A quest to connect Guyana ancestors' India links
Posted September 5th, 2007 by TariqueFeatures By Shubha Singh, IANS

New Delhi : Two women, strangers to each other but on a similar mission to trace links between India and the South American nation of Guyana, spent the summer months touring villages in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Leena Ramotar, a resident of New York, and Nalini Mohabir from Canada have ties in Guyana that stretch back to India. Though they have never met each other, both Nalini and Leena's family history have a similar trajectory - their ancestors went to British Guiana (now called Guyana) as indentured workers from villages in Uttar Pradesh, their parents emigrated from Guyana to seek better opportunities in the West. And they grew up in Britain and Canada.

In recent times, issues of identity, race and migration have gained importance for both the women, who are part of a secondary migration but whose ties to the original homeland are linked through the question of race.

Both of them have been moved to search for their roots and have made a trip to India to look for the villages from where they ancestors migrated. Unlike Indian migrants to Mauritius and Trinidad, people in Guyana lost touch with India because of the distance and the political situation in that country.

In 1868, the SS Trevelyn sailed from Calcutta (now Kolkata) to Guiyana carrying a shipload of indentured workers to work on the sugarcane plantations. In 1955, the MV Resurgent was the last ship from Guyana that repatriated the descendents of the indentured workers to India.

Leena Ramotar's great grandmother, Deepani was on board the Trevelyn to Guyana and Nalini Mohabir's grandfather, Chhablal Ramcharan, was the Repatriation Officer who accompanied the Resurgent to India.

A schoolteacher in New York, 54-year-old Leena Ramotar wanted to learn more about her ancestry. Her voyage of discovery began after she managed to get copies of immigration passes for three of her ancestors from the National Achieves in Georgetown, Guyana, last year.

The immigration passes gave the name of the individual, his caste and father's and mother's names together with the home address in India.

It zeroed down her search to three districts -- Buxar in Bihar and Rae Bareli and Ballia in Uttar Pradesh. Nalini also obtained copies of the immigration passes for her great grandparents, who came from Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh and Ajmer in Rajasthan.

Nalini Mohabir knew little about her links to India. She explained: "I grew up in Canada, I knew that I had a Guyana connection, had vivid memories of meeting aunts, uncles and lots of cousins during visits to Guyana. I had little idea of the India connection but in Canada I was an Indo-Canadian. As I grew up I wanted to know how I was connected to India."

After hearing tales about the Resurgent from her grandfather, Nalini decided to undertake an academic project to locate the passengers on the Resurgent or their descendents in India.

But as she packed her bags to fly to India, her father asked her to visit their ancestral village and bring back a bottle full of soil from the village somewhere in Faizabad, about 700 km east of New Delhi.

The search took Nalini to Ajmer but she could not find any links to her great grandmother, Moonie. She was, however, luckier with her great grandfather's village Dewarya.

Her great grandfather, Ramcharan, son of Sheoraj, left Faizabad in 1896. A local contact well versed in local lore informed her that Dewarya village was now part of Barunbazar.

A tour of Barunbazar did not provide any clues till one man directed her to a locality called Ranibazar where she met a young man called Vipin Jaiswal. His 95-year old grandmother, Bagdai, was still alive, her memory was fading but she gave the names of her parents-in-law as Shivraj and Latchmi.

She also said that that her husband Dukhi had an older brother Ramcharan, who had gone away. This was the family Nalini was looking for. Dukhi had two sons, Om Prakash, Jaiswal's father, and Ganga Prasad who lives in Mumbai.

Leena Ramotar was not as fortunate in her quest. After having no luck in Buxar and Rae Bareli, Leena toured the area around Ballia to look for the village her father's maternal grandmother Deepani came from.

In the Ballia record room she located a reference to Lalo, the name listed as Deepani's father's name in the immigration pass. But Lalo's descendants did not have recollection of his sister Deepani or what happened to her.

Leena was not quite convinced about the connection because she could not find any reference to her ancestor Deepani in the land records. People tried to explain to her that in those days, the names of women rarely appeared on official records.

Leena Ramotar's ancestor left her village home about 130 years ago and memories of her departure had faded; Nalini's great grandfather left 111 years ago and there was still someone left to remember his name.

Nalini said: "For the first time I connected with India. But I was so overwhelmed at meeting all those people that I forgot to take the soil that my father asked for."

Leena Ramotar did not have the same satisfaction at locating some who remembered family history. She had to cut short her visit because of her mother's illness, but she plans to return to India to do some further research.

Nalini is also sure she will return, and probably bring her father to Dewarya to collect the handful of soil that would connect him with his roots.

