Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley wants cit­i­zens to mo­bilise and fo­cus their col­lec­tive ef­forts and hopes for a bet­ter T&T. To do oth­er­wise is to be haunt­ed by eth­nic ghosts and per­pet­u­ate the agen­das of those who re­fused to see hope but on­ly fear, racial di­vi­sive­ness, ha­tred, bit­ter­ness, un­rest, and dis­sen­sion.

In his mes­sage for East In­di­an Ar­rival Day, he said: “Fel­low cit­i­zens, let us all recog­nise that we are all first and fore­most Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans, a melt­ing pot of vary­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics, at­ti­tudes and man­ner­isms, with a men­tal­i­ty and tem­pera­ment that are all, in the main, cheer­ful, fun-lov­ing and pos­i­tive, which make us a mighty peo­ple of un­lim­it­ed tal­ents and end­less po­ten­tial.”

Row­ley said while two dis­tinct el­e­ments of his­to­ry fash­ioned T&T’s iden­ti­ty, cit­i­zens strive to­geth­er dai­ly for a brighter fu­ture. He en­cour­aged every­one to join the com­mu­ni­ty as they re­flect on their past and con­tem­plate fur­ther con­tri­bu­tions to T&T.

Re­fer­ring to Pro­fes­sor of His­to­ry Dr Brins­ley Sama­roo’s doc­u­ments on the ab­hor­rence of the East In­di­an and African ex­pe­ri­ences un­der British colo­nial rule., he added: “It must be ac­knowl­edged that the thou­sands of im­mi­grants leav­ing their homes in In­dia for var­i­ous rea­sons would have held vary­ing de­grees of fear, yet there was the an­tic­i­pa­tion of a bet­ter life, on­ly to be con­front­ed with many tricks and tri­als.

“The first may have been the three-month cross­ing of the ‘Kala-pani’, con­sid­ered as ‘the black wa­ters’ be­tween In­dia and “Chini­tat”, then to be greet­ed, sad­ly, in a land that said they were a peo­ple that had “no re­li­gion, no ed­u­ca­tion, and in their present state, no wants be­yond eat­ing, drink­ing and sleep­ing.”

He said al­though there was the op­tion of re­turn­ing to In­dia af­ter five years on the sug­ar plan­ta­tion, they en­dured the pro­longed ex­pe­ri­ence of suf­fer­ing and sac­ri­fice and lived un­der a sys­tem of crim­i­nal laws de­signed to keep them un­der con­trol. How­ev­er, they re­spond­ed with sol­i­dar­i­ty and main­tained their con­nec­tion to their re­li­gion and an­ces­tral cul­ture.

“To­day, this com­mu­ni­ty can boast of its con­tri­bu­tion to our na­tion-state. The peas­ant agri­cul­tur­al skills of the ear­ly im­mi­grants were passed on to suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions,” he said.

Row­ley said the com­mu­ni­ty’s con­tri­bu­tions to the cre­ation of mod­ern T&T are iden­ti­fi­able in med­i­cine, law, sci­ences, en­gi­neer­ing, lit­er­a­ture, arts, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and suc­cess­ful fam­i­ly busi­ness­es in the ser­vices sec­tor and the high­est lev­els of pub­lic ser­vice.
“I main­tain that there is no con­tra­dic­tion be­tween a per­son recog­nis­ing his or her an­ces­tral her­itage on one hand and pledg­ing un­wa­ver­ing sup­port to the na­tion-state of Trinidad and To­ba­go on the oth­er.”