In time for to­day’s In­di­an Ar­rival Day cel­e­bra­tions, a lo­cal not for prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion has been launched with the aim of pre­serv­ing the lega­cies of In­di­an in­den­ture­ship.

The Gir­mitya Foun­da­tion, which is a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion reg­is­tered in T&T, was of­fi­cial­ly launched last week Sun­day at The Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi In­sti­tute for Cul­tur­al Co­op­er­a­tion.

Founder Nu­tan Ra­goobir stat­ed that In­di­an im­mi­grants were made to sign a Gir­mit (agree­ment) as part of their bond­ing to hard labour and as such were called Gir­mityas.

Ra­goobir stat­ed that the foun­da­tion was able to suc­cess­ful­ly achieve its first goal of cre­at­ing and im­ple­ment­ing a dig­i­tal li­brary ded­i­cat­ed to In­di­an his­to­ry—Gir­mitya Archives (www.gir­mityaarchives.org).

She ex­plained that im­por­tant doc­u­ments were cur­rent­ly scat­tered through­out var­i­ous sources and if not digi­tised, they could eas­i­ly per­ish.

“The Gir­mitya Archives is a dig­i­tal li­brary for schol­ars, aca­d­e­mics and stu­dents, pro­vid­ing ac­cess to re­search re­lat­ing to the In­di­an Di­as­po­ra and In­di­an His­to­ry,” the web­site stat­ed.

“We will help and en­cour­age you to ex­plore a wide range of con­tent as we col­lab­o­rate with an aca­d­e­m­ic com­mu­ni­ty, con­nect­ing stu­dents, ac­tivists and schol­ars while low­er­ing costs and sav­ing time,” it stat­ed.

Stat­ing that “re­mak­ing that what we did yes­ter­day is not al­ways suf­fi­cient for to­mor­row,” Ra­goobir said the Gir­mitya Foun­da­tion had al­ready iden­ti­fied its next project, one that would pre­serve a most pop­u­lar art form brought with the In­di­ans when they crossed the Kala Pani (black wa­ters).

Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh, se­nior lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and ad­vi­sor to the Foun­da­tion de­scribed our el­ders as walk­ing li­braries as they pos­sess a wealth of his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge.

Telucks­ingh en­cour­aged the younger gen­er­a­tion to lis­ten to sto­ries of the past as they are filled with strug­gles and tri­umphs so that they could ap­pre­ci­ate the im­por­tance of val­ues, morals and ethics.

He al­so em­pha­sised the need for his­tor­i­cal snap­shots to be col­lect­ed and en­cour­aged fam­i­lies to send any such record­ings to Gir­mitya Foun­da­tion for preser­va­tion.

At the launch, guests were greet­ed by tas­sa per­formed by First Cit­i­zens Drag­on Boys Tas­sa Group.

Lo­cal band Kaveesh The Band then per­formed the best of Bol­ly­wood melodies, in­clud­ing the hits from ac­tors ac­tors Amitabh Bachchan and Ra­jesh Khan­na.

There was al­so a spe­cial per­for­mance by sev­en year old Katelin Sul­tan who stunned the au­di­ence with her ren­di­tions.

Mo­hip Poon­wassie, an en­tre­pre­neur treat­ed guests to in­stant pho­tos with his pho­to booth, Per­fect Shots Ltd, cap­tur­ing hap­py mo­ments while Kash­miri Chai­wala pro­vid­ed chai, pako­ras and var­i­ous In­di­an snacks, en­sur­ing that every­one had the best of del­i­ca­cies.

At­tend­ing the launch were Pun­dit Ab­hedanand Per­sad-Shar­ma, Pun­dit Baldeo Ma­haraj, Pun­dit Narain Tewari, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad and his wife Camille Ramkalawan-Seep­er­sad and Di­rec­tor of the Ma­hat­ma Gand­hi In­sti­tute for Cul­tur­al Co­op­er­a­tion, Ramya Ajay.

The launch of Gir­mitya Foun­da­tion was spon­sored by The Guardian Group, Hand Arnold Ltd, No­vo In­ter­na­tion­al Ltd, First Cit­i­zens Bank Ltd, Xtra Foods and The Meena House.

Thank­ing the spon­sors for not on­ly sup­port­ing the Foun­da­tion but for shar­ing in its vi­sion, Nu­tan Ra­goobir stat­ed that the launch was not on­ly a cel­e­bra­tion of In­di­an lega­cies but al­so a cel­e­bra­tion of life it­self as per­sons were able to re­turn to nor­mal­cy af­ter two years of frus­tra­tions and trau­mas.