My Date with Narendra Modi: Dat Merkel Affair Priyanka Chopra’s Baywatched legs Trumps Bucket & Dowry from the Diaspora

They say blood is thicker than water, and that’s the balm. Breathing deeply, looking to be distracted from the flurry and flight of prudence from jurisprudence and plummeting pillars of the body politic here across the kala pani, up looms the publicly blossoming promance (power romance) between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi and German Chancellor Iron Lady, Angela Dorothea Merkel, sounding sirens of the recolonization of Europe and reconfiguration of the old into a New World Order.

The colour-coordinated his and hers suits, syncronised strides, long stares into each other’s eyes, relaxed garden walks and talks, tetes-a-tetes at the Iron Lady’s baroque castle retreat; the ‘made for each other’ Merkel-Modi hugs; the over shoulder winks to the European Union of a stronger India-Europe alliance are causing as many a conservative tongue to wag in consternation as the leg-flashing Bollywood princess Priyanka Chopra who takes time off to cover her Baywatched bikini body with (oh horror of horrors!) an above-knee length dress to greet her Prime Minister in Germany.

Like the knee-exposed Priyanka, challenging the image of conservative, cloistered Indian womanhood, Modi’s India with Gita-like prophesy is shedding its worn old body of deprivation, starvation, impoverishment and underdevelopment, for its new reincarnation as a potential world power.

As they say, blue blood is thicker than water, thicker too than German bier. I am patient, if anything. It’s but a pint in a sea of samskara. It is left to be seen how far will go this promance with the woman who had belched out in a fit of frustration at the challenges of globalisation that ‘Multikulti is dead’ while we rum-guzzlers on this side of the diaspora in Canada, the Americas, the Caribbean, take up the collective chant - ‘long live Multiculturalism!’

The Western world might have missed it, as it did my date - no surprise there - with BBC lenses fascinatingly focused on the furor over Priyanka Chopra’s legs rather than the shenanigans of the German Führer and India’s Pradhaan Mantri, but no sooner has Modi kissed his Merkel abschied/farewell, he is holding hands in another garden walk, in syncronised strides, with Russian Prem'yer-Ministr Vladimir Putin, doing an about turn of his motorcade and Primer Ministro of Spain Mariano Rajoy to walk casually into crowds of cheering desi fans in Madrid, and ensnaring France’s youthful and handsome leadership makeover in Premier Ministre Emmanuel Macron in a passionate embrace pour sauver le monde/to save the world from climate change.

While journalist Megyn Kelly from Trump’s NBC is still trying to remove foot from mouth having stood in her shoes and wondered aloud if the man with the world’s largest social media following is on Twitter, the ‘eat your heart out Trump-USA,’ and ‘take that Brexit’ chants escalate into a crescendo. Modi, meanwhile, is poised, arms outstretched for the passing of the baton from what used to be the world’s greatest power centre, now on the rocks of a titanic sinking in the tides of melting ice caps and climate change. With Modi’s coming, India, it seems, has arrived, even as ‘persons of Indian origin’ in these parts celebrate the near 200 years of their own departure, migration and arrivals to the distance shores across in the Americas.

The world may watch in awe, or in horror, at the changing discourse and turning of the tables to courses in a menu of curried counter-terrorism, spiced with dashes of global security, smart technologies, science, clean energy, served up between sips of German bier, French wine, Spanish sangria and Russian vodka, through promises of resource sharing in health, education, global development, international cooperation, trade, investment and India’s surprise pop out in all its IT splendor with a ‘Hello World’!  

India’s seemingly surprise emergence bedecked in brand new sari and adornments, tantalizingly teasing with its show of underbelly of self-empowerment through smart tech and social media savvy while conventional media grasps in dying breaths and bewildered clutches of disbelief at its emergence from branded impoverishments, buffoonery, deprivation and underdevelopment. Leading the twitterati is Modi - Tweeter Premiere.

They seem to have missed the matikor of preparation and prayers that preceded this coming out party on the world’s dance floor which sees India’s Modi curtsying and greeting and patting and pecking and nodding and kissing and hugging as he extends invitations to shardi, not as a demure bride, but dangling a dowry that would dazzle any suitor. Western world leaders from Merkel to Macron, Putin to Rajoy, hear the conch shells and drums heralding India call to line up to partake in the kitcheri of this shardi/marriage banquet of global power mongers.

