By Professor Dr Shardhanand Harinandan Singh, CEO GGLASC Madhubani/ Rotterdam
Girmitiya descendants awakened
Girmitiyalogy at the Academic International Conference, Lucknow University, India, on September 26, 2025, a team of international scholars affiliated with Mondial Online Girmitiyalogy University (MOGU) successfully participated in the final day of the workshop series. The interdisciplinary team consisted of Dr Seshni Moodliar Rensburg (Psychiatrist, UK/South Africa), Ms Aartie Mahesh, MSc (Counsellor and Management Specialist, Amsterdam, The Netherlands/Suriname), Ms Patricia Sudais Poinam, Obstetric nurse, BA/BSc (UK/Trinidad & Tobago), and Mr Chandan Kumar Singh, economist, MA (Coordinator, GGLASC.com). The lectures and sessions were led by Professor Dr Shardhanand H. Singh, Initiator of Girmitiyalogy and CEO of GGLASC (Madhubani, Bihar, The Netherlands/Suriname). This joint participation marked both a significant success and a milestone for Girmitiyalogy, an emerging field of study.
Historic Focus
When slavery was abolished across European empires, plantations still demanded labour. The solution came from India—this time through the system of ‘ girmit’, a five-year contract that promised wages, food, and a return passage. Thousands of Tamils, Telugu, and Malayali labourers left Madras, coastal Andhra, and Kerala for colonies. What is their history?
After the abolition of African slavery in 1833 globally, between 1834 and 1917, 1.3 –2 million Indians were transported under indenture (Striking-Women.org). Mauritius received 453,063, British Guiana 238,909, Trinidad 147,596, Suriname 34,304, Natal 152,184, and Fiji nearly 61,000 (Frontier Weekly). Each number tells of a family uprooted, a dream deferred, a culture transplanted. The reason to relocate was created by the policy of the Britisch Raj and the rich Zamindars (Landlords) to the impoverishment and degradation of many in the north and south of India. Most of them were peace-loving citizens from the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Life under the Girmit from ‘Coolytude’ to academic leaders
Indenture promised order but delivered hardship. Overseers enforced strict discipline; absences were fined or jailed. Mortality rates were high, and more than one-third returned home. Yet the migrants built temples, preserved their language and festivals, and raised children who would transform their host societies. Today, Indo-Mauritians, Indo-Caribbeans, Indo-South Africans, Indo-Fijians, and Indo-Guyanese, as well as Sarnami Hindostanis, are leaders in politics, business, law, and the judiciary, as well as in teaching, academia, medicine, economics, and more. The Transfer from ‘Coolytude’ to academic leaders is a fact today.
For decades, archives recorded indenture in the cold language of contracts and shipments. The human story—resistance, resilience, faith—was silenced. Girmitiyalogy, the interdisciplinary study of indentured labour and its legacy, seeks to restore these voices today. At Lucknow University, a ten-day global conference on Girmitiyalogy has just concluded, bringing together scholars and descendants from five continents. A major outcome: Girmitiyalogy.com is now open as a global research platform, enabling genealogical research and curriculum development for universities, high schools and lower education worldwide.
From Chains to Bridges
Indenture has long been described as “a new system of slavery.” Yet from those chains arose a people who turned survival into strength, silence into song, and pain into pride.
Today, our challenge is clear: we must teach this history not as a colonial afterthought, but as a defining chapter in the story of global migration and human courage. Girmit carries the memory of struggle, dispossession, and dehumanisation—yet also of extraordinary resilience. It gave birth to a hybrid identity, forged from tears and determination, rooted in the ancestral soil of Bharat Mata but blossoming across oceans.
Though Girmit descendants hold new nationalities, they remain connected by invisible threads of memory, language, ritual, and shared destiny—forming a transnational community bound by Indian cultural DNA. This is not merely survival; it is renewal, a living testament that identity can be both global and deeply rooted.
For tomorrow and our descendants
Let every university make Girmitiyalogy part of its curriculum. Let every scholar, student, and descendant trace the journey of their forebears. Let every nation recognise Girmit history as part of humanity’s common heritage. Let the United Nations recognise the system of the Indian Bonded labour as a crime against Humanity. This is a fact for the institution of slavery already.
Only then will the Girmit become more than a story of chains. It will become a bridge—linking continents, uniting past and future, transforming pain into a powerful legacy of dignity, solidarity, and hope. And restore the ancestral damage by the colonial violence en dehumanisation.
Bio Data.
Professor Dr. Shardhanand Harinandan Singh is a leading thinker, writer and founder of the field of ‘Girmitiyalogy’. He has been appointed Professor at EIMT Zurich since 2025, with a chair in Girmitiyalogy and Migration studies. His work focuses on the restoration of historical narratives of the Indian indentured labourers (‘Girmitiyas’) and their descendants worldwide. In addition, he is committed to sustainable connectedness and respectful coexistence in multifunctional societies. He resolutely rejects polarization in society. He writes relevant articles on LinkedIn almost every day. He shares the vedic vision of “Vasudeva Kutumbkam”; one family, in one world. He has published his Memoires (2021), the books Homogenization in Multiculturality (2024 and Loss of feelings by Multiculturalism in The Europeann Union/ The Neterlans.,
Works Cited (MLA)
Aggarwal, A. “Indentured Migration, Caste and Electoral Competition in Colonial India.” Duke University Historical Frontiers in Political Science, 2022.
“Indian Indenture System.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2025, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_indenture_system
“Indentured Labour from South Asia (1834–1917).” Striking Women, striking-women.org
“Colonialism and Indian Indentureship during the 19th Century.” Frontier Weekly, 2023.
“The New Science of Girmitiyalogy.” Girmitiyalogy.com, 2025.
Harinandan Singh S. Loss of Feelings ISMB: 978-94-6485-xxxx-x, Rotterdam, 2025