Administrative/biographical history

The Swadhinata Trust is a London based non-partisan secular Bengali group that works to promote Bengali history and heritage amongst young people. The Swadhinata Trust has been operating since November 2000, offering seminars, workshops, exhibitions and educational literature to young Bengali people in schools, colleges, youth clubs and community centres in the United Kingdom. The Swadhinata Trust promotes Bengali history and culture to ensure its representation as an essential part of the history of Britain and by extension, our contemporary world.

Scope and content

Fifty two oral history recordings compiled as part of the project, 'Tales of Three Generations of Bengalis in Britain', by the Swadhinata Trust (Nirmul Committee) and CRONEM (Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity & Multiculturalism, University of Surrey) covering three areas of interest:

• ‘Roots and memory’ (dialogue between first and third generation on the history of Bangladesh and the 1971 war of independence)
• ‘Community creativity’ (dialogue between second and third generation on welfare and community involvement in the UK, from the 1970s-80s)
• ‘Popular culture: between tradition and innovation’ (across three generations, mainly focussing on traditional and more recent British Bengali musical heritage, from the 1970s-80s).

Quantity

67 wav files.

Available online

For oral histories and transcripts online, please visit www.swadhinata.org.uk