In honour of Indian Arrival Day, which we observe today in Trinidad & Tobago, my maternal grandfather’s West Indian Travel Permit.
According to research conducted by my cousin Stephen Trent, my great-grandfather, Ganga Singh Bissau, was born in the village of Ghagiphur, “which could be in Northern Rajasthan, Punjab or modern Pakistan (who knows if this village still exists).” He would have come to Trinidad some time in the 19th century to work as an indentured labourer. My great-grandmother, Bhagwanti Changoor, was born in St. James, Trinidad, of India-born parents.
My grandfather was born in Philippine, in southern Trinidad, and at birth was given the name Poon Mahabir Ganga Bissau, becoming Morton Dean Gangar after he fell in with some Canadian missionaries and was persuaded to convert to Presbyterianism (several of his siblings remained Hindus). He married my grandmother, Petronella Quarless, a woman of mixed African and European ancestry, in 1930. They had nine children. MD (as my grandmother always called him) occasionally spoke Hindi with his siblings but never with his children. I believe my grandmother’s mastery of Indian cuisine came via her mother-in-law, who also pierced the ears of the five eldest girls (by the time the sixth — my mother — arrived, Bhagwanti was too old, or was perhaps was even dead by then).
MD died in 1973, when I was far too young to contemplate such matters, but by 1967, the year this Travel Permit was issued, I’d like to believe that he was thinking of himself as a Trinidadian and a West Indian (though up until 1962 — the year Trinidad and Tobago gained independence — he was a British subject). Perhaps more importantly, MD was a metrosexual: I remember him as an assiduous hair-comber, and he always smelled of after-shave. Which might explain where C*POP gets the trait.
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We reach: Indian Arrival Day in Trinidad
On May 29 Trinidad and Tobago celebrated Indian Arrival Day, a holiday commemorating the first wave of migration to the islands from India, in 1845. The immigrants came as indentured labourers, bound for the sugar estates, replacements, as Dr. Roi Kw…
Trackback by Global Voices Online 06.01.06 @ 1:42 amWow! The funny thing is that India or Indians in general know very little about diaspora and such.
Comment by neha 06.01.06 @ 10:26 am[...] Georgia writes on digging up personal history. She also has some wonderful scanned documents and photographs. According to research conducted by my cousin Stephen Trent, my great-grandfather, Ganga Singh Bissau, was born in the village of Ghagiphur, “which could be in Northern Rajasthan, Punjab or modern Pakistan (who knows if this village still exists).” He would have come to Trinidad some time in the 19th century to work as an indentured labourer. [...]
Pingback by DesiPundit » Archives » More On Indian Arrival Day in Trinidad and Tobago 06.01.06 @ 10:31 amCome to think of it, Neha, what country’s citizens — as a group — really have an accurate grasp of what goes on in other places? A certain insularity may well in fact be one of the conditions of belonging. There is woeful ignorance of what goes on beyond borders even among the Caribbean islands.
Comment by Georgia 06.01.06 @ 2:39 pmMD was the original metrosexual man!
Comment by Christiana 06.01.06 @ 7:15 pmI don’t know about “Ghagiphur”, but my district “Jhunjhunu” (in North Rajasthan) has a village by the name of “Bissau”.
It is a common practice among emigrants from my district (and there have been thousands of them) to use the name (or a variation) of their village or district as their last name (Jhunjhunwala, Bagri etc).
May be you should check out Bissau in Jhunjhunu as well.
Comment by Vivek Kumar 06.02.06 @ 2:58 am[...] are some devoted to Indian food. You peep into one in Trinidad & Tobago, and you read about migrants from India who moved generations back. There’s someone who’s married to an Indian, and another who [...]
Pingback by Crossing Paths, Crossing Cultures: Global Impact of the Indian Blogosphere | DesiPundit 12.27.08 @ 5:43 amMy grandfather Julius boos hhad three children w/beloved indian girl. before turn of century., I would really like to know about them names, ages. I only hope that social distancing of those times can be overcome. I am nearly 65, Lived Venezuela all this time. I try to cook roty but…. I do hope you will appreciate my iniciative. Best regards.
Comment by kenneth boos 05.07.09 @ 5:05 pmLeave a comment
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