SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) is work­ing to­wards the re­vi­tal­iza­tion of var­i­ous facets of In­di­an cul­ture that may have slow­ly fad­ed from Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al land­scape.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor De­oroop Teemal, the Chair­man of the NCIC’s Her­itage Cen­tre, said the Cen­tre has un­der­tak­en a project in which the folk cul­ture would be looked at, record­ed, doc­u­ment­ed and re­searched.

At the time of his con­fir­ma­tion of the project, Sen­a­tor Teemal was ad­dress­ing a Jaal Ra­mayan work­shop at the NCIC Na­gar, Ch­agua­nas, on Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 10.  The event fea­tured a Jaal Ra­mayan group from Suri­name, and oth­er lo­cal per­form­ers.

“Com­ing out of all of that we are very op­ti­mistic that we will be able to re­ju­ve­nate, re­sus­ci­tate, rein­vig­o­rate and—in cas­es where the re­spec­tive tra­di­tions that were brought, died out—even be able to re-in­tro­duce the tra­di­tions in­to com­mu­ni­ties,” Sen­a­tor Teemal said.

Members of the Avocat Shiv Shakti Jaal Ramayan and Chowtal from South Trinidad group perform at the NCIC Nagar on Saturday 10 September 2022. [Image by SHASTRI BOODAN]

He said many com­mon tra­di­tions were brought to the re­gion by the in­den­tured In­di­an im­mi­grants who set­tled in this coun­try.  He said there are sim­i­lar­i­ties in tra­di­tions al­so in Fi­ji and Mau­ri­tius, since most of the In­di­ans that went to work in the in­den­ture­ship pro­gramme came from the com­mon re­gions of Ut­tar Pradesh and Bi­har in In­dia.

Sen­a­tor Teemal said the fact these tra­di­tions sur­vived in T&T for the last 177 years, shows the per­sis­tence of the peo­ple.

“With­out any sort of Na­tion­al sup­port of State sup­port, be­cause all of these folk tra­di­tions fall out­side the am­bit of what we call the na­tion­al cul­ture,” he said.  “It’s on the pe­riph­ery like so many things re­lat­ing to In­di­an cul­ture.  It’s just around, and the rea­son that it is there still is be­cause of the per­sis­tence and the sup­port and the love that we have and the con­nec­tion that we have when we hear the mu­sic of our fore­fa­thers.”

He said the NCIC would be look­ing at re­viv­ing all the fes­ti­val songs that make up the folk cul­ture of the lo­cal In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty.

Munesh Ku­mar Ja­groop, spokesman for the vis­it­ing Shri Satya­narayan Ra­mayan Saa­maj group from Suri­name, spoke about the ori­gin and prac­tice of the Jaal Ra­mayan.