Rethinking Windrush: transatlantic Indo-Caribbean experiences

In this talk, Meena Venkataramanan and Jeevan Kaur Sanghera discuss Indo-Caribbean experiences of the Windrush era and its legacy. 

The seminar will introduce the Indo-Caribbean Windrush Oral History Project, which centres Indo-Caribbeans who immigrated to Britain during the Windrush era in the decades following the Second World War and helped reshape Britain into the multicultural society it is today.

How do indenture and Windrush continue to affect the cultural heritage and lived experiences of Indo-Caribbean communities in Britain? 

As co-founders of the Indo-Caribbean Windrush Oral History Project, Meena and Jeevan focus on exploring and preserving this often overlooked history among modern British Indo-Caribbeans, offering valuable insights into the complex narratives of migration, identity and heritage connected to Windrush and South Asia. By interviewing Indo-Caribbean Windrush immigrants and their descendants in Britain and the Caribbean, the project builds on the legacy of the British Empire’s indenture system. 

About the speakers:

Meena Venkataramanan is a joint doctoral student in English at Brown University and law student at Yale Law School. Her work is situated at the intersection of contemporary Asian and Black diaspora literature and legal theory, particularly in the United Kingdom, Anglophone Caribbean, and United States. She is also a book critic, journalist, and essayist whose work has been published in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Public Books, among other outlets.

Jeevan Kaur Sanghera is a historian and heritage professional working with archives, communities and museums in London and Manchester. Her research explores the intersections of Black and South Asian diasporic relations across historical and geographical contexts, particularly in East Africa, the Caribbean and Britain. As a researcher for Global Threads - a collaboration between University College London and Manchester's Science and Industry Museum - her upcoming publications focus on Manchester's cotton industry and its links to colonialism and transatlantic slavery.