Prime Minister Panday’s Last Parlance – Final Fiery Journey Comes Full Circle to Reconnect with Ancestors

Panday’s Last Parlance, his final fiery journey comes full circle to reconnect with his ancestors with a State Procession of compatriots from the at the Southern Academy of the Performing Arts to the Mosquito Creek Shore of Peace. (See Route to Cremation Below). His Antyesi/funeral rites will take place exactly 32 years since an earlier journey to roots, the lands of his ancestors when he made the first return since his ancestors departed India for the unknown Chinidad (land of sugar) .

The journey that began in 1908 when his maternal grandparents Ajodhia and Subshanti left their village in Lakshmanpur India for Trinidad and Tobago (- some details of which I share below) will conclude today in the ancestral fire.

First State Open Fire Cremation, IndoTrinidadian, Hindu Rites for Head of Government

The open fire cremation, part of his ancestral legacy, was banned under colonial rule which brought Indians to Trinidad in 1845 and did not receive official sanction until 1952.

Now, 72 years later, Panday’s is the first national State funeral under Hindu rites. Even in death, it continues his life’s struggles for acceptance and recognition of many of the cultural elements transposed by his ancestors who came to seek sweeter lives for their children in a far of distant land to chinni chale meaning ‘come let’s go to sift sugar’. The word Chinni, meaning sugar, replaced Trini in the Indian lexicon, as my Ma the Nonagenarian, whom Panday considered his sister, knew. Panday now joins two Queens, these nonagenarians.

Bitter Sweet Experiences

The experience has been one of bitter-sweet arrows for the Indian labourers who came. In no one is that bitter-sweet experience more representative than in the figure of Basdeo Panday, the boy from the canefields who took on all-comers, became Trinidad and Tobago’s first Prime Minister of Indian Descent and first Hindu Prime Minister as the country’s fifth Head of Government in 1995.

Through a long and tumultuous career, he continued to roar into his nineties. Panday passed away in full humor surrounded by his friends on New Year’s Day 2024. He would be sent off in a blaze of fire and glory today January 9, 2024.

Return Journey To Roots

His many journeys as Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, his first Ministerial portfolio included his journey to roots in his ancestral village in India, which followed the earlier journey returning to our hometown village of St Julien. They encompassed his journeying from his impoverished beginnings in the canefields to the seat of governance at the Twin Towers.

I captured the excitement of preparation by the people of India to receive him on his return as a journey to roots to reconnect with his relatives in India for the first time since his grandparents left the continent for the so-called New World in 1908 (See below). The excitement to receive him as a son of the soil who had left to return as the leader of his land, was exhilarating and infectious, as must be the excitement at the pending return of his body to the holy fire/Agni and the liberation of his soul in a life of struggle for freedom, justice and liberties of his people.

Stately Farewell

Hundreds flocked to say farewell as his body was carried to music of Frank Sinatra’s My Way before he was set down in honour at the Rotunda of the iconic seat of Parliament, the Red House in Port of Spain, on Friday January 5 2024.

On Monday January 8, Panday’s body was transported along the San Fernando Bypass onto the Cross Crossing Interchange, to Rienzi Kirton Highway – named for his mentor in the colonial labour struggles, Adrian Cola Rienzi – then onto Todd Street through and into SAPA where he lay in State.

Musical Sendoff with indigenous IndoCaribbean music

Scores from his home region paid tribute at SAPA and last night he was given a musical send off by the traditional home grown music and musicians in a night of singing. Today, January 9 2024,

This morning, Tuesday January 9, 2024, Panday’s body will journey under military escort, from the corner of Cipero Street and the Rienzi Kirton Highway, onto Todd Street and into SAPA for performance of funerary rites.

The cortege will then depart SAPA and proceed left onto Balisier Avenue, onto the San Fernando Bypass, onto South Trunk Road to Mosquito Creek Road.

A military procession will then escort Panday’s bodily remains from Mosqui­to Creek Road to the Shore of Peace Cremation Site.

As he shared with me as we discussed his struggles to turn his oratory to authorship and complete his autobiography, he shared with me among his favourite music and reading, Sant Kabir Das, among which gems of wisdom was this one:

When you came into the world, people laughed, and you cried.
Go do something in life that when we die, the world weeps and we laugh.

Tears for Panday

Today as Panday’s soul is released into the realm of eternal laughter, those of his world will weep copious tears.

