Commemorating the Coolitude in the Caribbean Region

This chapter explores at the nature of commemoration of the indentured past in the Caribbean Region and in India, specially through monuments. Indian diaspora is widely spread in the Caribbean Region. There are different ways in which a society remembers its past. The most significant way to remember past is by construction of monuments. The act of remembering the past is an instinctive and natural tendency of human society. Indentured Indians were brought to the Caribbean under the system of Indentureship. The monuments constructed in their memory in the Caribbean though represent the conversation of the present with the past, but they do not highlight the exploitation of the indentureship. We should preserve the Girmit legacy as Indians in the Caribbean are a “soft power” of India in the region. The presence of public monuments creates a sense of shared past amongst the communities. It creates a narrative of how we visualised shared past and future. However, presentation of past should not be sanitised or selected.