Geet Gawai- Bhojpuri Folk Songs in Mauritius - An Ode to the Geetharines of Mauritius is the latest book of Dr Mrs Sarita Boodhoo. It was launched in India, precisely at the prestigious Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in New Delhi on 24 January 2023 by the Diaspora Research and Resource Centre, Antar Rashtriya Sahayog Parishad, a Delhi based Indian Diasporic NGO. And in Mauritius by H.E the President of the Republic, Mr Prithviraj Roopun in the presence of H.E Mrs K. Nandini Singla, High Commissioner of India on the occasion of the International Mother Language Day on 21st February 2023. 

A Round Table is being held around the Book Geet-Gawai tomorrow evening at the Hennessy Park Hotel Ebene at the initiative of La Librairie Mauricienne- Petrusmok at 18.30 hours. The book will be on sale on that occasion where the author Dr Mrs Sarita Boodhoo will be pleased “to dedicate” (dédicace). 

Will participate in the Round Table: 
Mr Yvan Martial, well known historian and former Editor in Chief of l’express, Mr Finlay Salesse, Journalist at Radio One, Mrs Rasheedah Malleck Beebeejaun, educationist and the author. 

The author will be pleased to share her experiences of four years of back breaking research carried out in the field from first hand exposure to hundreds of “geetharines” over 4 decades, some of whom have died carrying with them for ever, their encyclopaedic knowledge of their Bhojpuri songs handed down from several generations across the centuries in India and in Mauritius. A few of the Bhojpuri songs as is customary in oral literature have been recreated locally adapted from old ones with which they share commonalities in tune, style and vocabulary adding local colour, touch and one or two creole words too. Which has given us a vibrant Mauritian Bhojpuri unique in the world. On the same occasion the Geetharines will be pleased to give a display of some songs taken from the book and a medley of jhoomar songs and dances. 

Dr Mrs Sarita Boodhoo pays a vibrant homage to the resilience and tenacity of the geetharines who from generation to generation have weathered oppression, repression, social injustice, exploitation (including sexual) in the sugarcane fields, at home and at the in-laws. But nothing has deterred them from going ahead in their own empowerment and the singing of age old songs around the different cycles of rites of passage the “Sanskar Geets” and other genres of songs to celebrate the phenomena of life, nature, seasons, environment, family bonding, the preparation of and adjustment to the sacred rites of passage. These Bhojpuri songs and the practice of married women singing among themselves has been handed down from the ancient sacred text of Rig Veda, and has percolated down to the common folk, through these rich meaningful songs, each with a particular deep significance. Carried down through the centuries till the modern time in the Gangetic plains of India and across the Indian Ocean in Mauritius. 

It is a voyage of discovery of a rich intangible cultural heritage preserved in Mauritius since the arrival of the girmityas, the engagées, the indentured labourers after the abolition of slavery for almost two centuries. Geet Gawai was inscribed at UNESCO as the safeguarded intangible cultural heritage of humanity (patrimoine mondial de l’humanité)- on 1st December 2016. For the safeguard and transmission of Geet Gawai to future and younger generations, the vehicle of the element, Bhojpuri, rich in etymology and oral literature deriving 60% of its words from Sanskrit, needs to be taught at formal and non-formal institutions insists UNESCO. 

Geet-Gawai – Bhojpuri Folk Songs in Mauritius is a well-researched and documented scholarly work on the Bhojpuri Sanskar Geet as brought to the shores of Mauritius by the geetharines from the Bhojpuri belts of India during the Indentured Labour Migration and handed down from generation to generation from the Dadis, Nanis to the younger generation. 

The book Geet Gawai contains several dozens of Bhojpuri songs. The author has not only given the songs in original written in Devanagri script but taken great pains to transliterate them in Roman script as well as given a fair translation in simple English for the benefit of a wide readership. These studies of a historiccultural heritage dimension will also act as a fillip to researchers and scholars of anthropology, to musicologists to spur them to have a fresh look at the study of folk songs and folk tales, puzzles, sirandanes, folk beliefs and practices as the heritage of mankind and which are being gradually and slowly swallowed by modernity and commercialization the world over. The book Geet Gawai – Bhojpuri Folk Songs in Mauritius has a vast spread of information, and material that will prove to be of practical use in ethno-cultural and linguistic studies.