By Dr. Kumar Mahabir & Shalima Mohammed, MBP
During the celebration of the 200th edition of our Thought Leaders’ Forum, we formally announced the launch of a series entitled “Living Legends.” The series has since focused on heroes and icons who are still alive. It has provided a unique opportunity for people to engage directly with, and learn from, these living role models.
It is in this context that historian Dr. Maurits Hassankhan of Suriname has been recognised and celebrated. Dr Hassankhan is a pioneering historian engaged in research on indentureship, migration, diaspora and development. He has written articles and books on Indian indentureship and diaspora in Suriname. His interests are also in ethnic relations and democracy in plural societies.
The following are excerpts from the Indo-Caribbean Cultural Centre (ICC) Thought Leaders’ Forum held on 14/1/24. The program was chaired by Shakira Mohommed and moderated by Shalima Mohammed, both from Trinidad. It was a joint event hosted by ICC and the Ameena Gafoor Institute for the Study of Indentureship and its Legacies (AGI). There were four (4) speakers in the program in which a short film was also featured. The topic was “A pioneering son of Indian indentured labourers: Dr. Maurits Hassankhan of Suriname”.
The speakers were Dr. Shuchi Gupta (India) - Lecturer in the History Department, CCS University, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India. Producer and Director of the documentary film Who Am I? Rita Tjien Fooh (Suriname) - Member of the International Advisory Committee of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme. Chair of the Forum of National Archivists of the International Council on Archives. Dr. Goolam Vahed (South Africa) - History Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Co-editor with Hassankhan and Lomarsh Roopnarine of the book Indentured Muslims in the Diaspora: Identity and Belonging (2016), and Dr. Maurits Hassankhan - Researcher, author and former Head of the History Department at Anton de Kom University. He is the co-author of Databases on Indentured Labourers in Suriname (Indians, Indonesians and Chinese).
Dr. Shuchi Gupta said: “I appreciate Dr. Hassankhan and his initiative in exploring his ancestral roots. I have introduced the film Who Am I? which features Dr. Hassankhan’s search for his ancestral roots in India.”
Dr. Goolam Vahed said: “I admire Dr. Hassankhan and I regard him as both a friend and a colleague. Dr. Hassankhan has earned my respect as a role model due to his accomplishments.”
Rita Tjien Fooh said: “Dr. Hassankhan is my mentor, I have known him for 38 years, first as a student, then as a researcher, later as a minister, and now as a colleague. I would like to briefly highlight his work in Suriname, especially his research on Indian indentured labour and related topics. His research is very important and impactful, and he expects excellence in his work and from everyone working with him”
Dr. Maurits Hassankhan said: “Thanks to all the speakers, and especially to Rita Tjien Fooh for her contribution. Our relation is very long, and I am very proud of her. My career as a historian started as a curriculum developer. I was a teacher from the beginning, and when we started teaching, our schoolbooks were written by Dutch people. It is important that we write our own history textbooks. I came back to Suriname after doing my academic studies, and that was in 1975, the year of Independence, so it was the right moment to start rewriting history schoolbooks. But when we were reading the existing history schoolbooks, I discovered that there was less attention to indentured labour. History is compulsory in the basic schools and also the junior secondary schools. But there was not much attention on indentured labour and migration, and we decided to establish a section to research that. So, in the 1980s, after 13 years of working in the field of curriculum development, I started with this.
“In 1986, I was appointed fulltime lecturer at the university, and from that time, I decided to promote research and publications. But most of the lecturers at the university were not doing enough research and they were especially not promoting history very well, and so I decided to establish a journal in English in a Dutch-speaking country to promote it and to inspire our lecturers to publish in English because there has been some research by people from outside the Dutch area. I thought it was better for our scholars to write in English so the larger public outside the Dutch-speaking countries can read their work.
“One of my first project was the immigrant groups in Suriname, because not much was written on them. On the 125th anniversary of India immigration, we began a book on ancestral heritage, creating a database of Indian, Indonesian and Chinese immigrants, where they came from, and I learned for the first time about the emotional aspect of migration.”
[VP]
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