Centre for Policy Research Autobiography of an Indian Indentured ...

more

Autobiography of an Indian Indentured Labourer

Shipra Publications

2022

Rahman Khan (1874-1972), born in the village Bharkhari (Hamirpur, United Provinces), was 24 years old when he left for Paramaribo, the capital of Surinam (South America). At the age of 67, Rahman Khan, a practicing pathan Muslim, completed his autobiography entitled Jeevan Prakash in which he connects India, the land of his birth, with Surinam, the country in which he marries, is a contract labourer and later becomes a plantation overseer and a teacher in Hindi and Hinduism and gets five sons and two daughters. There is almost no written information available that describes the lives of the first generation of Indian indentured labourers in Surinam. This translated autobiography, originally written in Devanagari, is therefore a unique source. This translation is accompanied by endnotes and a glossary. Sinha-Kerkhoff and Ellen Bal have also added an introduction in which they place the autobiography in its Indian and Surinamese colonial contexts. The final outcome should interest labour historians and other social scientists as well as the common reader interested in colonial and subaltern history, transnational migration, diaspora and minority issues all well as issues of religion and communalism.

Paperback

Centre for Policy Research

Biography & Autobiography

9789391978112