The following is an excerpt taken from an article published in the Trinidad Guardian and gives a bit of the story of these talented men.  (Pink Panther featured in photo) 
Yes, indeed Sangre Grande has produced some fine talent, not only well know locally but internationally as well.  And they were featured in a special show on April 29th which was titled Calypso Icons of Grande.
The icons featured were Scrunter ((Irwin Reyes Johnson); Johnny King (Johnson King); Poser (Sylvester Lockhart); and, Pink Panther, (Eric Taylor)  and  Baron (Timothy Watkins Jnr).
Scrunter is a much beloved name in the calypso world and has been performing for over 40 years. He won the national calypso crown in 1982 with the hits Lick-e-Ting and the classic The Will. Many will no doubt remember, that famous appearance on stage at the Dimanche Gras show, by the late Lord Kitchener (Aldwyn Roberts), when he handed him the will, as the song said “ah just get the will from Lord Kitchener.”
Scrunter’s hits are almost too numerous to mention and include the classic Woman on De Bass, Take De Number, Sing In She Party, Oil in De Coil, among others There is also his many hits in the parang soca genre.
Johnny King, though born in Tobago, has made his home in Sangre Grande for many years.
The now retired policeman, first entered the calypso arena in 1980. He is known for his insightful, thoughtful lyrics with classics like Nature’s Plan, Appreciation, Darling and the mega-hit Wet Meh Down. King has been a finalist many times in the national calypso monarch competition and is well known for his performances at home and abroad,
Veteran and icon Poser, was born in Sangre Grande, in the village of Matura. He won the Sangre Grande calypso monarch crown for five consecutive years before deciding to come into Port-of-Spain to try
​The result is, he became one of the greats himself with hits like Ah Tell She, which won him the 1979 Road March title, Town Man, Party Tonight and Bus Conductor. A true culture lover who also played pan in his youth, Poser is a seasoned performer, both at home and abroad.
Pink Panther, renowned for his well-tailored pink suits, after the cartoon character of the same name, has a funny story to tell about how he got his start at the Kalypso Revue tent where he has been a staple for many years.
He remembers that he was invited there to try out by his brother calypsonian Scrunter as they were both Grande boys, however, tent manager, now deceased Jazzy Pantin, did not like his song We Ketching We Tail and turned him down. It was the founder of the tent Lord Kitchener, who took him under his wing after chatting with him and realising he’d composed his song and beat Scrunter with it in the Grande competition.
Pink Panther says not only did Kitch become a mentor and friend, but also, so did Kitch’s lifelong friend, Pretender. He recalls many Sunday sessions, honing the craft of calypso at Kitch’s home, Rainorama, in Diego Martin. He also credits National Calypso Monarch Chalkdust (Hollis Liverpool), with being another of his mentors. Panther is known for his satirical social and political commentary Dey Laughing In De Ghetto and is always a favourite with the crowd in the calypso monarch competition.

