Earlier this month, the High Commission of India announced that the Government of India would be hosting Guyana’s President, Dr Irfaan Ali, as the Chief Guest of the 17th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) Convention (Indian Diaspora Day), on 8-10 January 2023 at Indore, Madhya Pradesh. The PBD is commemorated on January 9 – the day when Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa to India in 1915, after honing the strategy of Satyagraha, to fight oppression.
The emblematic “diaspora” had been formed out of the dispersal of the Jewish people subsequent to their conquest thousands of years ago, when most had been driven into slavery in Babylon and Egypt. In more modern times, the process has not been much different for several other “peoples”. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, two sets of “diasporas” were formed, when millions of Africans were snatched from their native lands by Europeans and shipped to the “New World” as slaves – Africans and Europeans of several nationalities.
Following the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, Indians, Chinese and some other groups were shipped as “indentured labour”. The shipments of Indians and Chinese created two new diasporas, which become very significant because of their numbers. Intellectuals of African descent – from the USA, the West Indies and Africa – were the first to organise their diaspora, and launched the 1st Pan-African Congress in 1900.
When the 5th Pan-African Congress was held in Manchester in 1945, at the end of WWII, the individuals who were to become leaders in the struggle for independence – such as Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana – honed for their countries a common strategy which included a strong development component. As a matter of fact, several West Indian intellectuals, including George Padmore, repatriated themselves to the emerging independent countries in Africa to assist in their development. In 1974, Walter Rodney wrote “Towards the Sixth Pan-African Congress: Aspects of the International Class Struggle in Africa, the Caribbean and America”.
The successive governments of post-Mao China much more self-consciously mobilised its diaspora and very successfully tapped into the skills and resources in their drive for development, starting in the 1980s. In 1989, Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) who were mostly first-generation immigrants to the USA organised the “First Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin” (GOPIO) in New York City, to bring together the Indian Diaspora.
But it exposed a new problem – the descendants of those Indians who had been “exported” in the 19th and early 20th centuries to European colonies were now part of secondary diasporas, and had some concerns that were different from the NRIs – particularly when it came to the “development” of India. The NRIs generally were focused on increasing their business contacts with India and within their community in the USA, while the “Girmitiyas” – those arising from the “agreement” of bound labour – were focused on the development of their “new” homelands, and in simply maintaining cultural links with India.
When the Government of India initiated the annual PBD in 2003, it attempted to accommodate both imperatives – the drive for India’s development by harnessing the skills and resources of its diaspora, and the desire for cultural contacts of the latter. With the advent of the new Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, a decision was made to host the event biennially, and to have preparatory structured meetings and discussions in New Delhi with representatives of the diaspora on identified subject areas. For Guyana, the experience of its delegates to PBD should be tapped to facilitate its own aspirations to tap into its diaspora. Once again, there have been efforts for Guyana to achieve this goal through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana. However, after a flurry of activity, there does not appear to be a coherent strategy in place.
President Ali should observe India’s strategy firsthand at the PBD, and perchance adopt some of the policies from the successful Indian model.
