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June 2011
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From the Principal: A new way of seeing India
The first of these conferences, organised by the High Commission of India, was titled “Building a New Partnership between India and the Caribbean: The Role of Diaspora,” and the second was on the “Global South Asian Diaspora.” Neatly dovetailing into each other, both events took place primarily at the St. Augustine Campus, which played a key role, and the latter was the seventh conference in the series. The value of deepening such ties cannot be underestimated in this global environment; India as one of the Big Four economies tagged the BRIC along with Brazil, Russia and China, would be an important economic partner for this region. There is no denying that the cultural bonds between India and the Caribbean, particularly Trinidad, Guyana and Suriname, have shaped the way of life up and down the region. Indeed, with over 170 years gone by since the first shiploads of indentured workers came to the region, it is a source of fascination how much of that way of life – in food, clothes, music, ritual and religion – has survived intact to this day. Many visitors from modern day India have been struck by the preservation of their culture, transplanted and kept alive and unchanged in many ways, while much of it is not as visible in its ancestral home. The Caribbean might well have become a place where people can see how an old way of life had been exquisitely re-crafted to fit into a different space, and how a culture has maintained many traditional aspects and adapted to the new world. This is cause for celebration. Those cultural bonds have long been the mainstay of the relationship between India and the Caribbean, and as we seek to further deepen our ties, we should also focus on other areas that can enhance this, such as business/industrial partnerships, sports, tourism and other creative enterprises. It may seem irrelevant, but even the current tour by the Indian cricket team did not seem to be arranged so as to maximise spectator attendance, including those fans from the Indian diaspora at the games. We simply have to adjust our ways of seeing and planning to reap the rich rewards of this diasporic connection. The conferences had looked at networking of diaspora associations in the Caribbean and their role in development, at economic enterprise and technology, and in looking at innovative financing mechanisms. These are the kinds of initiatives and perspectives that can move the region forward in a holistic way, and they really invite us to consider our ancestral links from the other side of the traditional lens. Clement K. Sankat |
Two conferences about building relations between India and the Caribbean took place a month ago, both invoking diaspora bonds as a medium to deepen linkages.