Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

The an­nu­al Di­vali Na­gar re­mains an im­por­tant plat­form for pre­serv­ing In­di­an cul­ture, bring­ing gen­er­a­tions to­geth­er and al­low­ing the wider na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to ap­pre­ci­ate the con­tri­bu­tion of In­di­an her­itage to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­ety.

Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) pres­i­dent Su­ru­jdeo Man­ga­roo said the Na­gar was more than a venue for en­ter­tain­ment, food and shop­ping, de­scrib­ing it as a place where cul­ture was ex­pe­ri­enced and passed on to fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

Ad­dress­ing the open­ing of Di­vali Na­gar 2026 on Fri­day, Man­ga­roo said the an­nu­al event con­tin­ued to play an im­por­tant role in pre­serv­ing the coun­try’s cul­tur­al her­itage.

Man­ga­roo al­so thanked the hun­dreds of vol­un­teers, mer­chants, artistes, spon­sors and in­sti­tu­tions who con­tributed to stag­ing the event, de­scrib­ing their ef­forts as an ex­am­ple of what vol­un­tary ser­vice and co­op­er­a­tion could ac­com­plish.

His re­peat­ed ex­pres­sions of grat­i­tude to his board of di­rec­tors for their “sup­port and loy­al­ty” came against the back­drop of con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the NCIC’s fund­ing arrange­ments for this year’s Na­gar.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion has faced scruti­ny over state agency con­tri­bu­tions.

De­spite the ten­sions, Man­ga­roo main­tained that the Na­gar’s suc­cess de­pend­ed on the col­lec­tive ef­forts of those com­mit­ted to pre­serv­ing the coun­try’s cul­tur­al her­itage.

In his ad­dress, he al­so called on the pub­lic to ex­er­cise wis­dom and dis­cern­ment in the use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, warn­ing that tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment must not come at the ex­pense of hu­man val­ues and judge­ment.

This year’s theme, Vive­ka: Dis­cern­ing Truth in an Age of AI, high­light­ed the im­por­tance of dis­tin­guish­ing be­tween truth and false­hood, right and wrong, and ben­e­fi­cial and harm­ful ac­tions in an in­creas­ing­ly tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven world.

“Be­cause in­for­ma­tion is avail­able, does that mean it is true? And be­cause tech­nol­o­gy makes some­thing pos­si­ble, does that nec­es­sar­i­ly make it right?” he asked.

Man­ga­roo said ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence was trans­form­ing the way peo­ple worked, learned, com­mu­ni­cat­ed and con­duct­ed busi­ness, with in­for­ma­tion that once re­quired hours of re­search now avail­able with­in sec­onds.

How­ev­er, he cau­tioned that the abil­i­ty of ma­chines to per­form in­creas­ing­ly com­plex tasks did not mean hu­mans should sur­ren­der their judge­ment to tech­nol­o­gy.

He ex­plained that Vive­ka, in Hin­du phi­los­o­phy, rep­re­sent­ed the abil­i­ty to dis­cern and recog­nise what tru­ly mat­tered.

“It is not sim­ply the abil­i­ty to know more. It is the wis­dom to know what mat­ters,” he said.

Man­ga­roo stressed that the NCIC’s theme was not an ar­gu­ment against ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, not­ing that the tech­nol­o­gy could as­sist doc­tors, farm­ers, busi­ness­es and stu­dents while cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple.

He said the chal­lenge was to em­brace tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment with­out aban­don­ing hu­man val­ues, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and com­pas­sion.

Draw­ing a par­al­lel with the sig­nif­i­cance of Di­vali, Man­ga­roo said the fes­ti­val of lights rep­re­sent­ed more than phys­i­cal il­lu­mi­na­tion, sym­bol­is­ing knowl­edge, good­ness and the tri­umph of right­eous­ness over ig­no­rance.

“We can have the bright­est screens and still make the dark­est de­ci­sions. We can pos­sess ex­tra­or­di­nary tech­nol­o­gy and still lack com­pas­sion,” he said.

He added that knowl­edge must be guid­ed by dhar­ma, pow­er by re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and progress mea­sured not on­ly by tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments but al­so by the qual­i­ty of hu­man be­ings so­ci­ety pro­duced.

There was a heavy pres­ence of po­lice and se­cu­ri­ty at the Na­gar. Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rudolph Bhag­wan­deen told GML that there were at least 40 po­lice­men in­side and out­side the venue.