The emerging New World Order, like Modi’s India, may seem pretty new, but it has had a long gestation, in peace, under the radar of the frenzied paparazzi chasing the glitterati and still recovering from a dazed stupor of having so misread the signs to Donald Trump’s electoral victory, just as it disdainfully dismissed the bugles of the New World Information Order.

There begins my journey of mixed intentions, not unlike Modi’s: the pursuit of truths, mine journalistic rather than political truths, enroute to rediscover, not unlike Columbus, the ancient world, unearth some roots, unravel the mysteries of the complex tapestry of ‘multikulti’, that see me on one then another and anticipating a third passage to India that twists and turns and meanders through my date with Narendra Damodardas Modi.

From my repose on my nondescript island enclave across the kala pani, looking on at the unfolding pantomime, and dissolution of jurisprudence and its associated disassociated and disembodied body politic, I muse on the made in India moment.

Before Modi’s swachh bharat/clean up India movement, before India’s Pravasi Bharatiya Divas magnanimously flinging its doors open to its diaspora of PIO’s/persons of Indian origin and NRI’s – non-resident Indians, it was laying the groundworks in for this global debut through its membership in the Non Alignment Movement – states, some 120 of them, which did not see themselves as aligned with nor against any of the then major western power blocs, largely designated into ignominy in their third world status, and developing world classifications.

It is ironic that Donald Trump, raving about the biases and prejudices of mainstream media, the grip of the ‘swamp’, would turn his chops on the United Nations and the programmes of its agencies, when the goals of sustainable development, many evolved from the vision, principles and recommendations of the Non-Aligned movement, are, not unlike his own declared platform promises of revisionary approaches to economics, finance and certainly, information handling.

While my ancestry as a person of Indian origin might have been my initial point of confluence, it was, rather, as journalist, grasping at the principles and precepts of non-alignment for developing journalistic objectivity - not just a New World Order, but too, a New World Information and Communication Order that present passages to India, Canada and North America, Indonesia and the East, Britain, and Europe and my date and private tete-a-tete with Narendra Modi. Stay tuned.

Next: Sneak Preview: “I try to suppress the giggle. Narendra Modi strides across the room, arms outstretched …”: My Date With Narendra Modi II: The Prodigal; The Fox, the Well and holes in the bucket of violent extremism; Sustainable Development, preparation of the New World Order and the shaping the New World Information Order – from Non Alignment to UNESCO.

Dr Kris Rampersad is an independent sustainable development educator and journalist. Email lolleaves@gmail.com

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Of Diasporas Migrations Arrivals

