IISH

Autobiography of an Indian Indetured Labourer

Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff, Ellen Bal, Alok Deo Singh, Autobiography of an Indian Indetured Labourer. Munshi Rahman Khan (1874-1972)
Delhi: Shipra Publications, 2005; ISBN 81-7541-243-7; 339 pp.

Munshi Rahman Khan (1874-1972), born in the United Provinces, was 24 years old when he left for Paramaribo, Surinam as an indentured labourer. For more than 40 years he wrote his memoirs. These memoirs form a truly important source, because the majority of the indentured labourers couldn't write and therefore texts of their hand are rare. This book contains next to a broad and informative introduction by Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhof and Ellen Bal a carefully annotated English translation of the originally in Devanagari written memoirs, as well as fifteen color phtotographs. This extensive document gives a very good impression of the circumstances of life and work of Indian labourers in the Caribbean in the first decades of the 2oth century. This publication was initiated by Amrit Consultancy, The Hague.

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