Imran Karim Awan

I as a child of Asian parents from East Africa have a hard time explaining this to the average person because [they] say “Alright your families from East Africa, but you're not black? Nut you have Asian culture, but you’re not purely Indian or Pakistani? You have African culture but you’re not from there [originally] and then you're technically British?” but I can imagine for someone of dual heritage descent that gets even more complex for you. So when the question inevitably rises in the past or in the future “Oh where are you from Bharti?” what's your line that you say?

Bharti Dhir

I tend to say I'm from Uganda, I’m of dual heritage, I’m part Asian and part African. I don't necessarily call myself half Ugandan even though I was born in Uganda because I don't really know what that racial heritage or that cultural part of me is because I was abandoned as a baby. So although I know there's an African part of me I don't know which part of Africa. So if people ask me I just say Ugandan Asians because I'm part Asian part African but born in Uganda. So that in essence is my identity, my racial identity. My cultural identity, I think I would say I was Asian because I was brought up in a Punjabi Sikh family so that's what I relate to culturally.

Imran Karim Awan

How old were you when your family left Uganda?

Bharti Dhir

I had just turned 12 in 1972.

Imran Karim Awan

So you had your formative years in Uganda. So that’s quite interesting, because my dad, both his parents were Punjabi they still described themselves as Ugandan Asian, because even though they were culturally Punjabi, so very similar to your upbringing, they still felt a sense of “Right we are in East Africa at the time” so can I ask what were the languages spoken at home when you were growing up?

Bharti Dhir

Well the main language that we spoke was Punjabi, that was our first language, and then obviously we learned English and I used to be able to speak Gujarati and I used to be able to speak Swahili but I'm at that stage now where after many many years of never practising those languages, funnily enough I can understand Gujarati, but I cannot understand Swahili. I've lost that language completely now. My mum was very fluent in Kiswahili, in Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, and English even though she never went to school. She went to school as a young girl and she couldn't read or write but she picked up those languages.

Imran Karim Awan

Wow that’s quite phenomenal I think it’s very impressive of that generation because the same with my Dadima, Punjabi ethnically, but [knew] Urdu, Hindi, Swahili, and Gujarati because there were so many Gujaratis there, [knew] English and then because they were of Muslim background they had to read and write Arabic as well so that’s quite cool.

Bharti Dhir

My mum was fluent in Urdu as well I forgot that language.

Imran Karim Awan

So I mean the whole thing with identity, it’s always kind of like a mixed bag with various East African Asian communities, so if I may ask at what age in your childhood were you kind of aware of the dual heritage ancestry that you had?

Bharti Dhir

I wasn't aware because I think in the 1960s when people were adopted, they tended not to tell their children that they were adopted. So I grew up thinking I look like my dad and my sisters look like my mum, and my dad would grab me and say to my mum “She looks like me” and my mum would grab Anju and say “Oh she looks like me” and similar with my other siblings. So for me it was a shock, when I was about eight years old I walked into my dad’s study which was forbidden to us but I was an avid reader and I remember looking for something to read and I knew he had books and I thought “Well I’ll go into his study and get a book out and be able to read it” and I saw a file with my name on it and it was essentially my adoption file and that's how I became aware that I was actually dual heritage because it said that an “Asian baby was abandoned” but then I started to realise actually I didn't really look Asian and there was some papers alluding to the fact that I was of dual heritage, so they said mixed race.

Imran Karim Awan

So found out [you were adopted], it was not an accident the way you found out, but it was bit of a shock. There wasn't any build-up, no one told you, it's just something you found out on your own. So just an aside what line of work were your parents in?

Bharti Dhir

My mum was a housewife but my dad he's got an interesting story. He left India as a young man, my grandfather left for Uganda, my grandfather got into trouble with the law, and he just went off to Uganda and when my dad was a little bit older, I think in his early 20s, he was dispatched to go and find him to tell him to come back. He found my grandfather but by that time my grandfather was so happy in Uganda that he refused to go back to India and my dad fell in love with Uganda as well, so he decided to look for an opportunity there. So he started working as a servant in somebody's house and then from there he had read English and he had been to school and he picked up a manual on how to fix cars and he really read that manual and then he used to go to the street and asked people if they wanted their cars fixed and from there he built up enough money to eventually go and get a garage in Kabale which is right down south near the Congo border, and he got a garage, he got married and my mum joined him a few years after.

Imran Karim Awan

I'm assuming they were from Punjab, which part of Punjab were they originally from?

Bharti Dhir

My mum was from Hoshiarpur and my dad was from Bansia [in Jallander].

Imran Karim Awan

So did your parents get married back in India, or did they get married and then your mum followed?

Bharti Dhir

My mum was only 14 and then my dad got married to her and she stayed with the in-laws and when she eventually joined my dad she was in her early 20s, so all that time they were apart.

Imran Karim Awan

So they were apart for a good decade or so, that’s fairly common actually, the man used to go and settle there and then call his wife over. So going back to what you were saying you found this out [about being adopted], so did you did you speak to your parents about it or?

Bharti Dhir

I didn't because the study was forbidden and so there was no way I was going to admit to my dad that I’d gone into the study.

Imran Karim Awan

You were more worried about getting in trouble, yeah I can relate.

Bharti Dhir

Yeah you can imagine can't you in Uganda you know they thought nothing of beating you, not just at home but at school as well, so I just kept quiet. I told my sister because I looked up the word adoption in the dictionary and I realised that I was adopted. I told my sister, but I didn't discuss it with anybody I just played along.

Imran Karim Awan

I guess at the age of eight, of course you're still a kid, I guess academically you know what the term means but do you recall your initial gut reaction to finding out?

Bharti Dhir

I think it was just more shock and more like “Why did my parents lie to me?” and looking at them and thinking why. I mean years later I asked my mum and she did say “It was because they never wanted me to feel like I wasn’t part of the family” so they went against the advice that was given to them that was “You must talk to your children if they are adopted and let them know they’re adopted” she and my father were scared that if they said that to me that I would suddenly turn against them or reject them or feel like I didn't really belong. So they didn't want it to be such a big thing she did say to me that “Eventually they would have told me but they would not have told me at that age” and the strange thing was like how it works with when you're in a community the kids at school used to say to me, even before I found out, they used to say “Oh you know that's not your real family, you know that's not your family, you know that's not your family” and I remember getting into loads of fights in school and then coming home and saying  “So and so said I'm not a part of this family, it’s not my real family” and my mum and dad said “Just ignore them they're just jealous”

Imran Karim Awan

Yeah kids are fun aren’t they. So thank you for expanding on that, so if I’ve understood correctly you found out, you spoke to your sister at some point about it but it was never something that you would speak about, not publicly but in a public environment with your family. So you're having the normal tribulations of growing up everyone has, school work, home life, but you've got this thing that you're aware of, did you used to think and ruminate about it on a daily basis or was it just something you put to the back of your mind and you just got on with day-to-day life?

