BY HERMAN ROOP DASS Sunday, October 11 2009

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DIVALI TIME: Leanne Ali, 18, of Claxton Bay, poses with a deya as the country prepares to celebrate the Hindu festival of Divali next Saturday. ...

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YEAR after year, the National Council for Indian Culture (NCIC) has been seeing a decline in grants from Government, according to Deokienanan Sharma, president of the NCIC even as he pointed out that “Divali is the premier and largest Indian cultural event in the country practised by some 42 percent of our locally born and bred citizens of East Indian descent”.

Sharma was addressing the opening night on Thursday of the 2009 Divali Nagar at the Narsaloo Ramaya Drive, Endeavour, Chaguanas. He added, “This project brings numerous benefits to our country and points us to another way to raise our youths, as it is, perhaps, the only place where entire families can come and enjoy themselves in a most congenial and fear-free atmosphere.” He thanked the many business houses that support the commercial area, the many religious groups and NGOs, the performing artistes, the TT Police Service, the private security sector, and the public “who have been increasing in numbers year after year.” He touched on the theme “The Hindu Concept of God” and explained that it was their hope “that it will generate sufficient interest and inquiry into Hindu thought and will help to disabuse many of the misconceptions that are associated with our religion.”

He praised First Citizens Bank for their third year of sponsorship, the Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago, the Ministry of Culture, the National Gas Company, the Tourism Development Company. He said that the staging of the Divali Nagar was aimed at “enlightening the public on aspects of Indian cultural practices, and particularly Hindu traditions and beliefs.”

Sharma said that “denouncement of the Hindu religion is grossly unfair, unjust and done with malice and ignorance of its teachings. Hinduism is the world’s oldest religion and has withstood all that has been thrown at it, and nothwithstanding its wounds has survived and prospered and today the religion and its supreme doctrines are more and more being accepted.”