A resolution was passed in public discussion that every year on 14 May as to be Girmit Remembrance Day. 14 May is the day that the Leonidas (the first ship of indentured Indians) arrived in Fiji in 1879. Throughout the country each year there are celebrations in memory of the Girmityas and Indian culture.[1]
Grenada
The 100th anniversary of the first arrival of Indians in Grenada was commemorated in 1957. This was the first ever commemoration of the day in Grenada. The next commemoration would occur more than five decades later in 2009.[7][8] On 29 April 2009, the Government of Grenada declared that 1 May would officially be designated as Indian Arrival Day and observed annually alongside the existing Labour Day. The date was already a public holiday in Grenada, on account of Labour Day. The Government also announced that Boucherie Road, the road leading to the site of the arrival of the Maidstone, would be officially renamed Maidstone Road to honour the arrival of Indians in Grenada.[9] The renaming was officially carried out in a ceremony at 10:30 AM at La Fortune Junction, St. Patrick on 2 May 2009. Governor General Sir Carlyle Glean unveiled a granite plaque commemorating the arrival of the first Indians in Grenada. The plaque bears the inscription, "On 1st May 1857, in this bay the sailing vessel "Maidstone" anchored and landed 287 passengers having left India three months earlier, with 304 passengers. Between the years 1857 and 1890 other ships anchored in this and other bays bringing a total of 3,200 persons from India to work as agricultural indentured labourers in Grenada. This monument is dedicated to those who became the genesis of the Indo-Grenadian population of our nation".[10]
Guyana
In Guyana the holiday is celebrated in May commemorating the first arrival of indentured labourers from India to the country, on May 5, 1838. On this day, the workers arrived in Guyana to work in sugar plantations. Their descendants today comprise 44 per cent of Guyana's population of over 750,000.[11]
Jamaica
In 1995, the Government of Jamaica proclaimed 10 May, Indian Heritage Day, in recognition of the Indians' contribution to the social and economic development of the country. The arrival of the Indians more than 170 years ago is commemorated in stamps.[12]
Mauritius
In Mauritius, the holiday is celebrated on 2 November to commemorate the arrival of Indian labourers. 65.8% of the total population is of Indian origins with Mauritius being the only African country with a Hindu majority.
Saint Lucia
The Indian Diaspora of St. Lucia, an association promoting Indo-Saint Lucian heritage, organized the first Indian Arrival Day celebrations in Saint Lucia on 6 May 2013. The association is campaigning for the Saint Lucian government to officially declare 6 May as Indian Arrival Day.[13][14] Many other Caribbean nations observe Indian Arrival Day annually to commemorate the date when the first Indians arrived in their respective countries.[15]
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
The Parliament of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines enacted an Act of Parliament on 26 March 2007 officially declaring 1 June as Indian Arrival Day. The first official commemoration of the event was held on 1 June that year.[16] The day is marked annually by a re-enactment of the landing of Indians at Indian Bay, Kingstown, followed by a procession to Heritage Square. Several Indian cultural events are also held to mark the occasion.[17] The first International Indian Diaspora Conference was held for the first time on 1–3 June 2012. It was organized by the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Chapter of the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin International (GOPIO-SVG), in partnership with the SVG Indian Heritage Foundation, and under the patronage of the SVG Ministry of Tourism and Culture. This was the first international conference for the Indian diaspora held in the country. Similar conferences had been held in other Caribbean nations since 1975.[18][19]
The Government of the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines officially designated 7 October as Indian Heritage Day.[20]
In Trinidad and Tobago, Indian Arrival Day is celebrated on 30 May. It commemorates the arrival of the first indentured labourers from India in May 1845 on a ship named Fatel Razack after a journey of five months, carrying 275 Indians. Trinidad and Tobago was the first country to start this holiday.
Indian Arrival Day was first celebrated in Skinner Park, San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago, as the East Indian Centenary on 30 May 1945[23] which marked the hundredth anniversary of the coming of Indians to Trinidad. The Acting Governor representing the Government of the United Kingdom attended indicating the significance of the observance. Other local dignitaries who addressed the large crowd included Timothy Roodal, George F. Fitzpatrick, Adrian Cola Rienzi, and Murli J. Kirpalani. Greetings were also read from Mahatma Gandhi, Lord Wavell and Colonel Stanley, the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
After the 1945 Centenary extravaganza, however, the celebration of the anniversary of 30 May gradually declined. By the 1950s, the Indians who were on the Fatel Razack as immigrants to Trinidad and Tobago were brought as "coolie" indentured labourers. By the early seventies only the Indian group was the Hindu Divine Life Society of the Chaguanas was staging an annual procession and ceremony under the name Indian Emigration Day.