(Shubha Singh can be contacted at shubyat@gmail.com)

One can only admire these women who are willing to make great sacrifices to find their ancestors. Good luck ladies.

It is not just good luck wishes!!
It is more Flower Power to Women.
Take the challenges as deh saying
Tek de bull by the horn....

Did you guys read about the Biharis brides
who refused the grooms and kicked them out
from "under the marro". One was shown a nice looking guy but an ugly one turn up for the wedding and the other fella wanted big dowry.
Times have changed. I salute those Biharis!!

A moving touchdown in India
9 Sep 2007, 0020 hrs IST,Meenakshi Kumar,TNN


They have little in common with the country their ancestors left behind over a century ago. Its language, culture, people - are all alien to them. While their ancestors were sons of the soil, they're known as pravasis in their motherland. Yet, the desire to discover their families is making many People of Indian Origin (PIO) trace their roots. Some are successful, some are not. But what's important for all of them is the need to establish a link with the land of their ancestors.

When Fiji-born Pratap Chand's father passed away, he realised there was very little he knew about the land his grandparents came from. In fact, he didn't know much about his grandparents. Who were they? What did they go through when they landed in a foreign, hostile land....These questions egged him to embark on a journey to search for his origins. The only document that could help him, he hoped, was the emigration pass his grandfather brought with him way back in 1908 when he came to Fiji Islands as an indentured labourer.

''The emigration pass had certain details such as my grandfather's age, the name of his village, etc. All that helped,'' says Chand, now settled in Canada. It took a year to track down his relatives. In March, he finally met his father's third cousin in Ram Nagar, a small village in UP's Basti district. ''It has given me a greater sense of family. I was really moved to find the place from where my family originated, especially the house and village where my grandfather lived,'' says an emotional Chand.

Pundit Manideo Persad's feelings were the same when he met his second and third cousins in Pratapur in eastern UP this year. ''This search has completed a jigsaw puzzle. I now know my grandfather, Patishwar Tiwary, much better,'' says Trinidad & Tobago's High Commissioner to India. His search took a while though, as there were no records of his grandfather in the village. He finally came to know of him when he discovered his grandaunt's family. His father was the only son and when he left, no records were kept of him.

In most cases, the search was not a cakewalk. The emigration pass didn't always help. At times, names of villages and districts didn't match. And sometimes, nobody could recall the person being searched. That's what happened to Guyana-born New Yorker, Leela Ramotar. She came in search of her great-grandmother, Mariah, to Rae Bareilly in June, but couldn't find anyone who remembered her. Same was the case in her father's village. ''It's sad. It's like losing something that you recently found. But I'll search again,'' she says, looking wistfully at some old documents.

For second and third generation PIOs, the desire to reconnect with the country of their ancestors is much stronger today. In the last decade, Delhi-based Chandra Shekhar Tewary, founder, Indi Roots Foundation, has helped over 100 PIOs reunite with their families in India. He is one of the few who is devoted to this cause. ''In the last 10 years, the trickle has grown to a steady flow. The interest grew after former Trinidad & Tobago PM, Bansdev Pandey traced his family in UP. For all these people, it's important to establish a link with the land of their ancestors. That's why they make the effort,'' he says.

Tewary's modus operandi is simple. Once a person contacts him and sends a copy of the emigration pass, he tries to locate the exact village and district. After that, he ferrets out information about the person from land records. If the identity of the person is confirmed, it doesn't take him too long to trace the surviving family. After this, he informs the person, who then makes a trip to the village. Sometimes, Tewary's search takes months of repeated visits to villages and at other times, it extends to a year. So far, he has helped people from Fiji, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana and Mauritius - countries where Indian indentured labourers settled down in early 20th century.

Do families keep in touch once ties are established? ''In most cases, they do,'' says Tewary. Besides, many families return to contribute to the village in some way. Salesha Whitmore, a Trinidadian Indian, who traced her grandfather's roots last year in Bharaich, UP, plans to return next year to build a community centre. Persad, too, wants to build a school so that it'll benefit the entire village. Guruduth Chuttoo, a Mauritian Indian, who discovered his ancestral village in Jharkhand last year, plans to adopt it. Others are helping by financing water pumps or thrashers. ''In helping them, we have to be realistic that we don't create any dependency,'' says Persad. In a rare case or two, some families have been harassed for more financial assistance.

Yet, nothing can deter the growing desire to reconnect with the motherland. The pravasis don't want to be outsiders any more.

meenakshi.kumar@timesgroup.com

Sunil great article.

Thanks for putting those documents on line.

Sunil

Keep posting these fab articles.
It is a great insight for those hoping to connect the thread of their ancestry with the actual places of origin.