When pho­tos and videos of for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day's 90th birth­day cel­e­bra­tions were shared on­line last week, the very vast ma­jor­i­ty of those who com­ment­ed were herald­ing his mile­stone.

Re­gard­less of his past po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tions, the recog­ni­tion of Mr Pan­day, in this case, tran­scend­ed po­lit­i­cal, cul­tur­al or racial bi­as­es.

Many saw on­ly a man they had grown to ap­pre­ci­ate for his con­tri­bu­tions to T&T, which al­so in­clud­ed decades of rep­re­sent­ing sug­ar cane work­ers as a trade union­ist.

Mr Pan­day, of course, holds great sig­nif­i­cance to the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty, who rep­re­sent the ma­jor­i­ty of our pop­u­la­tion.

Fol­low­ing on the heels of many oth­er ma­jor po­lit­i­cal con­trib­u­tors of East In­di­an de­scent, Mr Pan­day earned a place in his­to­ry as T&T's first prime min­is­ter of East In­di­an de­scent when he led the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in­to an al­liance gov­ern­ment with the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion in 1995.

His jour­ney rep­re­sent­ed an as­cent to the pin­na­cle of ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­i­ty in T&T, 150 years af­ter the first 217 East In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers de­board­ed the Fa­tel Raza­ck in 1945 at Nel­son Is­land.

The val­ue of their ar­rival to T&T over the years, how­ev­er, has been far more than in the po­lit­i­cal are­na but stretch­es to a wide range of fes­ti­vals and re­li­gious ob­ser­vances which al­lowed East In­di­an im­mi­grants to main­tain the val­ues and prin­ci­ples which had sus­tained them for cen­turies be­fore.

Here in this new land that Eu­ro­pean dis­cov­er­ers called the West In­dies, those who came here seek­ing bet­ter lives brought with them an ar­ray of food and tra­di­tions that all cul­tures and races in T&T em­brace to­day.

T&T re­mains one of the few Caribbean coun­tries with cel­e­bra­tions like Di­vali, Phag­wah and Hosay as part of the na­tion­al sta­ple of ac­tiv­i­ties and where roti, dou­bles and pholourie are among pop­u­lar cuisines.

Chut­ney and its vari­ances, when mixed with so­ca and oth­er gen­res, are unique to T&T thanks to the East In­di­an pop­u­la­tion, as are the dances and mu­si­cal in­stru­ments they brought.

Un­ques­tion­ably, the beau­ty of the cul­ture that T&T dis­plays to the world is due large­ly to the con­tri­bu­tions of the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty, in­ter­min­gled with the cul­tures of oth­er races who live here.

Racial dishar­mo­ny, how­ev­er, has threat­ened over the years to dis­rupt the uni­ty we've shared for the last 178 years.

The dif­fer­ences in our po­lit­i­cal struc­tures and bit­ter as­crip­tions of blame for the de­cay in the coun­try's so­cial fab­ric, have ex­posed an ug­ly un­der­bel­ly of a na­tion that has far more po­ten­tial to progress when unit­ed than when it is not.

David Rud­der struck a right note in his pop­u­lar "Sweet Sweet T&T" ca­lyp­so, that "how we vote is not how we par­ty."

The lev­els of peace we have found when en­joy­ing our­selves at Car­ni­val and oth­er fes­ti­vals, ought not to de­pre­ci­ate be­cause of who we sup­port or who in­flu­ences us.

If T&T is to re­main an ex­am­ple of the in­ter­ra­cial, in­ter-re­li­gious ac­cord it has so long been known for, it would re­quire more ef­fort from those who set the pace of our progress in pol­i­tics, busi­ness, cul­ture, re­li­gion and acad­e­mia.

As we cel­e­brate In­di­an Ar­rival Day to­day, our hope is that the val­ues of those who came to our shores as in­den­tured labour­ers from In­dia con­tin­ue to blend with the val­ues of all oth­ers who call T&T our home, in a bond that fur­ther de­fines this coun­try as the rain­bow na­tion we've long boast­ed about.

To the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty, Hap­py In­di­an Ar­rival Day!