Paras Ra­moutar

Nalis, in col­lab­o­ra­tion of the fam­i­ly of the late Ran­jit Ku­mar, will ob­serve his 100th birth an­niver­sary on Mon­day, Ju­ly 9, at NA­PA The­atre 1, UTT Cam­pus, start­ing at 6 pm. Known as "the man who built Wright­son Road," Ku­mar was a bril­liant civ­il en­gi­neer who mi­grat­ed from his home­land in In­dia and set­tled in Trinidad in 1935.

He brought with him the first In­di­an movie ever to be shown in Trinidad-Bala Joban-and so be­gan the pop­u­lar­is­ing of In­di­an movies lo­cal­ly. More im­por­tant­ly, Ku­mar's in­tro­duc­tion of In­di­an movies in Trinidad proved to be piv­otal in giv­ing the East In­di­an di­as­po­ra an iden­ti­ty in its new sur­round­ings.

It did not take him long to get deeply in­volved with the prob­lems and is­sues of pub­lic life in T&T and to iden­ti­fy him­self with the peo­ple of this coun­try. In 1943, he was elect­ed a Port-of-Spain city coun­cil­lor, and in 1946 be­came an in­flu­en­tial mem­ber of the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil, work­ing with Capt An­drew Arthur Cipri­ani and labour union leader Tubal Uri­ah "Buzz" But­ler who led this first in­dus­tri­al strike in the oil belt.

Ku­mar joined with But­ler to fight for many caus­es such as elec­tric­i­ty, wa­ter and drainage. In 1956, he fought the gen­er­al elec­tion for the Ca­roni North seat, but lost to lawyer Mi­tra Sinanan. Mon­day evening's cel­e­bra­tion will be­gin with a fea­ture lec­ture ti­tled, Ran­jit Ku­mar: A Pi­o­neer-His Lega­cy, by Prim­nath Goop­tar, a his­to­ri­an who re­searched the life and times of Ku­mar.

A pan­el dis­cus­sion, mod­er­at­ed by Hans Hanoomans­ingh on the im­pact of Ku­mar's life will fol­low. Oth­er mem­bers of the pan­el will in­clude Prof Brins­ley Sama­roo, Prof John La Guerre and Goop­tar. This ob­ser­vance is timed to mark this coun­try's 50th year of In­de­pen­dence, and the or­gan­is­ers of the trib­ute find it fit­ting that the con­tri­bu­tions of out­stand­ing per­son­al­i­ties should be high­light­ed.