Indian Arrival Day: The majesty, the other arrival remaining

May 06, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – Being someone with scant patience for the wiles and timing of men, I went ahead and made it official. Arrival day is now Indian Arrival Day. All by myself, the deed is done. A joyful Indian Arrival Day to my sisters and brothers of the ethnic strain. That is, if they will have the goodwill in their hearts to accept such a greeting, a handshake, from someone like me. Perhaps, it is a good day to remind them of something else: in all the disagreements and disputes, I have never besmirched or slandered the race, in any form or fashion. Differ, yes; but malign and putdown, not this citizen.

Fourteen years prior to the bicentennial (I hope that this is right) anniversary of the first Indians from the subcontinent, it is high time that this is gotten right. Indian Arrival Day, it should have been already. Must be now, to make matters right. Some friends may have been earned just for this posture, this call. The hope is that they will stay that way, with none lost, a couple more gained, for speaking with frankness in what now follows.

Indians did arrive then on Guyana’s shores, and Indians have arrived now. Long before now. If it is okay, the history lesson will be left for another day. But Indians did arrive physically. And they have arrived educationally, financially, politically, recreationally, and along with most of the other lovely and positive adverbs that say much of the strides of a foreign people in their new land, their strange, new home, no longer new or strange.

They have arrived religiously in what they have retained, and part of their arrival has been what they have embraced. But there is still an arrival, a glaring strand or two missing-towards which they must work just as diligently to reach and deliver from what must be an elevated perch. I see this as a combination of the mental and the spiritual, and both will possess all the attributes to contribute immeasurably to the other states that were identified.

The sum of the story is that since the Arrival of Indians in Guyana, they have been blessed with their arrival at different heights and in different realms in this land of theirs, this Guyana. From rivers crossed to barriers overcome to heights scaled to inhibitions conquered. It is a grand story, is it not? To say otherwise would be a sacrilege.

An enduring dishonor to the line of ancestors, who toiled with nothing to achieve a little more than they started out with in their journey of discovery. There is gratitude. Gratitude to them, and to all the others who looked like them. But I would be an infinitely smaller man if I were to be so limited as not to take a bow to the memory of those who were different and did open a door or two along my way.

I trust that none of this is so peculiar, and peculiarly said, that it goes over the head of those reading, absorbing, and thinking. To promote thinking is what infuses all these writings, these public service hands, that are extended before one and before all Guyanese.

Because in my book of a few pages and only a few more paragraphs, there is this vision, this point, that is dug up and given free of charge. Arrival is more than a moment in time. Arrival is more than the national recognition and national celebration that are long overdue, very much deserved.

Arrival is about landing on one step, then creeping to the one above, then still aspiring and moving for those next difficult steps in the staircase (those challenging rungs in the ladder), that are there to be climbed and from there to soar. To put differently, and in the most undesired terms (probably), Indian Arrival Day is here, but having arrived, where do Indians go from here? Having arrived cannot and should not be the dead end of a terminal for Indians in Guyana.

It is what must not be, regardless of the costs, the sacrifices, that are sure to line the way ahead. Especially given the context of the environment, the demands of this new era in Guyanese life.

The proud Arrival of Indians must sweep up and carry along others in this society, so that there is no danger of any Guyanese being left behind. Not one Guyanese (or any law-abiding fraternal Venezuelan) left behind. In their moment of triumphant arrival, Indians must consistently and comprehensively manifest that they are broadminded enough and profound enough.

Meaning that they are of the vital substances to consider the steps that remain in their journey towards an authentically inclusive national instinct, national practice, and national destiny. It is to be broadminded enough to think of those whose arrival preceded them. Profound enough to discern those who came after them. Those who are yet to encounter and taste the fullest freedom of having arrived in a space of extraordinary wonder that should be the property of all Guyanese.

The national patrimony that makes so much possible for every national. When all are held in the best of lights, whether coming involuntarily to Guyana before, or landing afterwards, then arrival would be at its most towering apex. There is Indian Arrival Day. Then there is that national arrival day that is an epoch that transcends all other arrivals. There is that one arrival that is left to complete.

To all Indians, from President Ali to Vice President Jagdeo to the men in the Opposition: Ramjattan and that honorary Indian, Aubrey Norton and the circle of Guyanese people: a special Indian Arrival Day. This is what must power the expansiveness of today’s long-ago arrival, and the arrival of that other day that is waited upon, now believed possible.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

Guyana, Hard Truths by GHK Lall, Indian Arrival Day

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