DOCUMENTARY
A PASSAGE TO BRITAIN BBC2, 9pm
Ship passenger lists hide a multitude of stories, as historian Dr Yasmin Khan discovers when she investigates an extraordinary collection of trips from the Indian subcontinent to Britain.
She says: “I’m fascinated by the lives of immigrants who, like my own father, came from the Indian subcontinent to build a new life here. I want to find out what happened to them. I’ll discover how Britain changed them and how they changed Britain.” In this first episode, she traces some of the earliest British Asian pioneers, who sailed from Bombay in the 1930s on the P&O liner The Viceroy of India.
We hear the story of a 21-year-old student, Netra Dutt, whose Bengali parents forced him to come to Britain.
Raja Stokes, an 86-year-old surviving passenger from the Viceroy, talks about his deep bond with his nanny who cared for him from birth and travelled with the family to Britain.
These are compelling stories of courage, identity and alienation.