In his book A Turn in the South, VS Naipaul, who was born in 1932, writes: “In the Indian countryside of my childhood in Trinidad there were many murders and acts of violence, and these acts gave the Trinidad Indians, already separated from the rest of the island by language, religion, and culture, a fearful reputation.” In the 19th century, Trinidadian men typically carried weapons ranging from knives to swords to pistols—indeed, the last item could be readily purchased from stores in Port-of-Spain and San Fernando. Only in 1844 was legislation passed in an attempt to control violence, with Ordnance No 8 making it a capital offence to wound anyone with the intent to kill. According to historian C R Ottley in his book East and West Indians Rescue Trinidad, the first person to be executed the following year under this law was an East Indian man who had attacked a woman and maimed her.
In that era, Indian men in central Trinidad carried the same stigma that young black men from Laventille have today. Almost half of all crimes were committed by Indians, although most of these were minor offences like having unlicenced dogs, traffic violations and, of course, leaving the sugar estate without permission or other breaches of the indentureship contract. However, in his autobiography Inward Hunger, Dr Eric Williams recalls how, on the night of June 24 in 1911, when Trinidadians were celebrating the coronation of King George V, a Chinese shopkeeper was murdered and his shop set afire; seven Indian men were charged and three of them were convicted and hanged. This was one of 16 murders committed by Indians that year, who also accounted for two-thirds of shooting with intent and one-third of manslaughter convictions in the colony. Williams notes, “Half of the prisoners in 1911 were Hindus or Muslims.”
The Colonial Office actually had a separate category for murders in the Indian community, in which domestic murders were rife. Between 1895 and 1900, for example, there were 26 killings among Indian immigrants in Trinidad, and 21 of the victims were women. In part, this penchant for violence was due to the sex imbalance that was a direct result of unequal numbers of men and women coming from India in search of a better life on Trinidad’s sugar estates. But the 1911 Census noted that “The excess of males in the total population is...caused by East Indian immigration, and the statistics of previous Censuses...induce one to believe this is diminishing.”
Even though in most societies women typically outlive men, the Trinidad Indian cohort curiously had more widowers than widows—an average of 140 men whose wives had died, as compared to an average of 85 women whose husbands had died. For the rest of the Trinidadian population, there were more women than men over the age of 75. The higher number of Indian widowers suggests either that marriage conferred some longevity benefit on men, or shortened women’s lives or, possibly, that long-lived men were more likely to get married. The 1931 Census further noted that “East Indians regard the marriage ceremony as an essential institution of social life and accordingly early marriages are not infrequently contracted, though they are seldom ratified by registration. The tendency of East Indians to describe themselves as married where the conditions of the law have not been fully carried out has embarrassed both enumerators and tabulators.”
When the supply of indentured labourers from India ceased in 1917, Indians comprised 15 per cent of the population, or about 50,000 people, but Trinidadians of Indian descent accounted for 17 per cent (58,000). Two generations after their arrival, Indians thus made up one-third of the colony’s population, but 40 per cent of native Trinidadians. By 1931, according to the Census, Indians accounted for 114,946 or 28 per cent of the population, with 83 per cent born in the colony, meaning that, just 86 years after the first labourers arrived in 1845, there were more locally-born people of Indian descent than African descent in Trinidad. Native-born Trinidadians, including Indians, accounted for just 45 per cent of the population. Put another way, although Indians were a minority and considered by African-Caribbean people as alien, Indian-descent people very early became Trinidadians as defined by place of birth.
In 1911, one Indian boy out of ten and one Indian girl out of 14 went to school, as compared to the rest of the population where half of boys under 15 attended school and two out of every five girls. Illiteracy among the general population was 53 per cent, but for East Indians it was 96 per cent. Nonetheless, Indians had already begun to lay the foundation for their descendants’ future. (See Table One) A 1918 ad in the PoS Gazette from the Trinidad Government Savings Bank listing accounts which had been inactive for ten years gives some insight into the financial status of the working class. In the Port-of-Spain branch, most of the customers were labourers who had up to 17 shillings in these accounts. But Rampirith from Cunupia had £8 in his account, Mithania from Arouca had deposited £11, and Rampersad from Icacos Village had £12. In the San Fernando branch of the bank, most of the depositors were also labourers, nearly all Indian and therefore most likely sugar estate workers, with £14 being the largest sum from Bugaloo of Usine St Madeline. All this suggests that agricultural workers, whose wages ranged from 40 cents to 60 cents a day (or $8 to $10 a month), were still able to save part of their incomes even during the war years. To contextualise these rates within the cost of living, a 1936 report of the Wages Advisory Board noted that in 1920 a basket of groceries for one healthy man cost between $2 and $2.50 per month. But Indians had a reputation for frugality to the point of malnourishment. Historian K O Laurence in A Question of Labour records that, between 1910 and 1917, Indian labourers remitted a total of £57,981 to India, which was an average of $81 per person.
Thus, although Indo-Trinidadians were still mainly poor sugar workers, several had already begun establishing themselves among the hitherto exclusively white business class. A 1921 notice in the PoS Gazette about the election of directors of the San Fernando Cinematograph Company Ltd included “Messrs Sultan Khan, M A Ghany, F Mahabir and S Boodoosingh.” Three of those four names were to remain leading business and political personages up to the late 20th century. Between 1921 and 1930, Indians continued to return to India after their contracts ended. In this decade, the Indian population in the colony dropped by just over 14,000, with 7,982 going back to India and the rest dying. So only a small minority of Indians—seven per cent—chose to leave Trinidad.
One hundred years later, as shown in Table Two, nearly all who stayed are better off by all standard measures than the average person in India.


