nPostednon May 5, 2016
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LikenTrinidad and Tobago andnseveral other nations in and around the Caribbean,nGuyana celebrates IndiannArrival Day.
LikenTrinidad and Tobago andnseveral other nations in and around the Caribbean,nGuyana celebrates IndiannArrival Day.n
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nDoesnit seem surprising to learn that Caribbean nations celebrate thenanniversary of people arriving as indentured laborers from India?
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nPerhapsnit is not so surprising when you learn that a large percentage ofnthese nations’ populations are descended from the Indian laborers.n(And, remember, we are not talking about Amerindian – we arentalking about East Indians, from India.)
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nAmerindiansnmake up only about 9% of Guyana’s population. Afro-Guyanese,ndescendants of slaves from Africa, make up about 30%; Guyanese ofnmixed heritage make up almost 17%. Indo-Guyanese – the descendantsnof the laborers from India – make up the largest group, at almostn44%!
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nWhynwere Indians brought to Guyana and other Caribbean nations? Slaverynwas abolished in Guyana in 1834, and many former slaves left thenplantations where they had worked, eager to start their ownnfreeholdings. The sugar planters, who were by and large British,nbegan to recruit people from Africa, Portugal, and other places toncome work on the plantations, but they could not interest enoughnpeople to work the plantations.
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nOnenof the plantation owners asked if he could bring over Eastern Indiansnfor a 5-year period of indenture. (That means that the planter andnthe laborer had a contract that the laborer had to work on thenplantation for five years.) Since Britain controlled India, it wasnperhaps natural for the British planters to recruit from the populousnsub-continent.
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nOn this date in 1838, the first small group of Indian laborers came to Guyana. Eventually, over the course of some eighty years, hundreds of thousands of laborers were imported from India. Of course, some of them returned to India with their earnings; many chose to (or had to) stay in Guyana.
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| Just as some Americans celebrate the Mayflower, the ship in which some early colonists traveled to the New World, some Indo-Guyanese people celebrate the Whitby, the first ship that brought Indians to Guyana. |
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| Indians in Guyana were allowed to keep and practice their culture, even back in the 1800s. Many modern Indo-Guyanese celebrate Hindu holidays and keep Indian traditions. |
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nInbet you are wondering if the planters, who were used to having slavenlabor at their disposal, treated the Indian workers well. As innanything dealing with people, the answer is “some did, somendidn’t.”
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nHowever, the Anti-Slavery Society visited Guyana to makensure that a new kind of slavery was NOT being introduced.
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nOn somenplantations they observed bad treatment of workers, includingnflogging and imprisonment, and they also found that some workers werenbeing paid less than a third of what they were promised. After thenmembers of the Anti-Slavery Society investigated, they gave a reportnto the Governor, who ordered the prosecution those guilty ofnmistreating the Indians. n
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nGuyana is on the northern coast of South America. Tonlearn more about Guyana, check out this earlier post.
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nAlsonon this date:
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nNationalnFerret Day in the U.K.
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nNationalnCartoonists’ Day
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nCinconde Mayo
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PhilosophynDay
PhilosophynDayn
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nChildren’snDay in South Korea
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nHidirelleznFestival in Turkey
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nPlannahead:
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Checknout my Pinterest boards for:
Checknout my Pinterest boards for:
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nMayn holidays
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nMayn birthdays
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nHistoricaln anniversaries in May
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nAndnhere are my Pinterest boards for:
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nJunen holidays
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nJunen birthdays
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n Historicaln anniversaries in June
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