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Scholarships, costumes for SA dancers

Fakir Hassen in Johannesburg

An Indian classical dance performance by African students so impressed the head of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations that he immediately announced scholarships and even costumes for them.

Himachal Som announced these gifts after watching the African students of the Radhakrishna Academy of Music and Dance perform Indian classical dance in Johannesburg.

Som, who is in the country as a guest of the South African department of arts and culture, said he was touched by the rendition of a variety of modern and classical Indian dance items by these students.

Som promised the students that those who excelled in their dancing would receive scholarships for a few years to study in India to become adept at various aspects of Indian culture.

"At the ICCR we spend millions of dollars, but today seeing you dance has been one of the happiest moments of my almost five-year tenure as director general of the ICCR," he told the students.

"Most of our efforts abroad are to promote Indian culture, but they are usually taken up by people of Indian origin living overseas. They come from a similar culture and background," he continued.

"But when I saw people from a completely different background and culture make the effort to learn something new, it made me think that the world is a small village, where we can share the best that we have with each other."

He said it was now clear that the South African community was no longer divided into black, white, coloured and Indian as it used to be.

He also promised to provide every student with a new costume and asked India's Consul General in Johannesburg Primrose Sharma to organise a celebratory party for their efforts.

"South Africa is the only country in the world where we have two cultural centres, one here and one in Durban," said Som. "It makes me so happy to see African children trying to learn our arts and culture."

The ICCR chief continued, "We have centres in some places where there are hardly any people of Indian origin, such as in Tashkent, where the locals take advantage of these programmes, but here it was very touching to see boys and girls approach it with such enthusiasm."

Vinod Hassel, who runs the Radhakrishna Academy, said Som's comments had vindicated his dream -- despite scepticism a decade ago when he first arrived in South Africa from India -- of training students in black townships in Indian dance.

Previously, the various racial groups had been kept apart through apartheid legislation, resulting in no exposure to each other's cultures.

Som told the Indo-Asian News Service that he has already started with a hectic ten-day programme in which he will take in a number of cultural activities and places of interest across the country.

The ICCR chief will be meeting cultural organisations in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, such as the National Arts Council, the Film and Television Foundation and the National Museum. "My visit here is a continuous effort to promote bilateral cultural relationships between the two countries," he said.

Indo-Asian News Service

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