About The Swadhinata Trust

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.

The need for such a Trust has arisen from a sense that, an absence of documentation and social data representing Bengalis' heritage, historical presence and achievements internationally, can contribute towards a sense of marginalisation, low self-esteem and alienation of young people in particular, as part of a minority ethnic community within wider society. This in turn, can limit their participation and contributions to mainstream culture.

As part of its goal to promote Bengali culture for a wider international audience, the Swadhinata Trust now seeks to establish a centre whose main activity will be in the field of culture, research and education. Swadhinata also proposes to develop a series of projects which will enable it to generate income through which to further support its activities. It aims to operate as a community and 'not-for-profit' business, selling educational material, teaching and consultancy services to statutory, voluntary and community sector agencies initially in Tower Hamlets and ultimately, nationwide. The establishment of an archival facility with a focus on the history of Bengalis in Britain is also envisaged as a complement to its educational activities. Within a wider definition of educational activities, the Trust also proposed to explore its potential to develop facilities such as study tours to Bangladesh, exchange programmes abroad and local history tours exploring the presence of Bengalis in Tower Hamlets.

Original site designed by Sabina Chowdhury and other students through study at East London University in 2000.
Current site administered by John Pulman. Contact via the Swadhinata details for comments, faulty links, etc.