Our bonds go well beyond geography and generations,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday (July 3) at a community event in Trinidad, calling Lord Ram “the divine link beyond oceans”.

Trinidad and Tobago, a tiny island country in the Caribbean, has a population of around 13 lakh, almost half of which traces its origin to India. 

The diaspora was brought to the islands as bonded labour in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and brought with them Lord Ram — specifically the tradition of Ramleela, the episodic dramatisation of Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas.

Story of girmitiyas

Britain banned slave trade in 1807, and finally abolished slavery in the British Empire in 1834. 

This created a labour crisis in many British colonies dependent on slave labour — including in Trinidad whose economy revolved around slave-run sugar plantations.

In 1838, the enactment of the emancipation legislation in Trinidad was followed by a large-scale emigration of emancipated slaves from the sugar estates. 

Plantation owners thus turned to indentured labour from India. The very first boatload of indentured Indians came to Trinidad on May 30, 1845.

Source: Indianexpress