Shas­tri Boodan

The Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) is ap­peal­ing for greater uni­ty amongst Caribbean peo­ples. This call came from Su­ru­jdeo Man­ga­roo, the pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the NCIC. Man­ga­roo was speak­ing at In­di­an Ar­rival Day or Land­ing Day cel­e­bra­tions at Ched­win Park, Ja­maica, on May 8.

Man­ga­roo said there was more in the com­mon his­to­ry of the peo­ple of the re­gion to unite, rather than cre­ate av­enues for grow­ing di­vi­sive­ness and ten­sion.He said, "Let us seize the op­por­tu­ni­ty to unite and build one Caribbean. Ja­maica and T&T, we are too close to fight or quar­rel. This func­tion is do­ing just that, it's help­ing to bridge the gap."

Man­ga­roo said Land­ing Day cel­e­bra­tions were get­ting big­ger an­nu­al­ly. He said cul­tur­al artistes from Ja­maica, in­clud­ing vo­cal­ist Dr Win­ston Tolan, the chief or­gan­is­er of Land­ing Day cel­e­bra­tions, are ex­pect­ed to per­form at Di­vali Na­gar cel­e­bra­tions this year.

T&T artistes stole the show at Ched­win Park. Vo­cal­ist and broad­cast­er with the TBC Ra­dio Net­work Sangeet 106.1 FM Vee­jai Ramk­isoon and his band, SRS In­ter­na­tion­al, did a mix­ture of film songs and pop­u­lar Tri­ni-style chut­ney mu­sic.

Ramkissoon was giv­en a spe­cial award by the or­gan­is­ers of the cel­e­bra­tions and even went on to in­struct Olivia "Bab­sy" Grange, Ja­maica's Min­is­ter of Cul­ture, Gen­der, En­ter­tain­ment and Sport, in the art of chut­ney danc­ing. The packed crowd at the free event were treat­ed to dance items by Pe­nal-based In­di­an dancer Bri­an Man­ga­roo, whose maid­en per­for­mance on the is­land seemed to mes­merise the au­di­ence.

Pa­trons were al­so treat­ed to per­for­mances by Melanie Bood­wah, a vo­cal­ist from Mi­a­mi with Guyanese roots, who played the har­mo­ni­um.

His­to­ry of In­di­ans in Ja­maica

Over 36,000 In­di­ans were tak­en to Ja­maica as in­den­tured work­ers be­tween 1845 and 1917, fol­low­ing the end of slav­ery. The Maid­stone was the first ship car­ry­ing work­ers from In­dia and land­ed at Old Har­bour Bay in 1845. It car­ried 200 men, 28 women un­der 30 years, and 33 chil­dren un­der 12 years, from var­i­ous towns and vil­lages in north­ern In­dia. This con­tin­ued un­til 1917, when In­di­an in­den­ture­ship end­ed in the re­gion.

In Ja­maica, the In­di­ans worked in the ar­eas of Port­land, St Thomas, St Mary, Claren­don and West­more­land for a shilling a day, and lived in bar­racks where sev­er­al fam­i­lies had to share a sin­gle room. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 81,500 In­di­ans live in Ja­maica to­day, main­tain­ing their tra­di­tion­al cul­ture.

Tra­di­tion­al In­di­an foods such as cur­ry goat and roti have be­come part of Ja­maica's na­tion­al cui­sine. De­scen­dants of the im­mi­grant work­ers have in­flu­enced the fields of farm­ing, med­i­cine, pol­i­tics and horse rac­ing.