SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The In­di­an Caribbean Mu­se­um cel­e­brat­ed its fifth an­niver­sary last Fri­day with a din­ner par­ty at Gas­ton Courts, Lange Park, Ch­agua­nas.Ad­dress­ing the gath­er­ing were mem­bers of var­i­ous de­nom­i­na­tion­al faiths, in­clud­ing Alvin Seereer­am, sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Pres­by­ter­ian Board, Kash­ma Khan of the AS­JA board and Sat­narayan Ma­haraj, sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha.Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, al­so ad­dressed those in at­ten­dance."I com­mend your vi­sion, as well as your ded­i­ca­tion in pre­serv­ing such a sig­nif­i­cant part of our na­tion's his­to­ry. As our on­ly spe­cialised repos­i­to­ry of in­for­ma­tion and ar­ti­facts per­tain­ing to the East In­di­an ex­pe­ri­ence, the In­di­an Caribbean Mu­se­um is one of our must im­por­tant links to the past," Ra­mad­hars­ingh said.

The mu­se­um, he said, pro­vid­ed a pow­er­ful bridge to T&T's his­to­ry, and act­ed as a foun­da­tion for col­lec­tive mem­o­ry and a space that ad­vo­cat­ed for mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing and co­he­sion.Ma­haraj made a pub­lic ap­peal for a kat­tiya, a bed us­ing ropes, on which he said the In­den­tured In­di­ans slept. He said the mu­se­um was hard pressed to find one.He in­struct­ed the mu­se­um to plant a root of sug­ar­cane, for he be­lieved since the clo­sure of Ca­roni (1975) Ltd sev­en years ago, the sug­ar­cane has been dis­ap­pear­ing from the land­scape and may soon van­ish com­plete­ly.He said by pre­serv­ing the plant at the mu­se­um, those who vis­it­ed the venue would have an op­por­tu­ni­ty to see a plant that was so abun­dant and had im­pact­ed on the de­vel­op­ment of T&T.