Because Panday proved that he was capable of surmounting the insurmountable; that he would become PM of a country that chanted as one of its mantras, no Indian could ever become one of its Prime Ministers, elevated him to he ranks of, if not a god, at least something of a demi-god; especially from the mere fact that in his prime, his picture was often placed by his supporters on their altar alongside the Hindu pantheon of gods – of Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma – giving credence to the idea that there was something more about him; that he was no lesser mortal.
Being a people indoctrinated by the thoughts of western civilization, being told that the great orators of the world were Greeks, Romans (and Churchill – who got his Nobel Prize – for his World War 11 speeches) who would have dared nominate Basdeo Panday for a Nobel Prize equivalent to what Churchill got. But Panday was from the back of St. Julien in Princes Town and Churchill was from the upper echelon of British society. Thus, while Panday made some of the most inspiring speeches ever as a politician – good enough to match Mark Anthony, Demosthenes and Cicero – the great orators of the past – Churchill got the Nobel prize for Literature (oratory, really) why, because he was better than Panday or because one was white and the son of Sir Randolph Churchill and the other brown and the son of Choate Maharaj of indentureship ancestry?
Ok, well if all of Panday’s oratorical genius didn’t qualify him for the Nobel Prize, have we thought that his eulogy today might have been written in the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly had he pursued a career in the film industry and instead of Ben Kingsley getting the role of Gandhi he had gotten it and had won the Oscar for Best actor becoming the first person of Indian ancestry to win that most prestigious of awards.
Ever since Ben Kingsley got the Gandhi role, I have wrestled with the argument that the automatic choice for that part, having already had a cameo in the Gandhian movie, Nine Hours to Rama, would have been, Basdeo Panday. In my argument with myself, did Panday do better in coming back to Trinidad to become Prime Minister (and become incarcerated) as a result or would he have attained greater international glory had he made that epic walk up the Academy’s red carpet to receive his Oscar and be forever immortalized as one of the all-time great actors of the movie industry?
Playing Gandhi was not just getting a lead role in a movie but to play the part of a man considered to be among the most iconic individuals of the millennium raises the question of the big fish in a small pond or the small fish in the big pond. As PM of T&T, Panday became a big fish in a small pond, but had he got the Gandhi role instead of Kingsley and the subsequent Oscar for it, there is no doubt that he would have become a big fish in a global pond.
I write this tribute thinking of the words of the great poet, Omar Khayyam, what might have been?
L. Siddhartha Orie