DR HAMID GHANY

Last week­end, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies be­stowed the Hon­orary De­gree of Doc­tor of Laws up­on Mr Ka­malud­din Mo­hammed, for­mer Cab­i­net min­is­ter and for­mer am­bas­sador. Last year, he re­ceived the na­tion's high­est award, the Or­der of Trinidad and To­ba­go. He served as Min­is­ter of Health in the Cab­i­net of Dr Er­ic Williams at the time when the Mount Hope Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex was con­struct­ed. This came about as a re­sult of the state­ments made in the 1976 bud­get speech de­liv­ered by the then prime min­is­ter and min­is­ter of fi­nance, Dr Er­ic Williams, De­cem­ber 12, 1975, which in­di­cat­ed that a med­ical school was go­ing to be de­vel­oped in Trinidad and To­ba­go in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

As the min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for de­liv­er­ing that project, it was one of the crown­ing ac­com­plish­ments of his ser­vice in pub­lic life. At an ear­li­er time in his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer, he was ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of West In­di­an Af­fairs by Dr Er­ic Williams in 1967. There were many chal­lenges fac­ing the West In­dies at that time in the af­ter­math of the fail­ure of the West In­di­an Fed­er­a­tion some five years be­fore. The for­ma­tion of Carif­ta, the de­sire of An­guil­la to se­cede from St Kitts and Nevis, the for­ma­tion of the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank, the re­or­gan­i­sa­tion and re­fi­nanc­ing of British West In­di­an Air­ways (BWIA), and the fu­ture of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies were all is­sues that com­mand­ed at­ten­tion in the late 1960s. He was in­volved in all of these ne­go­ti­a­tions, in one way or an­oth­er.

In­deed, one of the most daunt­ing chal­lenges con­cerned the fu­ture of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies it­self which be­came an is­sue at a meet­ing of Com­mon­wealth Caribbean Heads of Gov­ern­ment in Bar­ba­dos in June 1969. The agree­ment be­tween the con­tribut­ing gov­ern­ments to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies was due to ex­pire in 1972 and there were ba­si­cal­ly two cours­es of ac­tion to be pur­sued. In a mem­o­ran­dum to all Heads of Gov­ern­ment by vice chan­cel­lor OR Mar­shall dat­ed May 16, 1969, en­ti­tled Fu­ture of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, the cours­es of ac­tion were as fol­lows:

"• The con­tin­u­a­tion of the UWI as a re­gion­al Uni­ver­si­ty af­ter the ex­pi­ra­tion of the cur­rent agree­ment in 1972, ei­ther on its present ba­sis, or on a mod­i­fied ba­sis or,

"• the dis­so­lu­tion of the UWI from 1972 or a date there­after to be fixed and the es­tab­lish­ment of a mech­a­nism for giv­ing ef­fect to this de­ci­sion."

The re­gion­al gov­ern­ments de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies af­ter 1972 and his work with Dr Williams led to the con­tin­u­a­tion of the UWI. His own in­volve­ment in the for­ma­tion of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment in 1956 with Dr Williams came at a time when he was si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly lead­ing a strug­gle for the recog­ni­tion of East In­di­an cul­ture and mu­sic in this so­ci­ety. That strug­gle was one that tried to break that un­der­de­vel­op­ment that was al­ready a part of the colo­nial lega­cy of di­vi­sion be­tween racial and eth­nic groups in the so­ci­ety. His in­volve­ment with the launch of the pro­gramme "In­di­an Tal­ent on Pa­rade" in 1947 on Ra­dio Trinidad chal­lenged the un­der-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty of a very large sec­tor of the colo­nial so­ci­ety in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

On his show on Ra­dio Trinidad, he used to in­vite the Naya Za­mana Or­ches­tra of Os­tad Nazear Mo­hammed, Narsa­loo Ra­maya and Isaac Mo­hammed; Jit Seesa­hai and his Melody Mak­ers; and the S M Az­iz Or­ches­tra as well as many oth­er singers. The East In­di­an mu­sic scene in this coun­try can trace its up­grade to­day from the days when one hour per week was al­lo­cat­ed on Ra­dio Trinidad out of 119 hours per week in the colo­nial era. In this re­gard, Ka­mal must be re­gard­ed as a pi­o­neer. On March 29, 1981, Dr Er­ic Williams died in of­fice as prime min­is­ter. There were many in this so­ci­ety who felt that he should have been ap­point­ed prime min­is­ter to suc­ceed him. That did not hap­pen and he did not leave the PNM be­cause he was not ap­point­ed.

He stayed and con­tin­ued to serve the new prime min­is­ter George Cham­bers in his Cab­i­net af­ter the PNM won the 1981 gen­er­al elec­tion. George Cham­bers would reg­u­lar­ly have him per­form the du­ties of prime min­is­ter when­ev­er he had to trav­el over­seas. Af­ter he left of­fice fol­low­ing the loss of the PNM to the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion in 1986, he was re­called to pub­lic ser­vice in the late 1990s by the then prime min­is­ter, Bas­deo Pan­day, to serve as Am­bas­sador to Cari­com. De­spite the fact that Bas­deo Pan­day had been on the op­po­site side po­lit­i­cal­ly, when he served un­der Dr Williams and George Cham­bers, it was a cred­it to him that he could reach across the po­lit­i­cal aisle to ask Ka­mal to serve his coun­try in such a ca­pac­i­ty. Com­mit­ment to West In­di­an re­gion­al­ism, de­vel­op­ment of East In­di­an cul­ture, and ex­pan­sion of UWI, are ar­eas of pub­lic ser­vice, among many oth­ers, for which Ka­mal must be thanked.