CJ urges youth to choose honesty, courage and kindness

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

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Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh is urg­ing young peo­ple to em­brace hon­esty, courage, kind­ness and team­work, warn­ing that the choic­es they make to­day will help de­ter­mine the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ad­dress­ing a Ram Leela cel­e­bra­tion on Wednes­day, dur­ing the sixth night of the ten-night Green Ram­leela 2026 cel­e­bra­tions at Palmiste Park, San Fer­nan­do, Boodoos­ingh said the lessons of the Ra­mayana re­mained rel­e­vant to every­day life.

“One day, you will be the ones ex­plain­ing the sto­ry to a child, and you will de­cide what kind of T&T that child will grow up in,” he told the au­di­ence.

Boodoos­ingh said the sto­ry of Lord Ram, Si­ta, Lak­sh­man and Hanu­man of­fered four im­por­tant lessons, in­clud­ing hon­esty and hu­mil­i­ty, courage and loy­al­ty, for­give­ness and kind­ness, and the need for peo­ple to work to­geth­er.

He warned against ar­ro­gance, us­ing Ra­van as an ex­am­ple of some­one who be­lieved he was al­ways right and stopped lis­ten­ing to good ad­vice.

“Con­sid­er what hap­pens when a per­son will not lis­ten to the peo­ple who care about him or her. They make mis­take af­ter mis­take,” he said.

Boodoos­ingh con­trast­ed Ra­van’s be­hav­iour with Hanu­man’s hu­mil­i­ty, de­spite his enor­mous strength, and chal­lenged young peo­ple to con­sid­er the kind of friends they want­ed to be.

“Would you like to be a Ra­van or a Hanu­man?” he asked.

On courage and loy­al­ty, the Chief Jus­tice said do­ing what was right could be dif­fi­cult, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it was un­pop­u­lar.

“Courage is not about be­ing scared to do what is right even when it is un­pop­u­lar,” he said, adding that loy­al­ty helped build trust and last­ing re­la­tion­ships.

He said young peo­ple need­ed a strong sup­port sys­tem to lead suc­cess­ful and hap­py lives, point­ing to Lak­sh­man’s loy­al­ty to his broth­er Ram through dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances.

Boodoos­ingh al­so urged peo­ple to prac­tise for­give­ness and kind­ness, warn­ing that anger and harsh words could have last­ing con­se­quences.

“Anger may feel pow­er­ful for a few sec­onds, but the con­se­quences are hard to fix,” he said.

He said Ram demon­strat­ed mer­cy while re­main­ing firm in stand­ing against wrong­do­ing, in­clud­ing by of­fer­ing Ra­van an op­por­tu­ni­ty to sur­ren­der peace­ful­ly be­fore de­feat­ing him.

“For­give­ness lets us put down a weight we have been car­ry­ing,” Boodoos­ingh said.

How­ev­er, he iden­ti­fied the im­por­tance of peo­ple work­ing to­geth­er as the most im­por­tant les­son of the sto­ry.

He said Ram, Lak­sh­man and Hanu­man each had dif­fer­ent strengths that con­tributed to their suc­cess in res­cu­ing Si­ta, demon­strat­ing how co­op­er­a­tion and plan­ning could help peo­ple over­come chal­lenges.

Boodoos­ingh ap­plied the same prin­ci­ple to the stag­ing of Ram Leela, recog­nis­ing the con­tri­bu­tions of ac­tors, mu­si­cians, cos­tume mak­ers, stage builders, cooks, vol­un­teers and el­ders who passed on the tra­di­tion.

“No sin­gle per­son does every­thing. Every­one does some­thing,” he said.

He warned that when one per­son or group failed to do their part, oth­ers had to car­ry the bur­den, but when every­one con­tributed, the load be­came lighter.

“Our schools and work­places work the same way. So do our vil­lages and our homes,” he said.

The Chief Jus­tice said the tra­di­tion of Ram Leela had sur­vived be­cause gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple had pre­served and passed it on, de­spite the hard­ships faced by those who brought the sto­ry to the is­lands.

Boodoos­ingh thanked the com­mu­ni­ty for keep­ing the tra­di­tion alive and en­cour­aged young peo­ple to take an ac­tive role in pre­serv­ing their cul­tur­al her­itage. He said the fu­ture of the coun­try de­pend­ed on peo­ple mak­ing the right choic­es and ful­fill­ing their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, how­ev­er small their con­tri­bu­tions might ap­pear.

“If each of us does what is right and we do our part, how­ev­er small that part might be, our coun­try will be in safe hands,” he said.