In 1995, the Government of Trinidad proclaimed May 30 as the “Indian Arrival Day,”
thereby acknowledging for the first time the arrival of Indian indentured laborers in
the Caribbean, who later came to be recognized as the Indian diaspora.
In the early nineteenth century, hundreds of Indians were enticed into being
indentured laborers or were kidnapped and forced into it. They were parceled to different
British colonies in Fiji, Surinam, Guyana, Mauritius, Malaysia, and Trinidad. Their journey
to the tea, sugar, or rubber plantation sites narrates a heart-wrenching saga of inhuman
treatment equivalent to that meted out to cattle. The wretched condition in which they
survived, their inability to raise funds to return home, and the deceitful agreement
fabricated by the plantation owners shattered every hope of return or freedom. Illiteracy
became the biggest impediment in their endeavor for a better life and they eventually
compromised to a life of slavery. Their inability to find their way back home led to the
severing of all ties with their homeland. Once some change in living conditions took
place, these immigrants became owners of some plantations and with it the desire to
return also receded.
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