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Faatima Zannar

Before you retired how did you get into mechanical engineering?

Mohinder Singh Chana

I think I will have to go back to the days in Uganda, is that okay?

Faatima Zannar

Take me back all the way back

Mohinder Singh Chana

I think that is the best thing because otherwise I'm just jumping for one time zone to another time zone which that can be incoherent. Let's go back to the Asians in East Africa, as you probably know the Asians first came to East Africa in just at the turn of the century, 1890s, to help build the railways. At that time Kenya, Uganda, and I think Zanzibar, belonged to Britain and Tanganyika, what is Tanzania now, Germany ruled that part of East Africa. Indians had an experience of having built railways in India, Indian artisans. So when the British government decided to build a railway in East Africa from Mombasa inland towards Nairobi, and then later on Uganda, lo and behold they recruited Indians because the local people were not used to that sort of technology. So Indians actually came, and one of the great contributions of Indians was that they worked on the railways, they helped build the railways in East Africa, which helped stimulate the economic growth of that region. So when the railway was completed, a number of communities who worked on them Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, all spectrum of Indian society, and at that time remember India was the whole of India, there was no Pakistan, the whole of India was Indian. The railway workers were a multi-faith community, but when the railway was complete some of them went back to India, but a number stayed to help run the railways, not only that, when the infrastructure of that country began to develop, engineers and professionals, doctors and entrepreneurs, started coming to East Africa and their contribution has been tremendous. It's not really recognised, in fact they were nearer to Africans than the Europeans were and [they] employed Africans in various professional capacities as well. So a lot of them came back but a number of them stayed and a new wave of skilled workers and professionals went to East Africa and they were, these were skilled workers, and some of them set up businesses, some went into their own professions like doctors and into teaching, and so and so forth, into Kenya and Uganda and other parts of British East Africa. So my paternal grandfather Santa Singh Chana who was a skilled carpenter and maternal grandfather Arjan Singh Sambhi who was a skilled metal worker went to Kenya from Punjab in the 1930’s. My maternal grandfather went back to India after a few years. My father Gurdial Singh Chana joined my paternal grandfather Santa Singh Chana in about 1936. And my father who had trained as an engineer, mechanical engineer, in Punjab, India before he went to join my grandfather in Nairobi, but his first job was in Kisumu, in an engineering company. This company was run by a European, by an Englishman, he owned the company but his workers, most of his skilled workers, were Indians and the majority of them were Sikhs, they worked in engineering. So my father’s first job was in Kisumu and then he was offered a job, there was a goldmine in Kakamega, Kakamega is a town near Kisumu, just a few miles away from Kisumu, and where there was a goldmine, I think it was called Kavirondo Goldmine, and my father was in charge of the power station, he looked after the engines in the power station that produced the power for the goldmine. My mother Chanan Kaur Chana had joined my father earlier having travelled from Punjab. So my father was working there and that's when I was born in 1943, I was born March 1943 in Kakamega. So 27^th of March is my birthday and so this 27^th of March I will be 80 in fact, oh gosh! So that’s a milestone in one's life. So my father was working as an engineer in the goldmine and then there was a company in Uganda who were ginners, which means they processed raw cotton for export. Cotton was one of the crops which Uganda produced, so there were three Cs, just before we were expelled there were 3 major exports from Uganda, cotton coffee, and copper, but cotton had been prominent in earlier years, from the 1930s and so forth. So they needed an engineer and somebody suggested my father's name and they approached my father and my father said “No, no, I don't want to go to Uganda”. In those days Uganda, this is the 1930s/1940s, there used to be a saying that if you go to Uganda malaria would come to receive you at the station, malaria was rife, so some people were reluctant to go to Uganda. But then the Company owners came back, in fact they came back again twice offering a better salary, better incentives, and they said “Look people are living there it's not too bad”. So my father said “Okay I'll have a go” and he talked to our relations in Kitale, not far from Kisumu, and they said “Okay if you want to you can go, but you go to Uganda first on your own and see what it is like, if it is okay then you can come back for your wife (that's my mother) Mrs Chanan Kaur Chana and your child (that was me). In the meantime they will stay with us”. So my father went to this place called Busembatya in Uganda and there was the cotton mill, it was run by N.P. Patel & Co so he went there and saw the conditions were fairly good, not too bad. There were people living there but malaria was still present, one did contract malaria now and again, but he thought it was safe enough for my mother and me to join him. So we joined him and stayed in Busembatya and where my brother Bir Singh Chana was born, and while he was working at this cotton ginnery the manager of the ginnery, one day I think he said something to my father not politely, whatever it was my father took an offence, and my father just threw the keys at him and said “Look I’m not going to work for you”, because my father was a very skilled engineer and usually people who are skilled and good at their profession they don’t take any nonsense from anybody else. So he told the manager “To hell with you. I’m not going to work here”. Later on the manager and the owner of the company came to apologise to my father and said sorry there’d been a mistake made by the manager, but my father had decided by then that he would set up his own business. He told the owner of the company, “Look I don’t want to work for anybody I just want to set up my own business”. The owner was very understanding and in fact later they became very good friends, my father and him. So my parents moved from Busembatya to Jinja where in 1945 my father set up his engineering company called Nile Industrial Engineers. He started with a small workshop, he rented a place and started his business, which prospered with a lot of hard work involved. Then a couple of years later in 1947 he had bought land in the industrial estate and built a purpose built workshop. Hence in 1947, he moved his business to the new premises that he owned, and from then on the business developed further, and there were ups and downs but generally it prospered particularly at the time of expulsion it was with hard work doing extremely well, and I went to school in Jinja. My other siblings, apart from the one who was born in Busembatya, the other [three] were born in Jinja.