Indian Emigration Day, as it was called then, had been celebrated by various organizations after 1945 with limited success. By 1973 the latest was organized by the Divine Life Society, which had organized small annual processions in Chaguanas for Indian Emigration Day. By the late seventies even that small remembrance was dwindling.
In 1976 the Indian Revival and Reform Association (IRRA) was formed. They were concerned about racism against Indians and were interested in developing ideas, writing pamphlets to bring about an Indian revival and renewed pride in Indian heritage and Indian culture. The IRRA wanted to preserve the good things about Indian heritage and reform the ones that were no longer useful or relevant. The anniversary of the coming of Indians to Guyana was one of the good things that came to the IRRA notice.
In 1977 IRRA formed committee was established to revive the memory of the coming of Indians to Trinidad on 30 May 1845; Indian Emigration Day. The initial historic Committee comprised Anand Rameshwar Singh, Khalique Khan, Ramdath Jagessar, Rajiv Sieunarine, Azamudeen "Danny" Jang, Michael Sankar and Rajesh Harricharan. The following year Rajnie Ramlakhan, Anand Maharaj and Ashok Gobin joined in the group's celebration.
The first active step was taken in early 1978, when they produced and distributed a one-page pamphlet with the title "Indian Emigration Day May 30, 1978". It gave a brief account of the coming of Indians in 1845, and the importance of the event. The names of the first pioneers on the Fatel Razack were listed, and there was a short description of the achievements of Indians in Trinidad since 1845. The Trinidad Express carried a press release, and the Trinidad Guardian printed an article by Kusha Haracksingh on the voyage of the Fatel Razack. Mastana Bahar dedicated a show to Indian Emigration Day. San Fernando Secondary School organized a celebration.
A major turning point occurred in 1979 when the group expanded by approaching the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha. The SDMS Secretary General Satnarayan Maharaj receptive to the idea, agreed to organize a major celebration at Lakshmi Girls College on 27 May 1979. IRRA and the SDMS in discussions agreed that Indians were no longer emigrants to Trinidad and Tobago, but citizens who had arrived 134 years before. Coming out of this discussion the name was then changed to Indian Arrival Day.
The 1979 celebration was a great success and included the presence of some of the original immigrants born in British India. Government ministers Sham and Kamal Mohammed were there, as was the Indian High Commissioner and Presbyterian Church moderator Idris Hamid. The event was widely covered by the local media and immediately knew about the event. In fact it took just two years and an idea to revive the memory of the Arrival of Indians in Trinidad and Tobago to awaken the entire Indian community in Trinidad and Tobago.
Subsequent years the Hindu Seva Sangh and other smaller groups approached the IRRA for guidance in developing in various communities throughout Trinidad and Tobago. By 1980 Indian Arrival Day celebrations were held at the Spring Village, Cedros, Couva, Penal, San Juan, Chaguanas, and many other parts of the country. The National Joint Action Committee, the Catholic Church, other churches, libraries, masjids, mandirs, and schools at this point joined in the observances. In a short time, Indian Arrival Day was sweeping through the country. By 1985 there were more than 10 significant Indian Arrival Day celebrations taking place. The Hindu community took the lead in the development of the celebrations.
In 1991 Members of Parliament Trevor Sudama and Raymond Pallackdarrysingh first introduced to the House of Representatives the concept that Indian Arrival Day should be made a national public holiday. This call to make Indian Arrival Day a public holiday continued to be unheeded until 1995 Prime Minister Patrick Manning declared that the 150th Anniversary would be a public holiday called Indian Arrival Day, but thereafter the holiday will be called Arrival Day. The 1995 celebrations surpassed the 1945 celebrations with the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha having major celebrations in Trinidad and Tobago
In 1996 Prime Minister Basdeo Panday declared that 30 May would be known as Indian Arrival Day and not Arrival Day. However, in the birthplace of Indian Arrival Day – Trinidad and Tobago – there is a lobby to remove the word 'Indian' from the name. In the 1990s the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha expanded the Indian Arrival Day celebrations and dubbed May as "Indian Heritage Month" which ends on Indian Arrival Day.
The music of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines includes thriving music scenes based on Big Drum, calypso, soca, steelpan and also reggae. String band music, quadrille, bélé music and traditional storytelling are also popular.
The Saint Vincent and the Grenadines national football team represents Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in men's international football. It is controlled by the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Football Federation.
Indo-Caribbeans or Indian-Caribbeans are people in the Caribbean who are descendants of the Jahaji indentured laborers from India and the wider subcontinent, who were brought by the British, Dutch, and French during the colonial era from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. A minority of them are descendants from people who immigrated as entrepreneurs, businesspeople, merchants, engineers, doctors, religious leaders and other professional occupations beginning in the mid-20th century.
