Latest update January 6th, 2025 4:00 AM
Guyanese awarded India’s highest award
Ramsaran shown in front of Kolkata Memorial
India has conferred the prestigious Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) Samman Award on Guyana-born Ashook Ramsaran on January 9, 2011 in New Delhi, India at the conclusion of the PBD2011 events culminating in the PBD Samman Awards. There were a total of 14 awardees selected from all regions of the world.
The Pravasi Samman Award is the highest Government of India award given to a foreign based person of Indian origin and it has been given annually over the last nine years.
The award is given to outstanding overseas-based Indians who distinguish themselves to enhance India’s image and prestige while helping their community.
India’s President Pratibha Patil of India conferred the prestigious Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) Samman Award on the awardees at a widely viewed audience globally as well as delegates in attendance from all over the world at the annual event.
Ramsaran joins a small group of honorees from Guyana to receive the award – President Bharrat Jagdeo, industrialist Yesu Persaud, retired cricketer Rohan Kanhai, and former Commonwealth Secretary General Shridath Ramphal. A few others from the Caribbean region (Suriname and Trinidad) have also received this rare honour.
This year’s honorees include Governor General Sir Anand Satyanand of New Zealand who was the Chief Guest. Sir Satyanand delivered the feature address to this year’s ninth annual Indian Diaspora Conference and spoke of his ancestors who left India seeking better lives in Fiji and then moved to New Zealand where he rose to become Governor General.
Ramsaran is a fourth generation of Indian great grandparents who came to Guyana as indentured laborers (1853 and 1860). Ramsaran worked as a teacher in Black Bush Polder and in the New Amsterdam Magistrate’s Courts before he emigrated in 1968 to New York to pursue tertiary education.
He earned BSEE and MSEE degrees at the Polytechnic University in New York. He was an electronics engineer and progressed rapidly to the position of Vice President of Engineering in an international communications company before establishing Ramex, his own electronics manufacturing enterprise in New York.
Ramex is named among the Top 100 Indian-owned businesses in USA for 10 consecutive years.
Ramsaran is married to Camille Ramgadoo of Bloomfield and is the father of two sons, Arnold and Gerald, both residing in the USA. He is also the grandfather of Jaden, six and Gavin, three.
As Executive Vice President of the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin, he has helped to build closer links between India and the entire Indian Diaspora. He is spearheading the Kolkata Memorial project, which was inaugurated on January 11, 2011 in Kolkata. He is also chair of Tracing Our Roots Committee, which collaborates with others in seeking to trace the ancestral families and villages of those who left India generations ago. When asked how it feels to be accorded such a prestigious award by the Government of India for his efforts, Ramsaran remarked that, “it is indeed a special honor to be recognized as such. It is because of the strength, resilience, perseverance and sacrifices of our ancestors that we all stand tall. I feel gratified that I have been able to bring about recognition and remembrance of our ancestors who left India as indentured laborers from 1834—1920 by making the Kolkata Memorial a reality (on January 11, 2011) in Kolkata”.
Similar Articles
THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
Sports
Features/Columnists
Jagdeo is a liability to Irfaan Ali
Peeping Tom… Kaieteur News- Bharrat Jagdeo has long represented an unsettling paradox in Guyana’s politics. He... more
Forget Begging Rich Nations: Caribbean Countries Should Act to Save Themselves
By Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News- It has long been evident that the world’s richest nations, especially those responsible... more
Weekend Cartoon
