The Indian Council for International Co-operation is an organisation based in New Delhi, India. One of the prime objectives of this organisation is to link the Indian diaspora worldwide. The Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha of Trinidad and Tobago Inc. is linked to this organisation, attending their conferences in New Delhi India and other parts of the Indian diaspora.
Their primary objectives are:-
1. Promote goodwill and understanding among people of the world through nurturing people to people relationships.
2. Organise cultural exchanges between the scholars and thinkers of India and other countries.
3. Support studies and research to promote better understanding of the people of India and vice-versa.
4. Promote awareness about the problems of Indians abroad, and highlighting their achievements in their adopted countries.
5. Organise hospitality to PIO guests visiting India for social, cultural & academic works.
6. Provide assistance to students from abroad especially the students from the Indian Diaspora.
7. Provide facilities to people of Indian origin to trace their roots in India.
This international organisation publishes articles and books focusing on the impact that Indian indentured immigration has had on the various places they have been transported as Indian indentured immigrants. One of its publications titled Focus on Trinidad and Tobago—details the influence of Indian immigrants on the names of places where they lived and worked. This book is of historical importance and I wish to quote passages from same:
“One of the first areas in which the indentured Indians were settled was Diego Martin. Most of these people came from villages around the city of Patna and called their new home Patna Village. As more Indians were brought from the 1860s to work on Woodbrook estate, they created what was called “a coolie settlement” in the adjacent St James area.
“The traces and pathways where the labourers settled took the names of ancestral place of origin. Those who had come from the far north-eastern corner of the sub-continent called there Nepal which today is Nipal Street. Afghani immigrants from the far north of Greater India named their street after Kandahar.
“Others who came from the villages along the Ganges named their area after the river and those who had been picked up at the holy places in the pilgrimage city of Banaras named their Trinidad abode after that place. In this St. James area, too, there are streets named after the major Indian centres of recruitment. Mathura, Bengal and Lucknow.
“It was to county Caroni that most of the indentured Indians came and this area has the largest number of Indian-derived place names. When batches of immigrants from the villages around Madras were transported here, they called their village south of Piarco airport, Madras Settlement. Further south bonded labourers coming from the rice and leather-producing town of Kanpur (in Uttar Pradesh) gave the name “Kanpur” to their new home; today the place is called Campo.
“Settlers from Chandernagar and those who came from the Bengali swamps outside of eastern India’s major city named their new homeland Calcutta Settlement, to the north of Couva. To the south-east of Couva there came a ship load of ‘jahagis’ from Basti in Uttar Pradesh and in their memory Basta Hall was established.
“New areas to the east of Caroni were opened up for cultivation. One area of extensive development was the lands to the south of the Carib capital of Arima.
“Further east, the cocoa, coffee and banana proprietors needed not swamp-derived Indians, but rather those from drier areas of India. Labourers were obtained from many Pahari villages in Rajasthan. Most of these people settled with their other Pahari-speaking compatriots in an area which they called Pahari Ganj. Today that settlement, on the Toco Road is called Pahari Village.
“From the south eastern coastal area of India bordering on the Bay of Bengal, a group of Indians travelled to the far south western peninsula of Trinidad. These immigrants from the Coromandel Coast of India named their new abode Coromandel, a lively village on the road to Cedros.
“Boodoosingh Village, on the way to Point Fortin is named after an enterprising former indentured labourer who became a major land owner and an employer of indentured Indians. Fyzabad is named after Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh. Delhi Road, a main thoroughfare of Fyzabad, reminds us that the arkatis (recruiters) penetrated as far in land as Delhi.
“As the search for indentured workers proceeded apace in India, more and more areas in the country were opened up for cultivation. These areas took up the names of the Indian area from whence most of these workers came.”