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| Suriname country side in the 70's |
Let's take a trip back in time. The year is 1857 and India is under the British rule. Impoverished and young Indians are constantly looking for work, hoping to prevent their families dying from starvation. Amongst thousands of others, one young Bihari woman called Kabottari along with her 1 year old son Gobind boards a boat to an unknown land. She has been promised a wage for her labour at a sugarcane plantation in a country far far away from home. She is part of the people who are being sent on contract by the British to the tiny country of Suriname on the northern coast of the South American continent. The British had trade dealings with the Dutch who had colonised the country of Suriname. They provided the Dutch with cheap labour, though one could still call the labourers slaves back then. Slavery was officially abolished in Suriname later in 1863.
Suriname on the world map
Learn more about Suriname
Kabottari boarded the 'Zanzibar' from Calcutta hoping for a future, but unfortunately she didn't survive the journey on the ship. Baby Gobind was orphaned and miraculously survived and grew to be the first of several generations of the family 'Gobind'. His descendants like most of the other Indian diaspora lived in the settlement called 'Domburg'.
My story features Mina, a 5th generation descendant of Gobind and her daughter Gaitry.
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| Mina at 20 |
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Very young Gaitry
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Mina grew up in Suriname and lived there till she was 22 years old. In 1978, she left her children and her husband to travel to Holland in search of a better life. Since Suriname was a Dutch colony Mina had Dutch travel documents. She reached Amsterdam and worked for a year or more at a Cheese factory. Once she settled in, she sent for her family who travelled to join her there. Gaitry was four years old at the time. Mina, who is also known with her home name of 'Bittiya' left Suriname not long after the country's independence from the Dutch in 1975. Like many Indian origin people she grew up in keeping with Indian traditions. Her grandfather had built a Vishnu temple near their home. She grew up celebrating Holi and Diwali and several other Indian festivals.
The fact that she and other Indo - Surinamese were so far away from their origins in an era when there was no way to evolve culturally with the country of origin they have some styles of music that are hardly heard anymore in the Indian subcontinent. I know that because I was in a car travelling through Holland when the radio broadcasted a Bhojpuri song, but it sounded very authentic, very pure and of a folk genre. It contained none of the western beats or auto tune that now tend to be at least to some minimal degree in every song, whether Hindi or a regional language of India. That was in fact the first time I heard about the Indo-Surinamese and I looked up Indians or Biharis in Holland and learnt more about them. The Indo-Surinamese speak Dutch and Sarnami Hindostani, which is like a dialect of Bhojpuri. Mina learnt it and in addition learnt to speak and write Hindi. Now retired, she travels and stays in India for several months in the year. Her religious side has gotten stronger over time and she tries and catches up with what she can by spending whatever time possible in India, the ancient land of her forefathers.
Gaitry, Mina's daughter, grew up in Amsterdam. She lives in Brussels and is very curious about Indian culture that originates from the continent of India. I find myself equally curious about Gaitry and her mother's lives back in Suriname. It's a curious case of people having settled well away from their homelands and finding similarity however small to link themselves to others. Gaitry in some way represents what my descendants would be like, a blend of the present and the past, of the cultures and races from European and Asian continents.
Suriname similarly has a diaspora of people of West African, Indonesian, Chinese and other origins. A 'melting pot' from around 150- 200 years ago.
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| At the Vishnu temple built by Gaitry's grandfather |
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| Gaitry today |
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| Mina today |
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