Related Websites
Archives
- National Archives Department (Mauritius)
- The National Archives – Kew, UK
- British Library
- MGI Indian Immigration Archives (Mauritius)
- Archives départementales (Réunion)
- Indian Indentureship Records – General Registers (Trinidad and Tobago)
- Indian emigration passes to Fiji 1879-1916
- Suriname: Indentured workers from India (Hindustani)
- Ships List 1860-1911 (Natal, South Africa)
GIRMIT.org has been established to primarily focus on providing information for anyone who is interested in the history of the Indentured Labourers, the “Girmitiyas” who were transported to Fiji by the British under the System of Indenture or GIRMIT which was the term used by the Indian Indenture’s for the word AGREEMENT.
This website was created to pay tribute to these Girmitiyas and to provide information to anyone who shares similar interests and sentiments towards this very sensitive and important part of our history.
This project builds on the work of an earlier research project entitled “Subverting Stereotypes: Asian Women’s Political Activism” carried out by Ruth Pearson, University of Leeds, with Linda McDowell (University of Oxford) and Sundari Anitha (University of Lincoln). Detailed findings from the original research can be found on www.leeds.ac.uk/strikingwomen
The website offers a set of educational resources on:
(i) migration,
(ii) women and work,
(iii) rights and responsibilities at work and
(iv) the stories of South Asian women involved in the Grunwick and Gate Gourmet industrial disputes. This site also provides resources for Black History Month that celebrate the contribution of Black and minority ethnic communities to the political and economic life of the UK, and to their role in the struggles for better rights for us all. The site includes student-friendly research findings, workbooks, time-lines, case studies, curriculum connections and activities as well as a two-part comic which depicts the life stories of two South Asian women involved with these disputes, downloadable from the site.
Indentured labour from India in 19th century Reunion Island
This webpage provides an overview of Indentured Labour in Reunion Island.
1860 Heritage Centre – South Africa
The 1860 Heritage Centre seeks to position itself as the organisation that best showcases the rich heritage of Indian South Africans, within the diversity that makes up South Africa’s national heritage. It further envisions itself as an important building block in developing national cohesion and contributing to nation-building. The hope is to establish the 1860 Heritage Centre as a primary research base for Indentured History by locating all archives, documentation and research on indenture at the centre. It is also hoped that new perspectives will be developed on Indentured History by creating a platform for academic endeavours. It is hoped that the Museum develops into an important space for critical deliberations of different aspects of our past, as we forge a common South Africa society in the present and the future.
Journal for the Study of Indentureship and its Legacies
The Journal for the Study of Indentureship and its Legacies is a bi-annual peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by Pluto Journals in partnership with the Ameena Gafoor Institute for the Study of Indentureship and its Legacies.
This site is an attempt to give recognition to the presence of girmitiyas in the Caribbean. While the focus is primarily on Indians in the Caribbean, communication, cooperation and interaction with girmitiyas outside the region will also be encouraged.
This site includes the following portals about the Indian Diaspora in the Caribbean: Books (CHAKRA), Magazines (ICC), Articles, Photos, Videos, etc.
CHAKRA publishes books on a range of perspectives on the (East) Indian presence in the Caribbean, and the wider Indian Diaspora. It also provides a medium for presenting voice and visibility to writers who (would) have been marginalized by the mainstream press.
Indo-Caribbean Cultural Centre (ICC) is dedicated to publishing two magazines every year – a Divali souvenir magazine, and an Indian Arrival Day commemorative magazine. ICC is primarily committed to the production of knowledge about people, issues and events affecting Indians in multi-ethnic Trinidad and the Caribbean.
The Ameena Gafoor Institute for the Study of Indentureship and its Legacies
The Ameena Gafoor Institute for the Study of Indentureship and its Legacies has been set up to advance understanding about indentureship and its global impacts.
Welcome to the website for ‘Becoming Coolies’, an AHRC-funded research project based at the Universities of Edinburgh and Leeds, which seeks to understand South Asian labour migration in the nineteenth century and assesses its present day significance.
Global Girmit Institute is the Global Centre for the Study and Advancement of Girmit Diaspora.
The object of the Institute is the protection, promotion and advancement of knowledge and education on all aspects of Girmit, the lives of the descendants of Indentured workers, and on specific and totality of the environment within which the Girmitiyas have evolved and live.
Publications related to indenture in the South African History Online
South African History Online (SAHO) is a unique history project – its website, the organisation’s flagship project, is linked to a partnership programme with universities, community based history projects, educational and the cultural department of government.
SAHO mission is to write a new history which would break the silence on our past and to address the biased way in which the historical and cultural heritage of South Africa and the continent has been represented in our educational and cultural institutions.
National Council of Indian Culture
The NCIC is the principal organization for the development and promotion of East Indian and Indo-Trinidadian Culture in Trinidad & Tobago.
The Centre for Research in International History and history of the Atlantic (CRHIA) of the University of Nantes (France) is launching an international research group DIASCOM along with a research programme working on the study of the diasporas born out of the slave trade and indentured service in the long colonial context, and on the communities formed by the descendants of these African and Asian communities, in the decolonization context.
The aim of this five-year project in global history (2020-2025) is to examine the agency of the diasporic groups born out of forced displacement, in colonial and post-colonial contexts.
Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies (FIIDS)
Policy Studies, Analysis, Advocacy and Awareness Related to India and Indian Diaspora
CARE Framework (Gounder & Hassankhan, 2019)
The Cause and Response to Inequalities in the Indentured Labour Diaspora (CARE)framework is a multi-level theoretical framework for the systematic analysis of (i) causal factors and pathways for discrimination in the allocation of resources, (ii) resultant health outcomes and (iii) the strategies that the plantation-based individuals utilisedin response to perceived and actual acts of inequalities across the indentured colonies. The CARE framework is located at the intersections of indenture historiography, social determinants of health inequalities (Marmot, 2005), sustainable livelihoods (Scoones, 1998), and ecosocial theory (Krieger, 2001).