Bharti Dhir

I put it to the back of my mind and just got on with day-to-day life because it’s not one of those things that you thought about, you just had to accept that your parents had their own reason for not saying and you just got on with life.

Imran Karim Awan

That was very mature of you as an eight-year-old because I know people my age in the mid-20s that can't get over stuff. I think everyone realises that their parents in some way did their best for their kids right?

Bharti Dhir

I think to be honest with you the angst came in my teen years and that was when we moved here and I think then my African Caribbean friends said “Oh you're not really looking after your skin properly, it looks grey, you need to do this to your skin” and then they helped me braid my hair, how to look after curly hair, and so that was one part of it where you started to realise that racially I had to have a particular hair and skin care regime to really look after myself properly and that was taught to me by African Caribbean friends, because the Indian products didn't really suit my hair.

Imran Karim Awam

That’s the thing, Indian hair is never really curly, it’s very thick and long.

Bharti Dhir

Yeah so, the other part was I think the racism, I became very much aware of [it in the UK]. You know growing up in Kabale it wasn't such an issue because everybody accepted everybody, and it was only such a small community, I think there was no more than 50/60 families in Kabale.

Imran Karim Awan

Asian families?

Bharti Dhir

Yeah Asian but when we came to this country I became much more aware of the racism that Asians held towards Africans and black people, and so not only did I have to deal with the white racism but I also had to deal with the Asian racism and the non-acceptance, so you know grow up hearing things like “Oh she's so dark or he's so dark” and colourism, really colourism was very much an issue, the darker you were the less attractive you were, the curlier your hair that was also a non-attractive feature and becoming more aware of that and becoming aware of the fact that I was actually dual heritage. I think that's when I really started feeling I don't really belong I don't belong in this community, so I had a lot of grappling to do as a teenager and a lot trying to work out “Who am I? Where do I fit in? I don't fit into white society, I don’t fit into African society, and I don't fit into Indian society, so who am I exactly? What am I?” so there was all that identity struggle as a teenager.

Imran Karim Awan

And somewhat unluckily that matched up with the expulsion as well because you were 12, if I remember correctly, so just beginning your teen years and then equally even if you don't have all of those questions being a teenager anyway you've got so many hormones and an identity crisis is going on anyway.

Bharti Dhir

I mean even when we left Uganda what happened was when we were leaving Kabale every 50 miles there was a roadblock and there were soldiers there and they were checking everything and we were told to “Make sure that there is no money in your belongings otherwise they're going to kill you. They’ll use any excuse to shoot you because they'll accuse you of smuggling money out” and my mum really debated, people said “Oh you know that they're taking girls and they’re raping them and they're killing them, they’re just kidnapping girls” so some of the Asian families they put turbans on their girls to make them look like boys or they cut their hair very very short and made them wear boy clothes so they looked like boys instead of girls, and my mum really debated about doing that, and my mum had a lot of faith and she just decided she wasn't going to take that risk in case they did find out and so my sisters were as they were and there was me and the first road block we came to the soldier actually pointed a gun at my mum and told her to leave me behind because he said “I wasn't an Asian I was one of them” and my mum was like “No I'm not going to leave her behind” and three/four times he ordered her to leave me behind and she just refused and it was a very tense moment and at that time I think that really brought to the fore, I am dual heritage I am part African, because the soldier was saying to my mum “She is one of us and she's not one of you, so you need to leave her behind” and my mum was just refusing. So that was a very tense moment because he could have shot my mum or shot all of us.

Imran Karim Awan

Violence was very common as people were leaving, a mother’s love for you. So thank you for sharing that but I it sounds like through all of that you had dealt with it in your own way as a kid, but especially in your teen years it seems like other people were kind of forcing the issue on you whether it was the kids saying “Right you’re not part of that family” or it was racism from Asians saying “Oh you’re half this half that” and then obviously this very extreme example of the man with the gun.

Bharti Dhir

And I think there were a lot of assumptions made as well. If you went into a Gurdwara you heard them whispering in Punjabi “Maybe her dad slept with an African woman” and my mum was quite frequently told “You are so good to take on a child that your husband had on the side!” or they used to assume that my mum had had an affair or that my dad had had an affair and those were the assumptions that were made, and then another assumption that was made was, this was so funny, it was funny but it was bad as well. They’d say “Oh you brought your servant over from Uganda” and my mum would say “No she's not my servant, she's my daughter” or “Oh god is going to really bless you because you're calling your servant your daughter” and my mum said “She is my daughter!” so that was a very common assumption in the 1970s especially amongst the older Asians, they used to really believe that my mum would be truly blessed that she bought this African girl over who is a servant but was treating me like a daughter.

Imran Karim Awan

Yes the tradition of elderly Asian Aunties not having a filter has been proudly followed into nowadays as well.  We’ll come back to the challenges you faced as a dual heritage Ugandan Asian here in England but back in East Africa itself it was, just going from my own families experience I don't know if it's completely the same for your experience as well, that Asians whether they were Punjabi, Muslim, Hindu, Gujarati, Jain, Ismaili, most of them led quite comfortably middle class existences in various East African countries. So Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, you had the kind of colonial administration at the top primarily staffed by English people, you had the entrepreneurial class in the middle mainly Asians and then some of them joined the police and the army and what not, and then you had the Ugandan or Kenyan Africans themselves doing their thing. So there was already quite a racialized hierarchy anyway where various levels of tension, various levels of getting on, where you aware of that kind of colonial hierarchy in a sense when you were growing up and then situating yourself in that as a person of duel heritage descent?

Bharti Dhir

I think I was very aware because my sisters and I, we were placed in a private missionary school and that was a white school and that was meant to be very prestigious, and it was meant to be the elite of the elite.

Imran Karim Awan

Was that in Kabale?

