Cumbersome

Add as a preferred source on Google

New Delhi, Jan 4 (UNI) For the india, whose forefathers left the country in the early flush of migration as indentured labourers under the colonial rule, tracing the roots of their ancestry is now going to be much easier and the chances brighter.

Coinciding with the January 7-9 Prabasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) conference, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) is organising a five-day mega event, beginning tomorrow, during which kiosks will be set up for the visiting Diaspora representatives to record all the details about their ancestors, which will serve as the basis for locating them.

Under the project, touted as ''Ancestral Search Programme'', People of Indian Origin (PIOs), who are to attend the programme, will be given forms, seeking information about their ancestors, which will then be used to track down their ancestral town or village.

''The information provided by them, such as the names of their ancestors, the date when they left their motherland and the countries they went, can serve as a data bank. We will collate these details and match with documents like ship registers and immigration records. This will help us locate the place of origin of the people who were forced to work as indentured labourers in alien lands by the colonial rulers,'' says Mr. Suresh Pillai, coordinator of the event.

Mr Pillai says ship registers can be a source of vital information, including the names of villages they belonged to. ''Even if we are unable to track down their families here, they can be supplied with a lot of information about the place they originally belong to.'' IGNCA member-Secretary K K Chakravarty says there are also many missing links in the cultural ancestry of the india and the visiting delegates may be interested to make on the spot contributions in the form of paintings, musical instruments, sartorial designs and dramatics.

''We will put up kiosks for this. It is ultimately going to be a sort of knowledge management, but will go a long way in creating a coherent cultural narrative of the diasporic community,'' he says, making a strong case for synthesising what he terms ''the diaspora of ideas''.

Titled ''Origins: Creative Tracks of india,'' the five-day event will include exhibitions, performances, lecture-demonstrations, film shows and seminars to assess the influence of Indian belief systems, cultural and institutional practices on the mores and customs of adopted lands.