Dear Editor,
Next Sunday, May 5th, the day on which the first indentured labourers from India landed on our shores, is a Public Holiday. However, it is officially dubbed “Arrival Day”, which implicitly conflates the arrival of all the groups that were brought here to join our Indigenous Peoples. As usual there will be calls by Indian Guyanese groups and individuals for the holiday to be given the designation proposed by the Parliamentary Commit-tee, “Indian Arrival Day”, in 2004. Before, the day was first commemorated on the 100th Anniversary of Indian Arrival in 1938 with week-long activities. After a hiatus of two decades, its commemoration across Guyana as “Ramakhan Day” – from the first two persons, Ram and Khan, who stepped off the Whitby – in the 1960s, was initiated by the Gandhi Youth Organization,. This morphed to “Indian Immigration Day” in the 70s and then from the 1980s, “Indian Arrival Day” gradually took centre stage after the example of Trinidad and Tobago which initially named their holiday in 1994 “Arrival Day” but changed it permanently in 1995 to “Indian Arrival Day”.
On 14th April 14, 2003, the PPP/C government had established a Special Select Parliamentary Committee, of which I was a member, “To Review The Public Holidays Act, Chapter 19:07”. More specifically it was to consider making May 26 a permanent Public Holiday (Independence Day) and May 5 to commemorate the Arrival of Indians to Guyana. The rationale for considering the latter holiday was stated in the introduction of the Report of the Special Select Committee: “Guyanese of Indian origin, who form a large portion of the country’s population, had for a period of in excess of the past forty years, been calling for 5th May to be declared a statutory public holiday, in observance of the arrival of the first batch of Indian indentured labourers who came to the then British Guiana in 1838.” Yet the Government’s Resolution (No.12 of 2003) 14th April, 2003 to establish the Committee declared that it should review as a possible public holiday “Arrival Day, that is to say, the 5th May, or, if that day is a Sunday, the following day.”
In its conclusions, the Parliamentary Committee noted: “While the aforesaid recommendation (on the holiday be named “Arrival Day) is in keeping with our mandate, the Committee wishes to note that all (my emphasis) the submissions favouring 5th May as a Public Holiday recommended that it be designated “Indian Arrival Day” as is the case in Trinidad and Tobago.” The Report was presented to the National Assembly on 29, April 2004 and approved. The first “Arrival Day” Public Holiday was officially observed on May 5 of that year. I made my objections known during the debate but the government’s decision was carried. In the years since, there have been widespread calls from the Indian Guyanese community for the government to follow the recommendations of the submissions.
That decision, in my estimation, was actuated by a desire of the PPP government not to possibly alienate other Guyanese groups who had also “arrived”. African Guyanese have always argued – rightfully in my estimation –that since they were brought in chains as chattels, the commemoration of “Emancipation Day” on August 1st was most appropriate. Indigenous Peoples could commemorate their presence during “Amerindian Heritage Month”. In the years following the passing of the omnibus “Arrival Day” legislation , none of the other groups – such as Portuguese and Chinese whose arrival dates were respectively on June 3 and Jan 12 – took the opportunity to join in commemorating the occasion on May 5. In fact there were expressions of disapproval from those communities that their arrivals were subsumed with a date that clearly marked the Indian Indentured’s arrival.
In 2017, however, President David Granger initiated a precedent which addressed concerns about the government “favouring” Indian Guyanese which we commend. He issued a public notice in early January 2017 to the effect that Jan 12 be henceforth designated as “Chinese Arrival Day” but not a Public Holiday. Later, on 27 February 2017, he likewise proclaimed 3rd May each year as Portuguese Arrival Day. The days have since witnessed commemorative activities by those communities. May 5th was designated “Indian Arrival Day”.
We believe that as part of our nation building activities, our Guyanese society would almost universally support the reconsideration of the name of the May 5th holiday as “Indian Arrival Day”. And I submit that the time has come for the government to officially rectify the anomaly.
Sincerely,
Ravi Dev
