Paras Ra­moutar

The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) is pro­ject­ing to spend over $1 mil­lion for this year's Phag­wa cel­e­bra­tions, says the or­gan­i­sa­tion's sec­re­tary gen­er­al Sat Ma­haraj. "We are mov­ing ahead de­spite no word on fund­ing from the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism. "We are daunt­ed by this mi­nor short­com­ing. We ex­pect full sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment in 2012," he said in an in­ter­view.

Ma­haraj said Phag­wa cel­e­bra­tions be­gan some two weeks ago. He said this Sat­ur­day there would be the usu­al Chil­dren's Phag­wa at the Tu­na­puna Hin­du School. Hun­dreds of school­child­ren from all Ma­ha Sab­ha schools are ex­pect­ed to par­tic­i­pate in Sat­ur­day's cel­e­bra­tions. On Sun­day the fes­tiv­i­ty would ex­tend to more than 20 lo­ca­tions through­out Trinidad.

Ar­eas in­clud­ed are Fe­lic­i­ty, Tu­na­puna, Ch­agua­nas, Pe­nal, Debe, Cunu­pia and St Au­gus­tine. "Phag­wa 2012 will con­tin­ue in our nor­mal tra­di­tion to link with the past. "The genre of folk songs will hold the spot­light through­out our cel­e­bra­tions," he said. Ma­haraj said there would be no lewd be­hav­iour, no drink­ing of al­co­hol or any form of in­de­cen­cy.

"The SDMS projects Phag­wa as demon­strat­ing a high lev­el of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and a mes­sage to all peo­ples, re­gard­less of their re­li­gious be­liefs as a pat­tern of life," he added. The SDMS has now been cel­e­brat­ing Phag­wa for sev­er­al decades, and its var­i­ous pro­grammes and com­pe­ti­tions have set mod­el stan­dards, Ma­haraj al­so stat­ed.