314 Timehri. 
English. Our legislators might give the matter their consideration. An _ 
important amendment of the Immigration Ordinance—based upon the 
principle of the liberty of the British subject—was effected last year, 
whereby all unindentured and colony-born East Indians, by making a 
statutory declaration, relinquishing “all the rights, benefits and privi- 
leges ” of the Ordinance, would be entirely free thereafter from “all the 
disabilities which immigrants are at present subject to under the 
Ordinance.” This amendment was made in response to a petition by a 
section of the East Indian community whose grievance substantially was 
that they could not leave the colony without passports or marry without 
certificates from the Immigration Department. For some time past 
intelligent and wide-awake East Indians had been discussing amongst 
themselves these objectionable features of the Ordinance as applied to 
those not under indenture, and they could not see why as free British 
subjects they should not be entitled to equal rights and privileges as free 
British subjects of other races in the colony. No advantage seems to 
have been taken yet of the exemplary provisions of the Ordinance, and 
many a one doubtless will declare : ‘I desire no future that will break the 
ties of the past.” Nevertheless, the new Ordinance will remain on the 
Statute Book of the colony as the charter of the people’s liberty, secur- 
ing to them in every respect the rights of all free citizens. 
Such has been the evolution of the East Indian race in British 
Guiana. At the one end—humble and illiterate, and even despised 
immigrants, come to make a living as tillers of the canefields; at the 
other end—property holders and cattle farmers, and shopkeepers, and 
doctors, and lawyers, and ministers, and a voice in the Government of 
the country and a hand in the shaping of its destinies. All true lovers 
of the race will wish for it a wider sphere of usefulness and a larger 
measure of happiness and prosperity. 
I may, in concluding this hastily-written article, point to the neces- 
sity that exists in the colony for a newspaper or journal of some kind 
for the special benefit of East Indians. It may be printed partly in 
English and partly in Hindi. Such a paper cannot but still further 
advance the interests of the race, and by means of its Hindi columns 
serve as an admirable medium for disseminating useful information and 
inculeating sound advice amongst those conversant only with the Hindi 
language and who outnumber by far their English-speaking and English- 
reading brethren. 
Let me also express the hope that as East Indian immigration is still 
a necessity, and is in every way desirable, thereby providing an outlet 
for India’s surplus population and supplying builders for the economic 
fabric of the colony, nothing will be done to impair the harmonious 
relations which have so long existed between us and the Indian Govern- 
ment. 