Indian Arrival Day in Trinidad and Tobago: Having a sense of where we came from
Published on May 31, 2014
By Marcia Braveboy Caribbean News Now Senior Correspondent marcia@caribbeannewsnow.com Twitter: @mbraveboy PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad -- Indian Arrival Day is being celebrated in Trinidad and Tobago on 30th May. On the eve of the occasion we are summoned once again by our foreparents to contemplate this burning sense of our past that engulfs our thinking with sparkles of thoughts about who we are and where we really came from. This gentle meliorism by a conscious people whose gaze is set only on progress, must through active aspirations wonder into the deep and beyond the stars to find answers of a sometimes forgotten past, to reconnect the links for future generations. The flames of 200 years ago by our ancestors and predecessors refuse to go out under a people it still challenges to define their purpose on this journey to a better Trinidad and Tobago. Writer, author, journalist Kris Rampersad says that, more than a people defining themselves, there must be a better understanding of who we are and not allow political allegiances to mark out lines of segregation among our peoples and for the removal of denominational and ethnic inhibitors to national development and to see the dream of a people becoming one come true. “We as a country and a region are losing so much of understanding ourselves when we define and confine ourselves through all kinds of narrow allegiances, and that is not to downplay the value of identity to all of us.” Rampersad is a Caribbean woman. What that means is that she takes a keen interest not just in Trinidad and Tobago but also in our regional neighbours and the importance of that interconnection to each other as a Caribbean people. She sits on the UNESCO executive board in Paris representing Trinidad and Tobago and has been working across the Caribbean to build resilient communities through heritage and culture; developing policies, infrastructure and institutions while at the same time involved in journalism and new media as an independent media operator. But first, she is a Trinidad and Tobagonian national, passionately wanting us to celebrate our people-hood. She has just issued a call for artistes to produce nonviolent content in their music and to work and she is working towards producing music and songs for the soundtrack to a biography film she is working on to highlight the life and times of assassinated Senior Counsel Dana Seetahal. Rampersad hopes to use this brand to help music producers define spaces for non-violence with their art. “The dimensions of crime, for instance, in our societies cuts across ethic identities; to address those problems we have to be able to look beyond those lines.” Many Trinidad and Tobago nationals have been pulling at the skirt tail of governments to abolish the various celebrations and establish just one national holiday and call it “Arrival Day”, the thinking is that we all came, and it will be a true representation of the rainbow country that is Trinidad and Tobago. Kris Rampersad has a different view: “Do we need one arrival day? If an arrival day is important to people they should have their day - separately or together - I'm not sure I have an opinion on that. I celebrate all of them: how could we not? “I like to think of migration – departures and arrivals – the process that brought us here as an evolutionary flow – as only one stopping point in a long history of such migratory movements into antiquity. In a long view of history beyond the recent colonial past, implies that we can look ahead too with a longer view - and there might come a time when we as a nation would agree that we do not need many arrival days but one, to mark our national presence. I am sure the people associated with the rare 7,000-year-old skeleton discovered on our soil – a people we seem to have no curiosity about – would have celebrated an arrival of sorts at some point in time. Our coming here was one frame of migrations and from my research, when the truth is known, the story of ‘Banwari’ is likely to upset and overturn a whole lot of long held theories of migration, etc. Societies evolve. People come into contact with each other and change the space they occupy. The ancient history is replete with recounts of those – the Shrutis, the Vedas, the oral stories of the African and Chinese folk tales.” While Indian Arrival Day places the Indian community on the radar on such an occasion, the celebration of that day, like Emancipation Day, symbolizes the amalgam that is a ‘Trini’ (as they say in local parlance); a productive and talented people, as Rampersad describes the people of Trinidad and Tobago. It seems, however, that as citizens too much has been relinquished through old systems. While the British gave this twin island its independence, the people held on firmly to the institutions left behind by that British system, Rampersad declared. “As a counter to the erosion of identity the colonial system imposed on us, self-governance following independence sought to repair the damage with such national days. But the challenge of governance is really minimising the sense of threat to identity that has been ingrained in so much of our operations and many of our governance institutions have been unable to meet that challenge. “Because of our recent history and the striping of self esteem and identity of post slavery and indentureship part of the post independence process of regaining self was establishing these national days of recognising the presence of various groups, but