial great­ness would pre­vail over his man­i­fest weak­ness­es.

THOUGHTS

• I re­call Michael Man­ley say­ing that he was an in­ter­na­tion­al­ist or in­te­gra­tionist by choice but a Ja­maican by ac­ci­dent.

• Win­ston Ma­habir averred that it was at McGill that he es­tab­lished his iden­ti­ty as a West In­di­an as dis­tinct from a Trinida­di­an, and even more dis­tinct from a Trinida­di­an In­di­an.

• For the record, he found lit­tle in com­mon with the In­di­an stu­dents from In­dia.


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