From Arrival Day to ...

FROM PAGE XVIII both tormented by inner self-loathing, one more than the other was enveloped by tragedy. We respond to Edgar Mittleholtzer and V.S Naipaul. They were, and we understand what the vexations of colonisation did more through them, though they still rest well with us in many ways. The resolve is that the predicament of the arts today is the quest for its freedom, to embody its true self, and to envisage how we will shape today for tomorrow from the portraits and sceneries that have shaped us. any schools in the sugar estate areas where the immigrants lived. By the 1920s, however, there emerged several Indian doctors and lawyers, teachers, land surveyors, tradesmen of various kinds, and even a few trade unionists and politicians. In this process, the social and economic life of the country expanded and life became more comfortable.

In the 1940s and 1950s there occurred a revolution in secondary education. Several educationists, chief among whom were J.C.Luck,

R.B.O.Hart, R.E.Cheeks, O. Allen, and J.I.Ramphal opened schools and campaigned among parents to send their children for secondary education, most of whom would not have normally done so. These schools offered the Junior and Senior Cambridge examinations and the London Matriculation, which qualified students to enter the public service, the officer class in the police, and the teaching profession. Many more could now do correspondence courses for London

University degrees and even felt they could enter politics. The descendants of the indentured workers all became literate in English, and with the Secondary Education Revolution, an even stronger professional class emerged among them to help in all areas of economic and social development of the nation.

Guyanese celebrate Indian Arrival Day as commemorating a moment in the nation’s history that began the unleashing of growing strength and creativity.