Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

bavi­ta.gopaulchan@guardian.co.tt

It is an In­di­an Ar­rival day like no oth­er.

Not on­ly have cel­e­bra­tions been mut­ed by COVID-19 re­stric­tions but this is the first year the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha will not be able to em­brace the phys­i­cal pres­ence of cul­tur­al gi­ant Sat­nar­ine Ma­haraj.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the SDMS Pun­dit Kr­ish­na Ram­bal­ly said In­di­an Ar­rival Day was one of Ma­haraj’s fa­vorite events.

He said, “He loved the chil­dren’s par­tic­i­pa­tion and the gath­er­ings where peo­ple will get to­geth­er and re­flect on the mem­o­ries that In­di­an Ar­rival day brought and he will even go back in­to his child­hood days.”

May 30th com­mem­o­rates 175 years since the first group of in­den­tured la­bor­ers from In­dia came to T&T on­board the Fa­tel Raza­ck, hop­ing for eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties and bring­ing with them cul­tur­al en­hance­ment.

Singing, danc­ing and a re-en­act­ment of the ar­rival of the Fa­tel Raza­ck are the main events that mark the day through­out the coun­try.

Sat Ma­haraj passed away last No­vem­ber, leav­ing be­hind a rich cul­tur­al lega­cy in T&T.

As sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the SDMS, Ma­haraj was in­stru­men­tal in hav­ing In­di­an Ar­rival Day stamped on T&T’s cal­en­dar as a hol­i­day.

Though this year is qui­et af­fair, Ram­bal­ly sig­nals a call to all cit­i­zens to use the time to re­flect.

“Our fore fa­thers have strong ties when it comes to fam­i­ly life,”Ram­bal­ly said.

He added, “They were not ed­u­cat­ed in the Eng­lish lan­guage but they spent a lot of time and they did en­sure their chil­dren were.”

Guardian Me­dia was told the or­gan­i­sa­tion will cel­e­brate the day by per­form­ing char­i­ty across the coun­try and dis­play cul­tur­al per­for­mances on its broad­cast net­work.

In the 1990s the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha dubbed May as “In­di­an Her­itage Month which cul­mi­nates on In­di­an Ar­rival Day.

Each year hun­dreds of SDMS fol­low­ers will gath­er at the Par­vati Girls’ Hin­du Col­lege in Debe where they will be en­ter­tained with a va­ri­ety of per­for­mances in an­tic­i­pa­tion of Ma­haraj’s speech which usu­al­ly ad­dress­es key is­sues fac­ing the coun­try.