The Swadhinata Trust is a London based secular Bengali community group that works to promote Bengali history and heritage amongst young people and to all communities in the United Kingdom.
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 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 local history tours exploring the presence of Bengalis in Tower Hamlets.
Patrons
Prof John Eade
Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity & Multiculturalism (CRONEM), Universities of Surrey and Roehampton
Prof Chetan Bhatt
Department of Sociology, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics
Management Committee
Chairperson: Julie Begum
Secretary: Jamil Iqbal
Joint Treasurer: Abu Sahid
Joint Treasurer: Val Harding
Members: Alice Sielle
Peter Ashan
Farid Miah
Tarik Khan
Staff
Volunteer Director: Ansar Ahmed Ullah
Volunteer Webmaster: John Pulman
Webmaster: Mizanur Rahman
Facebook Administrator: Delwar Hussain
Accountant: Monir Ahmed