Indian Arrival Day in Guyana
Indian Arrival Day in Guyana is held on May 5. This event in the first decade of the month May is annual. Help us
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 percent of Guyana's population of over 750,000.
Most of the immigrants spoke a dialect of Hindi and came from the provinces of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madras (today known as Tamil Nadu). Within a decade, Indian immigration was largely responsible for changing the fortunes of the sugar industry, the mainstay of the economy, from the predicted ‘ruin’ to prosperity. East Indians evolved over the years to become the single largest ethnic group in Guyana and branched out of sugar into all aspects of economic and political life in Guyana.
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Mother’s Day on May 11 (Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bonaire, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Canada, Cambodia, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Congo, Dem. Rep., Congo, Rep., Cote d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Curaçao, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominica, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Faroe Islands, Fiji, Finland, Germany, Gabon, Gambia, Greenland, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guyana, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Macau, Malaysia, Malta, Myanmar, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Singapore, Sint Maarten, Slovakia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, United States, Uruguay, Vietnam, Venezuela, Zambia, Zimbabwe);
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Emancipation Day in Barbados, Bermuda, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica on August 1 (Celebration of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 which ended the slavery in the British Empire, generally celebrated as a part of Carnival, as the Caribbean Carnival takes place at this time);