Synopsis Rahman Khan (1874-1972), born in the village Bharkhari (Hamirpur, United Provinces), was 24 years old when he left for Paramaribo, the capital of Surinam (South America). At the age of 67, Rahman Khan, a practicing pathan Muslim, completed his autobiography entitled Jeevan Prakash in which he connects India, the land of his birth, with Surinam, the country in which he married, is a contract labourer and later becomes a plantation overseer and a teacher in Hindi and Hinduism and blessed with five sons and two daughters. There is almost no written information available that describes the lives of the first generation of Indian indentures labourers in Surinam. This translated autobiography, originally written in Devenagari, is therefore a unique source. This translation is accompanied by endnotes and a glossary. Sinha-Kerkhoff and Ellen Bal have also added an introductions in which they place the autobiography in its Indian and Surinamese colonial contexts. The final outcome should interest labour historians and other social scientists as well as the common reader interested in colonial and subaltern history; transnational migration, diaspora, minority issues and issues of religion and communalism.