The Copper Plate and a Farewell

In 1981 Pandit B.D. Lakshman was in his eighty-first year, living at Deuba with Mrs Rampiari Lakshman. It was a year of honours from both of the countries his life had joined, Fiji and India, and it was the year of his death.

A booklet for his life

On 30 March 1981, in Suva, D. Sharma published a small booklet, Pandit B.D. Lakshman – Teacher, Politician, Statesman: A Brief Life History. It sold for 50 cents. Its cover called him the "Founder of Trade Union Movement in Fiji", a "Promoter of Higher Education and Learning" and "A Living Bond of Friendship Between India and Fiji".

Mr Sharma signed his introduction on 29 March 1981, and wrote that he had known Pandit Lakshman "for close to 50 years". The rights of reproduction were "reserved with Pandit B.D. Lakshman", and readers who wanted more copies were directed to his son, Prince Gopal Lakshman, at Deuba Freehold. Mr Sharma knew that a short booklet could not hold a long life. "It would take volumes and volumes to write the full story," he wrote, and he hoped that one day somebody would sit down to write it.

The booklet is the foundation of this site, and there is more about it on the Sources page.

The Fiji Ratana medal

Mr Sharma wrote the booklet at the request of the India Fiji Girmit Council, which had decided to award Pandit Lakshman a gold medal titled "Fiji Ratana". Roughly translated, Mr Sharma explained, it means "The Jewel of Fiji". The medal was to be presented on 15 May 1981, at what the Council called the celebration of the 101st anniversary of the coming of the Indians to Fiji.

The medal, shown in the first edition, bears the words "Fiji Ratana" and "India Fiji Bond of Friendship", and the first edition describes it as awarded "on behalf of the people of Fiji". Because the booklet went to print before the planned presentation, it does not describe the ceremony itself.

(The first edition spells the title both "Fiji Ratana" and "Fiji Ratna". This site uses "Fiji Ratana", the spelling on the medal.)

India's copper plate

The second honour came from India. On 26 September 1981 India's Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, visiting Fiji, presented the Government of India's copper plate award, the Tamra Patra, at the Pacific Harbour Resort at Deuba. Pacific Islands Monthly explained that it was "given only to those who played notable roles in the nation's independence movement".

Pandit Lakshman, then 81, was in Brisbane for medical treatment. The plate was received on his behalf by two of his sons, among them Prince Gopal Lakshman, and their wives. One of the sons said that the plates had been made in 1972, for the twenty-fifth anniversary of India's independence, and had not been presented earlier because India was not sure whether his father was still living. The Government of India had instituted the Tamra Patra in 1972.

The copper plate is the clearest independent recognition of the years he spent in India, which are otherwise known mainly from the 1981 first edition (see India: Student and Satyagrahi).

A farewell

Nine days later, on 5 October 1981, Pandit B.D. Lakshman died in Brisbane, Australia, aged 81. Pacific Islands Monthly remembered him as "a pioneer in the fields of industry, education, and the trade union movement in Fiji".

The 1981 booklet, written only months before, had looked forward to a grand family get-together in 1982, when Pandit and Mrs Lakshman would celebrate their Diamond Wedding Jubilee. His life had begun near the indenture lines of Nausori, eighty-one years earlier. It ended with honours from Fiji and from India.

The story continued

In 2026 his grandson published a Second Edition of the 1981 booklet, keeping Mr Sharma's account and adding what newer research has found. This site grows from both books. His family's story, carried on by his son Prince Gopal Lakshman, is told on the Family and Legacy page.

Sources for this page: D. Sharma, A Brief Life History (Suva, 1981), the first edition, including the medal photograph; Ana Madigibuli, “Look Back: Lakshman recognised as India Independence hero”, The Fiji Times, 27 September 2020; Pacific Islands Monthly, 1 December 1981, p. 74; Parliament Digital Library of India, “Award of Tamra Patra to Freedom Fighters” (the 1972 award); Second Edition (2026), front matter and chapter “Deuba and the Later Years, 1962–1981”. Full details are on the Sources page.