Cambridge University launches fellowship to study Indian indentured labour history
Selwyn College appointed Guyanese-American Professor Gaiutra Bahadur last week as the «Ramesh and Leela Narain visiting bye-fellow in Indentureship Studies». Bahadur is the author of 'Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture', a major study of the lives of Indian women who became indentured labourers to colonial plantations in the 19th century. «I am honoured and delighted to be the inaugural visiting bye-fellow in indentureship studies,» said Bahadur.
«When I first began doing research in this area, the funding just wasn't there, so it was in many ways a labour of love. That's why I'm so happy to see there's now visibility and funding like this to help future researchers,» she said. Selwyn College and the Ameena Gafoor Institute, which studies indentureship and its legacy, collaborated closely in setting up the programme which allows a scholar to spend eight weeks at the university to conduct their research.
The programme will run for an initial five years. «The study and documentation of indentureship is undoubtedly valuable, but it has barely been included in the history syllabi of British and European Universities — a staggering omission considering the millions of individuals, and indeed entire cultures, irrevocably shaped by indentureship and its legacies,» said Professor David Dabydeen, the Guyanese novelist, poet and academic who is the director of the Ameena Gafoor Institute. «That is why this fellowship, and hopefully eventually establishing a Professorship, is so important.
Cambridge has created an academic subject, bringing it from the margins to the very centre. I am immensely grateful to the Gafoor family in Guyana for helping to make all this possible,» he said. According to the institute, in relation to the
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