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Proposal to designate May 29 as International Day of Remembrance for Indentureship
Emma Teelucksingh, a student of the Montrose Government Primary School, has made the proposal.
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Staff Reporter
- Sun, 25, May 2025
- 04:59 EDT
- 8
Depot of Indentured Servants in Saint-Denis, Reunion, second half of the 19th century / Wikipedia
A ten-year-old student has called on the United Nations to designate May 29 as International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Indentureship to remember the millions, especially Indians, tricked into indentureship by British colonialists in their “colonies”.
Emma Teelucksingh, a student of the Montrose Government Primary School in Trinidad, has made the proposal and is using all forms of media and social media to propagate the cause.
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Emma’s mission is being helped by her father, Senior Lecturer in UWI’s Department of History, Dr Jerome Teelucksingh, who said while the UN calendar contains several days to remember the victims of tragedies and genocides, there is nothing to for the victims of Indentureship.
Indentureship is traditionally associated with Indians, but included Chinese, Syrians and Portuguese workers, who also faced racism, religious discrimination, physical abuse and exploitation.
The indenture system was the initiative of sugar planters in colonial territories, who wanted cheap and reliable cheap labour as a substitute for slave labour following the abolition of slavery in the early 19th century.
Nearly 1.6 million Indians were forcibly tricked by the British and hauled over to European colonies in ships to distant colonies, especially to the Caribbean and the Far East. That sowed the roots of a future South Asian diaspora in these countries.
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