Celebrating perseverance

THE CONVERGENCE this week of three rituals of celebration – Phagwa, Spiritual Baptist Liberation Day, and the Easter Triduum – is a reminder of our diversity.

But while these commemorations all have completely different histories and stand on contrasting sides of a postcolonial spectrum, they share the fact that they are all about the power of perseverance.

The week began with images of the colour and vibrancy of Phagwa. While this festival has ancient roots in India, where it marks the arrival of spring, its message of renewal is universal.

This is particularly so for a society that today partly comprises the descendants of East Indian labourers, who would have risked a journey over the oceans, or kala pani, in search of a better life.

But, like the varied palette that defines it, Phagwa is commemorated by all. People from all walks of life are doused in abeer, embodying the love that unites us in our finer moments.

If colonial history is the backdrop to Holi, it is brought to the fore in the celebration, on March 30, of Baptist Liberation Day. The day marks the repeal of the Shouter Prohibition Ordinance of 1917 that outlawed Baptist activity, including meetings.

Police were authorized to enter, without warrant, any place where practitioners might have gathered. You could be sent to jail for six months with hard labour for flouting the ordinance. Colonial administrators said they were targeting “noise,” but really they were targeting freedom.

The ordinance was only repealed, after much lobbying and a years-long legislative review, in 1951. The persistence of those who worked to ensure that legal reform mirrored a fraction of what was required on the part of Baptists to keep their highly syncretic faith, with its diasporic, pan-Caribbean, and cosmological elements, alive in secret for decades.

There is thus something ironic about the fact that in the same week that this holiday is marked, Christians in the country will engage in the rites that culminate on March 31 with Easter Sunday.

Empires were formed in the name of God, but today, Christians, who have inherited their traditions from the colonial past, hold steadfast to the story of Jesus as the ultimate underdog.

It is a story in which a figure from the margins could be venerated with palms upon entering Jerusalem on a Sunday and, by Friday, be crucified – all before a glorious resurrection.

We live in a topsy-turvy time when many TT citizens – children forced to sit SEA or those living in horror houses defiled by crime, working adults struggling to have faith in systems – continue to defy the odds and to be resilient.

These holidays are tributes to all. They carry the hopeful message that maybe one day better will come.