This year, the com­mem­o­ra­tion of In­di­an Ar­rival Day (IAD) in St Vin­cent will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent. There will be many ac­tiv­i­ties lead­ing to June 1, the of­fi­cial­ly-recog­nised IAD. As in pre­vi­ous years, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines In­di­an Her­itage Foun­da­tion will be or­gan­is­ng a re-en­act­ment of the land­ing of In­di­ans at In­di­an Bay, fol­lowed by a pro­ces­sion to Her­itage Square, where there will be a dis­play of In­di­an cui­sine, among oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties. For the first time, there will be an In­ter­na­tion­al In­di­an Di­as­po­ra Con­fer­ence from June 1-3. Since 1975, In­di­an Di­as­po­ra Con­fer­ences have been held main­ly in T&T and oth­er larg­er ter­ri­to­ries. How­ev­er, a de­ci­sion was tak­en to or­gan­ise one this year in St Vin­cent to co­in­cide with our IAD. It is be­ing or­gan­ised by the St Vin­cent and the Grenadines chap­ter of the Glob­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Peo­ple of In­di­an Ori­gin In­ter­na­tion­al (GO­PIO SVG) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the SVG In­di­an Her­itage Foun­da­tion, with the sup­port from the Min­istry of Tourism and Cul­ture. GO­PIO is an in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion rep­re­sent­ing some 25 mil­lion peo­ple in the In­di­an Di­as­po­ra.

Par­tic­i­pants will come from sev­er­al coun­tries such as In­dia, Sri Lan­ka, UK, US, Cana­da and the Caribbean. Del­e­gates in­clude gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and diplo­mats, as well as oth­er high-lev­el of­fi­cials. The con­fer­ence is joint­ly or­gan­ised by Dr Ku­mar Ma­habir, co-chair of the GO­PIO Aca­d­e­m­ic Coun­cil and Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT), and Dr Arnold Thomas, GO­PIO In­ter­na­tion­al Co­or­di­na­tor for the Caribbean. For the three-day pe­ri­od, the con­fer­ence will be­gin with the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny at Peace Memo­r­i­al Hall on June 1 from 6-8 pm in the pres­ence of Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Ralph E Gon­salves. Re­marks will al­so be made by the pres­i­dent of GO­PIO In­ter­na­tion­al, Min­is­ter of Cul­ture, pres­i­dent of the SVG In­di­an Her­itage Foun­da­tion and a Min­is­ter from Sri Lan­ka. A cul­tur­al pre­sen­ta­tion is al­so in­clud­ed in the open­ing pro­gramme. The con­fer­ence pro­gramme for June 2 is from 8.30 am to 1 pm at Mur­ray Heights Ho­tel, McK­ie's Hill, Kingstown. There will be sev­er­al pan­els dis­cussing var­i­ous top­ics such as con­di­tions un­der which In­di­ans came, cul­tur­al and re­li­gious adap­ta­tion, and in­te­gra­tion and as­sim­i­la­tion. Fol­low­ing a lunch break, par­tic­i­pants will move to Di­a­mond to join a Sev­enth Day Ad­ven­tist Evan­ge­lis­tic cru­sade, where there will be a spe­cial ses­sion deal­ing with the rise of Ad­ven­tism among In­di­ans in SVG and Be­lize be­tween 3 pm and 4 pm. On con­clu­sion of this ses­sion, par­tic­i­pants will re­turn to Mur­ray Heights for the con­clud­ing ses­sion from 5-8 pm. On June 3, be­tween 9 am and 2 pm, par­tic­i­pants will be tak­en on an is­land tour to places of in­ter­est cli­max­ing in Ar­gyle where SVG In­di­an Her­itage Foun­da­tion is hav­ing a Fam­i­ly Fun Day. There are al­so sev­er­al ac­tiv­i­ties planned for the Ar­gyle event. The pub­lic is in­vit­ed, es­pe­cial­ly stu­dents and teach­ers.