Patna, (Bihar Times): After much confusion the Bihar government finally managed to trace out the ancestral village of Mauritius Prime Minister, Navin Chandra Ramgoolam. In fact the Mauritius government sent immigration records of Ramgoolams––both Navin and father and former PM, Sivsagar Ramgoolam.

It shows that their ancestors hailed from Harigaon village under Jagdishpur block of Bhojpur district of Bihar and not Barkasinghanpura in Buxar district of the state. In fact last year the Bihar chief minister took the soil from this village to present to Navinchandra during his week-long visit to the island nation. In fact in a hurry the state government even ordered the face-lift of that village after a delegation from that village met the chief minister.

What is more surprising is that last week when the chief minister met Navinchandra in Delhi reports appearing in a section of media said that Ramgoolams are from Chapra district and not Bhojpur or Buxar.

Now that the present Mauritius Prime Minister is to visit Harigaon on February 19 on Saturday the Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, accompanied with top officials, went to the village and announced a spate
of measures including construction of roads, a hospital, a school and other basic facilities.

Harigaon is about 60 km from Patna and has hardly any road connection. The Bihar government will now develop it as a model village with basic infrastructure and turn it into a historical place to attract tourists, particularly from Mauritius.

Navin’s late father, Sivsagar, was the prime minister of his country from 1961 to 1982 and is considered as the father of the nation. It was he who led his country to independence from Britain.

His grandfather was one of the hundreds of indentured labourers from different villages across Bihar and even east UP forcibly taken by the British to work in sugarcane plantations in 1871. Most of these labours were from Bhojpur,  Chapra, Siwan, Gopalganj, East and West Champaran districts of Bihar and Balia, Ghazipur etc of east Uttar Pradesh.

Over 60 percent of the 1.2 million population of Mauritius is of Indian origin, a large number of them from Bihar with Bhojpuri as their mother tongue.

The identification of Harigaon as the ancestral village came as a big blow to Barkasinghanpura, which will now fall back to its ownself. But then it will take some time as it at least got some face-lift last year.