Hi my name is Sukhraj Singh and welcome to the fifth podcast episode by SikhArchive in our Sikh history series, where today we are joined by the author and activist Zarina Patel from Kenya, to discuss her book, “Unquiet”: which explores the life and times of Makhan Singh, who was the great trade unionist and anticolonial revolutionary in Kenya.

I’ve been wanting to do this podcast for a very long time because I am deeply inspired by the life and activism of Makhan Singh. Not only was he a marxist and a trade unionist but he was the founding father of the trade union movement in Colonial Kenya and eventually formed the East African Trade Union congress.  His labour organising was a key moment in history in the build-up to the Mau Mau uprising and the Kenyan independence movement. In fact, he was imprisoned by the British for 11 years without charge or trial for largely being a voice against colonial rule and invoking independence. 
In this episode we discuss with Zarina Patel what inspired her to write the book and her methodology, who was Makhan Singh as a person, his affiliation with the Ghadar Party and some of the reasons why he is a lesser-known person in South Asian history.