Paras Ra­moutar

In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Shri Malay Mishra will de­liv­er the open­ing re­marks at a pan­el dis­cus­sion on Sun­day at the Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre, UWI, St Au­gus­tine, start­ing at 5 pm.Theme of the dis­cus­sion will be "One World: One Re­al­i­ty."Oth­er pan­elists are Pan­di­ta Dr In­drani Ram­per­sad; Dr Fazal Ali, act­ing prin­ci­pal of UTT; and Fr An­tho­ny Bhaskar Jayasee­lam of the Moru­ga RC Church.

Dr Ram­per­sad Paras­ram will chair the pro­ceed­ings and the pub­lic is in­vit­ed to at­tend.The phrase "Arise and Awake" con­tin­ues to res­onate in the minds and hearts of peo­ple across the globe as this was theme of Swa­mi Vivekanan­da who spoke to the Par­lia­ment of Re­li­gions in May 1893.Fol­low­ing the ad­dress Swa­mi Viviekanan­da stayed sev­er­al months in Amer­i­ca and lec­tured and taught west­ern­ers to study In­di­an phi­los­o­phy and then went to Eu­rope on a sim­i­lar as­sign­ment.

In 1897 he re­turned to In­dia and the na­tion rose and ho­n­oured him as they saw in him one who had risen to bring new life and vigour to the moth­er­land.In his dis­cours­es, Swa­mi Vivekanan­da re­mind­ed his coun­try­men to the In­di­an ide­al of re­nun­ci­a­tion, roused them to a sense of priv­i­lege in be­ing In­di­an and showed them how spir­i­tu­al cul­ture was the se­cret of In­dia's im­mor­tal ex­is­tence.