For the island nation of Mauritius and a humble village near Patna, the broken circle of history got completed on Sunday as Mauritian President Rajkeswur Purryag and his wife Aneetah Purryag made an emotional homecoming visit to the village.
Wajidpur, 25 km off the Bihar capital, gave a rousing welcome to the Purryags, whose forefathers had left for the tiny country in the Indian Ocean in the mid-19th century to work there as indentured labourers on sugarcane and rubber plantations.
Accompanied by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, the Mauritian first couple saw around the village that was refurbished through weeklong efforts and met their distant relatives who were identified earlier by the administration.
“When my forefathers had left Bihar and India for Mauritius, they had not gone alone. They had taken Bihar and India in their hearts,” said Purryag in his address to a large crowd of villagers. He wept as he continued his speech, recalling the migration of over 150 years ago.
Mahesh Mahto and Ganesh Mahto, masons in Wajidpur and descendants of Purryag’s Indian ancestors in the family of Prahladi Nonia, gushed with gladness to receive the Mauritian couple.
“We had heard stories from our grandmother saying a part of our family had left to places across the oceans. We are happy to see them coming back to meet us,” said Ganesh Mahto.
Wazidpur villagers presented the Purryags a handful of soil of the village and a bag of freshly harvested paddy from the village farms, apart from a felicitation letter grafted on a silver platter and a traditional angavastram.
“He (Purryag) is a son of Bihar, though Mauritius is his first home now. We are proud to have him here,” said CM Nitish Kumar. The Purryags were accompanied by Mauritius culture minister Mukheshwar Chunni, health minister L. Bandhu, economy minister Surendra Dayal and Indian high commissioner in Mauritius, Arya Kumar Jageshwar.
Purryag, who will be attend the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Kerala from January 7 to 9, left for New Delhi in the afternoon. In 2008, Mauritius PM Navinchandra Ramgoolam had visited his ancestral village in Bihar’s Bhojpur district.