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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Prof HS Adesh, teacher, author, philosopher

by

20140514

The Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha, long ago des­ig­nat­ed the month of May as In­di­an Her­itage Month. It was on May 30, 1845, that the first con­tin­gent of In­di­an im­mi­grant labour­ers ar­rived at Port-of-Spain abroad the ship, SS Fa­tel Raza­ck.This jour­ney from the port of Howrah in Cal­cut­ta, In­dia, was long and tor­tur­ous. The Fa­tel Raza­ck and its hu­man car­go sailed down the Bay of Ben­gal and round­ed the south­ern tip of In­dia and then head­ed to Cape Town, South Africa.

Round­ing the Cape, the Fa­tel Raza­ck be­gan the jour­ney across the At­lantic and head­ed for Trinidad. We are in­formed from the ship's records that many im­mi­grants be­came ill and even died on this leg of the jour­ney.Those who sur­vived of­ten de­scribed an area of the At­lantic as rough and even venge­ful. They called this the "Kala Pani." "Kala" is the colour black and "Pani" means wa­ter–the dead­ly wa­ters.

When T&T was ruled by the British colo­nial au­thor­i­ties, we were taught that the "sun nev­er sets on the British Em­pire." And in or­der to sus­tain its oc­cu­pa­tion of lands across the world, the colo­nial au­thor­i­ties fi­nal­ly turned to In­dia for cheap and com­pli­ant labour.In fact, our Cari­com part­ner Guyana, saw the in­tro­duc­tion of In­di­an im­mi­grant labour sev­en years be­fore the SS Fa­tel Raza­ck ar­rived in Trinidad. In 1838 Guyana, then British Guiana re­ceived its first con­tin­gent of In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers


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