In­di­an in­den­ture­ship to the West In­dies be­tween 1838 to the ear­ly 1900s saw more than 238,000 peo­ple land in Guyana, and 147,600 in Trinidad, more than 85% be­ing Hin­dus, of­ten re­ferred to as ‘Coolies,’ a low-paid labour­er, work­ing a min­i­mum of 45 hours week­ly.

They brought their di­verse re­li­gious be­liefs, con­tin­u­ing to cel­e­brate tra­di­tion­al fes­ti­vals. The ma­jor­i­ty of In­den­tured labour­ers brought to Trinidad were Hin­dus; they brought the Holy Scrip­tures, the Ra­mayan and Bha­gavad Gi­ta, cloth­ing, mu­sic and dance, the wa­ter buf­fa­lo for labour and cat­tle for milk, mak­ing of da­hee and ghee.

A va­ri­ety of foods and spices were in­tro­duced, cur­ries, spices, dhal, rice and veg­eta­bles. Dif­fer­ent cook­ing uten­sils and tech­niques were al­so brought. In Trinidad, the lan­guages of In­dia were brought, to­geth­er with names that still ex­ist to­day. The in­den­tured labour­ers’ con­tri­bu­tion to the sug­ar, co­coa and co­conut plan­ta­tions sur­vival can nev­er be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.

The In­di­an di­as­po­ra has achieved ma­jor suc­cess­es since leav­ing In­dia al­most 200 years ago. This com­mu­ni­ty, how­ev­er, rarely pays heed to the im­por­tance of his­to­ry, ar­chae­ol­o­gy and oth­er re­lat­ed ar­eas of study. Gen­er­a­tions have un­der­val­ued these sub­jects while nev­er ap­pre­ci­at­ing the tremen­dous ad­van­tages for men­tal, spir­i­tu­al, phys­i­cal, po­lit­i­cal and aca­d­e­m­ic growth.

We have ne­glect­ed the sig­nif­i­cance of sub­jects such as the so­cial sci­ences, hu­man­i­ties and pol­i­tics, but we es­pe­cial­ly do not un­der­stand the im­por­tance of his­to­ry and ar­chae­ol­o­gy. For a com­mu­ni­ty that does so well eco­nom­i­cal­ly all over the world, if on­ly we un­der­stood the sub­tle pow­er of his­to­ry, which con­sti­tutes every­thing in our past and de­fines us. Our fu­ture progress de­pends on un­der­stand­ing our ori­gins.

His­to­ry, for most peo­ple, gives them an iden­ti­ty and ef­fec­tive lead­er­ship. They be­gin to un­der­stand who they are, from where they came, the strug­gles their fore­fa­thers faced to sur­vive and give them an idea of how to deal with present cir­cum­stances. Un­der­stand­ing the needs of their so­ci­ety or spe­cif­ic civil­i­sa­tion cre­ates aware­ness about what they should main­tain, keep, fight for, and stand up for.

The lead­ers and he­roes you choose to rep­re­sent you in his­to­ry will de­ter­mine if that iden­ti­ty be­comes a strong and en­dur­ing one. An iden­ti­ty helps you to act in en­coun­ters with oth­ers; our iden­ti­ty will give us a shared col­lec­tive mem­o­ry and aid us in deal­ing with sit­u­a­tions. His­to­ry al­so presents us with so­lu­tions to prob­lems we are fac­ing now; ob­sta­cles peo­ple have faced be­fore and how to over­come them.

We can spec­u­late on the fu­ture and build up­on past ac­com­plish­ments. If we see our fail­ures, we can over­come them. Those who do not know his­to­ry are des­tined to re­peat its mis­takes. The world has had rev­o­lu­tions be­fore, war, famines, move­ments, per­se­cu­tion, geno­cide and al­most every group on the plan­et has a plan of ac­tion. If you do not know your his­to­ry, then you have al­ready lost every forth­com­ing bat­tle.

His­to­ry and ar­chae­ol­o­gy stud­ies will bring to the In­di­an di­as­po­ra a pos­i­tive iden­ti­ty, con­fi­dence, pride and hence a con­struc­tive per­cep­tion of our­selves. Be­fore you can have a cause, you need to know your worth. With a pos­i­tive iden­ti­ty comes pride, and pride brings con­fi­dence. In­di­an de­scend­ed stu­dents do not speak freely of their an­ces­tors’ achieve­ments be­cause they do not know what they are.

They can­not de­fend their pre­de­ces­sors be­cause they do not ful­ly com­pre­hend their strug­gle to sur­vive, and lit­tle if at all of the achieve­ments of Dr Rudranath Capildeo, Siew­dass Sad­hu, Bhadase Sagan Maraj or Sat­narayan Ma­haraj.

In years gone by, all an In­do-Trinida­di­an child knew about his his­to­ry was the ship, the Fa­tel Raza­ck in 1845 and we brought roti and cre­at­ed dou­bles and chut­ney mu­sic. Our chil­dren are now be­ing taught their an­ces­tral his­to­ry in the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha’s 60 ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions at pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­els. Text­books are not pro­vid­ing the his­tor­i­cal in­for­ma­tion, even at uni­ver­si­ty lev­el.

Any com­mu­ni­ty which be­lieves it has achieved all its goals and be­comes com­pla­cent will end up in a down­ward spi­ral which will be dif­fi­cult to re­verse. As we re­mind our­selves of the over­all progress and de­vel­op­ment of our com­mu­ni­ty, it is nec­es­sary to note the is­sues that re­quire im­me­di­ate fo­cus and to pon­der on res­o­lu­tions to these chal­lenges.

Imag­ine the con­fi­dence they would muster if they un­der­stood the sci­en­tif­ic and ar­chi­tec­tur­al achieve­ments of the Mau­ryas, Pallavas, Pandyas, Cholas, Marathas and the Vi­jayana­gara Em­pires. Tax­i­la, re­put­ed­ly the old­est uni­ver­si­ty in the world, lo­cat­ed in the City of Tax­i­la, Gand­hara, in present-day Pun­jab, near the banks of the In­dus Riv­er in 10th Cen­tu­ry BCC was teach­ing over 68 sub­jects and had over 10,000 stu­dents. Ze­ro, pi and surgery, and mar­tial arts prob­a­bly start­ed in In­dia.