Remembering Girmit: The Stories That Still Travel With Us
The Human Thread
with Sabrina Iqbal Khan
Exploring culture, humanity, and the stories we inherit.
Recently, communities across Australia and Fiji gathered to commemorate Girmit Remembrance Day – a time of reflection on the journeys, sacrifices, and resilience of the Girmitiyas who crossed oceans carrying little more than survival, memory, and hope.
Attending the recent Global Girmit Legacy Awards in Brisbane reminded me that Girmit is not simply history preserved in books or archives. It is living memory. It exists in the stories passed down at dining tables, in the preservation of language and faith, and in the quiet resilience inherited across generations.
As I listened to the stories of community leaders, elders, artists, and descendants of Girmitiyas, I was reminded how deeply migration shapes identity. Many of us in the diaspora live between inherited worlds — carrying pieces of places we may never have fully known, yet somehow still belong to.
Recently, I also watched filmmaker Shyam’s Girmit-inspired
documentary, which powerfully captured not only the hardship of indenture, but the humanity behind it. Too often, historical conversations reduce people to statistics and timelines. Film and storytelling allow us to see something more intimate: fear, longing, dignity, separation, survival, and love. They remind us that history was lived by real people whose emotional legacies still echo through generations.
My own heritage is layered across regions and histories — from North West India and Bengal to Afghanistan. Like many diaspora families, our identities are not linear. They are woven together through migration, displacement, resilience, adaptation, and memory. Over time, I have come to realise that identity is rarely about belonging to one place alone. Sometimes, it is about honouring every thread that brought us here.
Perhaps that is why Girmit remembrance resonates so deeply across communities. It is not only about looking back. It is about understanding how inherited struggles, sacrifices, and journeys continue shaping who we are today.
In a world increasingly divided by difference, remembering these histories matters. They remind us that behind every migration story is a human being searching for dignity, opportunity, safety, and belonging.
And perhaps that is the human thread that connects us all.
About the Writer:
Sabrina Iqbal Khan is an international award-winning filmmaker, producer and actress as well as a barrister to the High Court of Fiji and admitted to the Supreme Court of Victoria, 2007. A recipient of a Fijian Medal of Honour for community service, domestic violence awareness, poverty alleviation programs and women’s educational training initiatives in rural areas, her work centres on human rights, culture, identity, and social change through storytelling and film.
Her first film, Seema, received recognition in the United States of America, where a national day was declared in honour of the film. Sabrina has also published in the field of cross-cultural dialogue, including developing a dialogue theory recognised by the American Center for Dialogue. With heritage connected to North West India, Bengal, Afghanistan, and the wider Girmit diaspora experience, she writes on humanity, human rights, storytelling, and the social justice issues impacting our communities.
