Paras Ra­moutar

There are two facets of this new pub­li­ca­tion that was in­tro­duced to mark the 170th and 163rd an­niver­sary of the ar­rival of East In­di­ans to British Guiana and T&T re­spec­tive­ly in 2008. First­ly, the book re­veals the agony, the des­per­a­tion, the psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma of the first set of East In­di­an labour­ers on the voy­age from In­dia to the then British Guiana (Guyana). Sec­ond­ly, it re­vis­its the de­par­ture of some 243 East In­di­an who went back to In­dia in as re­cent as 1955. It re­counts the di­ary of Theophilius Rich­mond on board the Hes­pe­rus (1837-38) as the sur­geon who was ap­point­ed by Sir John Glad­stone, fa­ther of the British Prime Min­is­ter.

The ship set sail from Liv­er­pool in June 1837 for In­dia via Mau­ri­tius to col­lect the first batch of Coolies to be shipped to Glad­stone's for­mer slave es­tates in De­marara, British Guiana. Rich­mond, who was re­cent­ly qual­i­fied as a med­ical doc­tor, tells of his mis­chie­vous ex­ploits at sea, his in­fat­u­a­tion with the Cre­ole beau­ties of Mau­ri­tius, and his es­capades in In­dia where, dis­dain­ful of Moslem and Hin­doo cus­toms, he pokes fun at the na­tives; fi­nal­ly it tes­ti­fies to his re­source­ful­ness and com­pas­sion in the face of tragedy when cholera breaks out among his hu­man car­go, bound for De­marara.

Edit­ed by Dr David Daby­deen, Jonathan Mor­ley, Pro­fes­sor Brins­ley Sama­roo, Amar Wa­hab and Brigid Wells, The First Cross­ing epit­o­mis­es the whole gamut of the In­di­an in­den­ture­ship sys­tem, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Caribbean is­lands, among them Trinidad and To­ba­go, British Guiana, Suri­name, Ja­maica, Grena­da and Mar­tinique. Be­sides chron­i­cling the de­pres­sion on board, the ed­i­tors gave an in­ter­est­ing overview of the state of In­di­an im­mi­gra­tion to the Caribbean. Lit­tle is known about the de­sire and the even­tu­al re­turn of hun­dreds of in­den­tured labour­ers back to Bharat Ma­ta, from where they were sourced.

The ques­tion of repa­tri­a­tion was a hot is­sue, a diplo­mat­ic row emerged. The First Cross­ing is a well-re­searched book with a rich bib­li­og­ra­phy and very aca­d­e­m­ic and ac­count­able ed­i­tors. Af­ter read­ing the book, read­ers and thinkers would ex­pect to en­dure sim­i­lar lit­er­ary ma­te­ri­als and re­search­es on so­journs to oth­er parts of the Caribbean. It is hoped that this would not be too long in the wait­ing.