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I Food

culture and healthy eating - Editorial

/

Roasted tomato choka ... can lower the risk of heart disease, according to a Harvard University
study on health. A vegetarian diet can lower the risk of cancers because of salicylic acid found
in fruits and.vegetables.
Divali is the second largest national festival after
Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. Eid and Christmas
follow soon after Divali as final calendar festivals, with
many grand feasts with family and friends. It is an
appropriate time to create greater awareness about the
importance of a healthy diet to prevent illnesses and
diseases. Ministry of Health statistics show that one of the
main causes of death in Trinidad and Tobago is
cardiovascular disease. Moreover, statistics from Pan ,,_
American Health Organisation (PAHO) reveal that this
country ranks fifth in the world per capita in the case of
diabetes.
The theme of this year's edition of our magazine is
"Food culture and (un)healthy eating." The objective of
producing this publication is to effect a change towards a
healthy diet which will save citizens and the economy,
from unnecessary problems and complications. Diabetes
and heart diseases can' be prevented, reduced and
controlled by more than 60 percent if, people eat healthy
food and exercise regularly. It is recommended that every
person should have servings of vegetables and fruits with
every meal. Roasted tomato choka, for example, can lower
the risk of heart disease according to a Harvard University
study on health. A vegetarian diet can lower the risk of
cancers because of salicylic acid found in ifruits and
vegetables. It is expected' that about 50% to 60% of the
day's total calories should come from food sources of
complex carbohydrates and fibers. These foods include
fruits and vegetables, whole-grain bread and cereals, dried
beans and peas, and lentils and legumes.
Hindus and Indians are at a greater risk of contracting
heart disease than others with high cholesterol levels.
Research from the University of California-Berkeley
Center for Family and Community Health has shown that
Indians around the world have the highest rate of heart
disease. There is the suggestion that there may be a genetic
link to this disease. Indo-Trinidadians,
therefore, are
technically, a disadvantaged and at-risk group in this
multi-ethnic society. Most Indians are not aware that they
are at risk of contracting heart disease compared to others
with high cholesterol levels. Indians also form the majority
of patients suffering with, diabetes. The figures for these
"lifestyle diseases" are becoming
astronomical
and
alarming, particularly when a large percentage of people
can prevent their onset.
In addition to being a religious event, Divali is fast becoming the country's foremost food festival. Dishes like
roti, channa [chick pea] and aloo [potato], curried mango
and pumpkin are shared on the national table

with all groups that comprise the multi-ethnic society. The

preparation techniques that are used to make various types
of choka [roasted or boiled vegetables] and talkari [curried
vegetables] have proven to make the food tasty and
healthy.
In the past, there was more self-sufficiency in food.
During Indentureship (1845-1917), the backyard garden
was main the source of food and medicine. The diet of our
fore-parents was critical to their health and longevity.
Today, it is proven scientifically that consumption of
tomato choka can reduce the incidence of prostate cancer.
The traditional daal gravy, a legume rich in protein, is now
served to the convalescent
in the country's health
institutions. It is unfortunate that a deep-rooted agricultural
tradition which has sustained a healthy community is
destined to be destroyed. The closure of sugar-growing
Caroni (1975) Limited is the final nail in the coffin in the
neglect of agriculture by the state. Thousands of acres of
arable land that were used for food production are to be
turned over for construction of houses, malls, factories,
parks and playgrounds. It is uncertain whether those who
traditionally were agricultural workers would now get land
to produce food for themselves and consumers in the
market. The severance of that cultural root to the land will
only deepen the depression that has overtaken the
retrenched Caroni (1975) Ltd workers. Divali has always
been a time of the year when farmers were assured of
steady prices for their vegetables. Landless and jobless at
Caroni, they may now be without their daily meal of
locally-grown fresh fruits and vegetables.
The authors are responsible for the content of their articles.
The opinions expressed therein are not necessarily those of
the publisher.
ICC is an independent non-profit educational organisation
recognised by the Government of Trinidad and Tobago. It is
dedicated to publishing two magazines a year - a Divali souvenir
magazine, and an Indian Arrival Day commemorative magazine. '
Dr Kumar Mahabir, Editor and Chairman
Indo-Caribbean Cultural Council (ICC)
E-mail: mahab@tstt.neut
Tel: (868) 674-6008. Tel/fax: (868) 675-7707
Cover depicts traditional
They are (top clockwise)
saheena, mango chutney,
Cover design by Preddie

Indian vegetarian snacks,

aloo [potato] pie, kachowrie,
baiganee, and phulowrie (centre),
Partap.


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 Prime Minister
Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
Indian Arrival Day Greetings

As Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, I feel privileged to join with our Hindu Brothers and Sisters
in the celebration of Divali.
At all times, but especially at this time, our Nation needs to embrace the many facets of the Festival of
Light - the triumph of good over evil, caring, sharing and, above all, the power of light over darkness. As
fellow citizens, we must join hands in our focus on light and utilize this powerful and positive force to
elevate our people.
There is no place for useless upheaval, division, and other dark forces in our vision for Developed Nation
Status. Indeed, some of the central philosophical underpinnings of Vision 2020 are unity, peace and
prosperity.
May I express my appreciation to the Hindu Community for making Divali a celebration in which all
citizens of every creed and race can participate. This is a true representation of the spirit of Trinidad and
Tobago - an all-embracing spirit of unity in diversity that makes this twin-island Republic one of the
most wonderful places in the world.
Let us make Trinidad and Tobago's Divali 2003 a festival that the entire world will admire, as it
illuminates not only our homes, 'schools, temples and other public places, but also our individual minds
and hearts.
Light up every corner of Trinidad and Tobago on October 24th as a symbol of our commitment to light
and love.
On behalf of the Government and People of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, I wish the Hindu
Community and all our citizens.
Shubh Divali!

The Honourable Patrick Manning

Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago

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MINISTRY OF CULTURE & TOURISM

51-55 Frederick Street
Port of Spain
Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, West Indies

Namaskar,
It is with great pleasure that I take this opportunity to convey my profound feelings and best wishes to the
members of the Indo-Caribbean Cultural Council, the Hindu Community and to the wider community, on
the festive occasion of Divali 2003.
Divali or Deepavali, as it is also known, means 'a row of lights.' Light or knowledge dispels darkness or
ignorance. Divali, therefore, serves as a reminder that we should all strive for excellence in all our
undertakings, because it is only through knowledge that we can rid ourselves of negativity and the
darkness that resides within.
Festivals such as Divali also provide us an opportunity to reflect on our ancient traditions, and on the
possible solutions to some of our. modern day problems including unhealthy lifestyles. In the words of the
Late Swami Sachidananda of the Divine Life Society of Trinidad and Tobago Inc,: "Hindu Festivals are
interspersed by periods of intense fasting. As such, if we were to follow the traditions very closely,
excess bodyweight, a contributing factor to the killer diabetes and heart diseases, would automatically be
controlled." Ancient traditions such as Divali, therefore, need to be given greater emphasis in our lives;
otherwise inferior imports may dilute the richness that currently exists in our culture.
The importance of Divali, therefore, cannot be overstated. It encompasses a broad spectrum of activities,
including fasting and other life-giving practices, which in essence, are Ayurvedic practices; the culinary
arts for health and tantalizing the taste buds; crafts and handicrafts, the performing arts, rites and rituals
for personal, social and spiritual development.
The Ministry of Culture & Tourism has recognized the importance of Divali to the development of
Trinidad and Tobago, and as such, is giving support to its preservation and promotion. For indeed, Divali,
because of its immense popularity, has grown from a Hindu Festival to a National one.
Shubh Divali!

The Honourable Pennel ope Beckles

Minister of Culture and Tourism
Trinidad and Tobago

Winning the battle against sedentary lifestyle diseases

By Stephen Kangal
It would appear that Indians suffer from heart diseases not only because of poor dietary habits
(too much fats in food), but as research has shown, we have relatively small arteries.
The time is ripe for the Hindu/ Indian community to
mount a sustained and informed battle on winning the war
against those sedentary lifestyle diseases that are ravaging
our health, increasing the cost of health and depleating our
family units. There is need for a fundamental reform of our
dietary habits, our lack of interest in healthy regular
exercises, and our aversion to preventative medication.
Once these reforms are made, we can stem the widespread
and devastating incidence of cardiovascular
disease
. (CYD), diabetes (75,000), high blood pressure (HBP),
obesity and arthritis. CYD kills more than cancer, diabetes
and HIY-Aids combined (2562 annually-7 per diem).
Unfortunately, we may have to prosecute this assault
on our own as the State's health/sport/fitness services have
cast a blind eye on the matter even though CVD is the
number one killer in Trinidad and Tobago. A massive
$500m is allocated to the Anti-HlV Aids education
programme to say nothing of the work of the NGOs and
the UN. Precious little or nothing is devoted to
conceptualising an urgent and necessary public education
programme for the benefit of everyone against sedentary
lifestyle diseases. Perhaps electoral considerations are
involved elsewhere or simply there is a "don't care a
damn" attitude.
As one who has had to endure the adverse debilitating
consequences
of double coronary
by-pass surgery
undertaken in 2000 in Canada, I want to share my
experiences with readers. I always pursued an almost
addictive, active life-style, but more so during the last 30
years. I stayed away from coconut oil, dairy products, and
. red meat since the late 60s when the health guru, Lelord
Cordel visited this country to conduct dietary lectures.
Until 1996 my BP was 120/80-perfect and I weighed in
accordance with my skeletal frame.
Having adhered rigidly to the requisite exercise and
dietary imperatives, however, I neglected the option of
medication in view of the past history of CYD in my
family. We cannot rely exclusively on our medical
personnel to take complete control of our health. Diet and
exercise did not quite absolve me from CVD especially as
one whose mother and siblings suffered from CVD.
Accordingly for those of us born into a family with a
history of CYD and therefore genetically and ethnically
(Asian) prone to CVD the strategy to win the war must be
exercise, a low-fat diet, medication (statins), stress
reduction (yoga and deep' breathing) and moderate - not
excessive- amounts of alcohol. The latter is associated
with the improvement in the HDL - the good cholesterol
that transports

the LDL (the bad cholesterol) to the liver for expulsion.

