Local academic on international book tour

This year, the academy, in its commitment to the diffusion of research and the preservation of local cultural traditions, has published Balkaransingh’s work, The Shaping of a Culture: Rituals and Festivals in Trinidad compared with selected counterparts in India, 1900-2014. It was launched in February.

Since the release of the work, Balkaransingh has travelled to India on a book tour, with upcoming presentations to take place in Lucknow, Benares, Goa and Delhi as well as the presentation of further academic papers at conferences held in India.

Balkaransingh’s love affair with India and its culture is not a new one. A former permanent secretary at the Ministry of Finance, he completed his undergraduate education in economics at New Delhi University and is a Kathak classical dancer and choreographer, having received instruction in both the Kathak and Kuchipudi styles from the Kathak Kendra in Delhi. He founded the Nrityanjali Theatre in 1977, and has performed extensively with the group, both locally and internationally.

Praise for The Shaping of a Culture Professor Ken Julien from the UTT expressed great support for Balkaransingh’s work, lamenting that Trinidad and Tobago suffers from the irreversible loss of cultural heritage and tradition due to a failure to undertake efforts towards preservation and recovery. “We don’t study and adore where we came from; done today, forgotten tomorrow.” Professor Hollis Liverpool, in sharing Julien and Balkaransingh’s passion for cultural preservation, expressed the need to ensure that academic efforts translate into tangible and accessible progress. “Don’t just keep (the research) within the walls of UTT,” he urged. “Let it out – let it be reviewed, critiqued and help the community at large.” Professor Brinsley Samaroo, who accompanied Balkaransingh on one of his research trips to India, also discussed the importance of the work and of cultural preservation in general to the “new Caribbean civilisation which we are creating.” According to Samaroo, “We have proven (19th-century English author Rudyard) Kipling wrong when he wrote, ‘East is east, west is west and ne’er the twain shall meet’.” The process of collecting data for the work was a highly extensive one, and required combing several towns and villages in India. It was there that Balkaransingh uncovered – with, he says, “an open, inquisitive mind and a clear, trusting heart”– the lifestyles, rituals and stories of the Indian people, with their varied languages and cultural traits coloured with the nuances of different lands.

These stories shed light on the extent to which Trinidad and Tobago and India’s connections run more deeply than annual Divali celebrations.

The author was amazed to come across a woman of about 90 who was familiar with Trinidad; when he enquired further, she explained that her father had been indentured in Trinidad and, on completing his labour, returned to India with his two daughters, leaving his nine sons on the island.

Among numerous other topics, the book tells of the 400-year-old Carnival celebrated in the former Portuguese province of Goa, and of Indians hailing from Pondicherry arriving as French-speakers in Martinique and Guadeloupe before arriving in Trinidad.

The presence of Christianity in India is another subject covered : the then-new faith was brought to Indian shores by missionary St Thomas (otherwise known as “doubting Thomas”) in 52 AD. His missionary work and subsequent martyrdom there led to the construction of San Thome (St Thomas) Basilica in Chennai.

Return to India Two months after the launch, Balkaransingh once again finds himself pulled towards the motherland, this time to promote the book and to present additional academic work On March 28 and 29, he spoke on the centenary of the en d of the Indian indentureship system at a conference organised by Professor Ashutosh Kumar and the University of Leeds in collaboration with the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, held at the museum in New Delhi. Entitled 100 years after Indentureship, Where and How are the Present Generations of the Post-indenture System Influencing their Environments?, Balkaransingh’s work was among those of 20 speakers from ten countries and was well received.

Also to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of Indian indentureship, Balkaransingh is carded to present his work at the International Conference to Commemorate the Centenary of Abolition of Indenture System, to be held on April 20 to 22, under the aegis of the Indian Council for International Cooperation. This paper, 100 years after the Abolition of the Indenture System, Identifying Indo-Trinidadian Performative Traditions, Locating their Appropriate Antecedents in the Ancestral Country, and Examining their Potential for Future Development, appears to resonate closely with the book’s research and maintains Balkaransingh’s theme of linking the past and present, the cultural and the national, the east and the west.

The Shaping of a Culture: Rituals and Festivals in Trinidad compared with Selected Counterparts in India, 1900–2014 is available at local bookstores, on Amazon and via the UK online bookstore Hansib Publications.

A Kindle edition is soon to follow.