Faatima Zannar

So you all went to school in Jinja?

Mohinder Singh Chana

That’s right. I went to Jinja Government Secondary School, after of course the primary school and then this government secondary school. It used to be called at that time Government Indian Secondary School, and the society there was fairly segregated, we had our own schools Indian schools, I’m talking about 1950s/60s. When I finished secondary school in 1960 that's when I took my Senior Cambridge [exam], Senior Cambridge was equivalent to the O-Level examination, and it was set up by the Cambridge University for overseas students. Having completed Senior Cambridge exams in 1960, for further education one had to go abroad because they were not many facilities available at that time. Makerere University was being set up, it was in its early stages, and then the University of Nairobi was established but still many Indians preferred to send their children abroad for education and they either sent them to India or to the UK. Those who were well-off they would send their children to the UK. So after I finished my senior Cambridge in 1960 we were looking to where I should go for further education, and then my father said “Okay I'll send you to the UK”. So I came to the UK to study mechanical engineering, I did my A-Levels first and then mechanical engineering. We financed ourselves, we paid for everything, there was no government sponsorship of the sort. Indians didn’t qualify for Government bursaries because they thought they were well-off, most were but some were not. Anyway luckily my father's business was doing fine, although I came as a private student, officially I had to come through the Uganda students office. There was the Uganda students office with the education department in Uganda who sent us the application, so the application forms were filled out and processed and they had a number of colleges in the UK where they would send or recommend their students to go to. So I filled in the forms, I told them what I want to do “I want to do A-Levels before I do engineering” they said “Okay there is Cornwall Technical College, we recommend that you go to Cornwall Technical College”. In fact they found the place and there were a couple of other Uganda students as well who were there. We had the last meeting in Kampala with the Uganda students advisor, who was an Englishman, and he said “Oh by the way there is a six weeks course in London and we recommend that you attend that if you can. It is to get to know the English culture”. I still remember the extra fee was about £90 or so, this was just for the course and that was a lot of money in those days £90 in 1961. My father, who was with me, said “Yes, yes, go and attend, it’s alright, it will be a benefit”. It was in some respects of benefit. So there it is all set up, I've got a place in the College, a place on this course, and then I still remember, it was the 18^th of June 1961 when we landed at Gatwick, and the flight was from Entebbe airport.  It was a turboprop, a BOAC turboprop plane, and it stopped at Khartoum in Sudan first and when it stopped at Sudan for refuelling it was nearly 4:00 o'clock in the morning and I still remember as we got off the plane, and as the plane door was opened there was a gust of warm air coming in because Sudan is a hot country, and I still remember that, and then we went to the lounge stretched our legs. After Khartoum we stopped at Nice in France for lunch and refuelling before landing at Gatwick.

Faatima Zannar

Who did you take this journey with?

Mohinder Singh Chana

There were other Uganda students, they were all Indians, I can't remember the number but it must have been more than a dozen or so. We were going to different colleges to study. We had all come through the Uganda students office who had co-ordinated the travelling. I didn't know them before, but we met on the plane. I still remember sending home a postcard from Khartoum Airport and it formed part of my brother’s collection, and then from there we went to Nice in France, it stopped there, we had a lunch, and it was quite eye-opening for us to see Nice. It was summertime and at Nice, the planes used to land and take off every few minutes, and it was quite a new site to us, first sight of Europe, and after that the plane landed at Gatwick Airport. A British Council official came to receive us at Gatwick Airport and who had arranged a coach to take us to a hotel in London. I stayed in London for six weeks to attend the introductory cultural course. There were two or three other students from Kenya who were attending this course. Whilst I was trying to arrange accommodation for my stay in London to attend this course, I contacted and went to see Gurmit whose Sikh family lived in Jinja at the time and he had come over to the UK to work and was living in London. This is early 1960s and Indians from East Africa had gradually started coming to the UK because the political situation in East Africa was getting a bit untenable, well not attractive. I went to see him, to give the present his mother had given me to take to him. I told him “Look I'm going to live in London for about six weeks to attend this course and thereafter I'm going to Cornwall to do my A-Levels” and I said “I’m having difficulty finding accommodation” he said “Oh it’s alright, I’ll arrange for you a room or a bed”. So there was this big house owned by an Indian, terraced house in East London, and he arranged a bed for me, and I used to have meals with Gurmit. To cut a long story short that was my first introduction to English life. I completed my course, it was quite interesting, I learnt quite of lot of things from it and the exposure it gave us was tremendous because in East Africa our life was very much cushioned within the community, within the Asian community, and the life in East Africa in Uganda at that time, as I mentioned earlier, was fairly segregated, Indians stuck to themselves, separate Indian schools, which later on in early 1960s started changing the names because some of the African students were joining the schools, they changed the name from Government Indian Secondary School to Government Secondary School. In fact in my last year there were two or three Africans students who had come into the school and that was good because the country was heading towards independence, but prior to that it was quite segregated. When I attended this course in London I met people from all over Europe, not only Europe but some parts of Caribbean, a white man from the Caribbean I still remember him, and so it was interesting.  After that I went to Cornwall to attend my course at the College.

