No matter whether one is gifted with the innate power of writing, educated persons, especially those who become famous in later life, have the common propensity to write a memoir or an autobiography. Perhaps due to this, we have such works by accomplished philosophers and writers like Bertrand Russell, Rabindranath Tagore or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's Memoirs is considered a major literary work of the twentieth century.
At the same time, we enjoy reading autobiographies by non-writers yet legendary figures in their respective areas like politics, social work, diplomacy or the glamour world. The politicians of undivided India and those of independent Bangladesh include great persons like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Abul Kalam Azad, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and others. Among the Western leaders, the names of Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama et al have found a respectable place in the field of autobiography.
Churchill's, however, was a unique case. Although he was a great statesman, he excelled in writing. His talent for authorship was beyond an iota of debate. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, not the one reserved for Peace-as many had expected.
Compared to autobiographies, biographies or life-stories of famous persons, written by others, are aplenty. Many statesmen, political heroes, those in showbiz et al who do not feel comfortable at writing, or their posthumous admirers, assign biographers to write on them. Many biographies too have found a permanent place in this branch of literature.
Biographers also could emerge as creative and gifted writers. James Boswell, the eighteenth century British biographer of poet and critic Samuel Johnson, of the same period, turned out to be a celebrated writer in the later years. Boswell did not write anything in his life apart from this biography.
Coming to politicians, let us turn to a recent book-Ausamapta Atmajiboni) (Unfinished Memoirs) by Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the architect of Bangladesh independence. Published in 2012, originally in Bangla, the book is a chronicle of Sheikh Mujib's eventful life from boyhood to mid-youth. It was written while he was serving time as political prisoner in Dhaka Central Jail during the later part of 1967. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib begins his autobiography when he was a school-going child in Gopalganj sub-division in Faridpur district.
In the book, the Bengalee leader narrates in detail the political events that took place around him in nearly four decades.
Sheikh Mujib tells us how Suhrawardy, while on a visit to Gopalganj, spotted him, and noted down his mailing address. Then a local political activist in his early youth --- full of energy and ebullience --- he got a letter from the revered leader after some time. Suhrawardy had asked Mujib to meet him in Kolkata, if he visited the city any time in the near future. The all-India leader eventually became Mujib's political guide and mentor, and had shaped his career. It is now history.
The book ends in the mid-fifties, 1955, shortly after the formation of the Jukta Front (united front) government in the then East Pakistan.
The people of Bangladesh are quite fortunate to have this 'unfinished autobiography' by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. It offers the readers a rare glimpse into the events and historical circumstances that led to the making of Bangabandhu, the founder-father of independent Bangladesh.
The people of the sub-continent do not have enough autobiographies or memoirs by its major leaders who emerged in the pre-partition period. One of the foremost works of this corpus is Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography, which ends at a critical period of the leader's political career --- in 1921. The book spans a period from the Mahatma's childhood to his late youth. Gandhi ends his book by telling the readers that from then on the events that took place in his life were known to all. To quote him, "My life from this point onward has been so public that there is hardly anything that people do not know …" The great anti-British Indian leader's autobiography has a special focus on the spiritual and moral aspects of life. In the original Gujarati book titled Sathiya Sodhani, later translated as My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi tries to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong. The book also reflects on his quest for the ultimate truth. In the introduction, the leader of anti-British non-violent movement says, "What I want to achieve-what I have been striving and pining to achieve these thirty years is self-realisation, to see God face to face, to attain Moksha. I live and move and have my being in pursuit of this goal."
Pakistan's founder-father Mohammad Ali Jinnah did not write any book; if he had, we could have been benefited by his own detailed view of the hectic politicking, coupled with behind-the-scenes parleys and other complications, which occurred in the pre-partition politics of India. However, this void has been filled to a great extent by the temporarily expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jaswant Singh's book Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence.
Legendary Indian independence leader Abul Kalam Azad's India Wins Freedom is a monumental work in the genre of autobiography. The partition of the sub-continent, the latent political spasms and tumultuous events centring round it are minutely narrated in the book.
In the area of political memoirs, Toward Freedom (1936) by Jawaharlal Nehru, stands out with its unique glory. The respected all-India politician and the first Prime Minister of India, Nehru wrote the book while he was in jail.
Of the memoirs authored by writers, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's Memoirs is acclaimed as one of the most widely read books in the twentieth century. Although it is essentially a literary work, political activities, especially those of the Latin American Marxist parties, occupy a dominant place in Memoirs. Chile's socialist President Salvador Allende was a close friend of the poet. He also served as an adviser to the president. As the country's envoy, Neruda was assigned to diplomatic postings in a number of countries around the world, including India, Sri Lanka and Myanmar (then Burma).
A major poet of the last century and Nobel laureate, Pablo Neruda's friendship list included almost all remarkable poets and novelists in France and Spain. The book Memoirs offers lively portrayal of a number of events that occurred in the poet's life. Few writers are fortunate enough to lead a life as colourful as that led by Neruda.
Colombian novelist and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez's autobiography Living to Tell the Tale (first published in Spanish in 2002, in English 2003), is another book offering the detailed account of a writer's dramatic personal life. An author attuned to the turbulent politics of his country, and that of Latin America in general, Marquez, like Pablo Neruda, comes up with an enthralling collage of memorable episodes in his life. Living to Tell the Tale reads like a quasi-fiction, which exhaustibly draws on a lot of major events-that take the reader on a trip to a unique world of both excitement and deep reflections, not to mention the writer's private-life escapades.
Like all genres of literature, autobiographies or memoirs have long been witnessing avid readers. Be the author a celebrated writer, a politician or a painter, it is one's ability to tell the readers his or her own tales in an evocative style that makes a work distinctive.
shihabskr@ymail.com