The Coming of Indians to Trinidad

THE COMING OF INDIANS TO TRINIDAD Indians came to Trinidad to perform the most important job anybody can do for a country - save it from collapsing. They did that job, but received no thanks or recognition. Instead they were cheated and denied their rightful place in the country they helped to build. This situation still exists today. This is a brief idea of the story of those early Indians, the greatest story inTrinidad in modern times. Indians came after to work after the end of slavery, when the freed slaves left the estates and refused to work on the sugar estates. Without labour the sugar estates broke down, and since sugar was Trinidad this meant the end of the country. The planters were desperate. They tried everything, like blacks from the other islands, Portuguese from Madeira, Chinese, even white workers from England end Scotland. Nobody gave satisfaction until the Indians came. Those 219 who arrived on the Fatal Razack on May 30, 1845, the day we now celebrate as Indian Arrival Day, were the first of 143,000 who gave new hope to a dying Trinidad, FROM WHERE? Indians came to work in Trinidad from 1845 to 1917, at an average of about 2,000 a year. Most came from North India and left from tine port of Calcutta, and about 5,000 came from South India, leaving from the port of Madras. Those from North India came mostly from the plains of the Ganges River, in what is now Uttar Pradesh, with some from Bihar and Bengal. The name Beharry in Trinidad comes from Bihari, meaning a person from Bihar. In 1871, to take a year at random, those who left from Calcutta to work overseas were 41 per cent from central India, Agra and Oudh, 29 per cent came from Bihar and 22 per cent from West Bengal. Those who came to Trinidad would have been in about the same proportion from those parts of India. An interesting point is that the very first India's up to the l850'|s many of the Indians who came were "hill coolies" or Dhangars from Chota Nagpur. But