Girmityas- finding them
This is from Satish Rai who shares this amazing story of his years long quest and his successes. Never give up!
On a positive note, I would like to end this article by informing the audience and the readers that I have now successfully found the immigration passes of all six of my ancestors in India. I had embarked on my journey to find my Indian home and identity in 1994. It had taken me ten years and four journeys to India to find the village and relatives of my paternal grandmother, my aaji Gokuldei, in 2004. She was from Utraula in Balrampur, Uttar Pradesh. Her father’s name is Uma Rai but to date, I have not found the name of her mother. On the same visit, I went to the village of my paternal grandfather, my aaja Sukhdev. The village Phulpur, thana Kalwari in the district of Basti, was listed in his girmit pass. However, when I reached the village Phulpur, instinctively I knew that was not his village. My uncle Dhanus Rai had informed me that I will not be able to trace my aaja. He did not tell me why. I was able to guess from other information that he was in fact a Thakur from the district of Ayodhya, where my aaji’s first husband had lived. I am yet to unravel the truth about my aaja and hopefully locate his actual village in Ayodhya. These visits have been documented in my film Milaap a Royal Discovery: Fiji India Roots Trilogy film two.
I am fortunate that one of my mausas, uncle, was able to visit the ancestral village of my paternal great-grandfather. Baljit Maharaj is the father of my grandfather, my nana Pt Ram Khelawan Sharma. My nana was born in Fiji, but his father Baljit was born in Lakhimpur Kheri. My brothers and I visited Lakhimpur Kheri in 2019. This visit is documented in a short film Milaap: Connecting with maternal relatives in UP India movie.
A few months ago, I was able to find the name of Baljit Maharaj’s wife. His wife Sohani is from village Uchitpur, thana Ramahi in Ayodhya. Her father’s name is Ganga and her brother’s name is Sarjoo. Baljit and Sohani were recruited in Ayodhya and then transported to Fiji from Calcutta in 1910, one year before my aaja, aaji, and their two sons Girdhari and Banwari were recruited from the same place and transported to Fiji. At about the same time I found out that my maternal grandmother’s, nani Sukhraji’s father was Mathura Gosai. He was from village Bhandara in thana Khamari in Maharashtra. His father’s name was Chaitu. Mathura Gosai had somehow made his way to Prayagraj where he was recruited and later transported to Fiji in 1916, just one year before recruitment for girmit was made illegal in India. Finally, two months with help from my grandnephew Shekhar Kumar in Sacramento, the USA, ago I found the girmit pass of my parnani, my Nani's mother Jamiran. She was from the village Mankara in thana Budha in Basti, Uttar Pradesh. Her father’s name is Nabi and her brother’s name is Rawnak. She was recruited in Gorakhpur and transported to Fiji in 1914.
After approximately 28 years of search, I am now connected to all six of my girmitya ancestors. I am yet to visit the villages of Sohani, Jamiran, and Mathura Gosai and reconnect with my ancestral relatives there. I am still trying to find the actual village of my aaja Sukhdev. I hope to achieve this during my next visit to India. However, today I am totally connected to my ancestral and which is Bharat. I have found all the villages on the Google maps where my six girmitya ancestors were born and had lived before being transported to Fiji between 1910 and 1916. This discovery and knowledge firmly connect me not only to my ancestral villages but also to Bharat and her ten-thousand-year-old rich history and culture. This confirms my Indian identity; the identity of my six girmitya ancestors that had remained with them until they died in Fiji well before I was born on the same island, in the same area. I will explore all these issues and much more in my next book Mera Bharat: An Amazing Journey of a son of Girmityas Becoming an Indian. I hope to complete this book by end of this year.
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