HISTORY should not be used in a divisive way but to draw us closer, said Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony on Wednesday at the second instalment in a series of lectures to commemorate the 175th anniversary of the arrival of Indian indentured immigrants to Guyana.

Hosted at the Umana Yana, Kingston, the lecture titled “A Far Horizon: A World Made Small” was   presented by Dr. Kusha Haraksingh.
“It is very important that we discuss our history and learn from it. If we learn these lessons, it would stand us in good stead, especially among the younger generation,” Anthony said, adding that it was important to have a lecture series to commemorate the anniversary as Indians made up the largest number of persons who came as indentured labourers. He also commended the number of bodies who are carrying on Arrival Day activities during the month.
Minister Anthony noted that the National Archives has started a project to digitalise the archives and lauded historian Tota Mangar for getting the records listed as part of the UNESCO world register.

Indentured Immigrant Monument
Anthony said that there has been a call around the country to have an indentured immigrant monument in Berbice. Consequently, there is an ongoing competition and persons are invited to submit entries for the design of the monument.
This  year marks many special anniversaries, as listed on the events programme:  2013  is the 250th Anniversary of the 1763 Berbice Slave Revolts; 190th Anniversary of the East Coast Insurrection; 175th Anniversary of Emancipation; 175th Anniversary of the Arrival of Indian Immigrants; 150th Anniversary of the Arrival of Chinese Immigrants; 100th Anniversary of the Plantation Rose Hall Shooting; 60th Anniversary of the first election under Universal Adult Suffrage; and 50th Anniversary of the University of Guyana.
Meanwhile, the third and final lecture in the series, “Her Middle Passage: Indian Women and the Journey of Indentureship” will be presented by American journalist Gaiutra Bahadur on Tuesday, May 21. The venue is the Umana Yana and the time is 17:00 hrs.
Chairperson of the event on Wednesday,  Professor Dr. Prem Misir, Pro-Chancellor of the University of Guyana (UG), said the Indian Diaspora is not new as Indians have been back and forth for a number of years and there were 30 million Indians in 110 countries.  He made the distinction between People of Indian Origin (PIO) and non-resident Indians (NRI).
Speaking about ethnocentrism defined as the conviction of one’s own cultural superiority: a belief in or assumption of the superiority of the social or cultural group that a person belongs to, which led people to view others based on their own culture, he lauded Dr. Haraksingh for reaching out to people from their own perspective.
Dr. Haraksingh, Chairman of the CARICOM Competition Commission (CCC), is the foundation Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine, where he is one of the longest serving academicians. The mandate of the CCC is to apply the rules of Competition in the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME).
For more than 10 years he has conducted the Globalisation Seminar in the Institute of International Relations and has produced several doctoral students.
In public life, Dr. Haraksingh has been a trade union leader as President of the West Indies  Group of University Teachers, a senator in the Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago, Chairman of Caroni Limited, Central Regional Health Authority and the Sugar Association of the Caribbean.
He is also a member of the CARIFORUM and CARICOM College of Negotiators and the Region’s lead negotiator for legal and institutional issues and for dispute settlement.