RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Tri­bunal (EOT) Chair Don­na Prow­ell-Raphael says In­di­an Ar­rival Day should be a re­minder that so­ci­ety will flour­ish with uni­ty and equal­i­ty if peo­ple work to build it with those val­ues.

In a state­ment, she said, “In­di­an Ar­rival Day com­mem­o­rates the ar­rival of our an­ces­tors aboard the Fa­tel Raza­ck in 1845, the first ship to bring In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers to these shores.”

She not­ed that the peo­ple who jour­neyed to­geth­er formed bonds be­yond fam­i­ly ties. “A par­tic­u­lar bondage de­vel­oped among them – a hu­man re­la­tion stronger than even blood re­la­tion – the sur­vivors called each oth­er as Ja­ha­jis and Ja­ha­jins – ship broth­ers and ship sis­ters.”

Prow­ell-Raphael point­ed to the 1995 ca­lyp­so Ja­ha­ji Bhai by Broth­er Mar­vin, which high­light­ed that the lega­cies of in­den­ture­ship and slav­ery “bind to­geth­er two races in uni­ty.”

She said, “De­spite their dif­fer­ent ori­gins, In­dia and Africa, both groups have shaped the rich cul­tur­al mon­tage of Trinidad: ‘No more Moth­er Africa, No more Moth­er In­dia, just Moth­er Tri­ni."

Orig­i­nal­ly used to de­scribe a bond among In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers, the idea of the “Broth­er­hood of the Boat,” she said, can be ex­tend­ed to all who came or were brought to this land, in­clud­ing “the na­tive set­tlers who were the first in­hab­i­tants, the en­slaved Africans who were brought here against their will… and many oth­er mi­grants.”

Prow­ell-Raphael added that the labour and en­tre­pre­neur­ship of all com­mu­ni­ties “have built the in­dus­tries and mar­kets that sus­tain us,” while ac­knowl­edg­ing chal­lenges such as “so­cial di­vi­sions, eco­nom­ic dis­par­i­ties, and po­lit­i­cal ten­sions of­ten drawn along eth­nic lines.”

She said the “spir­it of the ‘Broth­er­hood of the Boat’ en­dures,” seen in the blend­ed cul­tures, lan­guages, mu­sic, and tra­di­tions. She added that the coun­try is be­gin­ning to show “hope­ful signs that peo­ple are start­ing to come to­geth­er in new ways to work be­yond old di­vides.”

“As a ju­di­cial ar­biter of equal op­por­tu­ni­ty and non-dis­crim­i­na­tion,” she said, “we recog­nise that such com­plex­i­ty calls for a le­gal frame­work that goes be­yond rigid tra­di­tions to em­brace in­clu­siv­i­ty and uni­ty.”

Prow­ell-Raphael said, “Let us draw in­spi­ra­tion from the ‘Broth­er­hood of the Boat.’ Ja­ha­ji Bhai sends a pow­er­ful mes­sage: we are all pas­sen­gers on the same ves­sel – one na­tion, com­ing to­geth­er, not as dis­parate groups, but as one peo­ple com­mit­ted to the com­mon good.”