Trinidad and Tobago’s Republican Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and the right to worship. This freedom must never be surrendered to any authority or circumstance. The celebration of Diwali, deeply rooted in the history of East Indian indentured laborers who arrived 187 years ago from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, remains a testament to…
This was no mere diplomatic courtesy call. India’s renewed outreach must be seen through the lens of historical connection and future potential. Nearly 44 percent of Trinidad and Tobago’s Indian diaspora traces its origins to the indentured labour system—deep roots that have flourished into rich cultural traditions shared in cuisine, music,…
In the years gone by, India was defined by its religious and cultural strengths, but it has now taken Prime Minister Modi, with a new initiative, to give a boost to India-Caribbean ties through a purely…
The celebration of Diwali, the Festival of Lights, has gained much national and international prominence in Trinidad, where the annual Divali Nagar at Chaguanas sees over 100,000 people thronging the nine-nights carnival spread over a 27-acre site from all over the Caribbean, the United States and beyond.
The observance of Diwali has its roots for 186 years since the arrival of the first of East Indians who came here from India, principally Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. They not only contributed to socio-economic development, but engineered a religious and cultural platform. The Indian diaspora proudly celebrates numerous East Indian religious…
Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has just returned from India where he signed an agreement, among other things, to assist in the establishment of a cricket academy at Trincity in northern Trinidad.
He became the first prime minister of Indian descent since the arrival of Indians in this Caribbean nation as indentured labourers from India between 1845 and 1920.
Of the 1.3 million population of Trinidad and Tobago, about 40 per cent are of Indian extraction, descendants of people who were brought here by the British as indentured labourers in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Dookeran pointed out that a journey for freedom, is what ignited the 'Yatra Jaaree Hai' (the journey had begun). In India in modern times, that freedom was given political expression in 1947; it was not only the freedom of India, and it soon spread to all places that was called the British Empire in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean"
It is about time that celebrations to mark Indian Arrival Day, whether in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, Mauritius, or Fiji, take on a new format and a more scientific approach
