The Indian Arrival Monument should be sited at Highbury

Dear Editor,

The report in Stabroek News of October 16 suggests that the authorities are bent on rewriting history by persisting with erecting the Monument generously donated by the Indian Government at Palmyra as opposed to Highbury, which is unquestionably the actual site where our forefathers from India first arrived in the then British Guiana. It baffles any iota of logic.

I recall writing in the media, somewhat jocularly, in April this year when the initial attempt to erect the monument at Palmyra collapsed, that it seemed like “cosmic justice”. And on a more serious note added that “...shifting the location of the monument…insults our collective intelligence…is obviously insensitive to the true sentiments of the descendants of the original Indian Immigrants … it is tantamount to celebrating the Berbice Slave Rebellion in Essequibo or observing the Enmore Martyrs Day at Blairmont or Skeldon”.

I am now of the view that the reported continuation with Palmyra as the site for the monument is a show of arrogance and complete indifference to the facts of history, as well as the sentiments of all the descendants of the original Indian immigrants.

I now call upon all like-minded descendants of the Indian immigrants to voice their disapproval while appealing to ‘the authorities’ to recant and re-site the monument in its only rightful location at Highbury.

Yours faithfully, Nowrang Persaud