It would appear that Indians suffer from CYD not only
because of poor dietary habits (too much fat in food) but as
research has shown, we have relatively small arteries. In
fact although I was scheduled for a quadruple by-pass,
only two arteries were grafted because the other two were
too small. It is to be noted that although I was diagnosed
with four major blockages in December 1999 I did not
experience any of the symptoms of CYD in the form of
chest pains (angina), shortness of breath etc. My ECG read
normal the day I was about to enter the operating theatre
for quadruple coronary artery bypass grafting surgery
(CABGS).
May I recommend that Indian males (post-50) with a
history of heart disease in their family should undertake an
angiogram because, in my case, ECG's, Nuclear Stress
Tests (injection of radioactive thallium), sophisticated
Persantine Tests and Imaging (PET Scans) cannot
accurately determine the extent of the coronary blockages.
It is possible that that my punishing and highly regimented
exercise schedules may have stimulated the growth of
collaterals. These are naturally generated by-passes that
the heart develops on its own to circumvent blockages and
to keep the heart muscles well supplied with a blood
supply. Even though I could run up steep hills daily, I had
two 90% blockages without a single sign of these defects.
In Trinidad, we are killing our children and ourselves
by feasting on fast foods and high fatty foods. In fact a
recent study on young accident victims showed plaque and
stenosis had already started to accumulate in the arteries of
Indians under 30 years old without any detectable evidence
of it. Angioplasty is done on 30- year olds in Trinidad and
Tobago. It is safer to patronise the charcoal barbecues than
the Kentucky and Royal Castle outlets. The traditional
Curried
Duck and "Buss-Up-Shut"
(Paratha Roti)
competition popularized by Indian radio stations must be
reviewed as these foods are replete with triglicerides/LDL.
We have to reduce the ghee, oil, white flour and sugar
used in prasadum, methai, roti.
While the frequent consumption of tomatoes by
Indians is associated with the reduced incidence of
prostrate problems and an increase in arthritis, the heavy
intake of salt together with the lack of exercise can
aggravate the menace of High Blood Pressure (HBP).

Stephen Kangal is a former teacher

and a retired Trinidad and Tobago Senior Diplomat

of household germs ....DEAD!

What V.S. Naipaul said about his childhood

Extract of Nobel Lecture, 2001

... the pledge .of land or repatriation [for ex-indentured immigrants] was dishonored for many of
the later arnvals. These people were absolutely destitute. They slept in the streets of Port of
Spain, the capital. When I was a child I saw them.
My background is at once exceedingly simple and
exceedingly confused. I was born in Trinidad. It is a small
island in the mouth of the great Orinoco river of
Venezuela. So Trinidad is not strictly of South America,
and not strictly of the Caribbean. It was developed as a
New World plantation colony, and when I was born in
1932 it had a population of about 400,000. Of this, about
150,000 were Indians, Hindus and Muslims, nearly all of
peasant origin, and nearly all from the Gangetic plain.
This was my very small community.
The bulk of this migration from India occurred after
1880. The deal was like this. People indentured themselves
for five years to serve on the estates. At the end of this
time they were given a small piece of land, perhaps five
acres, or a passage back to India. In 1917, because of
agitation by Gandhi and others, the indenture system was
abolished. And perhaps because of this, or for some other
reason, the pledge of land or repatriation was dishonored
for many of the later arrivals. These people were
absolutely destitute. They slept in the streets of Port of
Spain, the capital. When I was a child I saw them. I
suppose I didn't know they were destitute - I suppose that
idea came much later - and they made no impression on
me. This was part of the cruelty of the plantation colony.
I was born in a small country town called Chaguanas,
two or three miles inland from the Gulf of Paria.
Chaguanas was a strange name, in spelling and
pronunciation, and many of the Indian people - they were
in the majority in the area - preferred to call it by the
Indian caste name of Chauhan. I was thirty-four when I
found out about the name of my birthplace. I was living in
London, had been living in England for sixteen years. I
was writing my ninth book. This was a history of Trinidad,
a human history, trying to re-create people and their
stories. I used to go to the British Museum to read the
Spanish documents about the region
.
. .. What was past was past. I suppose that was the
general attitude. And we Indians, immigrants from India,
had that attitude to the island. We lived for the most part
ritualized lives, and were not yet capable of selfassessment, which is where learning begins. Half of us on
this land of the Chaguanas were pretending - perhaps not
pretending, perhaps only feeling, never formulating it as an
idea - that we had brought a kind of India with us, which
we could, as it were, unroll like a carpeton the flat land.
My grandmother's house in Chaguanas was in two parts.
The front part, of bricks and plaster, was painted white. It
was like a kind of Indian house, with a grand balustraded

terrace on the upper floor, and a prayer-room on the floor

above that. It was ambitious in its decorative detail with
lotus capitals on pillars, and sculptures of Hindu deities, all
done by people working only from a memory of things in
India. In Trinidad it was an architectural oddity. At the
back of this house, and joined to it by an upper bridge
room, was a timber building in the French Caribbean style.
The entrance gate was at the side, between the two houses.
It was a tall gate of corrugated iron on a wooden frame. It
made for a fierce kind of privacy.
So as a child I had this sense of two worlds, the world
outside that tall corrugated iron gate, and the world at
home - or, at any rate, the world of my grandmother's
house. It was a remnant of our caste sense, the thing that
excluded and shut out. In Trinidad, where as new arrivals
we were a disadvantaged community, that excluding idea
was a kind of protection; it enabled us - for the time being,
and only for the time being - to live in our own way and
according to our own rules, to live in our own fading India.
It made for an extraordinary self-centredness. We looked
inwards; we lived out our days; the world outside existed
in a kind of darkness; we inquired about nothing.
There was a Muslim shop next door. The little loggia
of my grandmother's shop ended against his blank wall.
The man's name was Mian. That was all that we knew of
him and his family. I suppose we must have seen him, but
I have no mental picture of him now. We knew nothing of
Muslims. This idea of strangeness, of the thing to be kept
outside, extended even to other Hindus. For example, we
ate rice in the middle of the day, and wheat in the
evenings. There were some extraordinary people who
reversed this natural order and ate rice in the evenings. I
thought of these people as strangers - you must imagine
me at this time as under seven, because when I was seven
all this life of my grandmother's house in Chaguanas came
to an end for me. We moved to the capital, and then to the
hills to the northwest. But the habits of mind engendered
by this shut-in and shutting-out life lingered for quite a
while. If it were not for the short stories my father wrote I
would have known almost nothing about the general life of
our Indian community. Those stories gave me more than
knowledge. They gave me a kind of solidity. They gave
me something to stand on in the world. I cannot imagine
what my mental picture would have been without those
stories.
Copyright @ The Nobel Foundation 1992
Courtesy: The Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden

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Indians in New Worlds: Mauritius and Trinidad

By Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Indians are accepted as long as they overtly identify themselves with the majority; they are
accepted as Trinidadians but not as Indians.
Trinidad & Tobago and Mauritius are poly-ethnic islandstates with large population segments oflndian origin. The
other major ethnic categories in both societies are of
African descent. Brought to the islands during the British
colonial indentureship scheme from ca. 1840 to ca. 1910,
the Indians were, in both societies politically marginal
until the electoral reforms of the post-war years. There are
both similarities and differences in the collective situation
of Indians in Trinidad and Mauritius. Both of the societies
are, nevertheless, remarkably peaceful at the inter-ethnic
level. In this article, I shall compare the respective
positions of Indians in the two nation-states, paying special
attention to the relationship between the wider sociocultural contexts of daily life and national politics.
The similarities between the two societies should not
be exaggerated. Trinidad is locally perceived as a largely
black society (for better or for worse, as the case may be),
unlike in Mauritius, several self-proclaimed spokesmen for
the Indians argue that they suffer cultural domination.
Policies acknowledging that Trinidad is truly a polycultural society, and thus something different from a
modern cultural melting-pot, are conspicuously absent.
National cultural symbols include the calypso, the carnival
and the steel band, all of which are. associated with the
blacks. The Indian presence is all but ignored in national
cultural. life and in tourism propaganda materials. The
aforementioned beer commercial, featuring an Indian
classical singer, is so exceptional that it may serve as a
reminder of the paucity of Indian cultural messages in the
shared Trinidadian public space.
Most of the creolisation of Trinidadians of Indian
origin occurs without they being discursively aware of it
happening; in aesthetic taste, dress, body language and the
perceptions of relevant paths for professional
or
matrimonial careers. This kind of process has also been
evident in Mauritius; for instance, the common form of
greeting is universally the handshake between Mauritian
men - this is not so in India. Nevertheless, the IndoMauritians still seem to stand a better chance of retaining
important aspects of their cultural distinctiveness, than do
the Indo-Trinidadians. This is due partly to their force in
numbers, partly to their firm position in the state agencies,
partly to the consciously poly-cultural policies of the
nation-state, and partly to their geographic proximity to
India. All this does not, however, necessarily matter as
regards the political importance of ethnicity. Writing about
Trinidad at the turn of the century, Bridget Brereton notes
that there were those press correspondents who argued that
it was important to bring into the open the existence of

racial feeling and discrimination, in order to destroy it;

they were nearly always coloured or black (Brereton
1979: 199).
The Indo-Trinidadians were muted then; they may no
longer be politically silent, but unlike in Mauritius, they
may never be in a position, sufficiently strong for them to
vie for cultural hegemony. The situation in the New
World, where "Indian-ness"
is frowned upon in the
national context, encourages Trinidadians of Indian origin
to relinquish their cultural heritage and become thoroughly
creolised. Indo-Trinidadians featured on TV, radio, in the
press and other cultural contexts of national society rarely
display any of their Indian heritage. In other words,
Indians are accepted as long as they overtly identify
themselves with the majority; they are accepted as
Trinidadians but not as Indians. This form of cultural
hegemony presents many Indo-Trinidadians with a very
real predicament: If they strive to preserve their traditions,
some avenues of careering will be closed to them; and if
they wish to be successful say, in the media, then they
must relinquish their cultural identity and may be regarded
as traitors by the more militant members of their
community. Discontents following these lines have been
widespread in Trinidad since Independence. This has led
to a certain exodus of Indians - some even tried to achieve
political refugee status in Canada in 1988 - but by and
large, the outcome will probably be an ever increasing
cultural creolisation of the dominated Indian population,
which mayor may not influence the social importance of
ethnicity.
From a slightly different perspective, we may arrive at a
theoretically
more
interesting
conclusion
in this
comparative exercise. Although I have stressed the
differences, there are fundamental similarities, culturally
and socially, between the blacks of Trinidad and Mauritius
as well as between the Indians of Trinidad and Mauritius.
In many respects, the similarities are more striking than the
differences, and they include important aspects of social
organisation and cultural values. In Mauritius, blacks are
rarely accused of being communalists (ethnicist); this
could be interpreted as an indication of their lack of
leadership, or their lack of political power, or both. In
Trinidad, blacks are often accused of "racism"; it is
frequently alleged, by non-blacks, that the PNM took over
an important principle of recruitment to high bureaucratic
positions from the British, namely that of "providing jobs
for the boys".
Thomas Eriksen is a University lecturer in Norway.

