One hun­dred and six­ty-eight years ago, May 1845, 227 sons and daugh­ters of Ut­tar Pradesh and Bi­har ar­rived on the ship named Fath Al Razak in Trinidad, West In­dies. The im­mi­grants came with the un­der­stand­ing that they would have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­turn to In­dia af­ter five years of in­den­ture­ship. His­to­ry has shown that very few re­turned and the In­di­an di­as­po­ra has grown to well over half a mil­lion, half the pop­u­la­tion of T&T.

Af­ter a per­ilous jour­ney, mal­nu­tri­tion and fear re­placed their ex­cite­ment and en­thu­si­asm. Lone­li­ness and un­cer­tain­ty caused some to lan­guish and die, but many trans­formed it in­to a source of strength, faith and courage.They had no tem­ples, mosques or church­es where they could seek so­lace. The land­lords, the colo­nial British Raj, dis­cour­aged so­cial gath­er­ings and sub­tly frus­trat­ed any ef­fort at wor­ship.

How­ev­er, the spir­i­tu­al prin­ci­ples of the in­den­tured moth­ers were re­silient and this pre­pared them to de­vel­op skills to change dif­fi­cul­ties in­to op­por­tu­ni­ties. The in­den­tured im­mi­grant women skil­ful­ly and silent­ly used spir­i­tu­al­i­ty to pre­serve the in­tegri­ty of their east­ern civil­i­sa­tion.

The Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of Women

The im­mi­grant women qui­et­ly re­vert­ed to their spir­i­tu­al re­sources for com­fort and brought out their pow­ers of de­ter­mi­na­tion, de­vo­tion and di­vin­i­ty. They emerged the spe­cial pow­ers of love, sta­bil­i­ty, mer­cy and com­pas­sion be­cause of their faith in God. Women have jeal­ous­ly guard­ed their de­vo­tion and di­vin­i­ty and se­cret­ly used it for sus­te­nance, hu­mil­i­ty and tol­er­ance. De­vo­tion is ded­i­ca­tion and wor­ship to God where­as di­vin­i­ty is the di­vine con­nec­tion with God through pu­ri­ty of thoughts, words and ac­tions.

When these two di­vine en­gines are work­ing in har­mo­ny, the third en­gine, called the in­tu­itive di­vine wis­dom or the di­vine in­tel­lect, is ac­ti­vat­ed and that gives one the pow­er to make the right de­ci­sions and con­sis­tent­ly do the right things at the right time. Peo­ple who have this di­vine in­tu­itive skill of­ten get so­lu­tions to prob­lems long be­fore the prob­lems arise. This was the main source of strength of the im­mi­grants, es­pe­cial­ly the women.

Eco­nom­ic Pow­er and­Thrifti­ness of Women

The in­den­tured im­mi­grant women may not have been able to read and write but that did not make them il­lit­er­ate.In spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, if you do not have a for­mal ed­u­ca­tion but have that dis­ci­pline to think out sen­si­ble so­lu­tions con­sis­tent­ly, then you are very knowl­edge­able or lit­er­ate.

Be­cause of the trep­i­da­tion of en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­place­ment and the phys­i­cal might of the colo­nial mas­ters, the in­den­tured im­mi­grant women in­cor­po­rat­ed their in­nate spir­i­tu­al skills to trans­form the im­pend­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in­to op­por­tu­ni­ties. They used their fru­gal­i­ty with great hu­mil­i­ty and qui­et­ly for­ti­fied their so­cial and eco­nom­ic foun­da­tions with their thrifti­ness.

Our great-great-grand­moth­ers were so clever, thrifty and pos­sessed so much in­tu­itive wis­dom that run­ning an ef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment trea­sury would have been but a piece of cake. They did not have a for­mal ed­u­ca­tion, but they pos­sessed com­pe­tence and pro­fi­cien­cy. This is a les­son for the poor­er sec­tors of the world.

Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty andthe Might of Cul­ture

The first 100 years of in­den­ture­ship (1845-1945) are one of the finest ex­am­ples in world his­to­ry of how in­den­tured women im­mi­grants used cul­ture and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty as might. The faith of the in­den­tured im­mi­grants was nur­tured by the re­silience of their spir­i­tu­al be­liefs. This prac­tice and be­lief gave them hope and courage, and it was through this per­se­ver­ance, tol­er­ance and faith that they were able to re­move the dark­ness of op­pres­sion and al­low the light of di­vine jus­tice to make dif­fi­cult jobs easy and the im­pos­si­ble pos­si­ble.

Peo­ple of the younger gen­er­a­tions now be­lieve that they can pur­chase this spir­i­tu­al gift and de­pend sole­ly on their gu­rus to re­move their ob­sta­cles and dif­fi­cul­ties. They have lost it be­cause of ar­ro­gance and ma­te­r­i­al af­flu­ence.Change, they say, is an eter­nal truth of life and peo­ple who claim that they can con­trol their lives could not in their wildest imag­i­na­tions had ever thought that their an­ces­tors would come to this part of the world to live and strive, to mul­ti­ply and to be­come the in­her­i­tors of the place called Trinidad.

To­day T&T can tru­ly be called a part of the In­dies. If we were to ask which force sus­tained the ear­ly poor peas­ants through their dark days and nights, the an­swer would un­equiv­o­cal­ly be the women.

At­til­lah Springer­re­turns next week.

BK Khem