If ever there is a need to learn about the detailed history of Guyana’s East Indians, then renowned Historian and Former Dean of the School of Education and Humanities, Tota Mangar, is the man to turn to. Mangar has delivered presentations and even taught about Indo-Guyanese history for more than 50 years. He holds a stellar record, not only as a historian, but as a school teache writing history pertinent to that of the 19th and 20th Centuries of British Guiana. To this date, he is still a reservoir of research and is readily tapped into for lectures at conferences and universities. One of Mangar’s
proudest achievements is his research which led to Guyana being placed on the UNESCO World Heritage Register of “Documentary Heritage of the Indian Indentured Labourers”.
BRIEF LIFE CHRONICLES
Looking back at his life, Mangar has no regrets. He was born in a mud-walled, thatched roof house at Anna Regina on the Essequibo Coast. Life for Mangar and his nine siblings who followed began in the same thatched roof houses built with walls of mud. It was the first set of houses built after the indentureship period. Mangar’s grandparents were among the Indian indentured labourers who were lured to British Guiana. His research shows that a total of 536 shiploads of indentured workers came.
He attended St. Agnes Anglican Primary, where he stayed on and wrote the College of Preceptors Exams. Mangar was then enrolled at the Normal Educational Institute, a privately-run secondary school in Queenstown. After writing the London GCE Exams, Mangar was employed as a teacher in the secondary department of St. Agnes School.“Being a teacher in those days brought a certain respectable status to your family,” he noted. In 1973, he graduated as a trained teacher and went back to St. Agnes where he taught for a further two years. He then left the Essequibo Coast to pursue a degree in History at the University of Guyana not long after. He mentioned, “I like history; I find it a challenge. It’s about how you analyze and interpret the information that gives it life and
meaning.” After graduating from University, Mangar was attached to the Ministry of Education’s Research Unit. In 1982, he was promoted as Head of the school’s Social Studies Department. He completed his Master’s Degree in History at the University of Guyana and left North Georgetown
Secondary in 1988. A few years after, he was named a Senior Lecturer and was given indefinite
tenure at the University in 1999. While there, he held many administrative positions.
He served as Acting Vice Chancellor in 2009. Over the years, he served as a Guest Lecturer at Carter Brown University in Providence Rhode Island. At the Federal University of Roraima, he served as guest lecturer on Guyanese and West Indian History. His impressive record led to him sit on many boards. These include the National Subject Committee on Caribbean History in the 1980s and 1990s, the National Archives Advisory Committee, the National Museum Development Committee (Chairman) and the current teachers’ training college, CPCE, from 2005-2007. In 2001, Mangar received a Fellowship to the Carter Brown University. In 2003, he received the University of Guyana’s 40th Anniversary Special Award for Distinguished Service, and then in 2008, he also received one of the University’s Long Service Awards. In 2007, the Indian Arrival Committee awarded Mangar for
“Outstanding contribution to the development of Guyana and as a distinguished Indo-Guyanese”.
Some of Mangar’s research work includes ‘Planter Class Power and the Struggle for Constitutional Reforms in Nineteenth Century British Guiana’ and ‘Conceptualization and History of the Guianas’.
Mangar became a teacher because of the status that was attached to the profession, and he is proud to have lived up to the reputation that is expected of those who teach others. Today, he remains a celebrated historian attached to the Ministry of Education.