High Com­mis­sion­er of In­dia to T&T, Malay Mishra, had the plea­sure of in­tro­duc­ing renowned Mau­ri­tius-In­dia his­to­ri­an Leela Cu­jad­hur-Sarup at the morn­ing ser­vice of the El Do­ra­do Shiv Mandir (ESM), Ma­ha Sab­ha Branch No 51 on May 29. The El Do­ra­do Shiv Mandir held the spe­cial Sun­day morn­ing ser­vice specif­i­cal­ly fo­cus­ing on the In­di­an Di­as­po­ra. "Each year dur­ing the month of May the tem­ple like oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions or­gan­ise ac­tiv­i­ties to high­light rich as­pects of the In­di­an Di­as­po­ra.

"This year we were for­tu­nate to have promi­nent his­to­ri­an Leela Cu­jad­hur-Sarup through the of­fice of the High Com­mis­sion­er of In­dia to the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go," said ESM pres­i­dent Nir­mala Har­ry­lal.

Mishra not­ed, "Leela Cu­jad­hur-Sarup has done ex­ten­sive re­search on the In­di­an Di­as­po­ra. She is a high­ly re­spect­ed and re­gard­ed In­di­an na­tion­al, recog­nised by the in­ter­na­tion­al di­as­po­ra com­mu­ni­ty for her close to two decades of con­tin­u­ous and ded­i­cat­ed his­tor­i­cal re­search in­to the Colo­nial Em­i­gra­tion Sys­tems of In­den­ture­ship (British, Dutch, French and Dan­ish.) "She is the au­thor of six books on colo­nial em­i­gra­tion in the 19th and 20th cen­turies, each one a unique piece of work and huge body of ev­i­dence. Her works are based on hard to find doc­u­ments as they orig­i­nal­ly ap­peared in the records of the British Em­pire. She is al­so founder/pres­i­dent of the Glob­al In­do-Di­as­po­ra Her­itage So­ci­ety (GIDHS) which was re­cent­ly set up in Kolkata."

In ad­dress­ing the au­di­ence, Cu­jad­hur-Sarup re­count­ed how she be­gan re­search­ing her an­ces­tors, which lead to the dis­cov­ery of their his­to­ry in the archives of Kolkata. She in­sist­ed on hav­ing a memo­r­i­al at the very place in Kolkata from where her an­ces­tors set sail to Mau­ri­tius in the 19th cen­tu­ry.

"The road for the es­tab­lish­ment of the Kolkata Memo­r­i­al Plaque was a long one, how­ev­er, it was fi­nal­ly re­alised on Jan­u­ary 11 2011," said Cu­jad­hur-Sarup. She pre­sent­ed the au­di­ence with a pic­ture of the Kolkata memo­r­i­al. "The Kolkata Memo­r­i­al Plaque was in­au­gu­rat­ed by In­dia's Over­seas In­di­an Af­fairs min­is­ter Vay­alar Ravi at Kid­der­pore De­pot along the Hoog­ley Riv­er in Kolkata. "The Kolkata Memo­r­i­al Plaque pays trib­ute to those who left In­dia as in­den­tured In­di­an labour­ers from 1834 to 1920.

"It is meant as recog­ni­tion and re­mem­brance of their jour­neys and as In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers to far away lands seek­ing bet­ter liveli­hoods for them­selves and their de­scen­dants; for their pi­o­neer­ing spir­it, de­ter­mi­na­tion, re­silience, en­durance and per­se­ver­ance amidst the ex­treme­ly harsh and de­mean­ing con­di­tions they en­coun­tered; for their preser­va­tion of sense of ori­gin, tra­di­tions, cul­ture and re­li­gion, and their pro­mo­tion of the In­di­an cul­ture; for their achieve­ments and suc­cess­es de­spite in­sur­mount­able odd," Cu­jad­hur-Sarup added. In con­clud­ing, Har­ry­lal thanked Mishra and Cu­jad­hur-Sarup for shar­ing a dif­fer­ent part of the In­di­an Di­as­po­ra with the tem­ple's au­di­ence, and in par­tic­u­lar com­mend­ed Cu­jad­hur-Sarup for her ex­cel­lent work in en­rich­ing the his­to­ri­og­ra­phy of the In­di­an Di­as­po­ra.