Bharti Dhir

Yeah in Kabale. So we went to a school called Kabale Preparatory School which was run by the Church Missionary Society. So there were a lot English teachers from England who came to teach there and there were some African teachers there as well but predominantly it was a white school and the children that went there were also children of the missionaries and so I think for me, I wouldn't say I was strongly aware, but I think what I accepted at the time was, and I think that was the norm in Africa generally, was that the whites were the top, Asians were the middle, and Africans were the bottom and I think when you looked around at the businesses they were predominantly Asian in Kabale. I cannot remember one business run by an African, most of the Africans we knew either worked in the garage for my dad or they worked in houses as servants or gardeners. So obviously as a child you just accept the norm of life I think what happens is when you become more politicised, as you get older and you become more aware of colonialism and you become more aware of the power of the… you know Asians were a minority and so were the English but you wouldn't believe it from the way the economy was run.

Imran Karim Awan

The way the power and the wealth was distributed it was concentrated on these two groups.

Bharti Dhir

Yeah and as you become more politicised you become aware of those issues and you become aware of the racism and the way people were treated was…I wouldn’t say necessarily from my own family because I think my father really did try he tried very hard to distribute to make sure that every single African who worked for him had an opportunity. So I'll give you an example he made it his business to get to know their families and then what he did was he would say “Choose one person from your family and I will pay for their education” with the hope that that person would then be able to contribute and do the same for the rest of the family. So he paid for virtually every servant and every worker he had in his garage, they all had a member of the family who went to school, my father paid their fees.

Imran Karim Awan

And these were native Ugandan families that worked for your dad, and he said “I’ll contribute to their education”?

Bharti Dhir

Yeah and I think he was quite unique in that way because he remembered his roots, he remembered coming and working as a servant, he didn't just get the wealth land in his lap. So he knew that a lot of the families they needed just that leg up, one person being educated would be enough to maybe get a decent job and then be able to provide for the family and maybe then educate a few more. So that was his reasoning for doing that.

Imran Karim Awan

That’s very commendable of your dad because I think what is quite common is that a lot of the Asian families who went to Africa they weren’t from wealthy backgrounds themselves, they either owned a bit of land or worked on a bit of land or when there was a war you’d go off to fight, but they were like from very average backgrounds right so the attitude your father had to his African colleagues, let’s say his African associates, would you describe that as being fairly common or actually you said it was fairly unique amongst the Asians in their attitudes?

Bharti Dhir

I think it was very unique. I don't remember anybody else doing that and also I think my father did have an inherit respect and he felt very strongly about justice and very strongly about people being treated [right]. So he had an understanding of poverty, so our garage was situated near a bus stop and there were people selling their wares there, like breads and things, African people, and I remember one guy stealing some bread and the whole mob went after him and they would have stoned him to death and kicked him to death and my father just went into that melee and just grabbed this man and took him into the garage, and the people in the garage were [like] “No don't do that let him [get what he deserves]” and my father said “No he’s a human being, he stole bread, somebody's hungry in his family and he stole bread, why should he die?” and they were like “Yeah but we’re poor, we don't go out and steal”. So it was a very harsh kind of justice that was meted out immediately if anybody tried to steal from each other, and I remember my father saying to the guy, he called the police because he knew that if the guy went out in the street he would have been killed. So he called the police, but in the meantime my mum put haldi (turmeric), on his wounds and then when the police came in my father said to him “When you come out of prison call me and I'll get you a job, not necessarily here because you will be recognised, but I'll get you job else elsewhere with one of my friends”

Imran Karim Awan

So it sounds like your dad, he stuck to his values, whereas in a lot of other cases it would have been easier to go along with what the mob wanted. So you talk about your dad as one example, you mentioned the issue of racism from the Asians towards the black population. When did you start to register that, or was it was something you just grew up with and you could see [that] this Punjabi or this Gujarati family is treating their servants like this or treating the population like that?

Bharti Dhir

I think yeah, you know what I see it also when I go to India, there were some families that were quite happy to slap their servants they would just slap them, and you see that in India as well that they think it's okay to slap somebody who works in their house, that cleans. If you don't do a good job you get a slap and get told off and I think, I don't remember calling it racism, but I remember feeling sorry that people were treating people like that yeah and I think the worst thing I used to see, and I saw that within my own family as well I’ll be honest, if they were asking for a salary or their wage to be put up “Please I need the money for this, I need the money for that” that used to really upset me. I didn't necessarily see it as racism but I think I became very aware, even though I couldn’t articulate it, about the inequalities and the thought that somebody would have to go and beg somebody to have extra money or ask for a loan and that person is holding all the power and they may have the money or they may not have the money but most of the time they had the money, but it felt to me like they held all that power and that person's life and that person’s family’s life depended on this one really powerful person holding the purse strings as to whether they were going to deign you with the favour of giving you more money or not giving you money, and on top of it you did see people getting sacked and fired and one person would get fired. The power was there and you became very aware of it as a child that there was a lot of power, you didn't necessarily equate it with racism, but I became very aware of the inequalities.

Imran Karim Awan

I guess it’s that kind of sense that you need to put food on the table for your own family and it's the act of having to go up to someone and that power rests of them. You previously said your realisation of the dual heritage facet of you had been put away in your own mind and you had a kind of day-to-day life to be to be getting on with, did you feel, and the reason I'm asking was because especially when I speak to the elder generation of my dad's lot even though they called themselves Ugandan Asian I think from what I can get they never themselves feel a kinship at all with the native African population there, would you say that was similar to you or was that quite different for you as someone of dual heritage when it came to just having basic human empathy with other people?

Bharti Dhir

I don't think, generally looking at the general Asian population, I don't think they had that empathy, I really don't think they had that. They did feel they were superior to the Africans and so within that equation people of dual heritage were also looked down on a common term they used to describe people of dual heritage was half caste, so that was a very very common term. So I grew up hearing that terminology and there was one family that was dual heritage were I think the guy was African and had married an Asian.

Imran Karim Awan

Really? That’s practically unheard of.

Bharti Dhir

Yeah and his children were dual heritage and I remember they were always called half caste or “chotari”, and I remember a couple of times being called out as well. So I was very aware that certain people were looked down upon.

