Suriname a culture of tolerance: this thirty-year-old nation is a harmonious home to diverse religious and ethnic groups and the world's largest nature reserve.

• Author: Luxner, Larry
• Position: Cover story

It's early Sunday morning, and the distant crowing of roosters punctuates the quiet prayers of Hindu worshipers at the Shri Shiv Mandir temple just outside Paramaribo, Suriname's capital city. Inside this holy abode, an elderly woman named Lackshmi sits cross-legged on a small stage, chanting mournfully into a cordless microphone, while two teenage girls stoke the fire at her side. Various ceramic Hindu gods watch over the trio as the smell of incense hangs in the thick tropical air. A dozen congregants follow along, occasionally ringing bells and shaking their tambourines.

While exotic to outsiders, this scene is common throughout South America's smallest country. Along rutted dirt roads and crowded city streets, Hindu temples with their distinctive spires and colorful flags enliven the Surinamese landscape.

Thanks to heavy immigration from India in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, about 27 percent of Suriname's 480,000 inhabitants today profess Hinduism. That makes it the leading religion, though Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism have also left their mark on this young nation, which last November celebrated thirty years of independence.

"In more than one sense, we are a unique country," says Suriname's ambassador to the United States, Henry L. Illes. "We have the largest nature reserve in the world, and Suriname has the world's highest percentage of tropical ram forest as part of its total area. And if you listen very carefully, as you travel throughout Suriname you'll hear more than twenty languages spoken, including Dutch, Chinese, Hindi, Javanese, Arabic, Portuguese, German, French, and dialects spoken by the Maroon tribes and the Amerindians."

The country's Hindustani, Javanese, and Chinese ethnic mix is a direct consequence of the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century. Faced with a dire labor shortage, the Dutch colonial masters began importing indentured servants to work the rice paddies and sugar plantations.

As a result, unlike the rest of South America, which is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, the worship of God takes many forms in Suriname. And the amazing thing is, everyone gets along.

"No religion in Suriname has any problem with any other religion," quips Guido Robles, a prominent Jewish businessman in Paramaribo. "All the problems are caused by the politicians."

Carlo K. Dwarka Panday, sales and marketing manager at Paramaribo's Hotel Krasnapolsky, enthusiastically agrees. "I'm a Roman Catholic. One of my grandfathers was Chinese, French, and Portuguese, and my other grandfather was 100 percent Indonesian. I guess that makes me Surinamese," the hotelier says with a laugh. "It's so typical. In most other countries, like India, you have Hindus versus Muslims. Here, it's not even an issue. When it's Id al-Fitr, the Hindus go to the mosque and celebrate the end of Ramadan with their Muslim friends. When it's Phagwa, the Hindu festival of color, Muslims enjoy it, too. And everybody celebrates Christmas."

Although culturally part of the Caribbean, Suriname, formerly known as Dutch Guiana, geographically belongs to South America. Its neighbors are English-speaking Guyana to the west, the overseas department of French Guiana to the east, and Portuguese-speaking Brazil to the south.

Suriname's oldest structure is Fort Zeelandia, which dates to 1640. Built by the French and reinforced by the British, the brick building was taken over in 1667 by the Dutch, and improved around 1688 to protect Parainaribo and surrounding plantations from enemy ships entering the Suriname River.

During Suriname's recent military dictatorship, which lasted from 1981 to 1992, Fort Zeelandia was used as an army barracks, but today it's a museum--and a perfect place to start a walking tour of colonial Paramaribo.

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