Emancipation Day is observed in many former European colonies in the Caribbean and areas of the United States on various dates to commemorate the emancipation of slaves of African descent.
Indo-Guyanese or Indian-Guyanese, are Guyanese nationals of Indian origin who trace their ancestry to India and the wider subcontinent. They are the descendants of indentured servants and settlers who migrated from India beginning in 1838, and continuing during the British Raj.
Hosay is a Muslim Indo-Caribbean commemoration that is popularly observed in Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica. In Trinidad and Tobago, multi-coloured model mausoleums or mosque-shaped model tombs known as tadjah are used to display the symbolic part of this commemoration. They are built and paraded, then ritually taken to the sea on last day of observance, and finally discarded into the water. The word tadjah derived from the Arabic word ta'zieh and signifies different cultural meanings depending on the region, time period, occasion, and religion. In Guyana, and Suriname, the festival is called Taziya or in Caribbean Hindustani tadjah in reference to these floats, arguably the most visible and decorative element of this festival.
Fatel Razack was the first ship to bring indentured labourers from India to Trinidad. The ship was built in Aprenade for a trader named Ibrahim Bin Yussef, an Indian Muslim merchant in Bombay. It was constructed from teak and had a carrying capacity of 415 tons. When the British decided they were going to bring Indians to Trinidad in 1845, most of the traditional British ship owners did not wish to be involved. The confusion as to the proper name possibly stems from the name "Futtle Razak", which was on the ship's manifest.
The Indian indenture system was a system of indentured servitude, by which more than 1.6million workers from British India were transported to labour in European colonies, as a substitute for slave labor, following the abolition of the trade in the early 19th century. The system expanded after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, in the French colonies in 1848, and in the Dutch Empire in 1863. British Indian indentureship lasted till the 1920s. This resulted in the development of a large South Asian diaspora in the Caribbean, Natal, East Africa, Réunion, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Fiji, as well as the growth of Indo-Caribbean, Indo-African, Indo-Mauritian, Indo-Fijian, Indo-Malaysian, and Indo-Singaporean populations.
The Southern Caribbean is a group of islands that neighbor mainland South America in the West Indies. Saint Lucia lies to the north of the region, Barbados in the east, Trinidad and Tobago at its southernmost point, and Aruba at the most westerly section.
Indo-Grenadians or Grenadians who trace their roots to India, form the largest minority group in Grenada. This term is not generally recognized by Grenadians or indeed Caribbeans. They usually refer to themselves simply as Grenadian or possibly Caribbean. This group was first introduced during the second half of the 19th century when Grenada experimented with indentured labour. By the second half of the 20th century Indians were so integrated into Grenada’s society that a distinct Indian cultural identity was generally invisible. In addition, Indians were involved in every aspect of Grenadian life. Currently there are over 12,000 Grenadians of Indian and mixed-Indian descent.
Indo-Vincentians are an ethnic group in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines who are mainly descendants of indentured laborers who came in the late 19th century to the early 20th century and entrepreneurs who began immigrating in the mid-20th century from the Indian subcontinent. There are about 5,900 people of Indian origin living in the country.
The British Overseas Territories maintain their own entry requirements different from the visa policy of the United Kingdom. As a general rule, British citizens do not have automatic right of abode in these territories.
The swimming competitions at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland took place from 24 to 29 July at the Tollcross International Swimming Centre.
Grenada–India relations refers to the international relations that exist between Grenada and India. The High Commission of India in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago is concurrently accredited to Grenada. Grenada has no diplomatic mission in India.
India–Saint Lucia relations refers to the international relations that exist between India and Saint Lucia. The Embassy of India in Paramaribo, Suriname is concurrently accredited to Saint Lucia.
India–Saint Vincent and the Grenadines relations refers to the international relations that exist between India and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The Embassy of India in Paramaribo, Suriname is concurrently accredited to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Swimming at the 2018 Commonwealth Games was held at the Gold Coast Aquatic Centre in the Gold Coast, Australia from 5 to 10 April. A total of 50 events were scheduled. Of the 50, 38 were for able-bodied athletes. The remaining 12 were for para sport athletes.
The Dominica national football team represents Dominica in international football under the control of the Dominica Football Association (DFA). Although a Dominica representative team had played previously, the football association was founded in 1970. It became fully affiliated to FIFA and CONCACAF in 1994.
The Saint Lucia national football team represents Saint Lucia in international football under the control of the Saint Lucia Football Association (SLFA). Although a Saint Lucia representative team had played previously, the football association was founded in 1979. It became fully affiliated to CONCACAF in 1986 and joined FIFA two years later.
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