Lest We Forget: Descendents of Indenture
Athol Williams, Deirdre Jonklaas Cadiramen, Simit Bhagat with Janet Steel
Athol Williams
Bio
Athol Williams is an award-winning South African poet and social philosopher. He has published four collections of poetry, had poems published in forty literary publications and received four poetry awards – Sol Plaatje EU Poetry Award for 2015 & 2016, 2016 Parallel Universe Poetry Prize at Oxford University and the 2017 South African Independent Publishers Award for Poetry. Athol’s acclaimed autobiography, Pushing Boulders: Oppressed to Inspired chronicles his escape from Apartheid. He holds degrees from Oxford, Harvard, LSE, MIT, London Business School and Wits. His creative and scholarly work focuses on advancing structural social justice and ethical development.
Deirdre Jonklaas Cadiramen
Bio
Deirdre Jonklaas Cadiramen, a Sri Lankan of Dutch-Burgher heritage, educated in Colombo, retired as Executive Secretary in Dubai, prompted by a stay in India she embarked on creative writing in 2000 and published 3 books. She was shortlisted for the 2002 David T K Wong Fellowship, one of her stories was translated into Telugu for an anthology of Sri Lankan Women’s short fiction, three of her poems were translated into Sinhalese, her Austin A35 restoration story won second prize in the July 2008 issue of the UK-based Classic Cars magazine. Her childhood on Ceylon tea and rubber plantations gave her a first-hand insight into Indentured Labour.
Simit Bhagat
Bio
Simit Bhagat is a former journalist and a development practitioner-cum- documentary filmmaker, based out of Mumbai.
Simit is the Founder of The Bidesia Project – an initiative to archive and promote folk music traditions from Bhojpuri region of India. He is presently also working on a feature length documentary film on folk musicians from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in India.
Simit’s earlier films have focused on social development issues including agriculture, water security, livelihoods, gender and women empowerment. His first short documentary film ‘My Disappearing Farms’ focused on the story of rice farmers from Sindhudurg District of Maharashtra, India migrating to large cities in search of work and their struggle to keep their farming culture alive. The film was nominated and screened at various film festivals across India including the prestigious 9th CMS Vatavaran Environment and Wildlife International Film Festival and Forum 2017 in New Delhi.
Simit has worked over a decade in different capacities, with some of the large development and media organisations including Thomson Reuters Foundation, Tata Trusts and The Times of India (TOI). As a journalist with TOI, he has also covered the United Nations climate change summit (COP – 15) in Copenhagen, Denmark and produced stories on climate change impact, negotiations and politics.
Simit has a Master of Arts degree in Science, Society and Development from Institute of Development Studies at University of Sussex, UK and a Diploma in Journalism and Mass Communication from Mumbai. He was one of the 9 journalists from 12 countries to have been selected for a fellowship on Environment Reporting from International Institute of Journalism, Berlin, Germany in 2008.
Janet Steel
Bio
Janet leads commonwealth writers, the cultural initiative of the Commonwealth Foundation.
Prior to this post Janet has spent over thirty years working in the cultural sector, primarily in theatre and new writing. Starting out as a young actress Janet quickly moved into directing, producing and script development. For thirteen years Janet was Artistic Director for Kali Theatre Company specialising in new writing by South Asian Women. During her tenure she developed, produced and directed 20 new plays which toured nationally, encouraged and nurtured over a hundred new writers for public readings, devised and managed several new writing festivals.
From dual heritage, Indian South African and British, Janet is passionately committed to inclusion and equality and has long been a campaigner for freedom of speech and cultural diversity in the arts.
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