Shas­tri Boodan

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says uni­ty is nec­es­sary to bring T&T out of the dark­ness en­velop­ing it.

She made the com­ment while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at Di­vali Na­gar cel­e­bra­tions in Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day night.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar paid trib­ute to those who helped T&T through­out the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, es­pe­cial­ly health­care work­ers, su­per­mar­ket work­ers, the po­lice and the com­mon man who gave what lit­tle they had.

“Our coun­try is suf­fer­ing from its dark­est days. Things are dif­fi­cult for many fam­i­lies. Crime is plagu­ing our na­tion and while our cit­i­zens suf­fer, there are those who tell us sac­ri­fice whilst they are laugh­ing all the way and spree­ing and fet­ting,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“But the light of a sin­gle deya will dis­pel dark­ness every­where and any­where. I have seen our fel­low cit­i­zens through­out our coun­try demon­strate pa­tri­o­tism, hu­man­i­ty, hu­mil­i­ty, which is what makes us Trin­bag­on­ian and that is what took us through the COVID. Not the de­layed grants and the vac­cine, what took us through is the courage of our cit­i­zens who gave up what lit­tle they had. The small busi­ness­es and the not so small who do­nat­ed food­stuff and ham­pers to help those in need.”

Speak­ing on the Na­gar’s 2022 theme Hin­du Panth, she said panths are dif­fer­ent path­ways with the same goal of spir­i­tu­al lib­er­al­i­sa­tion.

“Each of us have our own path­ways, our own dhar­ma, our own kar­ma. So, we do not say one is bet­ter than the oth­er, no, no, no, we don’t say one is true, one is false, we treat all with equal re­spect and dig­ni­ty. Each can lead the sin­cere seek­er to ex­pe­ri­ence the di­vine and each di­vine ex­pe­ri­ence is in­tense­ly per­son­al. We merge with the uni­ver­sal con­scious­ness; we each have our own panth ac­cord­ing to our own in­di­vid­ual kar­ma and our in­di­vid­ual dhar­ma. We can­not im­pose our own panth on any­one else, but we have our own path­ways to fol­low.”

The Di­vali Na­gar closed last night, ahead of to­day’s Di­vali hol­i­day.