International Indian Diaspora Conference slated for June 1

The International Indian Diaspora Conference will be held here from June 1 to 3 at the Murray Heights Hotel.{{more}}

The event is being organized by the St Vincent Chapter of the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO), in collaboration with the St Vincent and the Grenadines Indian Heritage Foundation (SVGIHF) and is expected to coincide with the celebrations to commemorate Indian Arrival Day on June 1.

It will be held under the theme ‘The Indian Diaspora in St Vincent and the Grenadines and the Wider Caribbean’ and aims to bring together people with an interest in the Indian Diaspora in the Caribbean on a number of areas, including religion, discrimination, politics, history, migration and sports.

According to Dr Arnold Thomas, International and Regional GOPIO coordinator, a number of high level officials are expected to be present during the two-day conference, including a four-person delegation from Sri Lanka, the Indian Ambassador to St Vincent and the Grenadines H.E K.J.S Sodhi and the High Commissioner from India to Trinidad, H.E Shri Malay Mishra.

Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves and President of GOPIO International are expected to speak at the launch on June 1 at the Peace Memorial Hall.

Remarks are expected to also be delivered by the Minister of Culture Cecil McKie and Frederick Stephenson, the representative for South Windward, where a large portion of the local Indian population resides.

The conference officially gets underway on Saturday, June 2, with the presentation of intellectual papers by a number of academics including Professor Lindsey Harlan, Professor of Religious Studies at Connecticut College in the United States among others.

One of the sessions will be on Seventh Day Adventism, which, according to Thomas, was included because the religious practice was prevalent among the local Indian population.

The conference officially comes to an end on June 2. However, the participants will join with the rest of the members of the SVGIHF at Argyle on Sunday, June 3 for activities to mark Indian Arrival Day.

Thomas spoke of the significance of hosting the conference in St Vincent for the first time.

Conferences have been held since 1975 and were held mainly in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname; however, a decision was taken to organize one conference every year in various parts of the region, and this year it was decided that it will be held here, where Indians form about 5 per cent of the total population.

More importantly, Thomas said that the underlying point that the local organizing committee would like for participating dignitaries to take away from the conference would be that St Vincent and the Grenadines should be seen as a model integrated society.

“I don’t think that anybody can think of any other country with such a mix of groups that are so integrated,” Thomas said.

“We are in fact so integrated that those of us who look Indian are Vincentian…we don’t have anybody here who are Hindu or Muslim, unless they are recent arrivals; so we want to project ourselves as a very stable society,” he continued. (DD)