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My personal quest for my own connection to India was always a yearning long before I met with Minister Jagdish Tytler of the then newly formed Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) in Brussels, Belgium in October 2004.
My continuing search and inquiries led me through many pathways but nothing definitive that would allow me to pursue a direct link to the ancestral village of my great grandfather Pooriya who arrived in Guyana (then British Guiana) as an Indian indentured laborer in 1853 aboard the ship Adelaide. That information was shown in the single line entry in the birth record of my grandfather Ramlochannd born March 10, 1867 in Guyana. That single line entry also listed my great grandmother Radhah having arrived in Guyana in 1860 aboard ship Colgrain. With no ship records of 1853 or 1860 available in the archives in Guyana, my search moved beyond Guyana to other possible sources such as India and the United Kingdom where I was hopeful that secondary records were kept.
In conjunction with that pursuit, I wanted to become more involved in civic organizations that focused on persons of Indian origin (PIOs) living in various countries. In 1998, I co-founded of the Guyanese East Indian Association (GEICA) which focused on adaptation and assimilation of PIOs from Guyana (and other parts of the Caribbean) in the United States. That same year, I became a life member of the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO International) and shortly thereafter advanced to the position of Secretary General.
From both my vantage point as Secretary General of GOPIO and my regular interaction with other PIOs and non-resident Indians (NRIs) on a global scale, I was able to view the entire global landscape of PIOs and the history of emigration from India during the 19th and 20th centuries. In particular, I acquired historical details, more in-depth knowledge and valuable information on Indian indentured laborers from 1834 through 1920. This appealed to me since I was interested in knowing more about my great grandfather and his journey to Guyana, with the intent that perhaps someday I would be able to find his ancestral village.
After review of my proposal and subsequent discussions, Minister Tytler of MOIA was convinced that my request to initiate and chair a session at PBD2005 was a worthwhile one: I chaired the first “Tracing The Roots” session at Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) 2005 in Mumbai, India. That session spawned renewed intensity among PIOs and encouraged MOIA to establish “Tracing The Roots” initiatives within MOIA and those were qualified to do actual searches for families in Indian based on emigration information obtained in the countries of destination. A few Indian states, including Bihar, also initiated programs to assist PIOs to trace their respective families and their ancestral villages.
I considered this a welcome trend that contributed to more interest among descendants of Indian indentured laborers and their quest to connect to their ancestral villages and, in effect, to India itself. It was a very successful session that drew on the experiences of many in PIO countries, historians, academicians and custodians of records of Indian emigration, in particular Indian indentured laborers from 1834 through 1920.
Thereafter, I was emboldened and encouraged to seek more and to do more to fulfill that personal desire to find and connect with the land (even the village) of my ancestors.
Since that time and previous as well, it has been a journey into the unknown, seeking those I have not known but wanting to know. Yet somehow it felt that I may have known them all along but have been missing the connection that could fulfill a long desire that exists as a vacuum. For lack of success in my own quest, that personal quest was quickly transformed to a universal one, representative of the descendants of those who left India from the ports of Kolkata (Calcutta), Chennai (Madras) and Mumbai (Bombay). In so many ways, it was fulfillment of another kind, for the larger good – and how fascinating this journey has been at every single point for me.
While I was standing with Leela Sarup and MOIA officials on the Kidderpore Depot docks on July 7, 2010, that realization came to fruition when the agreement was made with Dr A Didar Singh, Secretary of MOIA, to embark on a two-phase effort to pay tribute to Indian indentured laborers of 19th and 20th centuries (in particular, from 1834 through 1920): Installation of a memorial plaque at Kidderpore Depot (to be unveiled on January 11, 2011) to be followed by a memorial museum and resource center in a suitably significant site in Kolkata. In that respect, the July 7, 2010 meeting was quite historic
indeed.
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