Imran Karim Awan

Thank you for sharing that insight. So leading onto the wider thing that happened to the Asian population in Uganda, so the stuff that you saw first-hand in terms of feeling of superiority from the Asian towards the black population and at least going off from what my family were saying, and they were in Kampala at the time and then we had relatives living in Entebbe, but that was fairly commonplace across all of Uganda in terms of the Asians. So obviously that feeling was something, that it wasn’t just Idi Amin but the leader before, Obote, was at least from what I read starting to look at the Asian population in Uganda in problematic terms. So you know first-hand there was that kind of run up to Indian phobic kind of rhetoric that was building up. Were you in your own day-to-day you aware of a particular anti-Asian sentiment growing up?

Bharti Dhir

No I wasn’t. I saw it more like when you saw a servant get slapped and then you heard them say something under their breath, and you saw the look of resentment. So I saw it more as an individual thing, I didn't really pick up that there was a general resentment against Asians, I didn't pick that up at all, and in fact when Idi Amin made that announcement I remember in our house the servants were devastated they were crying a lot and they were begging my mum, my dad had died by then, and they were begging my mum saying “Don't go don't go stay here we’ll look after you” and my mum was like “No we have to go” and she sort of said “Take whatever you want from the house, whatever you want take, beds, anything because we're not going to have any use of it where we're going” and they were just devastated, they were devastated. So I didn't see anybody actually openly celebrating when he, Idi Amin, made that [declaration]. I think for some people especially in Kabale, maybe there was more celebration in the bigger towns, but in Kabale I think they realised the gravity of the situation because there wasn't any real factory or anything going on in Kabale, it was just a small town and they didn't have the means to carry on with the businesses or takeover the businesses. So I think they realised that the Asians going from such small towns and villages was actually going to be a devastating blow for them because where were they going to get their income from?

Imran Karim Awan

It sounds like Kabale especially was very close knit because there were so many Asian families and even the African population wouldn’t have been huge, and I just picked up, so your dad actually passed away when you guys were still in Uganda. Was it heart related or?

Bharti Dhir

He had actually had a brain haemorrhage, he was quite young when he died.

Imran Karim Awan

You said 52?

Bharti Dhir

Yeah 52 and I think he died when my younger brother was a year and a half old, when he died.

Imran Karim Awan

I’m sorry to have heard that, but I’m just thinking about your dear mother.

Bharti Dhir

My mum was 36 when my dad died, and she had five children to bring out of the country.

Imran Karim Awan

Because I was just thinking of my own Dadaji and Dadima, they did it together and back then the lady takes care of the kids and the home, and then the man earns the money and whatever, but they obviously worked together to get their family out, but with your mum it would have just been her and five kids. So if you want to, could you kind of expand on that, your mum was effectively on her own now.

Bharti Dhir

I mean we did have a cousin brother who lived in Kabale. So when my dad died he took over my dad's business and there were two of them, and they took over, and then when we left we ended up in a relative’s house in Kampala and they'd already gone. But then the same cousin brother joined us with his children afterwards, he also came from Kabale because what happened in Kabale was, because we were so near the Congo border and Idi Amin was convinced that if there was going to be an invasion against him it would come from the Rwanda/Congo border. So what he did was, he dispatched an army into Kabale and the first thing they did was they took everybody's cars, I mean my mum wouldn't have been able to drive anyway, but none of us had access to a car. So when he gave that edict that we all had to leave, initially we were told 45 days, I don't know whether that's a rumour because somebody said to me “Oh we never heard 45 days we heard 90 days”, but in Kabale the first thing we heard was 45 days. And then I don’t know if it was Chinese whispers but then there was a real panic “How are we going to get out when we don't have a car? and then people said “Oh no it's 90 days”. So we had one driver and he was dual heritage,, and he was a taxi driver and he actually was the one who took all the families out of Kabale one by one. So he said “You need to be ready at any time. I don't care if you're sleeping, whether you’re eating when I turn up, because I've got this many families to get out”

Imran Karim Awan

Let’s say 60 families, right?

Bharti Dhir

Yeah and he says “I’ve got to get you all out” so if a family was very large he had to take half and then come back for the other half, and in that time Kampala was a 5/6 hour trip.

Imran Karim Awan

Just one way?

Bharti Dhir

Yeah one way.

Imran Karim Awan

So basically half a day to get there and [back].

Bharti Dhir

Yeah and it took longer because of the roadblocks because every road block you were stopped and they would search.

Imran Karim Awan

Do you know what became of the driver in the end?

Bharti Dhir

I think he survived because he was married to an African woman, so he was okay, he stayed on in Kabale after.

Imran Karim Awan

Do you remember his name?

Bharti Dhir

I don't remember his name, in my book I've called him Mr M.

Imran Karim Awan

I guess when you're a kid you don't call an adult by their first name, you call them uncle or aunty.

Bharti Dhir

Aunty or uncle, so I don't know his name.

Imran Karim Awan

So if I understand correctly, you guys are in Kabale and because of the perceived risk Idi Amin had towards that particular bit of the border, were all of Asian families going to Kampala? Because I guess that was the only transit out of the country internationally. Was Entebbe the only airport?

Bharti Dhir

Yeah so you had to go to Kampala to get your visa, your papers, and then you had to travel to Entebbe to go.

Imran Karim Awan

So the announcement happened, you spoke about the servants reaction and the Africans you knew in your life, do you recall your mum’s initial reaction to it?

Bharti Dhir

I think she was just in a state of shock that this had happened, but she then just became very pragmatic and said “Right what can I take from here that we're going to need”

Imran Karim Awan

Was it one suitcase each or?

Bharti Dhir

It was one suitcase each, so it was clothes, she did put a couple of things in there like kitchen stuff one thing is what we call a Magaro, it's a metal thing looks a bit like a plyer, but you used it to hold pots. So funnily enough she packed and she packed that thing you make jalebi (Indian sweet) out of those are the two things she really needed to pack, but she got a trunk and she had the trunk, and the trunk contained a lot of the clothes, some quilts, and some table covers. So she was thinking very much “Oh when we set up home, we will have some of the comforts”

Imran Karim Awan

Speaking of home, was it always a given that you'd come to England then? Did you have British passports?

Bharti Dhir

I didn't have a passport because I was adopted. So I was on my mum's passport, but the rest of us had British passports because my father, I don't know how, but my father acquired a British passport. I think he did fight in the Second World War or something, I'm not sure exactly, but through that he got a British passport.

Imran Karim Awan

I think that would have been the case because it was still British India at the time, same with my great-grandfather, him and his siblings fought in the Second World War, some of them in the First World War. That’s interesting because a lot of Ugandan Asian families actually ended up going to Canada and also some to Scandinavia and Germany.

