PM Kamla's speech (edited) at Kolkata Memorial

File - Jan. 11, 2011: Dedication of the Kolkata Memorial for Indentured labourers - 

On 1st January 1920, some nine decades ago, Indian indentureship was terminated wherever it existed at the time. 

In January 2011 the Kolkata Memorial was opened in tribute to some one-and-a half million indentured labourers were transported from here in Garden Reach to destinations in the British, French and Dutch empires. 

The long journey across the kala pani (dark waters) was a traumatic passage for those who had to travel some 10,000 miles westwards from India, across three oceans to the Caribbean. 

On the indenture ships, as on the plantations the gender imbalance was noticeable. The plantation owners, in their desperate search for labourers, paid little heed to the need for women. In general only one third of the girmityas were female and this inequity was the cause of serious dislocation on the ships and on the plantations. It remained as a constant cause of conflict. 

Yet, out of all this adversity, the children of Bharath emerged like mother Lakshmi, out of the dark primeval ocean to create new worlds wherever they went, fired by the deep spiritual moorings which their ancient civilization had provided. 

Today I want to mention just a few examples of the enterprise which the jahagis and jahagins, the bravest of their generations, demonstrated in the lands of their adoption: Fiji, Mauritius, Natal, Seychelles, or the Caribbean. 

Their major contribution, of course, was the resuscitation of the sugar industry in these colonies but that was only a part of the enterprise. They also went to cocoa, coconut, rice and rubber plantations supplementing life on these estates with a wide variety of fruits, flowers, herbs and vegetables which they brought from India. 

One of the amazing untold stories of indentureship has been that of the jahagi bandal (ship’s belongings) with which each immigrant was allowed to embark from Garden Reach. From the time of their embarkation to Mauritius (1834), British Guyana (1838), or Jamaica (1845) this “Georgie bundle” as Westerners called it, literally contained the seeds of a new civilization which enriched the receiving colonies. 

In it they carried tattered copies of the Tulsi Ramayan in which they were comforted by the story of Sri Ram’s long exile and triumphant return. This gave them hope. 

In the Muslim bandal there was the holy Q’uran in Hindi or in Urdu, a constant companion in adversity. Equally important was the wide variety of seeds and cuttings, medicinal herbs and culinary seasonings. There were fruits like mango, pomegranates, bael, jack-fruit, saijjan (Indian drumsticks), tamarind and guavas. 

There were the seeds or dried remains of bodi, ochro, melongene, ginger, lowki (sweet gourd) and karaili (bitter gourd), pumpkins and melons. They brought new varieties of swamp rice, culled from the basin of the Ganges, spinach (bhagi), lentils (dhall), and mustard seeds. 

Using ancient agricultural techniques they drained swamps, converting them to profitable fields in western Jamaica, the Mesopotamia Valley in St. Vincent, the wetlands of Caroni in Trinidad and the coastal regions of the Guyanas. 

They created settlements where none existed before and gave ancestral names to these habitations: Barrackpore, Madras, Coromandel, Fyzabad, Calcutta Settlement, Malabar and Golconda. In the suburb of St. James, just outside of Port of Spain, many streets have been named after ancestral places: Patna, Meerut, Kandahar, Cawnpore, Agra and Lucknow.

Accustomed to the use of sturdy cattle in the Indian fields, the girmityas demanded and obtained the water buffalo (bhaisa) and zebu cattle which revolutionized transport on the plantations. On many ships there was special accommodation for these animals and their cowherd (ahir) minders. After freedom these ancestors reverted to their original caste occupations adding to the skill bases of their host societies: barbers, tailors, weavers, cooks, fishermen and jewellers.

There are many success stories which can be garnered from the lives of those who had braved the hazardous crossing to their new worlds. In the brief time remaining, I shall just touch a few. 

There was Beccani (1869 – 1934) born in a village just outside Basti in Uttar Pradesh. On 31st July 1874, this six year old boarded the Golden Fleece at Garden Reach bound for Chinidad, in the company of her younger brother Balak and their parents Teeliah and Charan. 

As the ship reached Caribbean waters on the 80th day, Charan fell victim to dysentery, leaving 24-year-old Teeliah to face the future with two young children. In Trinidad, Balak, her son, also died. Teeliah did not remarry. She devoted her life to the upbringing of Beccani and to her work on the estate serving two five-year terms until freedom in 1885. 

Beecani, on her part, married George Kernahan an estate manager whose name she used as she built up the finest cocoa estate in eastern Trinidad: St. Isidore. From its original size of 5 acres she extended the property to 420 acres, producing such a high quality of cocoa for the English market (Cadbury and Fry) that these entrepreneurs transported the cuttings from Beccani’s estate to initiate cocoa production in West Africa. 

Today that estate has been converted into an agro-forestry reserve and a haven and for indigenous wildlife. Beccani came from a place in Uttar Pradesh which never produced cocoa but she became Trinidad's premier producer of the crop. 

One also remembers Bharath Singh from Bihar who had to change his name to “Burro” in order to qualify for indentureship. Located in South Trinidad, he was able to purchase his freedom after two years, to bring his brother from India and to purchase a 150 acre estate called “Corial” which soon began to hire indentured labourers. Bharath Singh was one of the pioneers of business in the cities of San Fernando and Chaguanas.

In our own time the descendants of those who departed from Garden Reach have ascended to the highest offices in their respective countries. 

All of us would recall Sir S. Ramgoolam as Prime Minister of Mauritius, Ramdat Misier as Acting President of Suriname and R. Shankar who became President in 1997. 

In Guyana, Dr. Cheddi Jagan was elected Executive President in 1992 and he was followed by Bharath Jagdeo and now Donald Ramoutar. In 1987, Justice Noor Hassanali was elected President of Trinidad and Tobago and re-elected five years later; and in 1995 the trade unionists/lawyer, Basdeo Panday, was elected Prime Minister of our nation. 

Throughout this long journey from Garden Reach to a far-flung diaspora, the spiritual and cultural heritage of this great civilization has inspired and nurtured its numerous diasporas. 

At the present time India's emergence as a world power has provided a further boost to that self-confidence, enabling her diaspora to contribute fully to the development of their many respective nations. 

In that sense India's ancient message of whole world being one family bears special resonance in today's world. So I would end with that Sanskrit mantra, Vasudevam Kutumbakam, meaning that the whole world is one family.