In a new reflective opinion piece, a long-serving leader of TISI Sangam Fiji casts his life’s work as part of a wider Girmitiya legacy — one built on sacrifice, community organisation and cultural survival — and recounts concrete milestones that he says secure that legacy for future generations. The account, rooted in family memory from Koronubu, Ba, outlines how grassroots organising from the 1980s through to the present translated into schools, temples, property and health initiatives across the country.
The writer begins with his grandparents, Malawan Sirdar and Papatiamma, who arrived in Fiji as Girmitiyas and, he says, modelled the resilience that would shape his family. His father, Balsundaram Naicker, and relatives volunteered for decades to sustain the Koronubu Sangam School and the Shri Subramaniam Swamy Temple. Born on August 21, 1953 in Koronubu, Ba, the author describes a childhood steeped in unpaid service and a belief that his community had to build its own institutions or risk losing its language and faith.
What is new in this reflection is the detailed tracing of nascent projects in Nasinu through to their modern realisation. In 1982 he helped found a small TISI Sangam branch in Nasinu, meeting in homes with no formal funding and drawing impetus from that year’s Sangam Convention in Suva. Education became a central focus: Nasinu Sangam School opened in 1991 with 131 students and, the author reports, now serves more than 900. To raise funds and celebrate culture he organised the Nasinu Satellite Carnival from 1992 — chairing it for 18 years — with themed nights that combined fundraising with cultural programming; every dollar, he says, went back into building the school.
At the organisational level the author summarises two decades of national leadership. He served in a range of roles from branch level to the top post, including a stint as National President of TISI Sangam Fiji from 2011 to 2022. Under his leadership Sangam expanded branches across Fiji, purchased properties in Labasa and Nadi and built the Sangam Cultural Centre in Nadi. A flagship development was the long-held vision for Nadawa: the acquisition of 10 acres of freehold land in Nadawa, Nasinu, which the writer says was finally realised in 2021 and represents “foresight, persistence and commitment to future generations.”
Beyond bricks and land, the piece stresses the social infrastructure Sangam nurtures, particularly Maathar Sangam branches. These women-led groups have organised community health screenings — notably during Pinktober breast-cancer awareness campaigns — and the author credits early detection from those screenings with saving lives. He also highlights efforts during his tenure to increase women’s representation at all levels of Sangam leadership, describing the move as central to sustaining the organisation’s community work.
Framed as both memorial and manifesto, the reflection positions Sangam as “a lifeline” for Fiji’s Sanatan Dharam community: a network that preserves language, ritual and identity while responding to immediate social needs. The author’s account adds new specificity to a long-running story about cultural survival — documenting origins, growth in student numbers, the timeline of the Nadawa land acquisition and a decade-long national presidency — and underscores the argument that institutional continuity depends on sustained local volunteering, targeted investments and inclusive leadership.
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