Director General of the Indian government’s Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) Kumar Tuhin said he felt he had found a home away from home in Trinidad during his visit.

He said the people who came to the Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Cultural Cooperation to learn Indian culture form a bridge between the two countries.

Tuhin was addressing an audience at the institute at Mt Hope on Thursday. He was visiting the centre as part of a tour of the council's cultural centres worldwide.

During his visit to the centre, he planted a sapodilla tree alongside Indian High Commissioner Dr Pradeep Rajpurohit, and both men were given a tour of the facility, including the administrative offices, library, instrument and vocal classrooms, dance and yoga rooms, classrooms where Hindi is taught, and the auditorium.

The dignitaries also met prominent members of the Indian diaspora, heads of cultural organisations, and eminent artists.

Tuhin said this was his first visit to TT, and the IRCC had great hopes for the institute, which was the largest such centre in the region.

“When I landed only four days into my trip to various countries, I am thinking I have come back home. In TT, I have met friends today, experts and dignitaries. I truly feel that I have found a place that is a home away from India, a true home for myself.

“Therefore I think that the choice for this centre, the biggest and largest in the Caribbean, to be housed in Port of Spain, TT, was the perfect decision, was the right decision made by the government of India and for this we would also like to thank the TT government for their help and assistance in making this a reality.”

The ICCR was founded in 1950 by independent India’s first education minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Its website said its objectives are to participate actively in the formulating and implementing policies and programmes pertaining to India’s external cultural relations; to foster and strengthen cultural relations and mutual understanding between India and other countries; to promote cultural exchanges with other countries and people; and to develop relations with nations.

Tuhin said the work of the ICCR was cultural diplomacy as part of the Ministry of External Affairs.

“Diplomacy by its own gives a sense of being a complicated matter that is between governments and it’s supposed to be a very formal thing.

[caption id="attachment_1040216" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Indian High Commissioner to TT Dr Pradeep Rajpurohit (right), Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) director general Kumar Tuhin (left) and Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Cultural Cooperation director Ramya Ajay chat during a tour of the institute in Mt Hope on October 12. - Paula Lindo[/caption]

“If you look at the word 'culture,' it is a word that is deep in meaning, and also a word whose meaning has expanded over the years. Now if you had asked me the meaning before, I would have included music and dance and art and so forth, but now the meaning of culture also includes so many other aspe