Malis­sa Lara

It's been 165 years since In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers came to T&T but women in in­den­ture­ship con­tin­ue to be un­der-re­searched. Par­tic­i­pants at­tend­ing the Her­itage Tour and Lec­ture at Nel­son Is­land Her­itage site yes­ter­day learnt of the sig­nif­i­cant strides made be­tween 1845 and 1920. Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase, fea­ture speak­er, de­scribed it as a high­ly rel­e­vant top­ic, "giv­en the fact that his­to­ry was cre­at­ed on­ly this week when a woman of In­di­an an­ces­try was elect­ed Prime Min­is­ter of the coun­try."

Ma­hase spoke to a crowd of no more than 160 peo­ple at the front of the is­land near the re­cent­ly laid path­way giv­ing view to the his­tor­i­cal land­marks on the is­land. Ma­hase made men­tion of 106-year-old Sug­hari, still alive to­day, who ar­rived with her moth­er at age three. It was not al­ways a vol­un­tary jour­ney as some women were tak­en against their will. Oth­ers were lured with half-truths in­to mak­ing the jour­ney. Nel­son Is­land has a mixed his­to­ry where not on­ly African slaves worked but In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers were quar­an­tined over a two week pe­ri­od be­fore be­ing tak­en to var­i­ous plan­ta­tions.

The jour­ney was long and ar­du­ous and Ma­hase spoke of the fe­male labour­ers who worked just as hard in the fields as their male coun­ter­parts cut­ting grass and tend­ing an­i­mals. Though out­num­bered, some of these women opt­ed to stay in T&T. They felt a sense of free­dom. Ma­hase said by the end of in­den­ture­ship labour in T&T, there were 42,800 fe­male work­ers, a mere 29 per cent of the im­mi­grant pop­u­la­tion.