Bharti Dhir

But in my case, my father before he died, he really wanted me to come here because I was ill. I  developed a skin condition, for short it’s called EB but in long it’s called Epidermolysis Bullosa, it’s when your skin blisters up and a lot of the missionaries told my dad that there was a Doctor Emerson, funnily enough in Reading, and he was a very prominent dermatologist and everybody said to my dad “If you can get your daughter to England get her seen by Doctor Emerson” and so my father already started thinking and talking about coming to England for me to get the treatment. So it just feels almost like fate or destiny that when it happened we ended up in Reading, right near Royal Berkshire Hospital, right where Doctor Emerson worked.

Imran Karim Awan

Because you said Eldon Road to begin with?

Bharti Dhir

Yeah so I got referred to Doctor Emerson because of my skin problem, so it was almost like he was meant to see.

Imran Karim Awan

Did you tell Doctor Emerson about your dad's knowledge of him?

Bharti Dhir

No (laughter)

Imran Karim Awan

That does sound like kismet, because if the missionaries were telling your family “Oh Doctor Emerson in Reading” because Reading is not that well known.

Bharti Dhir

And because we could have ended up in a camp anywhere, there were camps not just in Greenham, we ended up in Greenham Camp in Newbury, but we could have been dispatched anywhere in the country. Somerset, places like that, and yet we ended up in Newbury and then in Newbury we met Mrs Palmer from Huntley & Palmers Biscuits, because me and my sister, they were doing a drive about recruiting people to do First Aid for [the] Red Cross. So me and my sister thought “An evening to get away, not have to do any work in the dormitory”. So my mum said “Yeah go for it”, so we joined the British Red Cross to learn first aid and stuff like that and she was the patron for British Red Cross. So she got to know that there were some children from the refugee camp. So she came to us and she introduced herself, then she came and met my mum, and then they offered my brother, because he didn't want to carry on studying, they offered him an apprenticeship in their factory fixing cars, fixing the vans, the Huntley & Palmer vans and with that came the house in Eldon Road. So that's how we ended up here and yet when we were in the camp we were told “You’re all going to Scotland” and my mum said to Mrs Palmer “We don't want to go to Scotland, we've heard how cold it is” and everybody said “You won’t understand what they're saying in Scotland because they speak a different type of English”. So it's all, as you say kismet, it just all happened and everything fell into place. We ended up in Reading, I ended up seeing Doctor Emerson, he started treating me.

Imran Karim Awan

And Huntley & Palmers is such a staple in Reading it's a household name, because the factory…

Bharti Dhir

There’s no factory there now but in the 70s it was very prominent.

Imran Karim Awan

It’ still called Huntley & Palmers and you met Mrs Palmer. So we have spoken about the initial kind of expulsion, your mum and Mr M., let’s call him the driver, kind getting everyone to Kampala and all of that. How long were you guys in Kampala before you had to leave again?

Bharti Dhir

I think literally we were there for about 4/5 days, not even that actually. My mum had to go get the papers and even then it was lucky because she went with my cousin brother and she took Shiv with her and we were stuck in this flat. So that was an interesting experience because my Bhabhi, my cousin brothers wife, she was there with her four children and then myself, my brother Shankardas, Mina, and Anju, and Shiv had gone with my mum, and every night just before sunset you had to come into the house and she would make either my brother or her sons, they had to climb through the window, go to the front door bolt it, because it was a heavy chain, and then all the lights would be off, and we had to sit in darkness. The only light we had was a bit of light coming through from the lamps outside, coming through the curtains, and we would just sit down in their silence, because at night you heard the army trucks trundling up the road, and if they saw a light on, they would go into the house and shoot people and then the trucks would take the bodies away. I just knew that there was a couple with twins and they got killed, they got killed on one of the nights. She gave us a drill and she said, I don't know where she got these reeds, from they were like straws but they were reeds that you find in a river, and she told us “If they come and they breakdown the door” she said “I want you to get into the water tank and use this to breathe through and I will knock three times once they've gone, but you do not come out, it doesn't matter, you do not make a sound, you don't do anything, you get into that water tank”. We were just excited, we were asking questions like “Oh so is the water going to be cold?” and she said “Yes, but I don't want you to make a sound!”.

Imran Karim Awan

So you’ve had to leave Kabale, whether it's 45 days or 90 days, Mr. M has driven your mum, your family, you had cousin brothers there as well of your family. I'm just seeing if I’ve understood correctly, and your mum is organising the paperwork, with the cousin brother, but in that meantime, was it a curfew that no one was allowed out during the night?

Bharti Dhir

I don't know if there was a curfew, I think there was, but generally people didn’t go out because soldiers would stop you and they didn't need an excuse to kill you. So I think everybody used to [lock themselves in] and try and keep quiet and hope that they didn't just knock on the door.

Imran Karim Awan

So complete silence, complete darkness at night, and to the point the Bhabhi, so your sister-in-law of the family, would have to drill the children to say “If this happens, water tank, reeds, don’t come out”. I'm assuming as an adult now you look back on it “oh s***”

Bharti Dhir

As an adult you realise just how courageous she was, in fact in my book I’ve written, the chapter is a Mother’s courage, because there is my mum's courage in defying the soldier and then there's bhabhi’s courage because she knew that if they did knock on the door she would have been killed, raped, killed, taken away. Because what they were doing was taking the bodies and throwing them in the river for the crocodiles, and so you do think that she in fact, we were told don’t even make the beds just sleep on top of the bed don't get under the sheets. Luckily it was quite warm anyway, so she wanted to be able to smooth the beds out and [have it] just look like it was only her in the house.

Imran Karim Awan

So if anything did happen it would just be her.

Bharti Dhir

It would just be her. So as an adult you reflect back, and you think “That took her tremendous courage”. Even during the day we were allowed to play outside but she used to say “Right near the house and if you see anybody walking up the road you come straight in from the back way and you do not say anything, you don't do anything”. But it was one of those things, it was very eerie, I remember it being very eerie, because when we used to visit my aunty we used to live in that flat. It was a hustling bustling street with lots of children playing out on the street, ice cream vendor coming up and down, there was a lot of people going up and down, cars, very vibrant, but this time it just felt like it was just us. We did see the couple with the twins sometimes but they never looked at us, they never talked [to us], they would go straight into the apartment.

