Economist Indera Sagewan-Alli says she has a responsibility to her ancestors in India and here at home to do better as that is an East Indian tradition.
In an address to dozens of villagers yesterday at an Indian Arrival Day function at Robert Trace in Warrenville, she said: “I remember as young girl when people like Prof Brinsley Samaroo and Trevor Sudama lobbied for this holiday. They didn’t just want a day to sit down and do nothing. What they thought was important was that as a country, we took time to recognise the contribution of East Indians to the development of Trinidad and Tobago.”
Sagewan-Alli said while much had been achieved academically, much more has being taken for granted.
Also speaking at the function hosted by managing director of Sheik Lisha Limited Churchill Azard Akaloo were Prof Samaroo, Pastor Clive Dottin and visiting lecturer from India at the University of the West Indies, Dr Syed Ejaz Hussain.
Sagewan-Alli said everything was failing in society: “We are losing more than we are gaining and we need to stop and intervene. I know that intervention is what we need because if we don’t intervene . . . we have already lost about two generations which Cepep and URP jobs can’t buy.”
Samaroo, who gave the crowd a history lesson, said of the 227 East Indians who arrived here on May 30, 1845, ten or 12 were Muslims and the others were Hindus.
“It was a man from Bombay called Ibrahim bin Yousseff who took his ship—Fath al Razack∏—and brought the 227 Indians to Trinidad,” he said.
Samaroo said there were 245 voyages after that between 1845 and 1917.
“Sugarcane didn’t start here in central or in south Trinidad but in north and later it moved to south and central. The early pioneers who developed sugarcane cultivation in Trinidad were the Indian indentured labourers who went to the place that is today called St James but if you think about St James in 1845 around there, what is now Western Main Road was a track,” he said, adding that the labourers planted sugarcane there and all the tracks were subsequently given Indian names such as Delhi, Bombay, Patna, Madras, Calcutta, Baroda, Mooneram and Nizam and Hyderabad.