Shivaratri and Carnival – a different view

THE EDITOR: With the Hindu festival Shivaratri virtually taking place yesterday at the same time with Carnival there is always talk about the contrast between the “sacred” and the “profane” that each in turn seems to symbolise.

The contrast is well expressed in an article entitled “Shivaratri and Carnival” in one of the dailies of March 2, in which Carnival is represented “as an event which appeals to the baser instincts of human beings when Shivaratri appeals to more acceptable forms of behaviour.”

The article goes further to expand on this difference in a wider context by suggesting that the Hindu festival is a means to become reawakened from a form of spiritual slumber precipitated by a focus on worldly pleasures in its myriad forms of which, implicitly, Carnival is one manifestation.

This contrast seems to be derived from the historical construct of adherence to religious values as acceptable human behaviour as against worldly pleasure such as Carnival which is its antithesis.

I prefer, however, not to see these different modes at polarised ends with implications of a sense of the superiority or acceptability, if you will, of the sacred over the profane but both be viewed on the same continuum of humanity striving for self-realisation, but through different channels.

Shivaratri, according to the article, is a journey towards self-realisation by divesting oneself of the pleasures of the world through prayer and self-sacrifice and uniting with the supreme godhead which automatically negates Carnival, but one has to only watch the panman immersed in the infectious rhythm of his drums, or the calypsonian delivering his message in song from the heart, or the masquerader’s delight in the aesthetics of his creation, or even the reveller on the stage moving to the beat in silent rapture to realise that it’s a kind of purgation, a distillation of the senses beyond the ordinary, beyond the imagination, perhaps on a different plane.

This a radical viewpoint pitted against long-standing historical norms related to what is sacred and what is profane. But if only we can remove ourselves from these constructed sensibilities of what is good or bad and become Shakespearean in saying that “there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Hamlet, Act2, Sc2, 248-249), maybe the expected adversarial discourse on these two seemingly antithetical forms of self-realisation may subside.

And it all has to with the management of difference. The world is a world of difference and the latter often breeds the desire for domination as with Hutus and Tutsis in Africa, or Shias and Sunnis in the Middle East, or with Muslims and Hindus currently in Kashmir, or as implied in the American South, or apartheid in South Africa, or even in our own TT with the two major races.

But just look to nature in your backyard and see how it manages difference with the myriad trees flourishing only with the little space they need. Despite the intermittent discourse above, Shivaratri never encroaches on Carnival and vice versa and maybe it is the kind of space we need to take us forward as a people .

DR ERROL BENJAMIN via e-mail