The Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go has con­ferred its first PhD in the hu­man­i­ties, and on­ly the sec­ond PhD in its his­to­ry, to Sat­nar­ine Balka­rans­ingh on No­vem­ber 10. Balka­rans­ingh com­plet­ed and sub­mit­ted the study in three-and-a-half years. He suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ed it in Au­gust 2011. This study which falls specif­i­cal­ly un­der the aca­d­e­m­ic cat­e­go­ry of 'Cul­tur­al Stud­ies' is en­ti­tled: TRINIDAD SPACE SPEAK­ING THROUGH IN­DO-TRINIDA­DI­AN RIT­U­ALS AND FES­TI­VALS: 1990-2009.

Sum­ma­ry of find­ings of Balka­rans­ingh's the­sis

Some of the find­ings of Sat Balka­rans­ingh's in­clude the re­cur­ring pat­terns of com­mon sym­bols-light, di­vin­i­ty, fer­til­i­ty, the use of mu­sic for con­vey­ing emo­tions, the re­cur­ring use of leg­ends and myths as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­spec­tive rit­u­als and fes­ti­vals, the role of lu­nar cy­cles and the sea­sons, the con­flict and ever-chang­ing em­pha­sis be­tween "re­li­gion" and "cul­ture." These were vis­i­ble in events such as Car­ni­val, Hosay, Ramlila, Phag­wa and Di­vali. Var­i­ous cal­en­dars (Ro­man-Gre­go­ri­an, Hin­du, (Sam­vat) & Is­lam­ic) have been used in de­ter­min­ing the oc­cur­rence of the events. The per­for­mance tra­di­tions with­in the rit­u­als and fes­ti­vals iden­ti­fied the chang­ing dy­nam­ics of role plays.

There were ev­i­dences of the trans­portive and trans­for­ma­tive el­e­ments. The "texts" and "con­texts" which brought the rit­u­als and fes­ti­vals in­to be­ing were iden­ti­fied and pre­sent­ed in the con­text of the chang­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic, in­no­v­a­tive and en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues which have mod­i­fied them, re­sult­ing in their cur­rent in­car­na­tions. There have al­so been ex­tra­ne­ous in­flu­ences which have changed the orig­i­nal piety of some of the rit­u­als, such as Hosay/ Muhar­ram of St James and Ce­dros in­to fes­tiv­i­ty and are cur­rent­ly re­vert­ing the St James event back in­to the pi­ous­ness of the com­mem­o­ra­tion. There are recog­nis­able pat­terns of chang­ing gen­der re­la­tion­ships, es­pe­cial­ly the in­volve­ment of women, with­in the events and hence in the so­ci­ety as a whole.

Sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and in­no­va­tion have al­so played sig­nif­i­cant roles in chang­ing pre­sen­ta­tion­al dy­nam­ics. These in­clude the use of fab­ric, cos­tume de­signs, light (fire­crack­ers in Ramlila, Di­vali, Christ­mas, Hosay, Car­ni­val, Shiv­ara­tri) and sound (dig­i­tal, tape and am­pli­fi­ca­tion). "A find­ing of ma­jor con­cern was the rapid­ly dis­ap­pear­ing tra­di­tion­al arts, both cre­ative and per­for­ma­tive, in the rit­u­als and fes­ti­vals. The coun­try is all the poor­er for the loss of crafts­man­ship in the dec­o­ra­tions of the Tad­jahs of Hosay, in the cop­per work of Car­ni­val, in the singing of mar­siyas, danc­ing of jha­roo, ba­naithe and Gat­ka and in the firepass in the Hosay. More­over, there is a loss of ex­pe­ri­en­tial mem­o­ry, lead­ing to dis­tor­tions in the in­di­genis­ing and cre­olis­ing fac­tor in cul­ture (Hosay leg­ends, drum­ming rhythms, names of ta­las (rhyth­mic pat­terns ), names of prayer flags, and the Car­ni­val dances and use of steel pan mu­sic in road mas dur­ing Car­ni­val," Balka­rans­ingh said.

Con­clu­sion, rec­om­men­da­tions

The study has recog­nised that de­spite liv­ing in this "new" en­vi­ron­ment for over 165 years and the con­tin­ued feel­ing of cul­tur­al mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion and alien­ation, and de­spite some of the neg­a­tive stereo­typ­ing of the In­di­ans, they have main­tained sig­nif­i­cant fea­tures of cul­tur­al per­sis­tence. Trinidad con­tin­ues to be con­sid­ered "home" for them, even though In­do-Trinida­di­ans do have a dif­fer­ent ap­proach to life and liv­ing, a broad world view of life: Va­sud­hai­va Ku­tum­bakam-the world is one fam­i­ly, to­day's con­cept of "glob­al vil­lage," al­low­ing for easy move­ment across bor­ders. The the­sis has al­so not­ed the in­abil­i­ty of the coun­try, both state and cor­po­rate, pri­vate sec­tor to use as­pects of our rich cul­tur­al her­itage to trans­form it in­to en­tre­pre­neur­ial busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties.

There is the fail­ure of the coun­try as a whole and our lead­ers in par­tic­u­lar at var­i­ous lev­els in the so­ci­ety to grasp the val­ue of our mul­ti­cul­tur­al na­ture and use it con­struc­tive­ly, to ac­tive­ly di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my. The the­sis doc­u­ments some of these as­pects of our unique her­itage of rit­u­als, fes­ti­vals, our rich ar­ray of artis­tic cre­ativ­i­ty, ex­pressed on an al­most con­tin­u­ous ba­sis. We can use these con­struc­tive­ly, us­ing the var­i­ous events to gen­er­ate sig­nif­i­cant rev­enues, cre­ate em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties, im­prove on our ex­port po­ten­tial from cul­tur­al in­dus­tries, and boost the tourism sec­tor of our na­tion­al econ­o­my.

With these unique cul­tur­al prod­ucts the coun­try can au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be­come a sig­nif­i­cant tourism des­ti­na­tion ca­pa­ble of trans­form­ing its econ­o­my away from its de­pen­den­cy on the de­plet­ing pe­tro­le­um re­sources in­to ex­port-ori­ent­ed, self-sus­tain­ing growth. Us­ing his project man­age­ment train­ing and ex­pe­ri­ence Balka­rans­ingh has iden­ti­fied a se­ries of project pro­pos­als, com­ing out of the study, de­signed for af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion, for the re­dis­tri­b­u­tion of knowl­edge, the re­gen­er­a­tion of our dy­nam­ic, cul­tur­al "per­for­ma­tive tra­di­tions"?and for self-sat­is­fy­ing, sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.