Shas­tri Boodan

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) is call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to take ur­gent steps to re­store the Li­on House, an icon­ic sym­bol of In­di­an in­den­ture­ship lo­cat­ed in Ch­agua­nas. The his­toric struc­ture, which has fall­en in­to dis­re­pair since the death of its own­er Suren Capildeo in 2016, was the home of No­bel Lau­re­ate Sir V.S. Naipaul and promi­nent­ly fea­tured in his nov­el A House for Mr Biswas.

The ap­peal was made by CCIC Pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj dur­ing the Cham­ber’s In­di­an Ar­rival Day cel­e­bra­tion held on Thurs­day at the Pas­sage to Asia Restau­rant.

De­scrib­ing the site as a na­tion­al trea­sure, he urged res­o­lu­tion of any on­go­ing is­sues that may be de­lay­ing restora­tion ef­forts. “As res­i­dents of Ch­agua­nas we are ask­ing for the restora­tion of this na­tion­al trea­sure, and it is. I want to call on the gov­ern­ment and the Capildeo fam­i­ly to re­solve any is­sues pre­vent­ing this. We must ho­n­our this her­itage just as Britain ho­n­oured Shake­speare’s birth­place.”

Ma­haraj al­so called for the in­volve­ment of the High Com­mis­sion of In­dia, rec­om­mend­ing that they ap­proach the TATA Group for fund­ing sup­port should a so­lu­tion be reached. Ma­haraj cit­ed TATA's track record of fi­nanc­ing In­di­an her­itage land­marks world­wide. He fur­ther high­light­ed the con­tri­bu­tions of the In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, not­ing that de­scen­dants of in­den­tured labour­ers have pro­duced dis­tin­guished in­di­vid­u­als in fields such as pol­i­tics, busi­ness, and pub­lic ser­vice — in­clud­ing two prime min­is­ters.

Fea­ture speak­er Dalvi Paladee, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Pen­ny­wise Cos­met­ics, en­cour­aged the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to up­hold spir­i­tu­al val­ues and an­ces­tral tra­di­tions in de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

“One of the rea­sons for suc­cess has to do with how we live, the uni­ty in the fam­i­lies, that val­ue came from the an­ces­tors, no mat­ter how hard it was they nev­er had in­fight­ing, they were al­ways try­ing to cre­ate and live in peace with each oth­er,” said Paladee.

He spoke of his grand­fa­ther, a poor farmer, who demon­strat­ed gen­eros­i­ty by shar­ing his sur­plus pro­duce with cus­tomers. Paladee of­fered three prin­ci­ples for liv­ing a mean­ing­ful life: faith, de­vo­tion, and self­less ser­vice.

“Have you used the teach­ings of the an­ces­tors to move your­self for­ward like I have, are we prac­tic­ing this full faith and tak­ing any kind of pres­sure for the so­ci­ety to­mor­row, are we, have we. If you do what the an­ces­tors had done and live self­less­ly you would have en­hanced the life for the peo­ple of to­mor­row.”

Greet­ings were de­liv­ered by Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment for Ch­agua­nas West and East, Dr Neil Go­sine and Van­dana Mo­hit, re­spec­tive­ly and Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed.

The event con­clud­ed with the pre­sen­ta­tion of the CCIC’s an­nu­al In­di­an Ar­rival Day awards.

Ho­n­ourees in­clud­ed:

Boodoo Sim­boo – SME of the Year

Dane Char­ran – Sports

Sen­a­tor De­oroop Teemal – Cul­ture

Franklyn Ma­haraj – Ex­cel­lence in Busi­ness

Keil Tack­lals­ingh – Law

Ravi Bis­samb­har – Cul­ture