While most may teth­er the ini­tial eco­nom­ic im­pact of the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty to the sug­ar in­dus­try, a lo­cal his­to­ri­an is urg­ing the pub­lic to ac­knowl­edge the wider con­tri­bu­tion of the group to the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

His­to­ri­an and lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh told the Busi­ness Guardian that un­for­tu­nate­ly, even the coun­try’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem has re­in­forced this stereo­type.

He said, “There is this stereo­type that In­di­ans on­ly came to work in the sug­ar in­dus­try. Pri­ma­ry school chil­dren, sec­ondary school chil­dren have grown up know­ing this, even adults. And when I tell them that In­di­ans have con­tributed to the co­coa, the cof­fee, the rice, the co­conut in­dus­tries, they are sur­prised.”

Teelucks­ingh said the con­tri­bu­tion to agri­cul­ture by the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty should not be un­der­stat­ed, as well as the fact that there was an over­lap where the com­mu­ni­ty worked along­side the African com­mu­ni­ty in the de­vel­op­ment of that sec­tor.

“I think this is a very im­por­tant point. When you look at the con­tri­bu­tion to the agri­cul­ture sec­tor, some might even know the term peas­ant farm­ing. Af­ter 1845, they were the new labour force and they con­tin­ued the peas­ant farm­ing that the ex-slaves were al­so do­ing,” said Teelucks­ingh, in a phone in­ter­view on Tues­day.

“I al­so want to men­tion a very im­por­tant point, and you might not be­lieve this, but on the sug­ar es­tates, Africans were work­ing with the In­di­ans. Peo­ple don’t re­alise that that hap­pened in the ear­ly stages of in­den­ture­ship, not just in Trinidad but al­so in Guyana. When the labour force was now com­ing in, the In­di­ans from In­dia, the ex-slaves, all they on­ly could do was agri­cul­ture. They were not trained to be clerks or book­keep­ers or any­thing. So af­ter slav­ery end­ed, some of the (Africans) con­tin­ued to be em­ployed in agri­cul­ture.”

Econ­o­mist and for­mer Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Win­ston Dook­er­an al­so not­ed the sig­nif­i­cant role the In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty played in the de­vel­op­ment of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

“In the ear­li­er days, the con­tri­bu­tion was in the fields of sug­ar and co­coa, which pro­vid­ed the main­stay for the de­vel­op­ment of those in­dus­tries in terms of the labour in­put,” said Dook­er­an, who ex­plained that since then the com­mu­ni­ty has ex­celled in var­i­ous oth­er fields which has led to ma­jor de­vel­op­ments in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He ex­plained the group’s con­tri­bu­tion in that field was one of three sig­nif­i­cant fields the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty has de­vel­oped im­mense­ly since com­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“One is in en­tre­pre­neur­ship. There has been a fair amount of suc­cess in build­ing en­tre­pre­neurs out­side the pub­lic sec­tor, to which the (East In­di­an) com­mu­ni­ty has con­tributed,” said Dook­er­an, “I think build­ing the eco­nom­ic base in sug­ar, co­coa, cof­fee, etc in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor was an ear­ly con­tri­bu­tion sub­se­quent­ly en­hanced by en­tre­pre­neur­ship in the busi­ness sec­tor, and then lat­er on by the ca­pac­i­ty to raise funds to save. The ten­den­cy to save. Now, this is not ex­clu­sive on­ly to the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty, but I think this is part of the con­tri­bu­tion they have made. The gen­er­al con­tri­bu­tion of all so­ci­eties that are worked for the ben­e­fit of our coun­try.”

He ex­plained that the com­mu­ni­ty had done sig­nif­i­cant work to­wards the de­vel­op­ment of the fi­nan­cial sec­tor based on the de­sire to main­tain and gen­er­ate sav­ings.

“They have had a strong de­sire for sav­ings in their own lives. And they have con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to en­hanc­ing the sav­ings ca­pa­bil­i­ty of the coun­try, which of course meant that they have made a con­tri­bu­tion to the fi­nan­cial sec­tor to help main­tain the sta­bil­i­ty of the fi­nan­cial sec­tor by their sav­ings’ habits. Sav­ing, as you know, is a nec­es­sary re­quire­ment up­on which you can build a so­ci­ety and cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­vest­ment. And if sav­ings are not pur­sued, then you lose the chance of in­vest­ment,” said Dook­er­an.

Teelucks­ingh al­so not­ed that sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant busi­ness­es have sprung up from the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty, post in­den­ture­ship and In­de­pen­dence, which con­tin­ue to be house­hold names to­day.

“Some of the ear­ly peo­ple like the drinks man­u­fac­tur­er SM Jaleel we have now, start­ed in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. Even in the trans­port in­dus­try, re­tail, and whole­sale, a lot of these In­di­ans went in­to those com­pa­nies. Some of the au­to sup­ply firms, even the Chan­cel­lor Ho­tel, Am­ral’s Trav­el, all these com­pa­nies were owned by In­di­ans,” said Teelucks­ingh.

He al­so point­ed out the pi­o­neer­ing In­di­an women of busi­ness such as the cos­me­tol­o­gist Ram­doolar­ie Ma­haraj of the Madame Ma­haraj School of Cos­me­tol­ogy and He­len Bhag­wans­ingh, who passed away in De­cem­ber last year, who cre­at­ed lega­cy fran­chis­es with gen­er­a­tional im­pact.

Dook­er­an said the com­mu­ni­ty’s con­tri­bu­tion to gov­er­nance and ed­u­ca­tion al­so played a ma­jor role in the de­vel­op­ment of the eco­nom­ic frame­work of mod­ern Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“The area of gov­er­nance, in this re­spect, in try­ing to build good gov­er­nance in the coun­try, they have been able to build the nec­es­sary in­sti­tu­tions at the lo­cal lev­el and be­yond that. The in­di­vid­u­als who have per­formed over the years in of­fice, em­a­nat­ing from the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty, by and large op­er­at­ed with dis­tinc­tion in the area of gov­er­nance,” said Dook­er­an.

“The third area I think, that you might want to fo­cus on, is in the quest for ed­u­ca­tion. Both in terms of build­ing in­sti­tu­tions for ed­u­ca­tion, and in terms of ac­quir­ing a de­sire for high or high­er ed­u­ca­tion. Re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions have built a lot of ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions to sup­port the ed­u­ca­tion dri­ve in the post-In­de­pen­dence era,” said the for­mer Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

“I am re­fer­ring to the con­tri­bu­tion in that area, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­spect to the Pres­by­ter­ian com­mu­ni­ty, the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty, and the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty, which added new in­sti­tu­tions to those that ex­ist­ed be­fore and con­tin­ue to ex­ist.”

Dook­er­an said the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty in T&T has pro­gressed sig­nif­i­cant­ly over time and was large­ly well-placed to build on what had been achieved by the group. How­ev­er, he felt there was still some re­luc­tance to ven­ture in­to new ar­eas of busi­ness and he hoped that the new gen­er­a­tion would take up this chal­lenge.

“I think an area that I sense the East In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty wants to move in­to, but I’m not too sure they’re feel­ing con­fi­dent enough to do so, is in the area of in­no­va­tion. I sense that they don’t have the full con­fi­dence to go from traders in­to in­no­va­tion,” said Dook­er­an.

“I think the younger gen­er­al­ly gen­er­a­tion might be more in­clined to do that. But that’s look­ing to the fu­ture. There might be some­thing that will as­sist them to get ex­cit­ed to go in­to in­no­va­tion and to get the con­fi­dence to do that.”