Shah Rukh Khan has asked his Chak De India director Shimit Amin to helm an upcoming project on bonded labour and migration.
Though Khan may not face the camera for this project, his company is backing the film about the labourers from eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar who went to work in sugar plantations in the West Indies in the early 19th century.
“The working title of the project is Jahaazi because these workers were known as Girmitiyas or Jahaazis, as they landed in large numbers in the Caribbean islands with a four or three-year-term as bonded or indentured labour. The project is set in the time when the first two vessels landed at Guyana, then known as British Guyana. The community, popularly known as Indo-Caribbeans, have now spread all over the West Indies, including Trinidad and Tobago,” says a trade source.
Interestingly, Shah Rukh is the owner of Trinbago Knight Riders, which may be why he got the idea of making the project,” says the source.
Notable Indo-Caribbeans include author VS Naipaul, cricketers Alvin Kalicharan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Sunil Narine and Robin Singh who also played for India. Incidentally Shah Rukh Khan was also approached for a biopic on the flamboyant Kalicharan.
Sources add that since Khan is also working on a Punjab-Canada migration film with Rajkumar Hirani, he may not do Jahaazi as a film project as earlier intended, and make it into a web series instead, considering the kind of research that has gone into it.
