Growing up in Belmont, Port of Spain, all I knew of ‘Indian’ culture was its food and music. The first I loved; the other I had no particular taste for. Indian families in Belmont were either creolized or privately well-off and secluded. We all knew of the Muslim Hosay in St. James, but the life and customs of rural Indians were worlds away, filtering through unflatteringly in calypsos or the catchy tunes of Sundar Popo.
My first encounter with Ramleela, therefore, was during my graduate research in the mid-70’s. In exploring the idea of a national theatre, I contested the thesis that a ‘national’ theatre could or should be based solely on Carnival. As popular and evidently theatrical as Carnival was, there were many other performative modes in multi-cultural Trinidad and Tobago that competed for inclusion in any such construct. At a time when my only faith was theatre, I was deeply drawn to the idea that, in the middle of a field in the country somewhere, one could witness the sacred in performance.
This first encounter happened in St. Augustine, just across the highway from UWI. There I documented 10 evenings of performances that took place through rain and shine, light and looming darkness. It would be another decade, however, before the opportunity came to actualize some of what I’d written. As founding Director of UWI’s then Creative Arts Centre, I introduced Ramleela to the curriculum for the certificate and, later, undergraduate programmes in theatre. Our students attended Ramleelas all over the country, researched, studied and even participated in some performances. They were taught various aspects of Indian arts and culture in classes with Raviji, founder of Hindu Prachar Kendra, sitarist and composer Mungal Patasar, and dancers-choreographers Satnarine and Mondira Balkaransingh and Sandra Sookdeo. In 1995, we used dramatic elements of Ramleela in our production ‘Temple in the Sea’ which we thus sub-titled ‘The Leela of Siewdass Sadhu’. This was an original dramatization of the historic and heroic achievements of an Indian immigrant to Trinidad, of whom little was known outside his immediate community.
Over the years of such work, our bonds with the Ramleela community grew stronger. We ran workshops in dramatic arts for the National Ramleeela Council of Trinidad and Tobago (NRCTT). As Artistic Director for the national contingent to Carifesta in Guyana in 2008, I successfully proposed the inclusion of Ramleela in our contingent. Bonds were strengthened between the NRCTT and their Guyanese counterparts to revive the tradition there. By this time, Ramleela, both locally and at its original source, had received international recognition. In his acceptance speech of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature, St. Lucian Derek Walcott highlighted his introduction to Ramleela in Trinidad. In 2008, UNESCO would list Ramlila in India as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
In 2013, the UWI, represented by the Faculty of Humanities, partnered with NRCTT to present the First International Ramleela Conference. That conference revealed for me the diversity, resilience and adaptability of Ramleela. In India, for instance, as Prof. Molly Kaushall informed us, with all its religious antagonisms, Muslims could be found performing in Ramleela. Not only that, as I later learnt, there was even a south Indian version of Ramleela, in which Rawan becomes the hero! We should not be surprised since, as Africans say, until the lion tells his side of the story, the hunter will always be the hero. For our part, the Ramleela Conference provided the first opportunity for the 36 groups in the Council to bring their own stories, challenges and dreams to the stage.
Over the years of our engagement with the form and its community, we have institutionalized Ramleela on the curriculum at UWI. By so doing, and ensuring our graduates are equipped with knowledge and respect for the tradition, we can see this experience being shared in secondary schools staffed by graduates of the now Department of Creative and Festival Arts. Among these graduates may be numbered Trevor Sieunarine, the effigy-builder from Sangre Grande.
Our approach to the teaching of Ramleela demanded respect as the basis of our interaction. Second was the appreciation of its dramatic features – story, plot, characters, spectacle, etc. Next, we explored its special place as sacred theatre and how its effects were achieved. Holistically, we then read/interpreted the production as ‘community theatre’ through which people find ways to tell their own stories, to show who they are and their relationships within and beyond their community. This reading incorporates not only the performance itself, but its ambiance, preparatory elements, as well as outcomes. While the story, with some variation in choice of episodes, is the same, its telling and production make all the difference. There is great creativity and ingenuity involved in features of which communities take particular pride: the suspended bamboo bridge at Matilda, the chariots in Avocat, the Ravanas of Grande and Felicity, the all-women’s Ramleela in Surrey Village. Throughout our visits and research we were the welcomed and, often, honoured guests of the NRCTT and its long-standing president, Mrs. Kamalwattie Ramsubeuik, to whom we owe special thanks.
My own understanding and appreciation of Ramleela is multi-dimensional. I accept the historical aspect of the text, depicting the Aryan invasion and conquest of the indigenous peoples of India/Lanka. The subsequent demonization of these peoples is a process with which we, as colonials, are all too familiar. Nonetheless, there remains for me the excitement in its artistic potential. We touched on this in creating ‘Temple in the Sea’ and, later, in the episodic, perambulatory performances of the play ‘Nation Dance: the Pilgrimage’. These are, however, but light touches of the brush. There is a great deal more to be drawn from the theatre of Ramleela that would inform the identity of our yet nascent attempts at a national/Caribbean theatre. While it is listed among Caribbean festivals for study on the Caribbean Examination Council’s Theatre Arts syllabus, Ramleela should also be taught in Social Studies and at primary schools throughout the country.
Ramleela has also clarified my own sense of spirituality as metaphor of the eternal/universal journey toward self-mastery. In this way, the ‘rakshas’ or demons, Ravana with his 10 heads, the battles and inevitability of warfare describe the internal struggle of soul with self to reach the Ayodhya of enlightenment. Of course, this is the intent of Tulsidas’ tale and its message to us all, even as the journey is deeply defined by Vedic mysticism. We can further explore the philosophical pathways he opens. For instance, we may ask ourselves: What is the value of self-mastery within the story? Being the god incarnate, would Rama have been a worse or better king had he not been sent into exile? Is the test of fire to which he subjects Sita, a test for Sita alone or does it attest to his own stage of self-realization? What is the meaning of his abandonment of Mother Sita to her second and final exile? Reflecting on our own position as ex-Indians in the Caribbean (for whom exile has specific significance) what is the value of this experience, if any, our ‘kala pani’? What is the very nature of experience, this ‘raft crossing the ocean of birth and death’? And with what, if anything, do we return to our spiritual/ancestral Ayodhya?
And, of course, we find in the story perennial and pointed relevance. Rama’s return to Ayodhya culminates in the festival of Divali, the celebration of light over the forces of darkness and a reign of harmony and bliss. In this lies a great message of hope for us all in the turmoil of this ‘yugh’, as we struggle globally for public, environmental, social and spiritual health. How better could the need for self-discipline and adherence to public duty, be represented than Lakshman’s circle around Sita’s hut? This period, it should be made clear, is manifestly Divali, the value of which should be internalized by us all and not jostled out of the way by the hollow, commercial bells of ‘early Christmas extravaganzas’. On the other hand, our Hindu communities, as custodians of the tradition, need to ask themselves, how can the message of Ramleela be not merely shared, but meaningfully help to transform our society into the ‘ beautiful city’ we all desire? It is the question I posed myself in the medium and making of theatre. It is the possibility Walcott evokes in his oft-quoted Nobel speech. How can we make this essence, given its breath of utterance, our social reality?
Rawle Gibbons
October 30th, 2020.