Indian Arrival Day is a public holiday that was first started in Trinidad and Tobago to celebrate the East Indian immigrants arrival to the nation during the indentureship period.
It is now celebrated on various days in the nations of the Caribbean, Fiji, South Africa and Mauritius, commemorating the arrival of people from India and the wider subcontinent to their respective nations as indentured laborers brought by European colonial authorities and their agents. In Guyana, Mauritius, Fiji and Trinidad and Tobago, where it started, it is an official public holiday.
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.
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. 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. 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".
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.
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.
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. This date is specifically chosen as the ship Atlas arrived in Mauritius on Sunday 2 November 1834 with the first cargo of 36 Hill Coolies or indentured labourers of the Dhangar caste, organised by the Hunter-Arbuthnot & Company.
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. Many other Caribbean nations observe Indian Arrival Day annually to commemorate the date when the first Indians arrived in their respective countries.
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. 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. 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.
The Government of the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines officially designated 7 October as Indian Heritage Day.
Indian Arrival Day in South Africa is commemorated annually on November 16. It marks the historic day in 1860 when the SS Truro arrived in Port Natal (modern-day Durban) carrying the first 342 indentured Indian laborers from Madras (Chennai) to work on colonial sugarcane plantations.
Between 1860 and 1911, over 152,000 indentured workers were brought from India to South Africa. While the day honors their resilience and monumental cultural contributions, it also remembers the harsh, slave-like conditions they endured and the racial discrimination they subsequently fought against during Apartheid.
In Suriname, Indian Arrival Day (Prawas Din) is celebrated on 5 June. On this day in 1873, a ship named Lalla Rookh, arrived in Paramaribo carrying the first batch of 399 Indian Indenture Labours.
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 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 who were "coolie" indentured labourers were long gone. By the early seventies, the only Indian group was the Hindu Divine Life Society of Chaguanas who 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.