His­to­ri­an and au­thor Pro­fes­sor Brins­ley Sama­roo is urg­ing cit­i­zens to learn about the sig­nif­i­cance of the East In­di­an con­tri­bu­tion to the re­gion, and to en­cour­age the con­tin­u­a­tion of in­tel­lec­tu­al work to add to the knowl­edge about our fore­fa­thers. Sama­roo was the fea­ture speak­er at the El Do Shiv Mandir In­di­an Ar­rival Day pro­gramme on May 27 and spoke on the theme "Con­tri­bu­tions of our an­ces­tors to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of our coun­try." He high­light­ed some of the ways in­den­tured work­ers af­fect­ed the eco­nom­ic and spir­i­tu­al de­vel­op­ment of the Caribbean. "The in­den­tured labour­ers for­ev­er changed the his­to­ry of the Caribbean with all that they brought with them that has been in­fused in­to the lifestyle of our Caribbean cul­ture. From the food, fruits, flow­ers, herbs, re­li­gious texts in what we know as their 'ja­ha­ji bhan­dal,' with 'ja­ha­ji' mean­ing 'ship' and 'bhan­dal,' 'bun­dle,'" he said. He said some ex­am­ples of the items they brought from which we ben­e­fit in­clude the chameli, mus­saen­da, suraj muk­ti (sun­flower), pan de pa­ta (pan leaf), man­goes, limes, or­anges and oth­er cit­rus, pep­per, karail­li, lowkie, rice, dhal, lentils, bha­ji and ed­does. He said herbs such as dha­nia, co­rian­da, mus­tard, geera, cin­na­mon, gin­ger, gar­lic, kara­pu­lay and neim had their roots in In­dia.

In ad­di­tion, he said, spir­i­tu­al val­ues such as those de­rived from the Qur'an, Ra­mayan and Bhag­vad Gi­ta were in­tro­duced by the in­den­tured labour­ers. "The spir­it of re­li­gious­ness, hard work, em­pha­sis on the im­por­tance of fam­i­ly life, ed­u­ca­tion-those ideas the In­di­ans brought with them, from the teach­ings of their Qur'an and Ra­mayan and those they prac­tised, all have made the Caribbean a much bet­ter place." He said the name of the ship on which the in­den­tured work­ers came to the Caribbean was the Fa­tel Raza­ck, which means Vic­to­ry to Al­lah as Provider, point­ing to the Is­lam­ic link to the jour­ney. Many dif­fer­ent ver­sions of the name have evolved over the years. Sama­roo al­so ex­plained to devo­tees that one of the rea­sons why cer­tain ar­eas in the coun­try were more dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed by in­den­tured work­ers than oth­ers was be­cause some ar­eas they had oc­cu­pied were in­fest­ed with snakes and the es­tate man­agers sought to move the labour­ers to high­er ground or al­ter­na­tive lo­ca­tions. He iden­ti­fied Lopinot as one such area.

He said through the in­flu­ence of the in­den­tured work­ers and the sug­ar­cane in­dus­try, the Caribbean econ­o­my had been res­cued. Al­so the goods and ser­vices In­di­ans brought with them, which now form a part of our "nor­mal" land­scape, with re­gard to fruits, flow­ers, veg­eta­bles, spices, herbs etc have trans­formed our culi­nary land­scape, eco­nom­ic and re­li­gious di­ver­si­ty, agri­cul­tur­al meth­ods, food pro­duc­tion, and en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it. He said the Caribbean's eco­nom­ic land­scape had al­so changed. "Among the work­ers there were al­so ju­la­has, or weavers, who have gone on to con­duct busi­ness in, for ex­am­ple, hab­er­dash­ery and mak­ing of var­i­ous types of plant oils, in­clud­ing co­conut, among their many in­ter­ests. The In­di­ans al­so took the Caribbean in­to the pro­duc­tion of rub­ber, co­conut, rice, and co­coa. "Many of the chil­dren of the labour­ers have gone on to be­come qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als now at var­i­ous lev­els in Trinidad and To­ba­go and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. The In­di­ans have spread their cul­ture through­out the world, where they con­tin­ue to make sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions in med­i­cine, tech­nol­o­gy, fash­ion, film, mu­sic and many types of busi­ness es­tab­lish­ments." Res­i­dent pun­dits Vinai Shar­ma and De­osaran Shar­ma of­fi­ci­at­ed at Sun­day's ser­vice. Trib­utes were paid to two of the el­ders in the com­mu­ni­ty-Lachan­daye Ra­muite and Su­per­sad Ma­haraj-who were ho­n­oured for their con­tri­bu­tion to the work of the mandir.

A Cen­tu­ry

• The El Do­ra­do Shiv Mandir (EDSM) in 2012 is cel­e­brat­ing 100 years since its es­tab­lish­ment. The mandir was con­struct­ed in 1912 by in­den­tured work­ers who worked in the near­by sug­ar­cane es­tates, and lob­bied the es­tate own­ers to al­low them to have the land so they could build a place to wor­ship and prac­tise their cul­ture.