Imran Karim Awan

Asian family?

Bharti Dhir

Yeah, Asian family.

Imran Karim Awan

My I ask is your Bhabhi still around or has she passed on?

Bharti Dhir

She’s passed on as well, but my cousin brother is still here.

Imran Karim Awan

Reading or?

Bharti Dhir

No Birmingham.

Imran Karim Awan

There's a lot of history there between family, they’ve been through a lot. So your mums organised the papers and you cousin brothers helped, and your Bhabhi is there. That kind of extended bit of family that you had in Kampala for those 4/5 days, did everyone come at once on the same plane?

Bharti Dhir

No we left first. My cousin brother arranged a car and we got to Entebbe, again going through road blocks. We got to the airport and you always had that sense of danger everywhere you walked, there was this sense of danger that they could stop you at any time, and then I remember my mum, she had gold necklaces and bangles, so she had just worn them and she also said “We'll just go out openly with this” and then she was ordered to take everything off and then my sister actually reminded me of this story. My mum started crying and I think the soldier, the female soldier, felt sorry for her and she just put all the gold back in a handkerchief, tied it in a knot, and put it in my mum's handbag and she said, she whispered to her, “If you tell anyone about this, I will kill you”. So she just gave it back to my mum and we left, and when we got in the plane, this was an interesting story. We got in the plane and we went up and then the soldiers ordered the plane back down. So then the plane got back down and they came on board, took a couple of Asians away, don't know where, why, no reason.

Imran Karim Awan

Was it random?

Bharti Dhir

Yeah, we all had to disembark after that and they checked us all again, but they didn’t check my mum's handbag which is really weird, and then we had to get back on the plane. So again it was an orderly queue, we all had to get on and we got up in the air felt like we’d just literally gone up, back down again, ordered back down, and the pilot told us “If I don’t go back down they will shoot the plane down”. So they bought the plane back down again, we were all ordered to disembark and they took away another couple of people, men mainly, they just took them away and they did that three times. Third time it was chaos because before that they were like “Right we need to see your boarding passes, we need to see your passport, we need to see this” Third time they just said “Get on, get on” because the pilot was like “We're really late now, we're really late” and in that melee we all got separated and my younger sister was meant to be with my brother. So we got on the plane and my mum’s like “Where's Mina, where’s Mina?” and we thought Mina had been left behind on the tarmac, and my mum was really crying she was hysterical, she was like “My daughters been left behind, this plane can’t go” and they were like “No, this plane has to go off, we’re sorry, we can’t waste any more time” and my mum was just crying saying “Okay let us off the plane” and [they said] “No we can’t let you off the plane, we’re going” and my mum she took the seat belt off and she ran up and down [and] found Mina right in the back of the plane, and that relief, she got hold of Mina and [said] “Where have you been!” and my brother he got a real telling off, and he is still very traumatised by that. He can't even talk about it, he says it just makes him shiver to think he could have lost her because she said “Hold Mina, I’m holding Shiv, keep hold of Mina”.

Imran Karim Awan

So there were five of you. So similar to what my dad said, because there were seven of them “Go in pairs, you look after them” so I can't recall all your siblings so there’s…

Bharti Dhir

So there’s Shankardas, Niranjana (Anju), Mina and Shiv.

Imran Karim Awan

And who was assigned to who? shitting

Bharti Dhir

So me and Anju were together, Mina was assigned to my older brother, and shiv was with my mum because he was only a year and a half.

Imran Karim Awan

So third time, plane takes off, your mum has found your sister, your brother is sh****ng himself because he’s going to get in trouble, and then where do you guys land?

Bharti Dhir

We landed in Heathrow and even then, it was weird because in a child’s mind you don’t really get a sense of time. So when we were about to land we thought “Oh we’re back in Uganda and the soldiers are going to ask us to get off again”. It was only when people started clapping that we realised we were not in Uganda, we were in England, and then the first thing that really struck as we disembarked from the plane was how cold it was, it was October, it was freezing!

Imran Karim Awan

And Uganda is equatorial so it’s basically warm the whole year.

Bharti Dhir

Yeah we’d come from Kampala. Kabale was more colder temperatures, Kampala was boiling hot compared to Kabale, and oh my god just getting off the plane and realising that cold, that biting biting cold, it was like a really weird sensation.

Imran Karim Awan

Were you guys dressed for it?

Bharti Dhir

No we were just dressed in summer clothes, there were no coats in Kampala.

Imran Karim Awan

I don't want to, I don't want to go through like every minute detail, so you’re in Heathrow and then what [happened]?

Bharti Dhir

We had to go through this immigration line. We were given coats, which were very welcome, and I just remember the women looking very stern, there were no smiles, and then we came out and we were put in a coach, and I remember the coach driver told us as we were leaving Heathrow, he told us to “Draw the curtains” and I think the reason he did that, looking back on it now, was because the National Front were protesting. So they had their placards up and we could hear them shouting but we didn’t realise that it was aimed at us, we didn’t even know that it was a protest, we had no idea, we just saw crowd of people and he told us to “Draw the curtains”. I don't think he wanted them to see us and then I don't know, with hindsight maybe he thought he was being followed, so he said “I’m going to take you through London”. So he took us to London, he took us through Piccadilly Circus, we saw the lights and he was saying “This is very famous, this is where all the theatres are” the Christmas lights were up and it looked really really pretty and people were very excited about being in London and then he took a long detour like that and then we ended up going to Newbury, to the camp.

Imran Karim Awan

What was your reaction to seeing London because obviously Kampala is quite built up now…

Bharti Dhir

Yeah by that time we were allowed to draw back the curtains in London and we were just looking, and it was dark, it was raining, lights were glinting and shining, and [I] remember just again, it was that almost disconnected feeling, you're in a coach, you’ve come from another country, there's a sea of white faces, more white faces than I've ever seen in my life, and people just are hurrying along with their umbrellas, and then there were these bright bright lights and then somebody said was saying “Oh it’s very dirty” because it was all black on the road, but somebody said “Well it has to look dirty, but underneath there is gold”.

