HYDERABAD: A research team including Prof. Gajendra Pathak of the University of Hyderabad (UoH) has secured a Rs 1.2 crore grant under the Indian Council of Social Science Research’s (ICSSR) second call for longitudinal studies. The project, titled ‘A Cultural History of Indian Labour Migration During British Colonial Rule’, seeks to recover the experiences of indentured Indian labourers sent to British colonies during the 19th and early 20th centuries.The research team includes Dr Chandan Shrivastava from BHU, Dr Rachana Vishwakarma of CUSB, Dr Anupama Pandey, the Indian High Commission, London and Captain Om Prakash Singh, a maritime expert and industrialist based in the UK. The project is coordinated by Prof. Niranjan Sahay from Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth in Varanasi.The initiative is titled ‘Girmitiya’ and it was conceived under the ICSSR’s 2nd call for longitudinal studies in social and human sciences.The project builds on the oral and archival remnants of a migration system that displaced over a million Indians, many of whom were sent to colonies such as Fiji, Mauritius, Trinidad, South Africa and Guyana under contracts that promised labour but delivered servitude. The word ‘girmitiya’ itself stems from a distorted pronunciation of the term ‘agreement’, which formed the basis of the colonial indenture system.Rather than treating this history as a closed chapter, the project proposes to open it out through personal stories, cultural practices, and forgotten routes. It centres on the cultural endurance of those who left India in ships and were never allowed to return. The work intends to trace how those migrants reconstituted identity through festivals, music, language and food. These fragments, once scattered across continents, are being gathered into a digital portal that acts both as an archive and a public platform.Scholars involved say this isn’t simply about commemorating the past. By making the narratives accessible to both researchers and descendants, the team hopes to bring visibility to those whose labour built nations but whose stories remained untold. The initiative calls for participation from migrant families, students, teachers, and cultural workers across the world. Those interested can contribute documents, photographs, family trees, or even local retellings. The website, once live, will serve as a multilingual, interactive public archive.
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