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book review (extract)

"Between Father and Son: Family Letters" by V. S. Naipaut

" .. .I shall go away never to come back, as I trust. I think I am going to be either a big success or
an unheard of failure."
Edited by Gillon Aitken
New York: Knopf, 2000
298 pages, $26
Reviewed by C. J. S. Wallia
V. S. Naipaul is the author of more than a score of
fiction and non fiction books, including the highly
acclaimed A House for Mr. Biswas, India: A Million
Mutinies Now, and the latest, Beyond Belief Islamic
Excursions Among the Converted Peoples. His writing has
been praised by Elizabeth Hardwick in the New York
Times Book Review: "The sweep of Naipaul's imagination,
the brilliant fictional frame that expresses it, are in my
view without equal today;" and by John Updike in The
New Yorker: "A Tolstoyan.spirit the so-called Third World
has produced no more brilliant literary artist."
Born and raised in Trinidad among the large
community of people of Indian origin, Vidiadhar
Surajprasad Naipaul ("Vido"), at age 17, won a
government scholarship to attend Oxford University.
Between Father and Son: Family Letters illuminates the
author's years of launching his writing career. Most of the
letters are addressed from Oxford to his father, Seepersad
Naipaul ("Pa"), an impecunious journalist and a selfpublish.ed short-story writer, and to his older sister, Kamla,
who also won a scholarship and was attending Benares
Hindu University in India.
The book reads like an engrossing novel. It also shows
us much of the raw experience Naipaul transformed into A
House for Mr. Biswas. In a recent National Public Radio
interview, Naipaul said that although he gave permission
to publish the letters, he did not participate in making
selections, nor does he intend on reading the book as there
are too-many painful memories.
Gillon Aitken has restrained his editing, wisely letting
the letters speak. The first chapter is Vi do's letters to
KamJa as he gets ready to leave Trinidad, 1949/1950: "My
stay in Trinidad is drawing to a close - I only have nine
months left. Then I shall go away never to come back, as I
trust. I think I am going to be either a big success or an
unheard of failure." The next eight chapters are divided
according to Oxford terms, from 1950 to 1953. The 10page final chapter is Vido's letters after leaving Oxford,
1954/1957, addressed to his widowed mother and to
KamJa. Vido, the second eldest of Seeprasad's seven
children, had a warm synergetic relationship with

his father. "Dear Everybody: What a delight to receive Pa's

letter from home. He really writes extremely good letters."
And from Seeprasad: "Your letters are charming in their
spontaneity. If you could write me letters about things and
people-especially
people-vat Oxford, I could compile
them in a book: Letters Between A Father and Son, or My
Oxford Letters." Vido to his father: "You know I can't
write well. Not half as well as you. You manage a type of
humour I cannot manage. Your view of life is surprisingly
good-humored. "
Pa praises Vido's writing published in "Isis," the
Oxford literary magazine. Vido: "When Palme Dutt, the
half-Indian boss of the British Communist Party, came to
Oxford, I gave him so much hell that the Communists rang
up the editor and cursed him. I think a man is doing his
reporting well only when people start to hate him." (The
last sentence, underlined in the original, pre-sages the
reception of his first two repertorial books on India.
However, in India: A Million Mutinies Now, (1990),
Naipaul distances himself from these two early books. In a
May 2000 interview published in Outlook magazine, he
said, "I was not equipped to deal with India when I first
came here."
Throughout their correspondence, the father and son
encourage each other in their writing endeavours. Pa
revises and retypes some of his old stories and asks his
help in getting them published in London: "Vido, please
try to place those stories. I know parts would sound rather
immature and crude, but it seems that is the sort of thing
publishers want these days. Just read the thing through,
type what needs typing and send it to a publisher. I think
you know what a godsend it would mean to me, if it was
accepted - not for the name, but for the money it might
bring me." Vido: "If I try to hawk your book around, I
wouldn't be doing you a favour. I would be trying to sell
stuff that deserves to be published." Unfortunately, Vido
fails to place his father's stories. (Many years later,
Seepersad's stories were published in London in 1977 and
reissued in 1995: The Adventures of Guru de va.).
At Oxford, Vido finds his stipend barely covers room
and board. Perpetually short of funds, he never asks his
father. To Kamla: "This is a desperate plea for help. I am
broke, broke, and broke. Can you send me 5-1O?" He
takes a summer job and offers to send money home.
Courtesy: IndiaStar Review of Books.

magic mist

. ~RA~G

.~2~
YEARS

The Persecution of a Minority: The Gypsies of Europe

By D.H.Singh
The Roma, Sinti or Gypsy, as they are known, originated in India ...
They moved through the Hindu Kush and then through Persia, Armenia and the Byzantine
Empire towards the West
Sara Ivey, an independent television producer of
Texas USA was in Romania to produce a film on the
health' system of that country following the collapse of
Communism. A member of the United Methodist Church
of the Disciple of De Soto, Texas, Sara Ivey was horrified
by the manner in which the Gypsies were ill-treated. Ivey
observed that "Gypsies are the undesirables of society"
and called for compassion and understanding.
The
laywoman of the Church lamented the hypocrisy of
Europeans and pointed out that "Christ would be
administering to these people. They are more hated
historically than the Jews or any other minority who have
been persecuted in Europe."
The Roma, Sinti or Gypsy as they are known,
originated in India. They fled India in the 13th Century as
their resistance to the Ottoman (Islamic) expansion
westward collapsed. They moved through the Hindu Kush
and then through Persia, Armenia and the Byzantine
Empire towards the West.
In the early years of settlement in Romania their skills
in metalwork, carpentry, and entertainment
were in
demand as the Crusades had depleted the population. The
Romanian Society was mainly agricultural and the skills of
the Gypsies were able to bring increased wealth and
prosperity to the country. The Roma was being seen as an
integral part of the economic structure. The landlords and
the monasteries did not allow them to migrate. The
demand on their labor increased. To secure a guaranteed
labor force and to prevent them from migrating, the society
passed laws reducing them to chattels. When properties
were sold, the Gypsies were also sold as part of that
property.
Laws were later passed to regulate their lives. The
Code of Basil, the Wolf of Moldavia,
dated 1654,
contained
references
to the treatment
of slaves,
including the death penalty in the case of a white
woman being raped by a Roma. The Europeans
including the treatment of non-Muslims
as 'fit for
slaves' adopted many of the Ottoman's concepts and
influences. The Gypsies were not allowed to have
musical instruments and they were confined to the
outskirts of the estates. The treatment of the slaves
was very cruel and it was common to have slaves
tortured
to death
for
minor
misdeeds.
The
enslavement and harsh treatment of the Gypsies were
not confined to the landlords but were practiced by

all. Even the Christian Monasteries

were engaged in
the auctioning of slaves. Among the upper class, the
house slaves were forbidden to speak Romany, the
language of the Gypsies. Female house slaves were
also provided to visitors for sexual entertainment.
The enslavement of the Gypsies were not confined to
Romania, Hungary and Eastern Europe but were practiced
wherever the Gypsies went. In Renaissance England, King
Edward VI passed a law stating that Gypsies be "branded
with a "V" on their breast, and then enslaved for two
years," and if they escaped and were recaptured, they were
then branded with an "S" and made slaves for life.
In Spain, Gypsies were treated no differently.
Columbus on his third voyage to the Americas transported
Gypsies. Instead, they were persecuted
and taken
advantage of in their hour of need. Is the Gypsies' question
relevant to Indians in the Caribbean? The condition of the
Gypsies have not improved in Romania where they are
more than 10% of the population and have settled for
almost seven hundred years. The Gypsies continue to
suffer
persecution
and all forms of disabilities.
Nonetheless, they have not surrendered their will, courage
and determination to survive.
History warns us that we must be eternally vigilant. As
Indo-Caribbean
people we must learn from our own
unique experiences. The Gypsies, amidst the racism and
bigotry of European society, have survived and so have we
of the Caribbean. Eternal vigil and organization should be
our watchwords. Failing to do this would reduce us to the
status of the Caribs and Arawaks whose presence are
confined to historical documents in the archives and text
books and the museum where artifacts are displayed. The
. Gypsieshave.their
own websites. They are researching and
documenting their history.
While they continue to struggle against victimization,
discrimination and persecution as a minority, they are not
prepared to roll over and die. They have been true to their
tradition by enduring and surviving with the conviction
that destiny would always be with them. Never for one
moment have they flinched from their customs and
traditions, the major pillars of their strengths.

D.H.Singh is a member ofthe

SHUDDI (Home Coming) Society in Trinidad

CHANNA

PEAS & CARROTS

PARBOILED

RICE

~==================~&w~~P~~tfromRBAIAPPlP~I:~====~====

I poem

A Divali Thought
By Maltie Maharaj
Her hair caresses the face of the moon.
On the evening air we feel the coolness of her breath,
Gently, on our face,
as the streetlight is turned on.
We scent her perfume in the flower
by the street side gutter.
You see, she does not look
upon the foul or fair with difference,
But blesses all with her abundance.
And feel her touch in the grace of a friend
in a wheel chair, stricken with AIDS or the infirmity of
age.
We sense her love in the beauty of a smile,
upon the sick and suffering,
and her wisdom in the words of a child.
She speaks through the heart.
Her strength in our faith is unflinching.
Her belief in the goodness of humanity everlasting.
Forgiving and eternal Goddess
Who can be compared to the glory of you?
Doting mother, you, who tolerate or tantrums with a smile
our neglect with patience,
Taking tomfoolery with love and generosity
and accepting a quick puja pat on the cheek with
thankfulness.

Domestic violence
Childish chat in the highest offices in the land ...
And worst yet, inhumanity to ouselves.
Oh Beautiful lady
You who all the Vedas, Shastras and Puranas worship.
The sight of whom causes the sun and moon
to bow in adoration.
Oh lovely and majestic giver of knowledge
Wealth
Strength
You who have rescued the Gods from Demons and
Disasters
Have mercy on your children,
Us Trinis
We youthful and sometimes misguided delinquents.
Show us by your wisdom that,
Peace
Love
Prosperity
Tolerance
Is still relevant in this world.
Om Shanti, Divine Lady.
Forget us not in our adversity.

You have made our Trinidad

Storm fee
War free
Drought free
Providing stability; giving wealth generously; sending
your servants of love
among us all
To fill us with
Tolerance
Knowledge
spirituality
Modern technology
Justice ...
OUR RESPONSE??
Neglect
Pollution of Ri ers
Kidnappings
\
Continual party-ing

Maltie Maharaj is a teacher at Siparia Senior

Comprehensive School, and has a B.A. degree
in English and an M.A. in Literatures in English.

