In his latest book, Guyanese-American author traces his ancestors’ journey from the villages of India to the sugar estates of British Guiana

FROM the quiet village of Peepra in Bihar, India, to the sugar estates of British Guiana, and across generations that now span continents, Harry Rickheeram’s latest work is more than a family history; it is a reconstruction of identity itself.

In his most recent book, A Story of Indenture, Survival and Legacy, the author pieces together fragmented records, ship registers and oral memory to trace how one family’s journey aboard the ship Syria in 1875 became part of Guyana’s wider indentured story.

Speaking with the Pepperpot Magazine from his home in Florida earlier this week, Rickheeram recounted how what began as a search for personal roots evolved into a deeply researched account of migration, separation and survival, and into a story that still echoes through Guyana’s cultural landscape today.

Rickheeram, now in his eighties, is a Guyanese US-based author born and raised in one of Guyana’s oldest communities, Fyrish Village.

Brought up in a very large family, Rickheeram was the third of thirteen children. At the time, his father was the sole breadwinner of the family, and with so many mouths to feed, extended family included, Rickheeram, as one of the older young men in the household, took on responsibilities early to provide for the family.

Recounting his childhood, he shared: “My father was the only breadwinner within the family, and we had to assist in other ways of sustaining the family,” he added.

“As a young boy, I had to struggle with farm duties, taking produce and things like that. We lived about a mile from the public road to go to the market. I had to take that produce for my mother, go to the market, come back, take the cattle, and then go to school.”

Rickheeram grew up during the British colonial era in Guyana. His early years included Congregational school, run by the Congregational Church, a British curriculum and salutes to the Union Jack.

He witnessed Guyana gain its independence, and when he entered high school, he began studying, for the first time, in a newly renamed Guyana.

But this chapter, too, was filled with challenges for a young man coming from the sugar plantations of the Corentyne coast.

As he shared: “After I finished primary school, I went to high school in Guyana. It was a challenge as a child. My father did not want to send me to high school because he said he couldn’t afford it. We had to pay school fees back then.”

Rickheeram worked with his father in the mornings before school to earn extra income for the family, which would cover school fees.

Although he finished high school, Rickheeram noted that it was still difficult for him to find work outside of the sugar industry.

While still a teenager, he began working in Guyana’s then-blossoming sugar industry.

As he shared: “I decided to start from the bottom in the sugar industry, a high school boy with a couple of subjects in GCE. I worked my way from running sugar cane to the fertilising department, planting cane, and I ended up in the factory as well. I eventually got a better job because of my experience,” he said.

Eventually, Rickheeram gained enough through hard work and dedication to migrate to the United States, where he continued working and studying.

That hard work paid off, as he shared: “I worked and went to school at the same time. That was my ambition, to further myself. I went to school while I was working. I ended up working with one of the biggest technology companies in the United States.”

While most writers begin their careers in their early years, Rickheeram did not write his first book until he retired.

He shared that he began writing to keep himself occupied, and with his life now centred around his family, he decided to trace his roots.

His research led to the creation of five books over the last few years: Life in British Guiana, Son of an Indo-Guyanese, Across the Oceans- In for Lost Love, An Indo-Guyanese Experience, Finding Lost Love Across the Oceans, an autobiography called Life is More than a Struggle, and most recently, A Story of Indenture, Survival and Legacy.

His most recent work, published just weeks ago, tells the story of indentureship in Guyana, tracing the steps of a family from India to the sugar plantations of British Guiana through a journey of hardship, resilience, and hope, and ultimately to the rebuilding of a new life.

Rickheeram notes that his most recent book required months of research and took years to complete.

It was sparked by a document he received from his grandfather’s youngest sister. That piece of history became the foundation for A Story of Indenture, Survival and Legacy.

As Rickheeram shared: “That document had so much information, the ship’s name that her father came on, all of that,” he said.

The document listed the names of Rickheeram’s ancestors, their places of origin in India, and the ships that brought them to Guyana.

Through further research, Rickheeram compiled as much of his family history as possible, adding: “They came from a small village named Peepra, in the district of Arrah, in the Bihar area of India.

“The document I received from the archive also had his father’s name on it, which helped me go further back into the ancestor history. His name was Gunga Roy. His wife Rookmin’s father was also listed; his name was Dookhit. They sailed on a ship called the Syria on the 19th of October 1875.”

Rickheeram’s research took years and saw him collaborate with people across the world to piece together the story of his family, which had grown increasingly complicated over time.

Lost documents and changed names, along with communities bearing new titles, made the search difficult.

Eventually, Rickheeram recreated his family’s history — a captivating story that includes his great-grandmother Ratnie, who was born aboard the ship during the very journey to Guyana, and his great-grandfather Mohabir, who came to British Guiana twelve years later at the age of 22 from the village of Sundarpur in the district of Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh.

The two were married in 1895 and lived to see the end of indentureship in 1917.

They were among the 238,979 indentured immigrants who made the crossing, and among the 173,466 who chose to stay and call Guyana home.

As Guyana marks its 60th year of independence this May, Rickheeram’s work arrives at a deeply meaningful moment.

The journey of his great-great-grandparents, from the villages of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to the cane rows of British Guiana, is not simply a family narrative.

The sacrifices made by tens of thousands of indentured immigrants, who arrived on strange shores with little more than their resilience and their names, helped build the Guyana that stands today.

In tracing their footsteps, Rickheeram has done what historians and archivists hope for but rarely see: he has given those people their names back, their stories back, and their rightful place in the nation’s memory.

Sixty years on from independence, that story of indentureship is also, in many ways, the story of Guyana itself.