THE nation celebrated Arrival Day yesterday. It is time for reflection on the journey this nation has travelled to extant times – from where we were to where we have reached, and the bylanes and bypasses along the way.

While the space on this Editorial column does not offer much leeway for an in-depth analysis of the experiences, travails and triumphs of our ancestors, we yet need to bring to the fore the journey from darkness to light, and some of the persons who reached for the stars, even while their feet were deeply implanted in the mud.

In 1834, the slaves had been set free and in British Guiana most of the freed slaves chose to pursue agriculture, only intermittently seeking paid employment on the sugar estates, so it was imperative for a new source of cheap labour be found to sustain the sugar industry. They reverted to contract, on an indentureship basis, labourers from Madeira (Portugal), India and China.

According to a report by Trev Sue-a-Quan, “The first batch of Chinese landed in Georgetown, British Guiana in 1853, and for the next few years all were men, most being taken forcibly. To curb the excesses of this trade in human cargo the British and Chinese authorities in Canton agreed to a formal supervised recruitment process and families were encouraged to emigrate.

Chinese women began arriving in 1860, but in small numbers. The period from 1860 to 1866 saw a relatively large influx of immigrants, bringing the local Chinese population to a peak of 10,022 in 1866. Subsequently only two boats arrived with Chinese immigrants, one in 1874 and the other in 1879. After this Chinese immigrants came of their own free will and at their own expense.”

Peter Rohoman states in his ‘Centenary History of the East Indians in British Guiana 1838-1938’:
“It will be the author’s main purpose to prove by the incontestable evidence of facts that Indian Immigration has not only been the salvation of the colony at a most critical juncture in its history, when after the abolition of Negro slavery, there was a general trek away from the plantations, resulting in the economic structure of the Colony being shaken to its very foundations through the lack of a dependable labour supply, but that the Indians themselves have proved to be the most valuable assets to the industrial welfare of the Colony as is unaided efforts, of the rice and cattle industries.”
Richard Mahase relates in his ‘Journey of the Guru’ the unutterable suffering and deprivation faced by descendants of the Indian immigrants, not least being denial of an education and upward mobility unless they denied their religions and converted to Christianity and, in the process, anglicised their names. The fact that many did and turned out to be brilliant professionals testified to the grave injustice done to Indians in then British Guiana, and it was only with the advent of the Jagans in the socio-political fray; and His Holiness Swami Purnanandaji Maharaj, who established educational systems whereby all were welcomed, irrespective of ethnicity, gender, religious convictions, poverty or any other consideration that disqualified them from entering Government or Christian-based schools that Indians could at last see a glimmering of hope to transpose out of the debilitating plantation world and carve a niche for themselves in the upper echelons of society.
However, there were those indomitable entrepreneurial pioneers who became giants of industry without sacrificing either their traditions, the religions of their foreparents and blazed trails now being trod by others.
Toolsie Persaud, Edward B. Beharry, the Gafoor father and son, the Kissoon brothers and Lyla Kissoon, Resaul Maraj, Bish Panday, Kayman Sankar, all of whom blazed trails and created wealth and jobs, not merely elevating themselves out of poverty, but also thousands of employees.
Dr. Cheddi Jagan is an iconic figure who also traversed uncharted territory to carve a future full of promise and prospects for achievement for this nation.
The great hearts of these gentlemen and women in turn contributed in many ways to better the lot of their fellowmen – many sharing generously of their bounty. Sattaur and Ameena Gafoor go beyond the mandatory zakaat in their charitable drives, as do Bish and Ahilia Panday. It was later brought to attention that Toolsie Persaud, Resaul Maraj’s wife and son-in-law, as well as many others contributed tremendously to the establishment of the Guyana Sevashram Sangha and its schools and library, thus all these persons not only facilitated the upward mobility of their fellow men, but also created avenues whereby they could sustain the religions and traditional mores and cultures of their forebears.
An investigative team showed findings to the effect that every 12% paid in wages to the Indian workers, 100% in profits was remitted to shareholders in Britain. Also, taking their figures from the then best managed estate, Rose Hall, it reported, according to Peter Rohoman, that “An abled-bodied man, working as a shovel man for 7 hours a day, during the slack season, and 15 hours per day, during the period of grinding, is able to save, after a period of 10 years of unremitting toil, not more than a sum of $162, while a male weeder saves nothing, in view of stringent living expenses, but has a debt of $37 at the end of the period. A female weeder fares even worse. Her budget, prepare on the same basis, actually shows, after 10 years, a deficit of $153. If she gets a return passage of $225, then her share of the cost of the passage money is included.”
Rohoman concluded: “Indians, by their strenuous labour, have filled the coffers of the absentee landlords. They have been unable to lay by anything for themselves from labours on the plantations, and the inconsiderable sum of 30 or 40 dollars, amassed after 20 or 30 years labour, has been the result of a systematic policy of hard thrift, achieved at the expense of their health, happiness, and physical well-being.”
Wherever they have settled, Indians have demonstrated their ability to survive with nothing but natural resources, primarily earth, and their own grit and determination. Even in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles and against all odds, the immigrants, utilising their land grants (most mere marshland) issued as an incentive to colonisation, and by dint of tremendous, almost superhuman, effort and soul-searing sacrifices, created thriving industries that propelled them out of the ranks of the servile into self-respecting, respected members of their communities.
Rohoman writes: W.E Henly has expressed the soul of the Indian immigrant in his “Invictus” when he wrote:
Out of the night that covers me
Black as the pit from pole to pole
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unfraid
It matters not how straight the gate
How charged with punishment the scroll
I am master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul

Longfellow wrote in The Slave’s Dream verse 1 of which reads: “Beside the ungathered rice (cane) he lay, his sickle in his hand/His breast was bare, his hair was buried in the sand/again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, he saw his native land” and verse 6,7 and 8 which read: “At night he heard the lion roar, and the hyena scream/and reeds beside some hidden stream/and like a glorious roll of drums, through the triumph of his dream.

“The forests, with their myriad tongues, shouted of liberty/and the blast of the desert cried aloud, with a voice so wild and free/That he started in his sleep and smiled at their tempestuous glee/.
“He did not feel the driver’s whip, nor the burning heat of day/For death had illuminated the land of sleep, and his lifeless body lay/freed of the iron fetter that the soul had broken and thrown away.”

In a situation where dreams and death occasioned the only freedom from utmost cruelty and abject servility of the total being, perhaps none of us could possess the depth of insight to visualise the sheer guts, to put it vulgarly, yet graphically, it took a people, born into conditions of subjection and degradation, to rise above their own traumas and courageously carve a path of freedom whereon their descendants could stride with pride and dignity.