Ac­cord­ing to the Pu­ran­ic En­cy­clopae­dia, the root ‘VID’ in San­skrit means to know. The books com­prised of the an­cient Hin­du knowl­edge, col­lect­ed and com­piled, were known as the Vedas, which were con­sid­ered the most an­cient and sa­cred scrip­tures of Hin­duism. The mantras (sa­cred chants) and rit­u­als were re­vealed to the an­cient Rishis (holy men).

Holy hymns and San­skrit mantras were put to­geth­er in four col­lec­tions known as Rig Ve­da, Ya­jur Ve­da, Athar­va Ve­da and Sama Ve­da. For thou­sands of years, they were passed on oral­ly from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion.

In T&T, and in many Hin­du out­posts across the world, the Ra­mayan of Tul­si­das is con­sid­ered to be a Fifth Ve­da. The Ra­mayan was first writ­ten by the sage Valmi­ki, who was re­gard­ed as a con­tem­po­rary of Lord Ram. Be­cause of his lit­er­ary skills, Valmi­ki was known as the ‘Adi Kavi,’ a di­vine po­et.

The Hin­du tra­di­tions, how­ev­er, re­main firm in their be­lief that the Vedas were re­vealed at the dawn of civil­i­sa­tion to Hin­du sages. Ac­cord­ing to our sages, Bramha, a mem­ber of the Hin­du trin­i­ty, was the cre­ator of the Vedas. Tra­di­tion­al be­lief is that Bramha, for the per­for­mance of sac­ri­fices, cre­at­ed Ag­ni (fire), Vayu (wind), and Ravi (the sun). The same an­cient source al­so points to the fact that there are two sides to the Vedas, the mun­dane and the spir­i­tu­al.

Hin­dus be­lieve that the in­car­na­tions con­tained in the Vedas are not man-made, but are rev­e­la­tions by God. We con­sid­er them be­gin­ning­less and end­less. West­ern­ers who con­quered and colonised In­dia for cen­turies will ob­vi­ous­ly not share this view.

But the ver­sion of the Ra­mayan that has sus­tained Hin­dus who have been trans­port­ed as sug­ar­cane work­ers in T&T, Guyana, Suri­name, South Africa, Mau­ri­tius, Fu­ji and oth­er des­ti­na­tions, has been the sto­ries con­tained in Tul­si­das’s Ra­mayan. In this ver­sion, the ex­ile and the dif­fi­cul­ties en­coun­tered by Lord Ram are iden­ti­fied close­ly with our an­ces­tors, who were vir­tu­al­ly force­ful­ly trans­port­ed through­out the far-flung pos­ses­sions of our colo­nial British mas­ters.

The sim­ple life of Ram, his broth­er Lutch­man and Moth­er Si­ta, dur­ing his 14 years of ex­ile to re­gions of the for­est ar­eas and be­yond, served as sup­port to our an­ces­tors, who had to toil end­less­ly in the sug­ar in­dus­try with­out prop­er nu­tri­tion, health and ed­u­ca­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties in ‘bar­rack’ type ac­com­mo­da­tions.

The suc­cess of our an­ces­tors and their present-day de­scen­dants is a re­flec­tion of de­vo­tion to Dhar­ma (re­li­gious du­ty), hard work and per­se­ver­ance that was dis­played by Lord Ram in the Ra­mayan. The words and de­scrip­tion of the Ra­mayan may be dif­fer­ent from those con­tained in the Vedas, but the mes­sages por­trayed in the Do­has, Chow­pais and oth­er po­et­ic chants of the Ra­mayan, make it equal to the Vedas in the view of the av­er­age Trinidad Hin­du.

In­di­an Ar­rival Day is a na­tion­al hol­i­day. It must re­main so. As long as de­scen­dants of the SS Fa­tal Raza­ck re­main in T&T, May 30 will be a day of re­mem­brance and cel­e­bra­tion. Over 50,000 peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed the cen­tu­ry of ar­rival at Skin­ner Park in 1945. They made ma­jor ad­dress­es to a main­ly Hin­du au­di­ence. They demon­strat­ed then, the uni­ver­sal­i­ty of the cel­e­bra­tion. In 1995, the pub­lic hol­i­day was grant­ed in view of the all-em­brac­ing na­ture of the In­di­an ex­pe­ri­ences in the evo­lu­tion of our na­tion­al so­ci­ety. In­di­an Ar­rival Day is in­deed a na­tion­al, not a sec­tar­i­an or a par­tic­u­lar eth­nic hol­i­day.

Those who are ashamed of their an­ces­tors’ ar­rival must not de­mand that the liv­ing cit­i­zens of our coun­try aban­don the mem­o­ry, his­to­ry and con­tri­bu­tions of those who came from In­dia and forged a unique so­ci­ety. Every year at this time, we ho­n­our in­di­vid­u­als who sym­bol­ise our T&T re­al­i­ty. Our chil­dren must know the liv­ing leg­ends in our so­ci­ety. They must see, touch and feel the pres­ence of these cul­tur­al icons.

As part of our na­tion­wide cel­e­bra­tion, the Ma­ha Sab­ha has in­struct­ed all Hin­du schools and tem­ples to con­duct a spe­cial pu­ja to ho­n­our the most se­nior cit­i­zens in their com­mu­ni­ty.

One of the strengths of our peo­ple is the bond be­tween gen­er­a­tions. The link­ages of and trans­fers from one gen­er­a­tion to the next are crit­i­cal to Hin­duism. In these times, TV and glob­alised evan­ge­lism are of­fer­ing sub­ver­sive temp­ta­tions. These shows man­i­fest as law­less­ness in our youth. It is our du­ty to em­pha­sise our Hin­du tra­di­tion, morals and val­ues.

In to­day’s T&T, as we ob­serve In­di­an Ar­rival Month, the Hin­du pop­u­la­tion is still be­ing guid­ed by the sto­ries of hard­ship and even­tu­al tri­umph that our God in hu­man form en­dured while on plan­et Earth.