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Why Hindus do not eat beef

By Dr Kumar Mahabir
Those who eat beef are at risk of contracting an undetectable disease that could slowly eat holes
in their brains before killing them. This pathological condition, named Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease (CJD), has already killed thousands of people around the world. It is the human
equivalent of BSE or mad cow disease ...
Hindus regard the cow as a sacred animal, and there
reason why the cow is revered in India. He argues that the
are strong feelings against the eating of beef. Some Hindus
cow contributes more to the economy of India alive than if
give their cows pet names, feed them special foods, adorn
it were slaughtered. A mature cow produces calves, and
them for ceremonies, and revere them during rituals.
the males among them can be used as draft animals for
Though domesticated cows were first brought from India
traction in an agrarian society. Cows also produce milk
to the Americas by Columbus on his second voyage, Zebu
which can be made into dahee [yogurt] and butter for
cattle (Bos indicus) were brought to the West Indies by the
domestic use and sale. The gobar [dung] can be watered
British in the ] 860s. Zebus are extremely disease-resistant
down and used as building material. Cow-dung is an
and hardy, and can survive on garbage and scrub
efficacious disinfectant and is often used as fuel instead of
vegetation. They do not eat when water is unavailable and
firewood. When the cow dies, low caste Hindu members in
live off the fat in their hump.
India work the leather as a source of income. They also eat
The cut on beef and goat in Trinidad's School Feeding
the meat which is a much-needed source of food.
Programme by the previous Government was replaced
Writing in the magazine Natural History (1999),
with lamb as part of a pilot project. Chicken has always
Doranne Jacobean states: "Today, as in past millennia,
been on the menu, and it has been halaled [consecrated] to
Indian cattle continue to provide milk, as well as cow dung
satisfy the spiritual taste of Muslims. Chicken, lamb and
for fertilizer and cooking fuel (in the form of the
fish are served because these meats are acceptable to all
traditional dried cakes or, increasingly, as bio-gas
religious groups, except for those who observe a strict
generated from composted dung). Even in a nation that is
vegetarian diet. The local ban on beef would have surely
building nuclear capability, cattle remain a crucial source
been greeted with joy by U.S. vegetarian activist groups
of power for drawing plows and carts." In her article
like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PET A)
entitled "A Reverence for cows," Jacobean adds that as the
who argue that there is a link between meat consumption
animals browse on crowded city streets, "their ability to
and cancer.
recycle garbage is phenomena!."
The Hindu scriptures unambiguously
support a
Vegetarians claim that they fewer physical complaints
meatless way of life. In the Mahabharath, for instance, the
because there are less impurities in their body. They alsomaintain that their skin is more beautiful. Local
great warrior Bhishma explains to the eldest of the
Pancava princes that the meat of animals is like the flesh
homeopathic practitioner, Dr Carol Bhagan-Khan, argues
of one's own child. Similarly, the Manusmriti declares that
that if all children abstain from eating beef (and all types
of meat), they are more likely to perform better in school.
one should "refrain from eating all kinds of meat," for such
eating involves killing, and this rebounds on the karmic
Beef, she contends, takes a long time to digest. This
cycle of inflicting injury and death. Under the influence of
digestive process uses considerable energy from the body
and affects the child's concentration span and mental
the invading Muslims and later the British, some Hindus in
ability. Those who eat beef are at risk of contracting an
India tried to appear "civilized" by eating the food of the
saheeb [rulers]. Those Hindus who never adopted a meatundetectable disease that could slowly eat holes in their
brains before killing them. This pathological condition,
oriented diet were following the ahimsa principle of nonnamed Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), has already killed
violence as a religious obligation to God and God's
creation.
thousands of people around the world. It is the human
equivalent of BSE or mad cow disease and, like its bovine
Hindus have an ecological reason for abstaining from
equivalent, it kills relentlessly and is largely undetectable
beef. They say that rearing animals for slaughter destroys
the rainforests and topsoil which increases water pollution
until after death. In her book Cannibals, Cows and the
and floods. Most economists agree that an acre of land is
CJD, Jennifer Cooke speculates that the disease might be
spread far wider than ever imagined. Cooke writes: "It will
much more cost-effectively used growing food than raising
be a long waiting game because CJD can incubate without
cattle. Hindus revere the cow, not as a representative of
any deity, but in her own right. In his popular essay
displaying symptoms for more than four decades."
entitled "Mother Cow" (1974) anthropologist Marvin
Harris of the University of Florida explains the practical Dr Kumar Mahabir an anthropologist in Trinidad.

your potential

! NEWS ON HINDUS

Britney goes bhangra for come back

Britney Spears has turned to Indian bhangra rhythms
for her comeback song out later this year. The song
features Spears singing and rapping over music and
rhythms from rural India and has been remixed by
British Asian producer Rishie Rich-himself celebrating a
top 20 hit in the UK this month with "Dance With You"
(Nachna Tere Naal). Rich has previously remixed songs
for West Iife, Ricky Martin and Craig David. "The
Britney song came to me as a really commercial pop
song," Rich told BBC World Service's The Music Biz
programme."The song was great, but what I sent back to
them is a real street edge with a bit of Asian influence."
The Indian influence is the latest change for Spears.
Spears - who has had a year off to reinvent herself is
described as being "over the moon" with the record. "I
actually didn't want to put too much Asian in it, because
I wasn't sure what they wanted," Rich said. "Steve Lunt,
who was the A&R for the records in New York, just said
'we want more, just put all in - we would rather you put
it all in, then we can take little bits out'." "That's what he
wanted - he wanted the full Asian thing."
Rich said that while bhangra had been established in
the UK for a while, it has only just begun influencing
music in the US and therefore Spears would be seen as
at the cutting edge of musical change there.
"Bhangra in America has just kicked off, and it's not
as big as it is here, "Rich said. "People are loving the
sounds and they want that sound." Passing phase? Rich
added that he felt the demand from music bosses
for bhangra-f1avoured hits was a response to the huge
amount of manufactured
music dominating
the
mainstream. "If I step back from the industry, I'm sick of
all this Pop Idol! Fame Academy stuff because it's all
just bland music," he said. "I think that you need
something that is going to be more innovative. I think
just generally if you mix Asian music - with Egyptian
music or Spanish music or pop music you get a different
sound." I think that's what people are looking for now.
Gareth Gates' new single is like a Spanish song - it's
an R&B kind of thing because people are looking for
something different now. "While bhangra's recent
explosion into the UK mainstream may not last, Rich is
simply happy it is now getting the exposure and airplay
it deserves. "A year ago I did a bhangra track for Misteeq but it didn't go on the album," he said.
"I bet the record company is regretting that now. But
at the time it wasn't happening.
Source: BBC NEWS.

NEWS ON HINDUS

Elephant conference turns to religion and

culture for conservation
Elephant experts here have turned to Asia's reverence
of the beasts to push conservation amid calls for a cull to
tackle growing wild jumbo populations in Africa. Ian
Douglas-Hamilton, an authority on African elephants said
religious and cultural practices in Asia shows the peaceful
coexistence between people and elephants amid increasing
pressure on habitats.
He is fascinated by the place elephants have in religion
in some Asian countries and in the Hindu and Buddhist
cultures. He said that the battle for space should not result
in the elephants losing out as their survival was linked to
human existence. "If we don't leave enough space for
elephants, we will eventually not leave enough space for
ourselves," he said after opening a symposium on
"Human-Elephant Relationships and Conflicts." Papers
presented at the meeting suggested allowing tourists to
hunt wild elephants in Africa to maintain its woody
vegetation and use the proceeds to conserve elephants
elsewhere.
Most experts here opposed the idea. African elephants
are found in 34 countries while in Asia only] 3 countries
have
wild
herds.
Douglas-Hamilton
argued
thatconservationists should ensure there is no conflict like the
rapid invasion of elephant habitats by man in the decade of
the 90s and even up until today. In Sri Lanka, the battle
between government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels has
taken its toll on wild elephants. The Biodiversity and
Elephant Conservation Trust based here, a co-organizer of
the symposium,
said an estimated
200 to 300
wild elephants had been displaced by the war.
The Tamil Tiger rebels had in the early stages of the
war spared wild elephants, but when the animals stormed
jungle bases in search of food and water, and drank up
the entire supply of water the rebels had for a week, they
started shooting the elephants when firing in the air failed.
Land mines were also the cause of agonizing deaths after
having their trunks and legs blown off by anti-personnel
mines. Elephants are considered a sacred animal in Sri
Lanka and elsewhere in the Buddhist world. Elephants are
also revered by Hindus who use caparisoned pachyderms
at temple pageants.

~SAPH

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Divali is a unique celebration of

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toiled suffering innumerable hardships. However, they
emerged in the second and third generations to status
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-'--.

Hindu influence on Western Literature

By Rajiv Malhotra
T. S. Eliot turned to Indian sources, particularly the Upanishads, Bhuddist sutras and Patafijali's
Yogasutras, the influence of which is most pronounced in his seminal poem, The Waste Land.
India has long occupied an important place in the
global imagination, as befits its status as one of the most
ancient civilizations. In this article, I will illustrate just a
few of the many ways Indian thought has deepened and
enriched Western thought to a far greater degree than is
commonly known. The influence
of India on her
neighbors, specifically
those in Central, East, and
Southeast Asia, has long been recognized, largely because
peoples of these other nations went to great lengths to
accurately translate and disseminate Indic knowledge into
their own languages and cultural idioms.
"Globalization" in the colonial context
was understood to mean Western domination of the globe
and the subversion of non-Western
cultures. This
understanding remains prevalent, if not explicit, in the
post-colonial world. It is based on the misconception of
Western superiority. Without a doubt, the West has
contributed much to civilization, but no single human
group has a monopoly on that virtue. No society represents
the apex of human evolution, thus leaving other societies
further down the evolutionary ladder, somehow bereft of
or deficient in the virtues claimed by the alleged front
runner.
We need not resort to the distant past to find such
examples, for it was only during the past two hundred
years that Indian classics have been translated into
European languages. Once the masterpieces of Indian
literature and philosophy were translated, however, they
rapidly received significant attention.
The great German poet Goethe, for example, was
deeply affected by reading Georg Foster's 1791 translation
of the Sankrit play Shakuntala, written by the great fourth
century poet Kalidasa. Goethe wrote "Here the poet
appears in his highest function". As a representative of the
most natural condition, the finest _way of life, the purest
moral endeavor, the most dignified majesty, and the most
solemn reverence of God, he ventures into base and
ridiculous contradictions.
A comparison of the first few pages of Shakuntala
with Goethe's Faust reveals that Kalidasa was the source
of Goethe's idea to begin Faust with the "Prelude in the
Theatre" representing a conversation between the play's
director and author. Clearly, there was a pronounced
Indian influence on one of the greatest works of modern
Western literature.
India's influence on Western literature became more
pronounced during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
as Europeans and Americans became increasingly aware
of Indian thought and literature. Emerson and Thoreau, for

example, were explicit in their admiration for the Hindu

classics, namely the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita.
The "oversoul" of the Transcendentalists is a rephrasing of
the Upanishadic doctrine of the impersonal absolute,
Brahman. These ideas also provided an intellectual
foundation for the poets Walt Whitman and W. B. Yeats.
Yeats was as familiar with Indianthought as he was with
neo-Platonic ideas, although his philosophy is usually
identified with the latter.
The Indian influence became even stronger during the
early twentieth century, as modernist authors looked to
non-Western cultures for inspiration in the development of
new literary models in an effort to free themselves from
the constraints of tired Western genres, While authors such
as Ezra Pound turned to Chinese and Japanese poetry, T.
S, Eliot turned to Indian sources, particularly the
Upanishads, Buddhist sutras, and Patafijali's Yogasutras,
the influence of which is most pronounced in his seminal
poem, The Waste Land.
And, of course, the influence of Buddhism on the
writing of Beat authors-such
as Jack Kerouac, Allen
Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder-is
both obvious and
profound. This was the product of the transmission of Zen
and Tibetan schools of Buddhism to the United States,
which achieved a cultural "critical mass" during the I960s,
when interest in these traditions broke out of the counterculture and into the mainstream.
Translations of the Indian classics drew the attention
of scholars in the early nineteenth century, and had a
significant
influence
on Continental
philosophy
in
particular. One of the most striking examples is that of
Arthur Schopenhauer,
whose subtle, psychologically
oriented philosophy played a significant role in the
development of psychoanalysis and existentialism in the
early twentieth century, and of postmodern thought at the
end of that century.
Schopenhauer unabashedly admired the wisdom of
Hindu and Buddhist scriptures, and adopted ideas from
these sources into his own thought. Most notably, he
disagreed with the dominant colonial attitude, which
incorporated
the belief that European
ideas and
technologies and Christianity were inevitably destined to
supplant Asian cultural traditions. Schopenhauer predicted
that the reverse would be true.

