The cel­e­bra­tion to­day of the 180th an­niver­sary of the com­ing of the first mass group of In­di­an work­ers in­to Trinidad, builds up­on the re­al­i­ty of the off­spring of the ar­rivants be­ing cen­tral to the na­tion.

The his­tor­i­cal records teach that as work­ers in the sug­ar in­dus­try, In­di­ans be­came im­mersed in it, which at the time was at the heart of the ex­is­tence of this British colony. It is al­so record­ed that al­though the in­den­tured labour­ers ful­filled their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the planters in the sug­ar­cane fields, many turned them­selves in­to in­de­pen­dent farm­ers and even­tu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed in be­com­ing small traders in a range of items.

To­day, gen­er­a­tions af­ter their an­ces­tors were in­tro­duced to this land far away from home, the sons and daugh­ters of those brought here have made them­selves cen­tral to Trinidad and To­ba­go. The re­cent re­turn of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress to Gov­ern­ment, a par­ty ground­ed in and rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a large por­tion of the In­do-Trinidad pop­u­la­tion, is an in­di­ca­tion that there is ac­cep­tance of it hav­ing full au­thor­i­ty to take con­trol of the coun­try.

The chal­lenge fac­ing the UNC and its lead­er­ship is to so­lid­i­fy and ex­pand the po­lit­i­cal as­so­ci­a­tions made with oth­er sec­tors of the vot­ing pop­u­la­tion.

If the par­ty is able to suc­cess­ful­ly do so on be­half of all of T&T, it will be con­tribut­ing in this gen­er­a­tion to the ef­fort at build­ing a na­tion out of the dis­parate el­e­ments of peo­ple, all of whom made dif­fer­ing trips un­der vary­ing con­di­tions to form a na­tion. Such an achieve­ment can be­come an ex­am­ple of a co­he­sive and mod­ern na­tion.

Such a wor­thy ob­jec­tive does not mean any one group of peo­ple eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied by their an­ces­tral cul­ture los­ing them­selves in a mushy amal­gam. What the join­ing of po­lit­i­cal and in­dus­tri­al forces in a gov­ern­men­tal al­liance can do is to help cre­ate a tru­ly co­he­sive so­ci­ety.

It’s an ob­jec­tive which all of T&T can ben­e­fit from and this in­cludes the po­lit­i­cal par­ties, large and small, in op­po­si­tion to the one which rep­re­sents the core of the In­do-Trinidad pop­u­la­tion. If a po­lit­i­cal amal­gam led by those who ar­rived from In­dia can hold to­geth­er, it will be an ex­am­ple to the na­tion that there is val­ue in eth­nic co­op­er­a­tion.

If the jour­ney from In­dia to Trinidad and that be­tween the plan­ta­tion fields and the towns and cities oc­cu­pied by the oth­er ma­jor eth­nic, so­cial and po­lit­i­cal group­ings of the so­ci­ety can be suc­cess­ful­ly held to­geth­er, the re­sult can bring a mea­sure of co­he­sion to the na­tion.

More­over, work­ing to­wards so­cial and po­lit­i­cal ef­fec­tive­ness can give T&T a recog­nis­able ex­am­ple to aim at for the goal of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism in which the in­ter­ests of all will be made re­al.

Lest it be thought that this ad­vo­ca­cy will be ben­e­fi­cial on­ly to the po­lit­i­cal par­ty in of­fice at the mo­ment, it will not. All of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties in the gayelle will ben­e­fit, as elec­toral vic­to­ry and gov­er­nance will be based on poli­cies and pro­grammes for na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, rather than a seg­men­tal agen­da. This In­di­an Ar­rival Day can be­come an his­toric one if it con­tributes to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment of a kind that can ben­e­fit all.