Have you visited India?
Yes, I’ve visited India. It was a state visit, and unfortunately with a state visit, there’s a lot of protocol, so I did not get a chance to see as much of the real India that I wish. But I managed to trace back my ancestors, some of them. Many had died. But I managed to meet some distant relatives and it was amazing for me. The place where they live seems to have been stuck in a time warp.
What area were they from?
They were from Rai Bareli district in Uttar Pradesh. But that area is a time warp and there were so many people, but unfortunately I couldn’t communicate with them, because as you know, Guyana lost Hindi, unlike Suriname.
But I could feel the emotion. It was a touching experience for me because I keep thinking of my grandfather, who’d left and he was only 17 years old. Leaving that area, that remote part of India at 17, not knowing where he was going and having to make that distant journey to Guyana. It must have been very brave of him to do it. So I was very pleased to go back and see that. I never thought much about my grandfather because I didn’t know him. He died before I was born, so that made me want to find out more and it’s almost like a story revealing itself, it’s very interesting.
I can’t wait until I find my people from India. My research has showed me so far that on my mom’s side, her great, grandfather is from India, and from my other side, my great grandfather is from India.
I got someone to help me, I’m not going to tell you who. And the person got some documents for me and I misplaced the documents, that was a year before I went to India. And I got another person, one of my staff to go back to the archives and I realised the document I had gotten from the first person was wrong. So you have to do a lot of cross-referencing, it’s not just going to the archives and finding the ship, if you know the year that it came and the surname of the person, but it’s cross-referencing with the birth certificates. There’s a number on the birth certificates. Each person has a number who came on the ship and if it’s on that certificate, then that’s the person. So you need to do a lot of cross-referencing.
The problem I’m having is that no one knows the ancestor’s names.
Oh, well then that’s going to be a nightmare, it could be a nightmare because my father’s surname is not my grandfather’s name.
But you knew your grandfather’s name.
Yes, I knew his name.
You’re lucky because it was just your grandfather. Did you know him?
No, no he died, as I said before.
Before you were born?
I didn’t know much about him and my father never spoke much about him. But it’s just that this little awakening happened maybe a couple of years ago.
Why did you want to do this?
I guess, it’s something that just happens to you, and I can’t pin it down to an exact event, but it just happened and I wanted to know and I said, I’m going to India.
You’re so lucky, because you found out where they’re from. Did your relatives and other people you came into contact with in India, did they embrace you as a fellow Indian or were you seen as a foreigner or outsider?
Well from what I’ve seen, I don’t know if as a fellow Indian, but it was a very emotional event. They were all there, people were crying. There was a huge crowd and I know they were shouting things that you can feel the emotions, I didn’t know exactly what they were shouting, but they were connecting. It was a very emotionally charged experience and although I did not understand what people were saying, I knew they were very happy and the women were crying in the village.
Wow, were these your grandfather’s sibling’s children?
No, they’re very distant relatives
What was your initial reaction to India? And did it change overtime while you were there?
Well, I went to India in, I think it was 1993, with Dr Jagan. At that time I was a minister in the government; he was president at that time. I’ve seen major changes in the country. But the first impression of India is that here is a world power, a country that is one of the leading countries in information technology, that produces fighter aircraft that has produced a nuclear weapon and simultaneously this is country with such an intense, huge level of poverty. So it’s a contrast, a huge contrast, I saw this also in South Africa, its like a first world and a third world country in one, combined. But you can see it distinctly, there is a sharp separation between the two, and that’s my impression of India. Of course, it’s also mystic too.
My parents tell me they left because of political hardships, economic difficulties and the racial tension, this caused them to leave. Why do you think so many Guyanese have left in this sort of massive exodus that we’ve had in this country?
As I gather, your parents left in the 80’s.
We left in the mid 80’s.
The mid 80’s, that was a very difficult period in our country, I think it’s well documented now that we had almost--we had about three decades with no democracy, bordering a dictatorship in Guyana, where elections were routinely stolen and it was only with international pressure and local pressure that in 1992 we returned to democracy, so your parents are right, that was a very tough period in our country.
It was characterized by huge economic problems, political repression and there was this air of hopelessness. Just to give you an example, in that period, several things were prohibited, food stuff, so if the police found you with bread made from wheat, or roti made from wheaten flour, they could lock you up.
The laws were so repressive that they made criminals almost of every family. People were eating the wheaten flour or the bread, so the children became criminals and the parents became criminals. Just think about it, whatever you eat, if you ate bread you could end up in jail. And that’s just a small example of what was happening.
There were so many shortages. Malnutrition rates were high. The country became heavily indebted and there was this air of hopelessness, there was nothing to look forward to, and a lot of our people left Guyana.
We still have problems today; we still have economic problems. We’re still trying to move the country forward.
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