Rajiv Malhotra is affiliated to the

Infinity Foundation in New Jersey, USA.

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The truth about the caste system

By Dr Meenakshi Jain
Caste has become synonymous with the theory of pollution .... Here it is possible only to say ...
in this regard too, we have been victims of the British propaganda machine.
Certain other features of caste system, as it operated in
the pre-British period, deserve to be commented upon.
Despite the commonly-held belief that hierarchy in Hindu
society was clearly defined and operational, in actual
practice only the position of the Brahmins at the top of the
ritual scale and the Harijans at the bottom was relatively
stable. In between there was ambiguity about the status of
several castes, an ambiguity that was acceptable to all
concerned. This itself produced a large element of fluidity
in the system.
The close association of caste with occupation
notwithstanding, members of a caste group ever exercised
exclusive monopoly over a profession. As leading
sociologists have pointed out, in addition to their
hereditary occupation, all castes traditionally also engaged
in cultivation. There were certain other professions such as
warfare which regularly drew adherents from different
castes. In fact, the leadership of most armed bands was
provided by non-Kshatriya peasant castes. Powerful castes
with almost a monopoly over violence were as much part
of the Indian scene as the ritual dominance of Brahmins in
the settled areas of the country. Many villages, in addition,
did not have a hierarchy corresponding to the all-India
system. There were, for instance, often only one or two
families of certain artisan and service castes such as nais
(barbers), telis (oil pressers), sonars (goldsmiths) and even
banias (money lenders) residing within the village
precincts. So there was little question of actually ranking
these one-or-two families in the village hierarchy and then
discriminating against them.
The usurious interest rates that the village baniyas are
supposed to have charged also became possible only under
British rule when for the first time land became a
marketable commodity. Generally it was the peasant castes
that were numerically preponderant and economically and
politically powerful at the village level. All castes living in
a village or a cluster of neighbouring villages were bound
together by economic and social ties. The Jajmani system
tied the highest and lowest castes in a strong bond of
mutual dependence. M. N. Srinivas has pointed out that in
the pre-British period, land being more abundant than
people, the paramount consideration of most Jajmans was
"to acquire and retain their local followers". This obliged
them to be generous in matters of food, drinks and even
loans when required. He adds that the tropical climate
made it difficult to store foodstuffs for long and this
combined with "ideas from the great tradition" further
encouraged distribution of surplus.
Moreover, all rituals required the participation of

several castes. This was also true of religious festivals

where even Harijans had important duties to perform.
Srinivas has recorded that Bhaksorin (Harijan) women
helped Thakur families at the time of delivery, bhangis
(sweepers) beat drums in front of Thakur homes. Brahmins
cast the horoscope of new born Thakur children and the
village barber spread the news and served food during the
celebrations that followed. He further record a rural
Mysore saying that 18 castes come together during a
wedding. Non-Brahmins and occasionally Harijans served
as priests of temples devoted to certain goddesses like
Sitala, Mari and Kali associated with smallpox, plague and
cholera. All castes including Brahmins sent offerings to
these temples. Thus non-Brahmins too fulfilled some of
the religious needs of other castes.
Alongside close interaction and co-operation at the
village level, castes also enjoyed a large measure of
freedom in respect of their internal customs, rituals and
life-styles. There was usually no outside interference in the
internal affairs of a caste, all caste matters being under the
jurisdiction of the caste council. The village panchayat
deliberated on questions concerning the larger village
society. A striking feature of the caste system in the preBritish period then, was its local character. There was no
all-India horizontal organisation of castes. This being so,
there was hardly any question of all-India tyranny of any
caste group, especially so of the Brahmins who usually
also lacked the political and armed strength to enforce
their will. British rule destroyed the local character of the
caste system. It broke up the homogeneity of small groups
over small areas and encouraged organisation of castes
over vast stretches of land. This became a major cause of
the caste tensions and rivalries India has witnessed in
recent years.
Caste has become synonymous with the theory of
pollution. The issue is complex enough to merit separate
treatment. Here it is possible only to say that like in much
else of the caste system, in this regard too we have been
victims of the British propaganda machine. Some idea of
the issue involved can be had from Mary Douglas, a
distinguished anthropologist. She has written, "I believe
that ideas about separating, purifying, demarcating and
punishing transgressions have as their main function to
impose system on an inherently untidy experience.
[Extract of article]
Dr Jain a historian and professor at Delhi University.
International Forum for India's Heritage (IFIH)
http://www.geocities.comlifihhome/articles/cpOOl.html

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Indian Diet, Diabetes and Heart Disease

By Debra Ramdath
Typical Indian foods such as paratha, daalpouri, phulowrie, sweets, prasad (mohanbogh),
doubles, fried chicken, curry duck and goat are all very high in fat.
People of the Indian diaspora have experienced a
higher incidence of heart disease and diabetes relative to
their counterparts in rural India and other migrant
populations in the western world. It has also become
frightfully apparent that Indians are developing these
diseases at a young age; as early as 25 years in men!
Although not fully understood, it is clear, that poor eating
habits, an inactive lifestyle and a family history all
contribute to the development of heart diseases, strokes,
different types of cancer and diabetes. There is an urgent
need to alleviate the human suffering and deaths caused by
these diseases, by changing our diet and lifestyles.
Modern living demands that the only important
requisite in our lives is financial success and the ability to
provide for our family. However, many of us work hard to
acquire wealth throughout our life, only to spend much of
this wealth trying to regain health later on. It is also
believed that only the very wealthy can afford to eat
healthy. This is certainly not true, as most healthy foods
such as fruits and vegetables are affordable. Good health
and healthy ageing are not chance occurrences but rather
the result of great care and attention given to healthy
eating, regular physical activity and avoidance of high fat
foods such as fried and oily foods.
To many people the word "diet" means suffering
through meals that restrict the intake of one or more
nutrients. Actually, the word "diet" comes from the Greek
word "diaita" which means a way of living. This is how
the "diet" should be regarded ... a way of living through
healthy eating and active lifestyle. Healthy eating is eating
a variety of foods from all the food groups on a daily basis.
Eating a variety reduces the consumption of large amounts
of anyone food and prevents overeating, which can lead to
overweight and other health problems.
Eating a variety of foods from varied sources ensures
the body of all the necessary nutrients. The human body
needs proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals and
water in varying amounts on a daily basis to function.
Protein is found in all meats, dairy products, beans and
meat-alternatives such as soya and tofu; it is the building
blocks of all cells in the body and is essential for growth
and repair. Protein is also a critical brain food so that it is
important to include it in every meal. Unfortunately, many
foods containing good quality protein come from animal
products and contain fat. Alternatively, a mixture of
various plant foods in a meal has the effect of providing a
low fat, complete protein with added roughage or fibre.
For example, a meal of rice, daal with bodi or channa and

a portion of green salad can provide a balanced meal

intake of most nutrients.
Carbohydrates which consists of sugars and starches
are the main source of energy needed on a daily basis for
all bodily activities and processes. They are divided into 2
groups: simple and complex. Simple starches are found in
refined sugar (table sugar), honey, syrup, molasses, fruits
and vegetables. Complex starches are found in cereals,
grains, ground provisions, rice and pasta. Simple and
complex starches, when eaten, are broken down during
digestion into glucose (sugar), which is absorbed into the
blood stream for energy.
All sugars are not created equally; some are better for
the body than others because some are absorbed slower
into the blood stream, which prolongs the feeling of
hunger. For example, sadha roti is slightly better for the
body than white bread as sadha roti is absorbed into the
blood stream at a slower rate than the white bread.
Scientific studies have shown that long term use of a diet
rich in refined carbohydrates are directly associated with
an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart
disease and certain cancers.
Typical Indian foods such as paratha, dhalpouri,
phulowrie, sweets, prasad (mohanbogh), doubles, fried
chicken, curry duck and goat are all very high in fat. Too
much fat in the diet increases the chance of heart disease,
diabetes and certain types of cancers. Instead, eat roti with
pumpkin and bhagi consider healthy options such as fresh
fruits in our prayer offerings.
Here are some simple steps to achieve a healthy body:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Use little oil and fats in cooking

Remove skin and fat from meats
Choose low fat dairy products
Avoid frying, instead bake, BBQ, roast or steam
Create fat-free desserts
Mix colored vegetables
Eat smaller portions
Eat a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables
Be active - walk, jog or swim
Consult a nutritionist or die titian for more advise on
healthy eating.

Eat Right, Keep Active, and Enjoy long and healthy lives
as our forefathers.
Debra Ramdath is a Trinidadian who studied
Nutrition at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.