as our society evolves; as we strengthen our national fabric and if our governance system can assure each group of its self identification – there is so much insecurity in our system you see – that would become less relevant….” The author and journalist sees Trinidad and Tobago as a country that is full of talent and flowing over; a country that is replete with individuals who have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps – generations building on the struggles of the previous one – like the now assassinated senior counsel Dana Seetahal and others like her who fully occupied their own spaces, doing what they do best, when all the frames and structures and institutions mitigate against that -- that is what Carnival and Phagwa and Baptist Liberation Day represent, Rampersad believes. In spite of its avalanche of talent and skills flowing in this twin island Republic, the islands remain underdeveloped. Kris does not like that. “We may feel now that we need to celebrate days like those, but my concern is that we -- as a society – by trying to define ourselves by those parameters we are also narrowing our vision of ourselves in silos rather than the collective strengths that we are. The insecurity that makes celebrations necessary forces the kind of chest thumping in trumpeting such national days – to, beyond colonial pains and hurts to trumpet the glorious ancient civilisations that are behind us. But it is also a divisive championing, that delimits us celebrating all the mother cultures that contribute to our national being.” What about those who define us by our ethnic and cultural antecedents? “We are also that,” Rampersad agrees, citing that we all came from somewhere. “We also came from somewhere, from a mother, and from a motherland – India, Africa, China, Europe – they are all our cultures as Trinis; and then there is that other space you can lay claim to based on ethnic origins; in fact, I think that is the process of evolution I attempted to trace in my first book, and maybe too in much of my journalism – on the one hand it was about how fiction influenced journalism Finding a Place; on the other it was how we evolved from one culture into another, to make us the people that we are – Trinis....” The multiethnic as well as multi religious society that Trinidad and Tobago is makes it equally a beautiful and complex society. The fight for space in every sphere, especially economic, political spheres creates antagonism primarily between the African and Indian groups. “Our jostle for space here, represented in the so many different celebrations, is depriving us of the opportunity to fully explore and appreciate the larger sense of self. To do so, we need to level the playing field and create an environment that is more secure for people’s self-identification before we can start thinking of relinquishing those isolated symbols of identification,” Rampersad explains. She thinks governments can turn the wheel of understanding in all the right directions once they exercise the will to do so. “The governance processes through since Independence has been challenged to do so and hence so often seems to be going in the opposite direction to creating the kind of society we envision ourselves as – ‘rainbow country’, multicultural, diverse, ‘every creed and race finds an equal place’, et al.” A scholar in her own right and of East Indian descent, Dr Kris Rampersad sees herself simply as a Trinidad and Tobago national and a reflection of all Trinidad and Tobago nationals of different creed and races. “For example, I am the sum total of being born and nurtured in Trinidad and Tobago but also of all the people I have encountered, all the places I have visited and lived in and all the experiences I have. Every travel, every encounter, and every experience changes and alters us in some way. I feel blessed to have been given such opportunities to meet, work play and share ideas with so many different people. I feel somewhat that I never return to Trinidad the same person I was when I left on some meeting or the other having been enriched by those experience. “It is an ancient wisdom, to embrace life as a journey, a series of journeys; a continuous process of departures and arrivals. The arrival of Indians and each other group, including the ‘Banwari’ people more than 7,000 years earlier, here ought to be seen in that context, as a universal experience and not as the be all and end all struggle it becomes in a political context; in a context of a society built on insecurities and pitching one group or ne ethnicity against the other, each vying for national space when equitable policies and approaches could address all that,” she said. Dr Kris Rampersad has authored three books: “Finding a Place”, which traces development of a literary sensibility among Indians who migrated with their own languages and cultures, through writings in newspapers, education and production of a Naipaul: acclaimed lord of the English Language. Her second book: “Through the Political Glass Ceiling” looks at the race to prime ministership by Trinidad and Tobago's first female holder of that office – Mrs Kamla Persad-Bissessar -- and explores the sociocultural and political situation that gave rise to first woman prime minister in the context of the 2010 general elections. In her third book: “LiTTscapes” (Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago) Rampersad features more than 100 works by more than 50 writers through visualising their fiction in landscapes, cultures photos and more. Look her up on Facebook to see the photos and to journey through her other works.

