Kalain Hosien

Nel­son Is­land’s record­ed his­to­ry goes back to T&T’s First Peo­ples, over 500 years ago.

How­ev­er, its past with In­di­an in­den­ture­ship at­tract­ed at­ten­tion and prompt­ed the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion HE Arun Ku­mar Sahu and Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment of­fi­cials to vis­it the her­itage site.

“As In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er, I al­ways want­ed to come to Nel­son Is­land to get a feel of the peo­ple who have roots in In­dia and their jour­ney,” Sahu, In­dia’s most re­cent High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T, said. He has been in Trinidad for 16 months.

Al­so at­tend­ing the tour last Fri­day, cu­rat­ed by the Na­tion­al Trust of T&T, was act­ing Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Allyson West. Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is is re­cov­er­ing at home fol­low­ing re­cent gall­blad­der surgery.

Both the High Com­mis­sion­er and the act­ing Min­is­ter ar­rived with their en­tourages dur­ing the af­ter­noon sun’s peak, un­der the se­cu­ri­ty of the T&T Coast Guard.

In strict ad­her­ence to the COVID-19 reg­u­la­tions, the Na­tion­al Trust split the tour in­to two groups, en­sur­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing.

Nel­son Is­land’s ar­chi­tec­ture, or what re­mains of it, was on proud dis­play. At­ten­dees were able to walk where can­nons once stood in the late 1700s, through the con­crete build­ings con­struct­ed by the Gov­ern­ment-owned African slaves in the 1800s, and even en­ter the de­tainee cells dur­ing the Black Pow­er Move­ment in the 1970s.

The tour’s crème de la crème was the Mar­i­on Hos­pi­tal’s rem­nants, as well as the East In­di­an In­den­ture­ship Ex­hi­bi­tion.

The High Com­mis­sion­er walked up the stair­way, in­to the ru­ins of what once was the Mar­i­on Hos­pi­tal en­trance – a con­va­les­cence site for im­mi­grants ar­riv­ing from their long, trans-At­lantic jour­ney.

Sahu ex­plained, “Last year was the 175th an­niver­sary of In­di­an ar­rival to this is­land, and I just want­ed to see per­son­al­ly, in my own eyes, what could have been the sit­u­a­tion and what kind of hard­ships they have faced.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Trust, the mor­tal­i­ty rate on board the ships was high, but over­all mor­tal­i­ty on voy­ages fluc­tu­at­ed due to bron­chi­tis, di­ar­rhoea, measles, mumps, and dysen­tery.

Based on records, 114,000 East In­di­an im­mi­grants were processed on Nel­son Is­land be­tween 1845 and 1921.

The walk­through ex­hi­bi­tion is lo­cat­ed in the old­est stand­ing roofed build­ing in Trinidad, which al­so housed women and chil­dren who ar­rived on the is­land over a cen­tu­ry ago.

The High Com­mis­sion­er and West were able to pe­ruse the posters and im­ages tak­en over Nel­son Is­land’s decades.

The room was il­lu­mi­nat­ed by LEDs and cooled by en­er­gy-ef­fi­cient AC units, a tes­ta­ment to the is­land’s com­mit­ment to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, de­riv­ing 100 per cent of its pow­er from so­lar pan­els.

At the end of the tour, Sahu con­fessed that it was an emo­tion­al jour­ney.

He said, “I have al­ways told that all those who left In­dia at some point of time, they have brought In­dia to wher­ev­er they went and built their own cul­ture. All those who came to In­dia be­came part of us.”

Nel­son Is­land was al­so used as an as­sem­bly fa­cil­i­ty and repa­tri­a­tion point un­til 1936 for the ex-in­den­tured re­turn­ing to In­dia.

Sahu al­so ex­plained that what links T&T to In­dia and sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries is a par­tic­u­lar, shared cir­cum­stance, “What binds peo­ple to­geth­er is suf­fer­ings. You know, we are good friends be­cause we have suf­fered sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences.”

West was hope­ful the trust’s ef­forts would at­tract lo­cals and for­eign­ers alike when re­mark­ing about her ex­pe­ri­ence of the tour.

“I have al­ways been a stu­dent of his­to­ry. It was re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing to hear the sto­ries and to see the build­ings are bring pre­served,” she said.

“The ef­forts that the Na­tion­al Trust is mak­ing to en­sure we are as eco-friend­ly as pos­si­ble and the fact that the is­land has been used over the years, for dif­fer­ent things and im­pact­ed dif­fer­ent groups of peo­ple. I’m hop­ing that we can get more Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens here as well as for­eign­ers who can en­joy what has been cre­at­ed here,” she said.

When asked if the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion would be will­ing to part­ner with the Na­tion­al Trust, Sahu quick­ly re­spond­ed: “We are ac­tu­al­ly open to any kind of pos­si­bil­i­ty, what­ev­er is pos­si­ble to do, and for this is­land, if the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has some­thing in mind, I am ready as High Com­mis­sion­er to push it for­ward.”

West elab­o­rat­ed fur­ther, “The Na­tion­al Trust has al­ready start­ed dis­cus­sions with the Min­istry and the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion to see what we can do in var­i­ous ar­eas. They are al­so look­ing at work­ing with them with re­spect to the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en and oth­er his­toric build­ings around the (Queen’s Park) Sa­van­nah. So, the part­ner­ship, it is safe to say, has start­ed, and we hope to build on that.”

Nel­son Is­land’s deep his­to­ry still has sev­er­al un­told sto­ries. With this new part­ner­ship and the Na­tion­al Trust’s con­tin­u­ing ef­forts, the sto­ry of T&T’s In­di­an her­itage may be heard for gen­er­a­tions to come.