Sources: CSO, Williams 1969, Ryan 1996. Source: CIA World Factbook, UNDP
TABLE 1: Indian progress in past 100 years
1917 96% illiterate 50% Indian 99% labourers
2017 66% scholarship 25% Indo-Trinidadian 42% of business persons, 59% law winners firms, 80% doctors
TABLE 2: Comparative indicators for India and T&T


Indicator India Trinidad and Tobago
Sex ratio 1 female to 12 males 1 female to 1.06 males
Infant mortality 30 per 1000 15 per 1000
Life expectancy 69 years 73 years
Functional literacy 61% 85%
Source:    Kevin Baldeosingh, Trinidad Guardian 

​I am pleased to bring you once again, a wonderful piece by the late Angelo Bissessarsingh.
Oil painting of an East Indian woman by Rudolph Bissessarsingh. Rape, mutilation, sexploitation of women of African descent were skeletons in the closet of civilised European historians of the day.
So too was the new horror of East Indian women who were either kidnapped, enslaved, lured and duped into taking the arduous voyage to the West Indies.
Between 1845-1917—143, 939 East Indian immigrants were shuttled to Trinidad.
In the case of women, the villages that they were either recruited from or captured were hidden or altered on the documents.
In the first phase, some came from the Chota Nagpur of Bengal, some from the ghettos of Calcutta and Madras.
By 1870 the major recruiting areas were Orissa, the Punjab, Bihar and Oudh. The ratio of women to men very rarely rose above 40:100 and the perception of the recruiters in the beginning was that women were not as valuable to the estate labour force as men, especially when they had children.
Older women rarely stood a chance of being recruited and it is documented that black hair dye was used by the recruiters to make them more valuable.
Many women especially of dark-skinned complexions were also viewed as promiscuous and prostitutes. On board the ship, the caste system separated them from each other as many women of a high caste were also recruited, forced to accept the promise of a better life because of famine in some parts of India.
Some were forced into what is described as depot marriages to make them more valuable. Muslims were kept separate from Hindus on the voyage.
Many female recruits found themselves on ships they had not opted for or certain destinations. It was not until the early turn of the 20th century that female doctors were hired to examine the East Indian women.
Prior to this, these devout Hindus and Muslims suffered the indignation of being ‘medically’ examined by questionable male figures.
The women were given a sari, two flannel jackets, a woollen petticoat, a pair of stockings and a pair of shoes.
Usually these were so deteriorated as to render them unwearable. Each immigrant also had a ‘tin’ or identification disk hung around his or her neck.
Rape, suicide, beatings, forced prostitution, marriages and in some extreme cases, murder were all a blot on the new disguised slavery known as indentureship.
Many actually jumped overboard to their deaths before reaching their destinations. The rations given to them were as meagre as the clothes on the voyage.
They had to huddle together even when they had to use the toilet for fear of rape, sometimes gang rape. It is recorded that some just walked away from their depot husbands upon reaching Trinidad.
This was the darkness of the voyage from India to Trinidad and the untold shame and scars that these women had to bear. It was human trafficking at its worst and definitely not a cause for celebration.
What we should celebrate is the tenacity, courage, toil and contribution of those who endured the kala pani in creating our present landscape.
This year, 2017, marks the 100 years celebration of the abolition of East Indian indentureship. It is through the research of Prof Bridget Brereton, Prof Brinsley Samaroo, Prof VA Shepherd that we learn of the atrocities of that cleverly disguised system of slavery known as indentureship. Angelo had noted that even the faded photos of East Indians were always doctored to depict them in a dehumanised and denigrated form, little more than animals so that the British Capitalist system could be validated in their cruelty to the East Indian immigrant. It was the rejection starting with the Sepoy Mutiny of the Indian people on the continent and their expressed dissatisfaction that brought an end to this blot on our history.
—Rudolph Bissessarsingh

To mark 100 years celebration of the abolition of East Indian indentureship, I am pleased to bring you another story about our history courtesy of the Daily Express.  

