Why I Will Never Celebrate Indian Arrival Day

Why I Will Never Celebrate Indian Arrival Day

Indentured labor in the Caribbean marked the beginning of disease, dependencies, prejudices, and ills that continue to plague Indo-Caribbean communities

By Rajiv Mohabir
June 2, 2016 | British colonization, Caribbean, Guyana, Indian Arrival Day, forced migration, indentured labor
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Each year on May 5 Guyana celebrates “Indian Arrival Day,” commemorating the arrival of Indian indentured laborers to the Caribbean. On May 5, 1838, the S.S. Hesperus and the S.S. Whitby arrived along the shores of Berbice and Demerara in Guyana. Together they carried 396 Indians, referred to as “coolies,” from Chota Nagpur, then Bihar, 300 miles from Kolkata. Since slavery had recently ended and African-descended people had been emancipated in the British colonies in 1833, the British were in need of cheap labor. They looked to India, the jewel in the Empire’s crown—a jewel that became a sugar crystal.

The first Indian arrivals to the Caribbean were part of the Gladstone experiment: a continuation of forced migration from the Indian subcontinent to see if Indians would be an adequate and strong enough replacement for Africans and African-descended slaves. The British had already been practicing indenture in the Indian Ocean in their colonies in Réunion and Mauritius. Each coolie was bound by a renewable contract to serve on the British sugar plantations for a period of five years. Lured away from their homes by the promise of riches, their passage across the sea at the hands of the British was brutal, followed by the degrading dehumanization that occurred on the plantations. Even though they were “paid” a wage, it was seldom enough to buy any kind of freedom from the plantation economy, except for rum that dulled the pain of its hellish conditions.
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