Across Global Diasporas: Key to Undertanding Diasporas UNESCO told

Reflections on Multiculturalism, Migrations Arrivals: Finding A Place Revisited Multimedia Edition Commemorating 15th Anniversary; 100 Years of End of Indentured Labour Trade; 172 Years since arrival of Indians in Trinidad, 79 Years arrival of Indians in Caribbean Heritage Educator, Dr Kris Rampersad,  address UNESCO Executive Board PARIS, France -- Trinidad and Tobago’s geographical location makes it pivotal to deepening understanding pre- and post-colonial migration routes, Dr Kris Rampersad told the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation (UNESCO) Executive Board. However, much of this is yet unassessed, understudied, undervalued, undocumented and unaccounted for in the contexts of global migration and cultural evolution. They are also under tremendous development pressures and face other challenges common to small island developing states, she said. Trinidad and Tobago was among countries supporting the introduction of the new programme of the UNESCO at the 195th session of the board in Paris to recognise the international impact of migration of post emancipation indentured Indian immigrant labour. In supporting the Mauritius initiative entitled The International Indentured Labour Route Project, geared to enhance knowledge around its landing point of Indian immigration, the Aapravasi Ghat, Rampersad, the Trinidad and Tobago Representative on the 58-member board, pointed out that the Caribbean was a critical dimension of labour migration to post slavery societies, noting that more than one million Indian and other Asians crossed the Atlantic to the Caribbean and the Americas in the immediate post-emancipation period. She said her research shows the islands may hold the key to broadening and deepening understanding pre-Columbian migrations in the Americas as it has been in the colonial and post slavery migrations from Europe, Africa and Asian in its location off the tip of South America and as the most southerly of Caribbean islands. Rampersad, a heritage educator, researcher and journalist, who has been researching and advocating for greater national and international efforts at safeguarding what she calls “the other Magnificent Seven of South Trinidad and the Global South,” said the heritage assets of small island states like Trinidad and Tobago, remain vulnerable to other pressing development agendas. She has written in her blog to the Trinidad and Tobago President Anthony Carmona and Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar asking them to prioritise their safeguarding within the national development agenda and readers are circulating online petition in support. Piloted by Mauritius, which also agreed to provide extra-budgetary funds to support its implementation, the decision to introduce The International Indentured Labour Route Project was universally supported and adopted by the UNESCO Board, along with other programmes to safeguard vulnerable heritage assets in other countries, following the negotiation of the text which came before the Programmes and External Affairs Commission. The Commission, one of two decision-making Commissions of the Board, was co-chaired by Rampersad. Rampersad suggested to UNESCO that as the project unfolds, the Board also explore not only the synergies with the Slave Route project but also the potential of private-public sector and NGO partnerships within both and how they may broadening and deepening the proposed refocus on oceans and small island developing states so as “to accommodate equity and balance and the cultural diversity and heritage dimensions in the United Nations post-2015 sustainable development agenda.” The Mauritius initiative drew from a decision of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee that considered “the importance of an International Indentured Labour Route Project to complement the Slave Route Project and the General History of Africa which will be implemented in the context of the International Decade of People of African descent.” Rampersad is the UNESCO national focal point on World Heritage and its trained facilitator for the English-speaking Caribbean on the Convention for the Protection and Safeguarding the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (2003). She has also been part of Commonwealth and UNESCO initiatives to recognise culture-centred development through these and other conventions that drive the cultural and creative industries sectors as the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005). Rampersad noted that the new programme, which has already been highly commended by Africa, Asia/Pacific, European and Latin American and Caribbean delegates also presents possibilities towards heightening the dimensions of international cooperation promoted in the UNESCO conventions against trafficking in cultural property (1970), World Heritage (1972), intangible cultural expressions (2003), diversity of cultural expressions (2005) and underwater cultural heritage (2006). In an interview on the initiative, she said: “Ebola is today waving its passport of global citizenship and has more clearly brought home to us the realities of the borderless world in which we really exist. As children of both slave and silk routes, though far removed from some of our societies of origin – and I say this acknowledging the also marginalised indigenous communities of our region, we in the Caribbean have naturally existed in trans-boundary spaces with intertwined heritage that span all the continents of the world. While in some of our societies these remain vibrant and effervescent and spawning new cultures through fusions, in others they are significantly in danger of disappearing from various pressures, still unmapped, understudied, underassessed and undervalued in the contexts of our global village. “In turn, we have also spawned other diasporas, offspring of our complex Caribbean societies, in other parts of the Americas, in Europe, in Africa and in Asia itself, that are not just parallel to but intimately intertwined with the storyline of our post slavery evolution.” In acknowledging synergies between the Slave Route Project and the new project, the Board “recognised the need to develop professional capacity in fields as history, anthropology, archaeology and heritage towards creating an international database on indentured labour… about such a major historical event and build greater understanding and cooperation among peoples.” The UNESCO Executive Board also lent support for a series of activities to celebrate UNESCO’s 70th anniversary; initiatives related to prioritising education and culture in the UN post 2015 development agenda, introduced new international prizes and revived some which were suspended owing to financial and other challenges. The Board is chaired by Mohamed Sameh Amr of Egypt and the UNESCO secretariat is headed by Director General, Irina Bokova.

Trinidad and Tobago key to understanding migrations, UNESCO told | Caribbean News Now