The Sanaatan Dharma Mandir of New York organized an event to celebrate the "Indian Arrival Day" of our Indian Indentured Ancestors to the West Indies to Guyana. This year marked the 174th years of our ancestors' dynamic history and rich heritage to the West Indies. The event was held at the mandir, located at 104-22 114th Street, Richmond Hill in Queens, NY, on Sunday May 6th.
Such celebrations are held in the different countries in the Global Indian Diaspora, where over a century ago, the British plantation owners took the Indians from India as indentured laborers to "toil and sweat" in their sugar plantations. In British Guiana, slavery was abolished in 1834, after which the African slaves refused to work in the plantations. The plantation landlords found themselves in a quagmire; they scrambled to fill that gap with cheap laborers from Europe, but those attempts failed dismally. Finally, they turned to India to import cheap laborers. India was also under British rule, so their work was made easy, especially, after they painted a rosy picture of "plenty food, plenty clothing and plenty money" for the laborers.
A section of the gathering
The executive body and members of the Sanaatan Dharma Mandir of New York planned this event to coincide with the "Indian Arrival Day" celebrations in Guyana, which is observed on May 5th and is a national holiday in that country. Previously known as British Guiana, the first two ships that arrived at Highbury, East Berbice were the Whitby and the Hesperus on May 5th, 1838. Indenturedship was a five-year contract, whereby the Indentured laborers were bound to work on the sugar plantations for five years before they were free to return to India if they could provide their own passage.
The children of our ancestors reading
It was a short but packed program at the mandir. The keynote speaker was Dr. Basdeo Mangru who is one of Guyana's and the West Indies' most distinguished historians. Dr. Mangru specialized in the Indentured ancestors' history in Guyana, a subject that is very close to his heart. He is the author of several books written on the Indentured laborers' history. His lecture was extremely well presented. He talked about how the recruitment process for the laborers started in India, the many voyages they made across the "Kala Pani" (which means Black Water) and their harsh struggles against the indentured system on the sugar plantations across the colony. It was a concise but well-documented history lesson on our indentured ancestors' experiences that many in the audience was not aware of.
The program was sprinkled with children of the mandir reading empowering statements about the rich characteristics of their indentured ancestors and the sterling contributions they made to Guyana to help in that country's socio-economic and political developemnt and their struggles for a free Guyana. The event was ended with a powerful and informative slideshow that depicted their hard but humble lives on the sugar estates. Pictures were shown of the ancestors' cutting canes, loading the sugar punts, living in their grass houses and fetching loads on the donkey-carts, among others. Mention was also made of the Kolkata Memorial and museum that is being built in India and spearheaded by GOPIO International in honor of the Indentured ancestors.