I share here the anticipation I captured in this article of those on the otherside, anticipating his return to India as must be the timber and tone of the souls waiting to receive his in the great beyond.

Excerpt from Panday’s Journey to Roots

From GLoCAl Knowledge Pot Archives

Red carpet welcome for Pandåy in India

By KRIS RAMPERSAD ,

Sunday January 21,1992

A RED carpet welcome awaits Prime Minister Basdeo Panday when he sets foot on Indian soil on Tuesday January 21,1992. And his ancestral village of Lakshmanpur, in the State of Uttar Pradesh, is preparing its own surprise for Mr Panday who will arrive in the village by helicopter on January 28 (1992).

Already the villagers — among them descendants of his maternal grandparents Ajodhia and Subshanti who left Calcutta for Trinidad as indentured immigrants in 1908 — have written Mr Panday, informing him that they were looking forward to his visit as a great honour.

The Prime Minister’s visit to India will be a far different welcome than was accorded returning immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago to India a century ago. Then returning immigrants were considered as being defiled crossing the kala pani — the dark waters of the Indian Ocean — and were not welcomed back into the fold until they had performed severe sacrifices.

But Mr Panday’s visit to India is not as a dharti ke lal (son of the soil). Rather, it is as an Indo-Trinidadian and product of the New World that he would accept the Honorary Doctor of Laws degree to be conferred on him by the Banaras Hindu University on January 27 (1992) and will be reunited with long-lost relatives.

Force of new island culture

The Prime Minister is taking to India the force of a culture that is uniquely Trinidad and Tobago’s, among them, tassa and chutney which came from India, but which have evolved their own rhythms and styles; the wholly indigenous steelband, calypso, traditional carnival costumes, and a multi-ethnic mix of dances.

“The beauty of the culture is in its mixture,” Indian High Commissioner Inder Vir Chopra told the Sunday Guardian.

“It is an opportunity to show Indians how the cultural forms that originated in India have been mixed in its contact with other peoples to produce something new. And by inviting Mr Panday to be the special guest of our Republic Day celebrations, we are paying tribute to all Indians who went out of India, in very difficult circumstances, and came out of that to be at the top.

About Dr Kris Rampersad

Dr Kris Rampersad is an independent scholar, journalist and development specialist . She has served as former Vice President of the Commonwealth Journalists’ Association, President of UNESCO Education Commission, Vice President of UNESCO Programme and External Relations Commission and Vice President of the Consultative Body of UNESCO InterGovernmental Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Media Specialist/Adviser to the Commonwealth Foundation.

Dr Kris Rampersad is global thought leader and consultant who straddles spheres of media, culture and education as an expert on integrated sustainable developmental issues of the Caribbean, SIDS, Developing World and the Global South. A Commonwealth Professional Fellow, Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge, Indian Institute of Mass Communication and Foreign Press Centre of Japan with a PhD in Pre and Post Colonial Literature, she invented the world’s newest creative genre, the MultiMedia MicroEpic that adopts and adapts the long-form classical epic for short-form new media which she piloted to the Commonwealth Scholars Forum at the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

 Her web platform, the GloCaL Knowledge Pot features her developing multimedia expositions of CEIBA-EDUtainment, novel creations that blend education and entertainment for all ages and sectors from pre-school to policy-making through traditional, conventional and new media forms. Dr Rampersad is a National Geographic Educator, UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Facilitator, Global Woman Techmakers’ Ambassador, Google Digital Skills Ambassador and Small Island Innovators’ Ambassador. Internationally, she has served variously as President of the UNESCO Education Commission, Vice President of UNESCO Programme and External Relations Commission, Vice President and Independent Member of the Consultative Body to the InterGovernmental Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Vice President of the Commonwealth Journalists’ Association.

More at https://krisrampersad.com/explore-our-world/who-we-are/dr-kris-rampersad-connecting-glocal-cultures/  To support, sponsor or collaborate on developing online resources in the GloCal Knowledge Pot as CEIBA-EDUtainment and MultiMedia MicroEpic interactive initiatives, new investigative research, multimedia publications and productions and digitisation of journalistic, academic and socio-cultural archives and development of online resource base You can make contact and connect through her web portal GloCaL Knowledge Pot,www.krisrampersad.com; as KrisRampersad on LinkedIn,Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest, KrisRampersad1 on Facebook and @Krisramp on X/Twitter

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