Angela Dewan

London School of Public Relations students from left, Celvin Jaya Hadi, Syahleena Ramadhani and Narendra Pryottama will perform Indonesian dances and songs as part of the Festival of India. The festival runs until Dec. 15. (JG Photo)

Indonesian Students Infuse Local Flavor to Indian Festival

Now in its sixth week, the Festival of India has painted the city in an array of colors with its lively dance, theater, fashion and music events.

The organizers launched the festival to strengthen the Indian-Indonesian relationship and a group of local students are intent on fulfilling this goal.

Representing the cultural diversity of the vast Indonesian archipelago are students from the London School of Public Relations, who will perform songs and dances from Sumatra to Java to Sulawesi.

Ravi Makhija, dean of LSPR, jumped at the chance to have his students take part in the festival.

“They asked us to perform, and we thought it would be great to have some students from the younger generation participate,” said Makhija, who comes from India’s Bangalore province.

“Seeing as we’re talking about Indian culture, we decided we should also showcase Indonesian culture. The emphasis will be on India, but we’re thinking of this as a cultural exchange,” he said.

The school has a choir and other musical and theatrical groups that the students can join for extracurricular activities. Narendra Pryottama, Syahleena Ramadhani and Celvin Jaya Hadi are three such students who will perform songs and dances at the festival.

The three admit that most of their knowledge of Indian culture comes from Bollywood films, so they are looking forward to exchanging cultural ideas with their Indian counterparts.

“We would like to learn about Indian music and dancing,” Narendra said.

“We’d like to compare them with our local songs, and maybe we could try performing them in the future.”

But the three are just as intrigued by the diversity of their own nation.

“We are learning more and more about Indonesian culture by doing these shows,” Narendra said. “We sing songs from different provinces in different languages. At the festival, we’ll perform five to six songs.”

Celvin said he was proud to present his country’s music and dance at the festival.

“We’re going to sing folklore songs in Indonesian and do the saman dance, which is a traditional Acehnese dance,” he said.

Syahleena, born to an Achenese father and Sundanese mother, considers herself lucky to have parents from different parts of the country and is looking forward to performing songs to reflect Indonesia’s many regions. “We’re going to be singing songs from North Sumatra, Java, Jakarta, Sulawesi and Papua,” she said.

Even though Narendra has North Sulawesi heritage, he said that he knew little about the province’s musical traditions before joining the LSPR choir.

“My mom is from North Sulawesi, and my father is from West Java. I’m proud of my background because I’ve been able to learn about two cultures,” he said.

Celvin’s parents are both from Bangka, and he too is proud of his roots.

“In Bangka, the culture is very Chinese, so it’s fun to mix it up and sing songs from all regions,” he said.

The students believe strongly in their national motto, “Unity in Diversity,” and are looking at this performance as a metaphor for a united Indonesia.

Syahleena said that Indonesians could appreciate the differences between cultures in Indonesia while remaining a strong unified nation. “We don’t want to separate the provinces. We want one country with one language,” she said.

Celvin hopes that the performance helps promote friendship between Indians and Indonesians, but also that a greater respect for Indonesia is developed.

“We want to show the Indians coming, and the whole world, that we’re Asian and we’re proud to be Asian,” he said.

“We’re proud of our heritage, like how batik has been officially recognized as Indonesian. We want to show the world that we have a great culture and tell people to come here and learn about it.”

Your View

See Result