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Divali, Hindus and Hinduism in multi-ethnic Mauritius

By Mona Sookmanee-Meighoo
People tend to marry within their own ethnic/religious group .... A Mauritian would argue that
the main reason for this is to keep their culture alive through the generations.
Divali is perhaps the most well-known of the Indian
festivals in India, as well as in Indian communities
throughout the Diaspora. In Mauritius, the most celebrated
Hindu festivals are Maha Shivaratree, Cavadee, Holi and
Divali. The Indian population is the largest ethnic group
in Mauritius, Hinduism is the most widely-practised
religion, and there are more than 150 Hindu temples on the
island. Like Trinidad, Mauritius is a multi-cultural country,
and the ethnic distribution consists of Indo-Mauritians
(68%), Creoles (27%), Sino-Mauritians (3%), FrancoMauritians (2%).
The history of Mauritius has contributed in creation of
a very diverse society. Mauritius, situated in the Indian
Ocean, was first discovered by Arab and Malay sailors as
early as the 10th century AD, and Portuguese sailors first
visited it in the 16th century the island was not colonized
until 1638 by the Dutch. Mauritius was populated over the
next few centuries by waves of traders, planters and their
slaves, indentured laborers, merchants, and artisans. The
island was named in honor of Prince Maurice of Nassau by
the Dutch, who abandoned the colony in 1710.
Mauritian Creoles trace their origins to the plantation
owners and slaves who were brought to work the sugar
fields. Indo-Mauritians
are descended
from Indian
immigrants who arrived in the 19th century to work as
indentured laborers after slavery was abolished in 1835.
Included in the Indo-Mauritian community are Muslims
(about 12% of the population)
from the Indian
subcontinent. The remaining 52 per cent are Hindus.
Among the Hindus, those of North and South Indian
descent are seen as being different types of Hindus since
the Tamil Hindus practise a special form of Hinduism,
characterized by dramatic forms of worship.
Indians in Mauritius came as labourers. Later, the
owners of sugar plantations thought it would be more
profitable to sell their lands to the planters and privatise
the sugar industry, so Indians became small planters. As
the Indian population became numerically dominant and
the voting franchise was extended, political power shifted
to the Hindus. Since 1968 (independence) Mauritius had a
Indian/Hindu Prime Minister until 30 of September 2003,
when the Prime Minister passed over the leadership of the
country to the Deputy Prime Minister, a Franco-Mauritian.
Hindus have played a key role in making Mauritius a
prosperous nation, and that was with the help and support
of all the other ethnic groups. Hindu leadership has set the
path towards success and everybody else believes in that
route to success.
Mauritians speak a variety of languages. Although

French and English are the official languages, most

Mauritians speak Kreol as well as the ancestral language
(Hindi, Bhojpouri,
Tamil, Telegu, Marathi,
Urdu,
Mandarin, Hakka, Cantonese), the government has always
promoted the preservation of ancestral languages and
ancestral cultures. There is a living tradition of writing in
standard Hindi in Mauritius, and both Hindi and Urdu (and
sometimes Tamil, Marathi and Telegu) are used on radio
and television and are widely taught in schools.
From a very young age, children in Mauritius learn
that the beauty of their country lies in the differences of
one another, may it be race, colour, language. Children
therefore learn to respect their own traditions and cultures.
as well as those of the other ethnic groups. Hence, people
do not simply live in a society where one tolerates others
customs, but where one learns about other customs,
appreciates. Nowadays there is more emphasis on the
sharing of cultures and standing together as one nation.
Slogans such as "tou sel ou pas tousse lesiel'' (alone you
will not reach the sky) have started emerging. The former
US Ambassador, Mark Erwin, said in his last address "the
greatness of Mauritius is its people, whose potential is
unlimited."
The Creoles, the Chinese and the Franco Mauritians
are more open to mixed marriages, while Hindus and
Muslims are the strongest endogamous ethnic groups of
the island. A Mauritian would argue that the main reason
for this is to keep their culture alive through the
generations. However, the remnants of the caste system of
India can still be felt, especially among the higher-caste
among Hindus. In Mauritius, a marriage between a North
Indian Hindu and a Tamil is seen as a mixed marriage.
With more and more Western influence, "love marriages"
have started taking over arranged marriages among the
Indian community, and as a result of this mixed marriages
(often performed without the parents' and relatives'
approval) have become increasingly common.
Like everywhere else, the older generation blames the
youth for what appears to be a decline in Hinduism.
However, every Hindu boy and girl would fast for all the
religious festivals, take part in the pujas, learn the ancestral
language, rituals and customs and wear the traditional
garments regularly. The Hindu youth have moved away
from the practice of orthodox Hinduism that has lost its
place in a developing nation. The fundamental base upon
which Hinduism stands is still strong.
Sookmanee-Meighoo works as a research officer
at COSTAATT (Community College) in Trinidad.

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What Derek Walcott said about Ramleela

Extract of Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1992

They [the actors] were not amateurs but believers. There was no theatrical term to define them.
They did not have to psych themselves up to play their roles .... They believed in what they were
playing, in the sacredness of the text, the validity of India ...
Felicity is a village in Trinidad on the edge of the
Caroni plain, the wide central plain that still grows sugar
and to which indentured cane cutters were brought after
emancipation. The small population of Felicity is East
Indian, and on the afternoon that I visited it with friends
from America, all the faces along its road were Indian,
which, as I hope to show, was a moving, beautiful thing,
because this Saturday afternoon Ramleela, the epic
dramatization of the Hindu epic the Ramayana, was going
to be performed, and the costumed actors from the village
were assembling on a field strung with different-coloured
flags, like a new gas station, and beautiful Indian boys in
red and black were aiming arrows haphazardly into the
afternoon light. Low blue mountains on the horizon, bright
grass, clouds that would gather colour before the light
went Felicity! What a gentle Anglo-Saxon name for an
epical memory.
Under an open shed on the edge of the field, there
were two huge armatures of bamboo that looked like
immense cages. They were parts of the body of a god, his
calves or thighs, which, fitted and reared, would make a
gigantic effigy. This effigy would be burnt as a
conclusion to the epic. The cane structures flashed a
predictable parallel: Shelley's sonnet on the fallen statue of
Ozymandias and his empire, that "colossal wreck" in its
empty desert.
Drummers had lit a fire in the shed and they eased the
skins of their tables nearer the flames to tighten them. The
saffron flames, the bright grass, and the hand woven
armatures of the fragmented god who would be burnt were
not in any desert where imperial power had finally toppled
but were part of a ritual, evergreen season that, like the
cane-burning harvest, is annually repeated, the point of
such sacrifice being its repetition, the point of the
destruction being renewal through fire. Deities were
entering the field. What we generally call "Indian music"
was blaring from the open platformed shed from which the
epic would be narrated. Costumed actors were arriving.
Princes and gods, I supposed. What an unfortunate
confession! "Gods, I suppose" is the shrug that embodies
our African and Asian diasporas. I had often thought of but
never seen Ramleela, and had never seen this theatre, an
open field, with village children as warriors, princes, and
gods. I had no idea what the epic story was, who its hero
was, what enemies he fought, yet I had recently adapted
the Odyssey for a theatre in England, presuming that the

audience knew the trials of Odysseus, hero of another Asia

Minor epic, while nobody in Trinidad knew any more than
I did about Rama, Kali, Shiva, Vishnu, apart from the
Indians, a phrase I use perversely because that is the kind
of remark you can still hear in Trinidad: "apart from the
Indians." It was as if, on the edge of the Central Plain,
there was another plateau, a raft on which the Ramayana
would be poorly performed in this ocean of cane, but that
was my writer's view of things, and it is wrong. I was
seeing the Ramleela at Felicity as theatre when it was
faith. Multiply that moment of self-conviction when an
actor, made-up and costumed, nods to his mirror before
stopping on stage in the belief that he is a reality entering
an illusion and you would have what I presumed was
happening to the actors of this epic. But they were not
actors. They had been chosen; or they themselves had
chosen their roles in this sacred story that would go on for
nine afternoons over a two-hour period till the sun set.
They were not amateurs but believers. There was no
theatrical term to define them. They did not have to psych
themselves up to play their roles. Their acting would
probably be as buoyant and as natural as those bamboo
arrows crisscrossing the afternoon pasture. They believed
in what they were playing, in the sacredness of the text, the
validity ofIndia, while I, out of the writer's habit searched
for some sense of elegy, of loss, even of degenerative
mimicry in the happy faces of the boy-warriors or the
heraldic profiles of the village princes. I was polluting the
afternoon with doubt and with the patronage of admiration.
I misread the event through a visual echo of History - the
cane fields, indenture, the evocation of vanished armies
temples, and trumpeting elephants - when all around me
there was quite the opposite: elation, delight in the
boys' screams, in the sweet-stalls, in more and more
costumed characters appearing; a delight of conviction, not
loss. The name Felicity made sense.
Consider the scale of Asia reduced to these fragments:
the small white exclamations of minarets or the stone balls
of temples in the cane fields, and one can understand the
self-mockery and embarrassment of those who see these
rites as parodic, even degenerate. These purists look on
such ceremonies as grammarians look at a dialect, as cities
look on provinces and empires on their colonies.
Copyright @ The Nobel Foundation 1992
Courtesy: The Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden

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A Hindu College in Guyana

By Dr Roop Misir
Over the years, the psyche of Indo-Guyanese people has been altered to the point where many
have lost their "Indian-ness" - pride in their history, culture and value system.
The Saraswati VidyaNiketan
(SVN) is the only
private secondary school in Guyana. It is a nongovernmental, non-profit organization. It is located on the
grounds of the village mandir at Cornelia Ida, West Coast
Demerara, Guyana within clear view of the Atlantic
Ocean. The school's motto is: Satyam vada dharmam cara
(Speak the truth), Svadhyaya-pravacanabhyam
(Practice
righteousness), Na pramadhitavyam
(Do not neglect
studying and teaching).
The Bhoomi Puja (sod turning) was jointly performed
on auspicious Krishna Janamashtami Day 1998 by Shri
Ashok Singhal, the Working President of the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad, and Dr. Prakash Joshi, the then Indian
High Commissioner to Guyana.
The Ministry of Education officially recognizes the
School. The school has a capacity for 150 students.
Classes commenced in September 2002, with instruction
being offered to students in regular subjects from Grades
7-11. In addition, the school has an Information
Technology
Department
with a modern
computer
laboratory.
Currently, there are ten highly qualified teachers on
staff, including university graduates. The Principal is
Swami Aksharananda (Ph.D., Wisconsin). The Hindi
programme is headed by Shri Hari Shankar Sharma (MA,
M.Sc) of Vidya Bharati (India). The high student/teacher
ratio allows for more
individualized
instruction.
Laboratories in biology, chemistry and physics are being
constructed. On the cultural front, there are classes in
Theology, Music, Yoga, Hindi and Sanskrit.
As a private institution, the school must generate its
own funds. This is accomplished mainly from community
donations and also from parents based on their ability to
pay. Local charities and corporate donors also make
contributions. In September 2003, a successful fundraising
Concert was held at the Vishnu Mandir (Toronto) under
the auspices of SEW A Canada.
Since their arrival in the colony of British Guiana in
1838 to work on the sugar plantations, the curriculum of
the public education system has failed to include courses
relating to their language and culture. As a result over the
years, the psyche of Indo-Guyanese people has been
altered to the point where many have lost their "Indianness" that is pride in their history, culture and value
systems. In fact, the game of politics has reached the point
where Indians have been reduced to being non-persons in
the Indian/Hindu cultural sense. Some Indo-Guyanese
graduates (e.g., sports personalities)
of the current
education system have become not only diffident

but they are also ashamed of their Indian cultural heritage.

