May­or of Ari­ma, Bal­li­ram Ma­haraj, has urged cit­i­zens to em­brace uni­ty as Trinidad and To­ba­go marks the 181st an­niver­sary of In­di­an Ar­rival Day.

In a state­ment, Ma­haraj re­flect­ed on the courage and re­silience of the In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers who crossed the Kala Pani to build new lives in the Caribbean.

He high­light­ed the con­tri­bu­tions of those ear­ly mi­grants, not­ing that they car­ried seeds, spices, sa­cred texts, and tra­di­tions that be­came in­te­gral to the na­tion’s iden­ti­ty. Ma­haraj ref­er­enced the schol­ar­ship of the late Pro­fes­sor Brins­ley Sama­roo, whose work traced the ori­gins of many labour­ers to Ut­tar Pradesh, In­dia’s agri­cul­tur­al and spir­i­tu­al heart­land.

The may­or shared per­son­al con­nec­tions to this his­to­ry, re­call­ing how his grand­par­ents ar­rived from Ay­o­d­hya–Faiz­abad in 1911 and worked in sug­ar­cane and dairy farm­ing. He al­so re­count­ed the sto­ry of his wife’s grand­fa­ther, Pal­tu Per­sad, who mi­grat­ed from Basti in 1910 and lat­er re­turned to In­dia to es­tab­lish a school that con­tin­ues to ed­u­cate chil­dren to­day.

Ma­haraj em­pha­sized that these bonds are not con­fined to his­to­ry, point­ing to his son Navin’s grow­ing ties with In­dia in spir­i­tu­al, cul­tur­al, and busi­ness spheres. He stressed that Trinidad and To­ba­go and In­dia share op­por­tu­ni­ties for col­lab­o­ra­tion in en­er­gy, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, agri­cul­ture, ed­u­ca­tion, and trade.

Re­flect­ing on mile­stones such as 188 years of Eman­ci­pa­tion, 63 years of In­de­pen­dence, and 50 years as a Re­pub­lic, Ma­haraj said the most im­por­tant mes­sage for the na­tion is uni­ty. “We must see that Di­vine spark in every hu­man be­ing, re­spect all, get rid of hate, anger, re­venge, ag­gres­sion and for­give one an­oth­er,” he de­clared.

He not­ed that while cit­i­zens prac­tice to­geth­er­ness dur­ing Car­ni­val, sports, and Christ­mas, po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions of­ten un­der­mine na­tion­al co­he­sion. Ma­haraj al­so ad­dressed ris­ing crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly home in­va­sions, urg­ing cit­i­zens to adopt the mind­set of be­ing their “neigh­bour’s keep­er.”

As the coun­try com­mem­o­rates In­di­an Ar­rival Day, Ma­haraj’s call for uni­ty res­onates as both a trib­ute to the sac­ri­fices of the past and a vi­sion for a more har­mo­nious fu­ture.