The conventional Arrival Day message seeks to glorify the East Indians’ arrival in Guyana and to celebrate the achievements and contributions of the East Indians in and towards Guyana. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But under the peaceful waters of cultural pride rages a deadly current of racism that few like to acknowledge. It is this unseen aspect of racial pride – the disunity created by unity – that Dr. Josh Kanhai seeks to address in his non-conventional Arrival Day Message.
We the People
This isn’t going to be the conventional speech for Indian Arrival Day. We are all equal at the end of the day. Cut my skin and you’ll see blood: the very same blood you have without a doubt. We the people are of this nation without hesitation; we were birthed on a soil claimed to be Guyana, a soil they once called “El Dorado.” We beg to differ, I am El Dorado and you are as equal of an El Dorado as you can be.
They the people have grown, they have evolved on principles not of Darwinism but on principles of race, heat, and hate. And they try to filter it down to us. They try to deviously deviate us from the narrow way of culture, tranquility, and peace which leads to progress. We will not blame them. However, we have to accept that this was something within the magnitude of a generational curse. Are you cursed my Guyanese brothers and sister?
Are you cursed with racism? Are you cursed with that need to just hate and unfortunately, horrifically hate an entire culture and label them within a class system. Are you going to figure out that I, that We, are not your enemy! Nobody is your enemy. No man is an island, and if he be an island, may he not be a volcano and erupt in his own ego.
We the people are going to move together for the better. We the people will continue to build on a foundation left by all of our foreparents and those before them. We the people have had enough of the time machine that only goes backward on one nugget of rhetoric. This is one nation, with #OnePeople working towards One Destiny.