Today Guyanese Indians constitute some 50% of the
country's population. The sad reality is that after nearly
four decades of political independence,
the public
educational system is still a legacy of the British colonial
past. It continues to emphasize Western and JudeoChristian values, while concurrently de-emphasizing the
Indian culture of the Indian students. Official education
policies of successive governments have attempted to
promote a 'national culture' in the "Land of Six Peoples."
But the unfortunate fact is that these policies have led to
the emergence of a dominant Black Creole/Afro-centric
culture at the expense of the Indian Guyanese people.
Whereas officially, Guyana observes Holi and Divali as
national holidays, the reality is that at the end of the day
these cornerstone Indian cultural events remain closeted
and forgotten until the next year when public employees
again get another day off work!
In contrast to Indians in Trinidad and Tobago and
Suriname, Indians in Guyana lag behind in the cultural
component of education received in public schools. What
is even more disconcerting,
is the fact that elected
government representatives
for Indian Guyanese have
repeatedly dismissed pleas for the teaching of Indian
languages and history as efforts by radicals to destroy a
fragile national unity. It is our intention that young Indians
wishing to become teachers in public schools could do so
without having to convert to Christianity and adopt
Christian names!
In more recent times, leaders have taken center stage,
most notably Ravi Dev, MP (politics), Ryhaan Shah
(social and cultural work) and Swami Akashananda
(education and religion). By attempting to breathe new life
into a people systematically denuded of their culture and
Jahaji spirit by successive "Indian" governments, these
stalwarts are striving to replace despair with hope. More
importantly, however, they strive to replace cultural
complacency with dynamic action to achieve cultural
equality with other members of the Guyanese mosaic.
At the SVN School, there are more students applying
for admission than there are places. Thus the school must
look toward expansion.

Mandirs and individuals wishing to make pledges

or contributions are asked to contact Toronto lawyer,
Ram Sahadeo by telephone at 905671 9233,
or email RoopMisiratsvnschooI01@yahoo.com.

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book review (extract)

"Missionaries in India" by Arun Shourie

What about the numerous schools, colleges, and hospitals the missionaries established in India?
Did they have a hidden agenda? Yes, says Shourie, quoting from Gandhiji's "Collected Works."
New Delhi Harper Collins, 1998
302 pages
Reviewed by C.J .S. Wallia
Arun Shourie is India's leading writer on politics and
history. He has been an economist with the World Bank, a
consultant in the planning commission and the editor of
Indian Express. In Missionaries in India: Continuities,
Changes, Dilemmas, Arun Shourie focuses on the
intentional misinterpretations of Hinduism by Christian
missionaries. The book is based on an invited lecture he
gave at the 50th anniversary meeting of the Catholic
Bishops Conference of India in January 1994. The bishops
got quite an earful! Nonetheless, to their great credit,
Shourie notes, "the bishops, the senior clergy, and scholars
gathered at Pune heard him politely with unwavering
attention." He adds, "Had I urged the themes of this lecture
to our 'secularists', they would have denounced them as
'communal', 'chauvinist-fascist' and, having labeled them,
they would have exempted themselves from considering
what was being said."
Among the many honors and awards for his writings,
noted for rigorous analysis and meticulous research, he has
received the International Editor of the Year Award, the
Dadabhai Naoroji Award, the Magsaysay Award, and the
Astor f... ward. Shourie quotes from a recent issue of the
Texas-based magazine Gospel for Asia: "The Indian subcontinent with one billion people is a living example of
what happens when Satan rules the entire culture ... India is
one vast purgatory in which millions of people ... are
literally living a cosmic lie! Could Satan have devised a
more perfect system for causing misery?"
Swami Vivekananda during his historic visit to the
U.S., a hundred years earlier, wrote: "Part of the Sunday
School education for children here consists in teaching
them to hate everybody who is not a Christian, and the
Hindus especially, so that, from their very childhood they
may subscribe their pennies to the missions .... What is
meant by those pictures in the school-books for children
where the Hindu mother is painted as throwing her
children to the crocodiles in the Ganga? The mother is
black, but the baby is painted white, to arouse more
sympathy and get more money. What is meant by those
pictures which paint a man burning his own wife at a stake
with his own hands, so that she may become a ghost and
torment the husband's enemy? .... If all Indians stand up,
and take all the mud that is at the bottom of the Indian

Ocean and throws it up against the Western countries, it

will not be doing an infinitesimal part of that which you
are doing to us."
Is this fair to the missionaries? one asks. What about
the numerous
schools, colleges, and hospitals the
missionaries established in India? Did they have a hidden
agenda? Yes, says Shourie quoting from Gandhiji's
Collected
Works.
In Gandhiji's
discussions
with
missionaries, they acknowledged that "the institutions and
services are indeed incidental, but the aim is to gather a
fuller harvest of converts for the Church. Many of the
missionaries who came to see Gandhiji had, in his words
"designs to convert" him to Christianity. "But what is your
attitude to Jesus? the missionaries would always come
around to ask Gandhiji. He was a great world teacher
among others, Gandhiji would say that he was the greatest
I cannot accept. He had not the compassion for instance of
the Buddha, Gandhiji would recount. The reverend
gentlemen would retire with the imprecation, 'Mr.
Gandhi ... soon there will come a day when you will be
judged, not in your righteousness, but in the righteousness
of Jesus." in the central section of the book, "The Division
of Labour"-among the British administrators, missionaries
and European Indologists.
Shouire cites extensively from historical documents to
establish that these three groups colluded in essential
agreement that "India is a den of ignorance, inequity and
falsehood; the principal cause of this state of affairs is
Hinduism. Hinduism is kept going by the Brahmins; as
the people are in such suffering, and also because Jesus in
his partingwordshas
bound us to do so, it is a duty to
deliver them to Christianity; for this, it is Hinduism which
has to be vanquished."
Macaulay's notorious minute instituting English as the
medium of instruction in India, says Shourie, "was laced
with utter contempt for India, in particular for Hinduism,
for our languages and literature: of course, Macaulay did
not know any of those languages... his ideas about
Hinduism had been formed from the calumny of
missionaries .... But the breezy, sweeping damnation-even a century and a half later, the imperialist swagger
takes one's breath away."

Courtesy: http://www.indiastar.com
IndianStar Review of Books, California, USA.


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Hindu youths in the Netherlands

By Dr Chan E.S. Choenni
The majority of Hindu youngsters are oriented towards Western culture and Hindu culture.
The majority of Hindu youngsters feel that they are Hindu because they 'were born and/or
raised in that way.'
In the Netherlands there are about 125,000 Hindus.
The overwhelming majority is of Surinamese origin. The
ancestors of Dutch Surinamese Hindus immigrated as
indentured labourers between 1873 and 1916 from the then
British-India to the Dutch colony Suriname. Indians form
the majority (35%) of the Surinamese population, and are
known as Hindustanis. After Independence of Suriname in
1975, a mass immigration took place of Hindustanis to the
Netherlands.
The
Surinamese
population
in the
Netherlands consists of 302,515 persons in 2000. About
50% of this population is Hindustani.
The Hindu
community in Suriname as well as in the Netherlands is
divided into two main religious streams. The larger is the
orthodox group known as the Sanatan Dharma. The
smaller is the more reformist group, the Arya Samaj.
Almost half of the Hindu youngsters questioned could
be called 'crossover Hindus' (westernized Hindus). The
majority of Hindu youngsters are oriented towards
Western culture as well as Hindu culture. The majority of
Hindu youngsters feel that they are Hindu because they
'were born and/or raised in that way.'
Young Hindus are proud of their religion and do not
have much difficulty in practicing their form of Hinduism
in the Netherlands. There is a positive image of Hinduism
in Dutch
society.
Certain
Hindu
concepts
like
reincarnation and karma have become part of the
'mainstream.' However the majority of young Hindus see
Hinduism as a complex religion. Although the majority of
young Hindus infrequent mandirs, they still find comfort
in Hindu rituals at sad moments. Sarnami-Hindi is a
language, which to most of them has no meaning. Sermons
and rituals are held in Hindi or Sarnami-Hindi, and
sometimes translated in Dutch. Often the mandir is visited
because of 'a family occasion' or celebration. As a
meeting-point for young Hindus, the mandir is poorly
rated. Youngsters will visit the mandir when they need
spiritual support or the right atmosphere to express their
grief. Knowledge about Hinduism is poor among young
Hindus; they often have incondite concepts of some
aspects of Hinduism, particularly fundamental Hindu
concepts and values. Many are not familiar with the most
important Holy Scriptures. Most youngsters (particularly
lower educated Hindu youngsters) state they would like to
know more about Hinduism. Young Hindus state that they
would like to discuss issues with pundits as equals. Young
Hindus would like to see a change in the position of

pundits from an authoritarian advisor to a respected and

caring conversational partner.
The fact that the majority of young Hindus do not
possess much knowledge about Hinduism is confirmed
when they are questioned about Hindu scriptures. Half has
heard something about the Bhagavad Gita and the
Ramayana. Less than a quarter has heard about the Vedas
and a tenth about the Puranas. There was a significant
difference according to the education level though: the
higher educated, the more often youngsters had heard
about the scriptures.
Comparatively
more Sanatani
youngsters have heard something about the Bhagavat Gita
and Ramayana than the other Hindu youngsters. The nonspecific Hindus have the least knowledge of the Holy
Scriptures. Results of earlier research (van Dijk, 1994) also
confirm that the scriptures are not well known: less than a
quarter would have read something about the scriptures.
The large number of Holy Scriptures within Hinduism can
be compared to that of Islam and Christianity. Perhaps this
myriad of scriptures can account for the large number of
young Hindus who do not know at least one scripture.
There exists a slight tendency that lower educated
Hindus have more problems with integration than higher
educated Hindus. Gender and country of birth (Suriname
or the Netherlands) hardly show significant or interesting
differences. Not surprising, results indicate that the higher
the educational level, the greater the knowledge of
Hinduism. Results have also indicated that the young
Hindus who are lower educated tend to be more
conservative. In the field of cultural orientation, the effects
of individualization and westernization are most noticeable
among Hindu youngsters. They prefer to judge for
themselves and would like their family to be less critical
and intrusive in their affairs. A minority of young Hindus
prefer Indian movies to western movies. Based on the
interviews with this group of young Hindus one may
conclude that the positive development of their identity has
been built upon the positive 'image of Hinduism in the
Netherlands.

Dr Choenni is a social scientist and senior

advisor in the Ministry of Justice in the Netherlands.

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recipe

Paratha Roti
This type of roti is known as "buss-up-shot" in Trinidad because of its resemblance to a burst-up shirt. It is available at
many Indian food outlets, some of which offer a catering service for weddings and other occasions. Paratha roti is
enjoyed by Indians and non-Indians alike.
Ingredients
2 lbs /900 grms white flour
6 tsp /6 x 5 mJ spoon baking powder
4 pot spoons / 200 mls vegetable oil or ghee (clarified butter)
2 tsp / 2 x 5 mJ spoon vegetable oil
3 ozs /75 grms margarine
1 V2 pts / 900 mls water (to knead flour)
Pinch of salt
Method

Sift flour in a large mixing bowl.

