Victor J Ramraj, 1941-2014: A fine scholar dedicated to a life of the mind

Dear Editor,     

I am very sad to learn of the passing of Victor Ramraj, Professor of English at the University of Calgary in Canada, where he taught for over four decades. I first encountered him at Queen’s College, Guyana, in early 1966. He did not teach me, but I chatted with him on several occasions, usually along the corridor. He stopped me one day because I was reading Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness, which he had obviously read and thoroughly liked. He asked what my reaction was, and I told him that I like Naipaul because of his clarity – one of the best writers I had read. Moreover, I found his forthright treatment of “man’s inhumanity to man” in India (an embryonic Marxist response) bold and refreshing. He said this book was no whitewash, and Vidia (as he called him) harboured no fear of letting the side down. He added that many are deeply incensed by the book, but this is what great writing should do: “shake you up.”

I lost touch with him for a couple of decades until around the late 1980s. In 1998 he chaired a talk I gave in Toronto. Over three decades after my first exchange with him, I was speaking on the north Indian background of the Indian indentured labourers, and I was challenging the notion that these people did not know where they were going; that they were all tricked into migrating. I did not believe indentureship was ‘a new system’ of slavery. I told him that many would not like what I had to say. He responded clearly that he appreciates my intellectual integrity and he was complimentary of the quality of my scholarship. “Go right ahead! Don’t look over your shoulders,” he advised.

Such was the magnanimity of the man. And many have said that he harboured no grudges against fellow academics; besides, he was generous in offering wise counsel to young scholars. This alone made Vic Ramraj an outstanding man; but this is just a sketch: he was a very fine scholar, dedicated to a life of the mind.

Yours faithfully,

Clem Seecharan

Emeritus Professor of History

London Metropolitan

University