Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Two months af­ter In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di an­nounced that Over­seas Cit­i­zen of In­dia (OCI) cards will be giv­en to the sixth gen­er­a­tion of the In­di­an di­as­po­ra in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) and the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia host­ed a work­shop yes­ter­day at the NCIC Na­gar in Ch­agua­nas.

The work­shop took par­tic­i­pants through the process of ob­tain­ing an OCI card.

NCIC pres­i­dent Su­ru­jdeo Man­ga­roo, re­spond­ing to PNM chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les’ re­mark ear­li­er this year that he some­times won­dered if he was liv­ing in In­dia or Bangladesh giv­en the com­po­si­tion of state boards, said the OCI card was im­por­tant for the gath­er­ing to seek their iden­ti­ty.

Man­ga­roo de­clared, “I am a born Trinida­di­an, a Trinida­di­an by birth, but I am an In­di­an by cul­ture and by spir­it, and no­body can take that away from us. Wher­ev­er I trav­el in this world, and I have been to 113 coun­tries where the In­di­an di­as­po­ra has set­tled, peo­ple see me as an In­di­an, and I am very proud of that. We live in T&T; even oth­ers here brand us as In­di­ans. One politi­cian went so far as to say that the state boards look like it’s from In­dia and Bangladesh. The OCI card is im­por­tant to us to seek our iden­ti­ty.”

It can cost thou­sands of dol­lars to ob­tain the OCI card. The card it­self car­ries a fee of around $1,800 (TT), but prov­ing In­di­an an­ces­try is far more com­plex. Ap­pli­cants are re­quired to trace their ge­neal­o­gy or seek a de­c­la­ra­tion from the Court of Ap­peal af­firm­ing their In­di­an ori­gin. Ge­nealog­i­cal trac­ing, of­ten plagued by bu­reau­cra­cy, can cost about $5,000 (TT), while a court route in­curs ad­di­tion­al le­gal fees.

Avidesh Sankar, op­er­a­tor of Sankar Ge­neal­o­gy Con­sul­tan­cy Ser­vice, ex­plained that the OCI of­fers nu­mer­ous ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing visa-free trav­el and the right to live, study, and work in In­dia. But he high­light­ed that the T&T sys­tem is not digi­tised, mak­ing trac­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult.

He said, “We have chal­lenges at the Na­tion­al Archives where some of the ship books are miss­ing, some of the pages have been de­stroyed, so there are years when you will see no in­for­ma­tion here.”

Sankar added that per­mis­sion has not been grant­ed for his agency to as­sist with digi­tis­ing the archives. He said the Gov­ern­ment of In­dia holds iden­ti­cal records. “If the In­di­an gov­ern­ment can make those records avail­able to us, it can be eas­i­er when trac­ing to get that in­for­ma­tion that is not avail­able here,” he not­ed.

He al­so point­ed out in­ef­fi­cien­cies at the Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al’s Of­fice, where on­ly five doc­u­ments can be searched per day, with a three-year search tak­ing al­most two months. Af­fi­davits sworn by peo­ple with dif­fer­ing sur­names, he added, fur­ther com­pli­cate the process.

Chan­di­ni Ram­soon­dar, who ad­dressed the gath­er­ing, said she ap­plied for her OCI in Ju­ly 2024 and re­ceived it by No­vem­ber. She de­scribed In­dia as an af­ford­able des­ti­na­tion for both med­ical treat­ment and tourism but ad­mit­ted the ap­pli­ca­tion process was chal­leng­ing.

She ex­plained that all sup­port­ing doc­u­ments must be in full colour, stamped by the Na­tion­al Archives, and no­tarised by a Com­mis­sion­er of Af­fi­davits.