Official holidays
Editorial
We now have a committee considering the possibility of including Independence Day (May 26) and Indian Arrival Day (May 5) in the holiday calendar. In business quarters the general feeling is bound to be that the addition of more non-working days will do nothing for productivity. As things stand we have 13 official holidays (although in the past few years Independence Day has crept unofficially onto the list, effectively making the total 14). Each of the three major religions has two religious days each, then there are the secular western holidays of Boxing Day, New Year's Day and Easter Monday, and finally, there is May 1, Republic Day, Emancipation Day and Caricom Day. One must presume that the committee would like to jettison two holidays in order to make room for the newcomers, but holidays are a sensitive matter, touching on cultural sensibilities, and about the only one it could abandon without causing a major outcry is Caricom Day. Even if this were done, however, and two new 'days' were added to the complement, we would still have one more holiday than we have now, which is not good news for business. The question is, of course, should the two days in question be made holidays at all. There have been a fair number of letters in our letter columns supporting a case for May 5 on the grounds of the economic contribution of the Indians to the sugar and rice industries, among other things. These are not in their own right very good grounds, considering that there is not an ethnic group in this country which did not make a significant contribution at one point or another during the colonial period to the national economy. It might be noted in passing that this applies to the Amerindians as well, who grew and processed Essequibo and Berbice's second most important export in the seventeeth century - anatto. (It was used in the manufacture of Dutch cheese.) They also supplied balsam copaiva and letterwood for export, and for a century and a quarter provided foodstuffs for the plantations. If the Indians get a day in recognition of their economic contribution, then why not everyone else? The same argument applies to actual arrival. Why only the Indians? And if we start adding arrival days to the furlough calendar that would mean another four or five lost working days. Why the day marking the beginning of bondage for Indians was selected, rather than that ending it is something of a puzzle, but be that as it may, the unspoken assumption behind the campaign for May 5 seems to be that the Africans already have a day in the form of August 1, so Indians should have one too. While Emancipation Day is a special day for the descendants of Africans, that is not all it is; it has meaning for every other group as well. It is the great watershed in our history, which marks the divide between a system of unimaginable barbarity on the one hand, and the glimmerings of a true society on the other. Without Emancipation at that point in time, Indians, Chinese and Portuguese might not have been here to make their cultural and economic contributions, and the Guyana which we know today might have had an entirely different character. What the Indians certainly do need is an Indian History Month or Heritage Month or Culture Month (or whatever other name they think appropriate). We have at the moment Black History Month and Amerindian Heritage Month, both of which allow for a much more generous timeframe in which to publicize facets of a culture, and educate the public about the past. It would have a far greater impact on the population at large than the celebration of a single day. As for the matter of May 26, that represents a political division which probably is not going to be settled any time soon. While Mr Burnham was the leader who took the country into independence, the origins of the movement lie with the political activities of Dr Jagan in the 1940s. In their desire to celebrate Independence, the PPP is tacitly acknowledging that fact. While the party did support the change to republican status in 1970, February 23 was nevertheless all Mr Burnham's handiwork. Now that it is clear to the Government that Mashramani is not going to fade away, and they actively support the carnival portion, they probably would prefer if the official ceremonies were confined to May 26 alone - for which purpose they will make it a holiday. They have certainly downgraded the flag-raising for February 23, but whether they will be allowed to drop it altogether is another matter entirely. We look as if we're destined for the confirmation of May 26 as a holiday, and in exchange it is conceivable that Caricom Day will be sacrificed. But let us call a halt after that. 
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