PARAS RA­MOUTAR?

Sat Balka­rans­ingh, a doc­tor­al can­di­date at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT), has said that the East In­di­an lega­cy pro­motes mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism in Trinidad and To­ba­go. He made this point at the Min­istry of Tourism's Na­tion­al Tourism Month event at the In­di­an Caribbean Mu­se­um, Wa­ter­loo while speak­ing on the theme, "Evo­lu­tion of the East In­di­an Cul­tur­al Lega­cy." The oth­er fea­tured speak­er was In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Malay Mishra who spoke on the top­ic, "The Im­pact of In­dia's Cul­ture and Her­itage Up­on Its Tourism In­dus­try." "The East In­di­ans lega­cy in this their moth­er­land of Trinidad and To­ba­go, is one of hard work, thrift, in­dus­try, com­merce, ed­u­ca­tion and a learn­ing so­ci­ety liv­ing in har­mo­ny with their fel­low cit­i­zens.

"They are con­tin­u­ous­ly in­volved in re­fash­ion­ing and re­paint­ing the spir­i­tu­al, phys­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tu­al, so­cial, cul­tur­al and po­lit­i­cal land­scape with their pres­ence. In so do­ing, they are con­tribut­ing in sig­nif­i­cant ways to cul­tur­al per­sis­tence re­in­forc­ing the foun­da­tions for a vi­brant, sta­ble, out­ward look­ing, self-sus­tain­ing econ­o­my in this our mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­ety," Balka­rans­ingh said. Re­fer­ring to the role of In­di­ans in the labour move­ment, Balka­rans­ingh not­ed that the dif­fi­cult con­di­tions of work on the sug­ar es­tates, the hor­ri­ble treat­ment and strained in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions met­ed out ini­tial­ly to in­den­tured work­ers, re­sult­ed in their as­sump­tion of po­si­tions as trade union lead­ers. "Their aim was to con­trol the di­rec­tion of their des­tiny. There were many strikes on the es­tates and ne­go­ti­a­tions for bet­ter terms and con­di­tions of labour," he said.

Balka­rans­ingh iden­ti­fied Adri­an 'Co­la' Rien­zi, Bhadase Sagan Ma­haraj, Ram­par­tap Singh, Bas­deo Pan­day and Rudranath In­dars­ingh among the promi­nent labour lead­ers who have emerged in this coun­try over the years. He gave new da­ta about In­di­an em­i­gra­tion to Trinidad. He said from 1845 to 1920, 147,596 East In­di­ans came main­ly from Ut­tar Pradesh and Bi­har, North In­dia. A to­tal of 147,596 came on 154 ships dur­ing 320 voy­ages from ports in Madras, Mum­bai and Kolkata. Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 per cent or 28,000 of them re­turned to In­dia af­ter in­den­ture­ship. His­tor­i­cal da­ta shows that 80 per cent were Hin­dus, 12 per cent Mus­lims and eight per cent Chris­tians.