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 [email protected])