This year, May 30, 2015 marks 170th Indian Arrival Day in T&T when East Indians, approximately 148,000, from India were brought here by the then colonial government between1845 to 1917 to work on the sugar, cocoa and coconut plantations.

We have to build a new consciousness, a new aura of confidence so that a new humanity will emerge. The Indian Diaspora must endure this portfolio not only for itself, but must set the pace and ignite another serious paradigm, and work assiduously towards a new humanity which will uphold and maintain ethical, spiritual and moral values. Let Indian Arrival Day become just not another day in our calendar. It has deep significance in world history and world thought.

There should be syllabi in all academic institutions from primary and tertiary levels about the arrival of East Indians, Africans, Chinese, European and Portuguese in our land. Lack of such an undertaking will set each group apart, instead of knitting them towards the evolution of a T&T society.

We have founded a nation, but we are yet to construct a society where everyone would feel loved, respected, and become major functionaries in all aspects of corporate, and in the process of governance and service.

We have much to celebrate about. But, we have much more to do to ensure that the genres of our cultural strengths are not wished away by the stroke of one man’s penmanship.

The nation-state of Trinidad and Tobago is strong because of the East Indian intervention then, now and in the future.

Carl Jasper, the existentialist philosopher, writes on history: “The apprehension of history as a whole leads beyond history. The unity of history is itself no longer history. To grasp this unity means to pass above and beyond history into the matrix of this unity, through that unity which enable history to become a whole… We do not live in the knowledge of history, in so far, however, as we live by unity, we live supra historically in history”.