Well known Guyanese historian Professor Tota Mangar departed Thursday, 16th February 2023 for New Delhi, India to take part in an International Conference from 20-22 February 2023 by India International Centre (IIC), a platform of intellectuals and the best personalities in all fields in Delhi, including Art, Culture, Education and Bureaucracy.
In a statement released by the India High Commission, the subject of the Conference is “Connected Histories, Shared Present: Cross-Cultural Experiences between Latin America, the Caribbean, and India.” Mangar would be presenting his paper on “Guyana- India Relations 1838 To The Present Time: The Ties That Bind And Solidify.” The conference would also be attended by renowned academicians and historians from the Latin American and Caribbean region.
Mangar is a renowned historian in the Caribbean on Diaspora matters and a well-acknowledged authority on Indo-Guyanese history. He has published many articles on indentureship, including “An experiment in East Indian Land Settlement Scheme in Transition: 175 years of East Indian Arrival in Guyana”, which is classic piece that has been praised by researchers on Indian history.
India and Latin American & the Caribbean (LAC) region have a long history of interaction which dates back to precolonial and colonial times when the Pacific was an active locus of trade. The economic enterprise of indentured labour that resulted in the huge Indian diaspora in the Caribbean after the abolition of slavery is certainly the most dramatic episode of this history. Since the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, significant intellectual and cultural contacts were established between the two regions.
This included Rabindranath Tagore’s stay in Argentina in 1924; the Indian Humanist MN Roy co-founding the Mexican Communist Party, and Mexican José Vasconcelos turning to Indian spiritualism as an integral part of conceiving a new education policy for his country. Gandhian thought and his legacy of non-violence continue to reverberate in today’s Latin America and the Caribbean. Closer to our times, Octavio Paz’s poems and essays on India, and Gabriel García Marquez’s magical realist literary techniques, and subaltern women’s testimonies from Central America became popular in India. Travel accounts, translations have also enriched this cross-cultural dialogue. In recent times, the emergence of digital platforms has facilitated access to cinema and television from both regions, and accelerated interaction in the realm of popular culture, sports and music.
India’s relationships with the LAC region thus have been forged in contexts of empire, nationalist and democratic movements, but it is in fact the people-to-people connections that impart dynamism and vitality to India – LAC growing contemporary links.
Before leaving Prof. Mangar met the High Commissioner of India, Dr. K. J. Srinivasa. He was briefed by the High Commissioner about the administrative and logistic arrangements at IIC and on the importance of the conference for the Caribbean and Latin American region not only academically but also for contemporary relationships between India and the region.
Mangar is visiting India for the first time.
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