Take out 4 ounces flour and set aside for parthan (dry flour to sprinkle).
Combine flour, baking powder and salt.
Knead with water to make a soft dough.
Smear dough lightly all over with 2 teaspoons oil.
Leave to rest for about 2 hours.
Divide dough into 6 equal parts and make into loyahs (balls).
Roll out loyah with a belnaa on lightly floured board into a circle 5" in diameter
and 1,4" thick ..
Paste a little margarine to cover surface completely.
Sprinkle a little flour.
Cut a straight line from the center to one end.
Roll-the end with hand in clockwise direction making a cone shape. (Same
Method when making. a croissant).
Tuck in both ends and press flat.
Leave to rest for 30 minutes.
Put tawa (baking stone) to heat.
Mix ghee and oil in a bowl.
Roll out loyahs on floured board, to about 118" thick, and cook on tawa, turning both
side and-basting with oil and ghee mixture with a puchara.
Place on a-clean kitchen cloth and "pound up" with hands or end of belnaa until
partially broken up into strips.
Serves 6-8 persons

Variations
Some cooks who prefer a richer paratha roti, use only the ghee and butter (and exclude oil). Evaporated milk can be
substituted for, or combined with, the water to knead the flour.

I NEWS

ON HINDUS

Bhakti is a bestseller
While indipop, bhangra, rap and remix albums come
and go in popularity, Indians listen to devotional music
morning after morning without getting tired. Believing in
God seems to be the safest bet in the music industry,
industry insiders say. While there may be many reasons for
the perpetual
popularity
of
devotional
songs,
a spokeswoman of Music Today says," There's so much
stress that people are increasingly
veering towards
spiritualism and bhajans/stotras fulfill that need."
People of all ages are buying CD recordings of
just bhajans and kirtans. Pure Sanskrit slokas are also
popular. Devotional music stays at the top of the charts,
even beyond the festival seasons of Navaratri, Ganesha
Chaturthi and Deepavali. The popularity associated with
devotional songs is also inspiring singers of other genres
of music to venture into this territory.

I NEWS

ON HINDUS

Hallmark to add Hindu Deepavali card

This year, for the first time ever, Hallmark will sell
cards for the Hindu celebration of Deepavali or Divali,
as well as for the Muslim holiday of Eid-ul-Fitr. "With
the increase in the number of Hindus and Muslims, we
realized that there was an ongoing need that we were not
satisfying," said Deidre Parkes, spokeswoman for
the Kansas City, Mo.-based Hallmark Company, that has
been making greeting cards for Americans since 1910.
While based on a desire to sell more cards, the new
Hallmark cards are also recognizing the changing face of
America, said Egon Mayer, a Sociologist at the Graduate
, Center of the City University of New York. Mayer
"directed the American Religious Identification Survey,
which showed that the number of Hindu adults in the
United States rose from 227,000 to 760,000 between
1990 and 2001. During the same period, the number of
Muslim adults went from about 527,000 to 1.1 million.

NEW DELHI, INDIA, April 19, 2003

USA, September 17, 2003

Effective May 1, 2003,

the Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards
now inspects tyres on
new and foreign used
vehicles, in accordance
with existing National
compulsory standards
prior to the submission
of these vehicles to the
Ucensing Authority for
registration.

. 12 Century Drive" Trindty IndustI1a1 Estate, Macoya, Tunapuna.

Tel. Nos.: 662-88.7,662-4481/2 or 6634835/6
Fax:66J.4335. Email: ttb;@ttbs.org.tt. Website: www.ttbs.org.tt

The Implementation Division of the

Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards
inspects and monitors locally produced
and imported goods which are covered
by national compulsory standards. Items.
currently subject to inspections are new
and used:
passenger and commercial tyres
(exclusive of agricultural and industrial tyres)
electrical goods and automotive batteries
garments, textiles and footwear
pre-packaged goods
household chemicals and cleaning solutions

Standards .. a secure foundation for

sustainable growth and development .

What Derek Walcott said about Ramleela (Part 2)

Extract of Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1992

Here in Trinidad, I had discovered that one of the greatest epics of the world was seasonally
performed, not with that desperate resignation of preserving a culture, but with an openness of
belief that was as steady as the wind bending the cane lances of the Caroni plain.
is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for
The performance was like a dialect, a branch of its
granted when it was whole. The glue that fits the pieces is
original language, an abridgement of it, but not a distortion
the sealing of its original shape. It is such a love that
or even a reduction of its steptic scale. Here in Trinidad, I
had discovered that one of the greater steptics of the world
reassembles our African and Asiatic fragments, the
cracked heirlooms whose restoration shows its white scars.
was seasonally performed, not with that desperate
This gathering of broken pieces is the care and pain of the
resignation of preserving a culture, but with an openness of
Antilles, and if the pieces are disparate, ill-fitting, they
belief that was as steady as the wind bending the cane
lances of the Caroni plain. We had to leave before the play
contain more pain than their original sculpture, those icons
and sacred vessels taken for granted in their ancestral
began to go through the creeks of the Caroni Swamp, to
catch the scarlet ibises coming home at dusk. In a
places. Antillean art is this restoration of our shattered
performance as natural as those of the actors of the
histories, our shards of vocabulary, our archipelago
Rarnleela, we watched the flocks come in as bright as the
becoming a synonym for pieces broken off from the
original continent. And this is the exact process of the
scarlet of the boy archers, as the red flags, and cover an
islet until it turned into a flowering tree, an anchored
making of poetry, or what should be called not its
immortelle. The sigh of History meant nothing here. These
"making" but its remaking, the fragmented memory, the
two visions, the RamJeela and the arrowing flocks of
armature that frames the god, even the rite that surrenders
scarlet ibises, blended into a single gasp of gratitude.
it to a final pyre; the god assembled cane by cane, reed by
weaving reed, line by plaited line, as the artisans of
Visual surprise is natural in: the Caribbean; it comes
with the landscape, and faced with its beauty, the sigh of
Felicity would erect his holy echo.
History dissolves. We make too much of that long groan
Poetry, which is perfection's sweat but which must
which underlines the past. I felt privileged to discover the
seem as fresh as the raindrops on a statue's brow, combines
ibises as well as the scarlet archers of Felicity.
the natural and the marmoreal; it conjugates both tenses
The sigh of History rises over ruins, not over landscapes,
simultaneously: the past and the present, if the past is the
and in the Antilles there are few ruins to sigh over, apart
sculpture and the present the beads of dew or rain on
from the ruins of sugar estates and abandoned forts.
the forehead of the past. There is the buried language and
Looking around slowly, as a camera would, taking in the
there is the individual vocabulary, and the process of
low blue hills over Port of Spain, the village
poetry is one of excavation and of self-discovery. Tonally
road and houses, the warrior-archers, the god-actors and
the individual voice is a dialect; it shapes its own accent,
their handlers, and music already on the sound track, I
its own vocabulary and melody in defiance of an imperial
wanted to make a film that would be a long-drawn sigh
concept of language, the language of Ozymandias,
over Felicity.
libraries and dictionaries, law courts and critics, and
I was filtering the afternoon with evocations of a lost
churches, universities, political dogma, the diction of
India, but why "evocations"? Why not "celebrations of a
institutions.
real presence"? Why should India be "lost" when none of
Poetry is an island that breaks away from the main.
these villagers ever really knew it, and why not
The dialects of my archipelago seem as fresh to me as
"continuing", why not the perpetuation of joy in Felicity
those raindrops on the statue's forehead, not the sweat
and in all the other nouns of the Central Plain: Couva,
made from the classic exertion of frowning marble, but the
Chaguanas, Charley Village? Why was I not letting my
condensations of a refreshing element, rain and salt.
pleasure open its windows wide? I was enticed like any
Deprived of their original language, the captured and
Trinidadian to the ecstasies of their claim, because ecstasy
indentured tribes create their own, accreting and secreting
was the pitch of the sinuous drumming
in the
fragments of an old, an epic vocabulary, from Asia and
loudspeakers. I was entitled to the feast of Husein [Hosay],
from Africa, but to an ancestral, an ecstatic rhythm in the
to the mirrors and crepe-paper temples of the Muslim epic,
blood that cannot be subdued by slavery or indenture,
to the Chinese Dragon Dance, to the rites of that Sephardic
while nouns are renamed and the given names of places
Jewish synagogue that was once on Something Street. I am
accepted like Felicity village or Choiseul.
only one-eighth the writer I might have been had I
contained all the fragmented languages of Trinidad. Copyright The Nobel Foundation 1992
Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments Courtesy: The Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, Sweden

CY:'Ve~imas-csu

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Caribbeatt 1ttbiatt olktales

Kumar Mahabir
Written as a textbook for secondary schools
and as a collector's item for personal pleasure

Caribbeat\ It\biat\ Toll(tales' is an

interesting, authentic and useful book. It is the
first and largest collection of its kind to be
written in the original language of the
storytellers. The tales were tape-recorded in
English and transcribed with little or no editing
so as to maintain the rhythm of the narration.
Uis
book consists of a collection of 25
stories which have been passed down from
generation to generation by word of mouth
from India to the Caribbean over a century and
a half. The tales were collected from traditionbearers in Trinidad, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Lucia
and Grenada since 1980.
This book is a valuable document of our language and
cultural practices.
-Professor Vibert C. Cambridge, Ph.D., Chair,
Department
of African
American
Studies,
Ohio University.

It represents a major contribution

heritage of the Caribbean.

to the cultural

-R. Michael Ballantyne,

Founder and Past President of
The British Columbia Folklore Society, Canada.

Dr. Mahabir continues his bra, e effort in reconstructing

artifacts of Indo-Caribbean
culture which may
otherwise have disappeared.
-Dr Frank Birbalsingh,
York University.

Professor

of English,

Kumar
Mahabir
has
been
an
English/Literature teacher/lecturer for over
fifteen years in Trinidad and Tobago. He
received his BA and M.Phil degrees in English
from the University of the West Indies. He later
received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the
Universityof Florida.

Caribbea11111t)ia11 f'ol1U'ales
Collected by Kumar Mahabir
Colour Illustrations by

Angali Dabideen & Preddie Partap

English text.
San Juan, Trinidad and Tobago:
Chakra Publishing House.
2002. xi + 200 pp.
Glossary, index.
TT$40 or US$20 (includes postage)
Paperback. 14 x 21 cm.
ISBN 976-8180-20-0
Order copies by communicating to
Chakra Publishing House (Caribbean)
LP 52, Swami Avenue, Don Miguel Road,
San Juan, Trinidad and Tobago,
West Indies.
Tel (868) 674-6008, 675-7707.
E-mail: mahab(atstt.net.tt

N~110NAL

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s. .
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