THOSE priceless photos taken of the Indian indentured labourers on their arrival at the human processing depot on Nelson Island show an impoverished people exhausted, dispirited and wary of their future on the mainland.
But by the end of their five-year indentureship, the majority would choose to stay, accepting Crown land instead of the free trip back to the Motherland.
However, it is a little known fact that not all who made the voyage from India came on contract.
Some paid their passage and arrived on the island free of encumbrance, says genealogist Shamshu Deen who has researched and found the roots, in India, of many Trinidadians.
Then there is the case of man named Mandary who met wife Ooozerone on the voyage to Trinidad in 1856, and returned to India 22 years later with their four children.
Within two years, the family (without Mandary who had since died) returned to Trinidad on November 8, 1882 aboard the vessel, the Scottish Admiral.
Among the children was Prabhu, who would take the name Prabhudial Maharaj, and make his fortune in the cocoa planted in east Trinidad, a wealthy Indian at a time when most of his race lived in barracks and shacks.
The industry that was King cocoa, crashed in the 1920s, but not before Prabhudial built what would become his legacy.
In 1918, the year after the end of Indian Indentureship, he began constructing the family home. He chose a gentle slope at Sangre Chiquito, with a long driveway leading to the main road heading to Manzanilla, a spot that invited the traveller to consider the elegance of the house but discourage anyone from coming too close.
It took him two years to build, and he spared no expense. And when it was completed, it rivalled any of the east coast great houses (several of which still survive) which were influenced by Trinidad's British, French and Spanish heritage.
Prabudial Maharaj would have two marriages and at least twelve children before his death.
His first-born, Prem Dial (1898-1966), who was bequeathed the house, also had two marriages that produced seven children.
The second to last child, Vishnu Dial (born 1949) now owns the home and lives there with a brother and their families. And he knows the place is something special.
Dial said: “I have lived my entire life here. It was already old when I was born. My father told me that it took two years to build, and they used the very best material. The front walls (mortared and shaped to look like bricks) have thousands of river stones, and the fretwork was patterned after what my grandfather saw in India”.
There was a detached kitchen at the back made of tapia walls, to prevent an accidental fire from torching the place, and concrete cistern for storing rainwater. Nearby were the coca drying and store houses, where the beans would be bagged for transport into Sangre Grange, where it would be weighed, sold and transported out of the area by rail. Those buildings are gone now and the attic can no longer be accessed, but surviving it all was the antique Ansonia Octagon clock, older even than the house, under which generations of Dials marked time.
Pillars shaped into hands holding a sphere, stand at the base of the staircase. Why Prabhudial had commissioned the sculptures is lost to time, but the family would like to believe it to be a message from a man who then “had the whole world in his hands”.

​On May 30th 1845, the Fath Al Razak docked in the Port of Spain harbour in Trinidad and Tobago with 225 adult passengers on board. The passengers were immigrants from India who had come to the British colony to work in the sugarcane plantations after the abolition of African slavery. They had spent 103 days on sea during the arduous and dangerous journey that spanned 14,000 miles (36,000 km). The immigrants were contracted for five to ten years to work in the sugarcane estates in a system that ended in 1917.
A total of 147,596 Indians came to Trinidad over a 70-year period. Although they were promised a free return passage back home, at least 75 percent of them stayed and settled in the New World colony. In many ways, they brought India to the Caribbean. They continued with their traditions of Hinduism and Islam, and eventually transformed Trinidad into a colourful cosmopolitan society with their introduction of new styles of dress, music, songs, dance, language, cuisine and customs.
http://www.trinicenter.com/tnt/2007/250507.html