Imran Karim Awan

The streets paved with gold indeed. For this particular programme they held a couple of training sessions and there's an exhibition in Leicester Museum where I went to and because the East African Asian community was smaller than, let's say the Indian or Pakistanis or whatever successive waves of migration, I always thought we were just a blip in the kind of story of Britain, but there was actually a big discourse around our lot when we came over because Enoch Powell was like “We don't have room, it's going to be an issue, forget it” and I think it was [Edward] Heath at the time, he went against his own ministers to say “No their registered their citizens, they’re coming here”. If you feel like talking about it, you described the racialised dynamics back in East Africa, you're living in a middle-class Asian family, your dual heritage yourself and you, even though your parents try to be as fair as possible and helpful as possible to the Africans, other Asian families are fairly dismissive. How did that all kind of change when you came here, because now, even though Asians were the minority in East Africa, now you're truly truly a minority close to the bottom of the social [hierarchy], could you expand on that?

Bharti Dhir

I think what really struck me was, we lived in Eldon Road first after leaving the camp, I mean in the camp I think we were pretty sheltered so we didn't experience the racism, we didn't experience hostility and we were children so we weren't allowed in the main TV room, that was the domain for the teenagers, the youths of the day, and the elders so they might have known a lot more than us, because they were obviously seeing the protests on the news but because we weren't allowed to. We used to hear in school, they used to say “You know not everybody likes us being here” but other than that as children we didn't really understand that there was hostility out there towards us because we were pretty sheltered. We stayed in the camp, school was on the camp, eating was on the camp, we didn't have cars, so we didn't have access to being able to go outside.

Imran Karim Awan

How long were you living in that sheltered lifestyle?

Bharti Dhir

From October till around June.

Imran Karim Awan

Wow so over half a year then and you had your day-to-day in Newbury, and then you were in Eldon Road?

Bharti Dhir

We went to Elton road and then when we went to school again, I wouldn't have called it racism I would have called it more ignorance, “Have you seen Tarzan? Did you live in mud huts? Did you live in trees?” and that was directed to me and my sisters. “How did you get to speak English?” even the teachers used to say “You speak English ever so well, where did you learn this from?” so there was all that to get used to and doing a lot of explanation, I remember a lot of explanations “No, we went to proper school. No, we had a brick house. No, we had water, we had running water in a tap. No, we didn't walk miles to a well” and then we left Eldon road and we moved into the council house in Shinfield and that was when I really became aware of the prejudice. We had excrement put through our letterbox, we had bricks through the windows nightly, we had graffiti on our walls telling us to “F*** off and go back” “You're not wanted here” and my mum when she’d walk through the park to go to the bus stop, because that was a shortcut, little kids used to run up and kick her and scream abuse at her. She used to just say my mum’s attitude was very much in Punjabi they say “Anadha dimak which kamjori ha” which means “Their minds are weak, there's something wrong in their minds, that's why they are behaving like this”. So that's how we grew up, we used to see them as having a defective mentality that they could do that to people, but my mum used to say “No sane person would be would be putting dog poo through somebody's letterbox”

Imran Karim Awan

It's like when you say “Batimiz” which means there's something lacking in their character.

Bharti Dhir

Yeah there's something lacking in their intellect or their brains that makes them behave this way she used to say “They call us junglee” (which means uncivilised people who come from the jungle)  “We are really civilised compared to them” and that was true you know, they used to say we came from the jungle to “Go back to jungle” but they acted so uncivilised.

Imran Karim Awan

So from October to January you’re in the Newbury camp. So your day-to-day practically everything was in that and then you had the council home in Shinfield. Do you remember it being particularly bad in Shinfield, in terms of the racist attitude compared to Reading?

Bharti Dhir

I mean where we were, it was part of Reading, but it was a white working class area and they really resented [us]. I think it was predominantly National Front area as well that particular area, it was sort of border of Whitley, it was pure National Front and It, oh god it was just awful, and we went to school in Whitley as well so can you imagine.

Imran Karim Awan

What school did you go to?

Bharti Dhir

We were going to Southlands School for Girls. It was just an interesting experience all round wasn't it, the level of ignorance was just a horrendous and it was amazing when we went to school, so bearing in mind my name is Bharti- what did the headteacher say when she first saw us she said “What's your name?” and Anju said “Niranjana” she goes “That’s far too complicated, we’ll call you Angela” and then with me she said “Oh Bharti that's fairly easy to say” and my sister had a lot of problems when she was older because all the school records put her down as Angela. When she left with her O levels and she wanted to go into nursing, eventually after doing her A levels, she had to fight to get her name changed back to Niranjana she had to show people “Actually my name was never Angela, my name is actually Niranjana, it's just the headteacher called me Angela” the official records from school put her down as Angela.

Imran Karim Awan

It was one of the many things because of course racism is hard enough but then you have the little BS like that “Say my name man!”. It’s a shame because Punjabi or most Asians names have such a lovely meaning in their own native tongue. I kind of compare it to my mum and dad’s experiences because when they speak about racism it’s very similar to what you've just described, no one had any qualms about saying stuff like that, it was very open. You being of Ugandan Asian heritage did you ever feel it start to abate in time, people getting more understanding, or has there always been this kind of undercurrent?

Bharti Dhir

Do you know what, I think there is more of a tolerance [now] rather than an understanding. I think that inherent resentment will always be there with some groups of people and you see it even now with refugees coming over and the number of people that will say “There's no room for them, we’re overcrowded as it is” you know Suella Braverman and Priti Patel saying “Let them die out there on the Channel” and “We're going to get them deported as soon as they come in”. So that rhetoric about refugees, I think that resentment has always been there, but with the Ugandan Asians it’s turned to “Oh look how successful they are, look how well they’ve done”. We’re the good refugees. So I do find it really difficult to understand this dichotomy, there is the deserving refugee like the Ukrainians they’re deserving. Ugandan [Asian] refugees, they didn't want, but now of course we’ve suddenly turned deserving, and I read somewhere that the Ugandan Asians are the most successful group and have really contributed millions to this economy because they've all gone and [created] businesses, especially in Leicester.

Imran Karim Awan

Yeah it's very common to own a chain of convenience stores of jewellery shops, restaurants.

Bharti Dhir

But then you’ve got the other side which is the term “Undeserving refugee” the ones that really need to be “Packed off to Rwanda or left to drown in the Channel”. So going back to your question, I think there has always been that underlying resentment about refugees who are perceived to take away the benefits of the indigenous population and I don't think that's ever going to go.

