Ugandan Asian story ‘one of triumph over adversity’
LEICESTER MARKS MIGRATION MILESTONE WITH EXHIBITION AND PLAYS
FIFTY years ago, brutal dictator Idi Amin announced his intention to expel Uganda’s thriving community of south Asians, giving them 90 days to leave or be rounded up into concentration camps.
More than 27,000 Indian and Pakistani holders of UK passports made their way to Britain, which reluctantly let them in.
Many moved to Leicester, with some arriving penniless after Amin expropriated their wealth in a purported drive to give “Uganda back to ethnic Ugandans”.
Overcoming racism and weather, the Asian refugees rebuilt their lives from scratch, as chronicled in a new exhibition marking the anniversary of Amin’s incendiary decree of August 4, 1972.
“Nobody used to assist us, everybody was against us,” retiree Madhukamar Madhani said on a visit to the exhibition at Leicester Museum.
“But through sheer hard work, a lot of people have put a lot into the community,” he said, noting the prosperity on display in the city’s ‘Golden Mile’ – a stretch of road rich in Asian-owned businesses.
The exhibition curator, Nisha Popat, pointed to parallels today in Britain’s generosity, or lack of, towards refugees. “We are in a world where there is a lot of conflict and there are refugees,” she said.
The intention was about “showing the impact of refugees, what they went through, and the impact they can have on a place”, she added.
The family of home secretary Priti Patel, who is responsible for refugee policy now, were Gujarati Indians from Uganda who fled to Britain in the 1960s
when anti-Asian prejudice was already rife. Patel is trying to push a policy today that would send asylumseekers entering Britain illegally on to Uganda’s southern neighbour Rwanda, for processing and permanent settlement.
Britain says it is acting to stop a deadly trade in migrants crossing the Channel from France. It points to its welcome for holders of a type of British passport from Hong Kong, and the refugees fleeing from the war in Ukraine.
In 1972, the then Conservative government dragged its feet initially, seeking to send some of the Ugandan Asians to other countries before agreeing to honour their passport rights.
They largely succeeded in their new lives, rebuilding the small businesses and shops that were the mainstay of their middle-class prosperity in Uganda.
Amin was overthrown in a 1979 coup and ended up a refugee himself, dying in well-heeled exile in Saudi Arabia, in 2003. His eight-year reign of terror, chronicled to powerful effect in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland, resulted in the deaths of an estimated 300,000 people.
The dictator was “really very bad with the Asian people”, said Bhikhulal Pragji Chohan, another retiree in Leicester. “We all, Asian people, all like to do our jobs, and they left everything there and (they) came here without anything.”
As well as the exhibition, Leicester’s Curve Theatre is staging three plays to mark the anniversary.
“The story of the Ugandan south Asian exodus to Leicester is one that begins with trauma and upheaval for so many,” the Curve’s chief executive, Chris Stafford, said.
“Fifty years on, it is undoubtedly a story of resilience and triumph over adversity.”