Speak,memory

High office,among other things it confers on its incumbents — most notably the “system” of assistants that Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee is banking on to finish his memoirs as a parliamentarian — bequeaths event-filled memory. Every individual who has walked the corridors of power is a repository of incidents,anecdotes and opinion that do service to history and public memory. Not only are these entertaining and educative in themselves but they also provide keys to understanding,unravelling,reconstituting and reworking systems and institutions. Such memoirs needn’t be literature in the older,value-loaded sense of the term,but it helps if people like Chatterjee choose to be their own Boswells or find themselves as much.

Prospective publishers may not be overwhelmed by George W. Bush’s plans to write his memoirs; some commentators may feel condescending towards,and sceptical about,the man and his proposed book. That,however,is the fate of all political memoirs,no less so of those written by Bill and Hillary Clinton. If and when Bush’s own fat little book gets written,we can rest assured it will be informative,not least about things we already know. It was a very significant and turbulent presidency to begin with,one that changed political and strategic contours. Winston Churchill’s memoirs of his prime ministerial days through World War II were not the best history of the subject. But which credible World War historian does without them?

India is no stranger to such memoirs of its own,and Chatterjee has just lived through one of the most dramatic political moments of the decade — the trust vote of July last year,with rare,unprecedented personal consequences for a House speaker. He is an insider who has seen more than 30 years of parliamentary and regional politics. As he plans his book and his retirement,publishers queuing up for rights to what he might write next don’t surprise.