Imran Karim Awan

It’s quite striking to hear you say that because, let’s say my generation you’re on Twitter you see these things happening and you're kind of gut response is “Let’s all be cool with each other”, but you're saying that as someone who had to go through that thing and 12 [years old] is still a child, you're still a kid, so even somebody who had to go through that, you're seeing very similar rhetoric being deployed now.

Imran Karim Awan

Hello, we’re back after a short comfort break. Just on our comfort break we were talking fairly high level about things to do with generational trauma, the way people can’t talk about what happened, not only with the expulsion in Uganda, but other traumatising instances like [Indian] partition and the modern refugees. We can return to that but something Bharti said on the break was very interesting, if I understand correctly, back in East Africa even though our people had gone there to open up new opportunities we were still reproducing existing cultural norms. So let's take the Punjabi example [it’s the] man’s job to go out and make money [and the] women’s job to look after the home, raise the kids, make the food, and we touched on the feminine norm back in Uganda and the modern day feminine norm post expulsion and settled here. So I won’t try and explain it for you, you take it away Bharti.

Bharti Dhir

Yeah we were talking about the fact that although the whole expulsion was traumatic in the way it was carried out and some of the atrocities that we saw leaving Uganda, and experienced in Uganda prior to the expulsion, I think when I talk to a lot of the women who left Uganda there is one thing we are all agreed on, and that is that leaving Uganda was not bad for many women. Some of us settled in the UK, some of us settled in Canada, some of us settled in the USA [but] one thing that's common amongst all the women, and myself included, is that we recognise that we have had opportunities that we would never have had in Uganda. So as we said earlier, in Uganda the gender role was very defined and, yes girls did study and went out to study and even went university, but it wasn't with the aim of getting a degree and pursuing a career necessarily, unless you were a doctor. It was a more about getting a good marriage and getting a very good match. So the higher educated you were the more likely you were to get a good family to marry into and that was the ultimate aim, and then it was in the lap of the gods whether that family was going to let you work. You'd most likely end up giving up any career you ever had, if you did have a career, and actually just being a housewife and raising children and running the household and that was your job. Since coming to England I’ve done two degrees, I've got a career, I’ve done something that many Asian women would never have the opportunity to do, and that is adopt a child. I’ve been able to choose whether I wanted to get married or not get married. I haven't had that inherent pressure of “You have to be married to be happy”. I realised a long time ago that marriage was really not on the cards for me, I wanted to be a mum more than a partner to anybody, and so I think we have to acknowledge that England has been liberating for women. I've got friends who are in the LGBT community who are female, and they have said they would probably never have been allowed to be gay or express their sexuality in Uganda, they would’ve been forced into marriage and that would have been it.

Imran Karim Awan

Sorry to interrupt, are they of the same background, so they are [of] East African Asian descent?

Bharti Dhir

Yes [but] not dual [heritage], I'm talking about Uganda Asians. So I just think that coming to England has opened up a world of opportunities, not just personally, maybe sexually, maybe career wise, maybe life choices for women, and those opportunities would have been denied to us in Uganda. So in a way, yes the expulsion was bad, yes it was traumatic, and yes we did have a good life in Uganda. We had a lovely life, the weather was nice, we had a sense of freedom in one way, in the sense that you could go out and pick mangoes off a tree or guavas off a tree you know that kind of thing. But I don't miss the overall political picture from a woman’s perspective and I think we have to acknowledge that for one group it's been a liberating experience.

Imran Karim Awan

It speaks to a great wisdom that you can see that side of it. I won’t be able to say anything that's more insightful than what Bharti has just said. Just something for my own selfish benefit, if you could have one takeaway that you'd try and give to this particular research programme, making sense of the Ugandan Asian expulsion and identity as one thing, and the second thing, as to younger people who have come from that background who have been born and raised here, if you could give one message to both sets of parties what would it be?

Bharti Dhir

The first message I would give is essentially that in life, not just referring to the refugee experience, but everybody's life is a journey and within that journey there will be some sort of trauma that we come across, whether it's the death of a loved one, or whether a loss of some kind job or whatever. Something that's going to affect you very deeply, just like the expulsion did to a lot of people, and one thing I would say is that trauma should not define you. There is a light, we’ve all come here for a purpose, we’ve all been born for a purpose, and there is always a light at the end of that darkness of trauma. So when I come across people who are just embedded in that trauma and can't see beyond it and don't see the positives that they have in their life, or they don't see the positives that are around them because they’re embedded in the past, in that trauma, and they just want to live in that trauma. My main message is wake up, open your eyes, whatever experience you've been through, learn from it, learn that there was a purpose behind it, use it for the good of humanity and use it for the good of yourself, and look around you, there's a lot of positives. So trauma doesn't have to define you for the rest of your life, you can overcome trauma and you can make something of your life and your family’s lives, and I think that's one thing that people have demonstrated in terms of the Ugandan Asian experience. So I think that's one thing that I would say in terms of the younger generation growing [up] today, I would just say, and again I'm going to refer to my book I'm sorry about this, but take time to talk to your elders, talk to your family, talk to your parents, talk to your grandparents if you're lucky enough to still have them around, and ask them to describe to you their stories. Have they got any special stories they'd like to share with you, have they got funny stories from their childhood, have they got serious stories from their childhood? Get to know their lived experiences. Too often young people of today don't want to know but regret it after. So one of the reasons I wrote my book was because I was writing it for my daughter. I wanted her to know, this woman is my mom and this woman she had these experiences, some were good, some were bad, some affected her worth negatively, and some affected her worth positively. And I think there's a wealth of knowledge skills and values that elders can impart to the younger generation and it's such a shame that the young generation don't take the time to want to hear those experiences. So, all I would say is take a little bit of time get to know your mom, get to know your dad if you're lucky enough to still have them here, get to know your grandparents if you’re even luckier to have them around, and get to know about their experiences. Don't wait until after their death and then say “I knew nothing about them” I hope that helps.

Imran Karim Awan

I think It really did, from my own experience I was lucky enough to have three living grandparents from a young age until my kind of teens and early adulthood, and exactly as you said, some of my fondest memories in my childhood are just listening to my Nani and Dadi just talking about simple day-to-day stuff back in Africa and their life experience, and I feel like I would ruin the rest of the interview if I tried to ask anymore questions, unless there's anything else that you'd really like to touch on?

Bharti Dhir

No thank you very much you are fantastic interviewer.

Imran Karim Awan

On behalf of the programme and just for me as well it was honestly a pleasure speaking to you today and thank you for your hospitality and for opening up.