Civil Servant of Mauritius searching his origin in Orissa

Kendrapara,Jun 2 (UNI) Mr Ramroop Jugurnauth, a civil servant of Mauritius is on a mission to find his root in Jajpur district of Orissa after he discovered some rare handwritten letters, some important documents and slokas written in Oriya in his house.

Mr Jugurnauth(47) works as a civil servant in Mauritius the Human Resource department in the Ministry of Civil Service in and lives with his wife and two daughters at Beau Bassin.

Mr Jugurnath said after going through the volume of dusty papers in the Mahatma Gandhi immigration archive in Mauritius, he found that his great-great grand father came to Mauritius on November 30, 1870 from Jajpur district on Orissa as an indentured labourer in a ship 'Alumger' bearing no- 1193 .

''I took keen interest in my childhood to gather information about my ancestry as my grand-father used to speak about his family,'' Jugurnauth informed .

To substantiate his claim, Jugurnauth had sent scanned copies of the handwritten papers that he discovered from his house and the photograph of his family members to this correspondent.

This is not all. '' I also carried out research at the Immigration Archives in Mauritius and found that my ancestors were Brahmins by birth,'' he said.

'' Two years back I and my family members visited India to see some important religious places. We visited Kedarnath, Badrinath, Rishikesh, New Delhi and other places. As ill luck would have it, we could not visit Orissa after one of my daughters fell sick. I will visit all the important religious places, including Puri, soon.

I have been frantically searching my origin in Orissa for which I will pay a visit to Orissa soon'', he added.

Talking about his family history, he stated '' When slavery was abolished, the colonial masters of Mauritius, that is the British, had to find ways and means to sustain the development of the island for their own interests. So they had taken recourse to indentured labour from India, which was also their colony at that time. I would like to trace my roots and to know from where exactly my ancestor came. My family name is in fact the name of my migrant ancestor.

Most probably, my family's name would have been different there,'' he stated.

''My great great grandfather, Juggurnauth Immigrant No.352036 (this is how indentured workers were all identified), came to Mauritius as an indentured worker in 1870.

''The copy of the archives record that I found in Mauritius shows that one of his sons, Satta Bajee, was the father of my grandfather Shyamsoondur and my father was Parmeswar,'' he said.

Jugurnauth has two daughters Chitra and Kritika, aged 10 and 8 respectively. His family has Mauritian nationality.

His wife, Kesha, is an Indian music teacher in secondary schools in Mauritius. She graduated in north Indian classical music from the University of Mauritius.

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