Geneviève Yolande Marie Engel (; 17 December 1946 – 6 April 2026), known professionally as Lotus Vingadassamy-Engel and Lotus Engel, was a French Guadeloupean poet, lyricist, and professor of French literature of the 18th century. Vingadassamy-Engel was known for her 1992 work "The Hindu Diaspora in the French West Indies".
Biography Genevieve Yolande Marie Hoareau was born on 17 December 1946 in Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe to a Hindu Tamil-Guadeloupean family. Vingadassamy-Engel received her PhD from the University of California, San Diego.
By 1981, Vingadassamy-Engel was living in France where she taught at schools and universities. From the 1980s onwards Vingadassamy-Engel published poetry, lyrics and works of fiction. Vingadassamy-Engel's poem The Scribe was calligraphed by , a calligrapher, type designer and painter.
In December 1991, Vingadassamy-Engel gave a lecture entitled "The Hindu Diaspora in the French West Indies" at the India International Centre, which detailed the effects of indentured labour on Indo-Guadeloupeans, and the Hindu customs practiced among their descendants. Vingadassamy-Engel's work played a role in the cementing of Indo-Guadeloupeans as being part of the Indian diaspora. A revised version of this lecture was subsequently published in the India International Quarterly in 1992. Vingadassamy-Engel was a founding member of the PALM India Foundation, and served as the artistic director. Vingadassamy-Engel was also a painter, sculptor and calligrapher.
On 6 April 2026 Vingadassamy-Engel died in Saint-Jean-de-Liversay, aged 79.
Bibliography Articles
Fiction
Poetry
Poetry and lyrics
References
External links – INDOLink Diaspora: Genealogies of Semantics and Transcultural Comparison – Numen, Vol. 47, No. 3, Religions in the Disenchanted World (2000), pp. 313–337 – INDOLink