May 5 is Indian Arrival Day, and nothing else

May 07, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor,

 On Monday, we observed and in some quarters celebrated Arrival Day. I remain satisfied with the absurdity of this title of Arrival Day. The records are clear. 

 May 5th, 1838, is the date that our Indian brothers arrived on two ships, the Hesperus and the Whitby. Earlier, I was among those who contended that it would be a historical error to designate May 5 to cover the arrival of Chinese and Portuguese and Africans who were enslaved after the arrival in this colony by the Dutch and British imperial colonizers.

Why the PPP chose to make May 5, Arrival Day, to cover our foreparents who arrived or better put, were brought here, is troubling and defies logic and good sense. Discussions years ago, with the likes of Pandit Sharma, Sase Narain and others, the PNC always contended, and I so submit that May 5 is Indian Arrival Day, and nothing else. The Chinese and Portuguese who came from Madeira may wish to pursue their case.  

The greatest tragedy, however, is that because white imperialism was and is still dismissive of people with woolly hair and melanin, despite the movie ‘ROOTS,’ you can find no record of when the Africans, tricked, bound and brutalized, arrived on our shores. 

This naming of May 5 as Arrival Day to cover all ethnic groups that worked on our plantations is yet another trick plucked out of the hat of the PPP’s well-oiled and funded propaganda establishment. If we are to advance as One People, we must be willing at all times to transmit to our children, all of our history, the glorious and the damned, who must not do what we observe happening elsewhere where popular men seem determined to erase the truth of our past.

The relaying of this truth, the whole truth, will make us strong as a people and, more importantly, identify the real enemy whose tonic, whose strategy, whose static remain to divide and continue to rule. When we go past the Indian Monument Site, between North Road and Church Street, bounded by Alexander and Camp Streets, how many of us know that the biggest plantation owners and slave masters, the  Gladstones, instead of bargaining with the Manumitted Africans for better wages and conditions, sought to bring in labour from  India, Madeira and China. Modern trade unionists refer to this as scab labour. 

I have elsewhere applauded my Indian brothers for their hard work, sacrifice and judicious practice of deferred gratification. With what is happening currently in parts of the world, our education must not be afraid to articulate all of our colonial experience and in this regard, not to be shy to expose the enormous damage done to slaves during the horrors of the Trans Atlantic journey, where the Africans was the only group who had its roots completely severed from his homeland, and like a tree,  if you cut its roots, its growth in an alien environment requires supreme strength and spirituality, which those Manumitted Africans displayed.

Our Indian brothers, for example, were able to bring with them their holy writings, drums, and cultural paraphernalia, including their labels and names. The African who smuggled the drums and other cultural implements, once discovered, on that journey from West Africa to the Americas and Guiana, were thrown overboard, severing their liberty or links with their home land and with that void, happily gave birth to the steel pan, a demonstration of the resilience of the most brutalized people of this period. 

Our Chinese, Portuguese and Indian Brothers have, over time, been able to reconnect with their ancestral symbols. The severing of roots was so cruel and severe that I know of no Guyanese nor American Blacks who have been able to identify the village from which they were uprooted. So we are left with religion and labels of our erstwhile slave masters.

I urge this and succeeding Governments, with boldness to teach all of our history, not to ignore the efforts of Cuffy, Quamina and Acrabee, not to ignore the work of Fowell Buxton, William Wilberforce and John Newton, who wrote the words of Amazing Grace and that the tune is that of an African oriented work rhythm.

For me, May 5 is Indian Arrival Day and ought not to cover the arrival of others. For me, it is absurd. I close with the words of a highly respected Indo Guyanese uttered at a celebration, “ We came in different ships, but today we are in one boat.”  Let us paddle together to the drumbeat to the rhythm of the Congo drum, Tassa drum, the Portuguese drum, the Chinese Drum and the Amerindian drum, so that as One People, we can all overcome the tricks and stratagem of the attitudes of our erstwhile masters, attitudes which are still in place and is consuming many of our ancestors in other parts of the world.

Years ago, at public rallies, one of our modern-day liberators would lead the chant, Can we do it? Whether you are Singh, Debarros, Chin, Sydney, or Prabhu, our response is Yes, we can.

 Hamilton Green,

Elder

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