There should have been colour­ful, joy­ful cel­e­bra­tions tak­ing place around the coun­try to­day to mark a ma­jor his­tor­i­cal mile­stone. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, COVID-19 has forced com­mem­o­ra­tions of the 175th an­niver­sary of East In­di­an Ar­rival in T&T to adopt so­cial dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols, so there will be no re-en­act­ments of the 1845 ar­rival of the Fa­tel Raza­ck, street pro­ces­sions or live cul­tur­al events.

In­stead, vir­tu­al pre­sen­ta­tions and spe­cial ra­dio and tele­vi­sion pro­grammes will en­sure East In­di­an Ar­rival re­mains at the fore­front through­out the day. For that, full cred­it goes to the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC), Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha (SDMS) and the many oth­er re­li­gious and cul­tur­al groups that have cre­ative­ly put to­geth­er to­day’s ac­tiv­i­ties.

This pub­lic hol­i­day came about through the ef­forts of two par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, Trevor Su­dama and Ray­mond Pal­lack­dar­rysingh, who in 1991 be­gan lob­by­ing the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for May 30 to be recog­nised on the na­tion­al cal­en­dar. Their calls were fi­nal­ly heed­ed in 1995, on the 150th an­niver­sary of East In­di­an Ar­rival, when then Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning de­clared it a pub­lic hol­i­day.

May 30, 1845, was in­deed a ma­jor turn­ing point for T&T, adding a vi­brant di­men­sion to the so­ci­ety that we are to­day. The 143,939 East In­di­ans who mi­grat­ed to T&T dur­ing the years of in­den­ture­ship, end­ing in 1917, were seen at the time as so­lu­tions to an eco­nom­ic and labour cri­sis. They came here main­ly from Ut­tar Pradesh and Bi­har in north In­dia, with small­er num­bers com­ing from Ben­gal and var­i­ous parts of south In­dia.

Most­ly young and un­mar­ried, the im­mi­grants were quar­an­tined on Nel­son Is­land be­fore be­ing as­signed to es­tates to serve out their con­tract­ed five-year pe­ri­ods of in­den­ture­ship. Most chose to re­main in T&T when their in­den­ture­ship end­ed and have em­bed­ded in­to the mul­ti­cul­tur­al fab­ric of this na­tion prac­tices and be­liefs that have be­come es­sen­tial el­e­ments of the coun­try's iden­ti­ty.

To­day, we give thanks for how life in these twin is­lands has been en­riched by the mu­sic, cui­sine and re­li­gions brought here by our East In­di­an an­ces­tors. This is al­so the oc­ca­sion to cel­e­brate the price­less con­tri­bu­tions of the de­scen­dants of those im­mi­grants in many spheres of lead­er­ship and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

East In­di­an im­mi­grants came to these shores with dreams of pros­per­ing in a strange new world. Their years of toil, en­dur­ing servi­tude, dis­crim­i­na­tion and ex­ploita­tion be­came a sol­id plat­form on which the suc­cess­es of In­do-Trin­bag­o­ni­ans have been built.

For these and many oth­er rea­sons, cel­e­brat­ing this coun­try’s first East In­di­an im­mi­grants should not be mut­ed by COVID-19. In­stead, every creed and race should take time to­day to re­flect and re­joice on all of the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment that has come about be­cause of that land­mark event 175 years ago

T&T has the dis­tinc­tion of be­ing the first coun­try to make In­di­an Ar­rival a pub­lic hol­i­day. There are now cel­e­bra­tions in many oth­er parts of the world, no­tably Fi­ji, Mau­ri­tius, the Unit­ed King­dom, Unit­ed States, Cana­da, New Zealand, Aus­tralia and many parts of the Caribbean.

There are many rea­sons to cel­e­brate to­day.