 Faatima Zannar

How long were you in Cornwall for, in the UK?

Mohinder Singh Chana

In Cornwall it was two years, and after that I went to study my engineering at the university, and then after that I worked for awhile, and then I went back to Uganda. So I went back to Uganda in late 1960s/early 1970s and joined the family engineering business. Among our major customers were Kilembe Mines Ltd an international company engaged in copper mining where the senior management and engineers were all expatriates, some from the UK, one from Holland, and Canadians, so a mixture of expatriates and other engineers who had worked at other mines in South Africa for instance, or Rhodesia which was again a white dominated society at that time. Other customers included Nyanza Textiles, Ministry of Works, etc.

At the time of the expulsion of Ugandan Asians in 1972, my younger brother Jaspal Singh Chana was in England studying engineering.

Faatima Zannar

So how many siblings were you all together?

Mohinder Singh Chana

We are four brothers and one sister (I am the oldest, then Bir Singh Chana, Jaspal Singh Chana, Manjit Kaur (sister) and Harvinder Singh Chana). My sister was doing accountancy. Our father had influenced us into engineering, because he was an engineer and we are an engineering business. My sister, he thought she’d make a good accountant, so she decided to do accountancy when she came over that is just before she finished at school.  When we were expelled she had just finished her O-Levels in Uganda. When she came over here she joined a college to qualify as an accountant.

Faatima Zannar

How was it for you returning to Uganda after you finished your A-Levels?

Mohinder Singh Chana

I had qualified as an engineer, mechanical engineer. After A-Levels I went to Uni and qualified as a mechanical engineer, and I went back to Uganda and there were a lot of changes during the time I was here some of my friends had left the country, some of the friends I went to school with had left the country.  When I came to the UK to study in 1961, Uganda was not independent at that time, it gained its independence in 1962. I remember at the time I was at Cornwall Technical College. We, the Ugandan students (a multi-racial group of Africans, Indians and Europeans) organised an independence day celebration event at Camborne Town Hall officiated by the Mayor of Camborne. Our photograph with the Lord Mayor of Camborne appeared in Uganda Argus.

Faatima Zannar

That’s lovely. So you celebrated the independence and then you carried on with your studies, and you returned to Uganda to help with the family business. Did the image that you had of Uganda at that time in your head, how you thought Uganda would be, did it match what you came back to?

Mohinder Singh Chana

More or less. Even during my study I did make an interim visit to Uganda, I went in 1965 to attend my brother Bir Singh Chana’s wedding, his wife comes from Kisumu. It was a tremendous celebration, but I could see the changes and I could see the Indians adapting themselves to the new circumstances, and the businesses were doing quite good, I can only talk about my relations in the Sikh community, a number of them were doing quite well. We were doing quite well, our engineering business, and so my brother’s wedding was quite an ostentatious occasion, as Indian weddings tend to be. In the interim period there were still some friends and contacts that were there, they were still there, although some people had left Uganda. But later on when I went back after finishing my studies then I saw quite a few changes, a number of people had left, but there was still a thriving community and the people I had gone to school with most of them had left Uganda for other opportunities. But when I went back I immersed myself in the business, and as I said most of our dealings were with engineers from the mining or textile industry, and most of the engineers were expatriates, the main personnel and management were from the UK or other European countries. Our dealing was largely with them, and some them became very good friends and we used to socialise with them and invite them home for meals. For instance, Kilembe Mines was an interesting company, it used to mine the ore in Kasese, nearly 300 miles from Jinja, and it had a dedicated railway line which brought the ore from Kasese to Jinja where they had built a smelter to process the ore to turn into copper ingots using electric furnaces, and to power those furnaces obviously they need electricity and it was much more sensible and economical to set up the plant in Jinja because the Owen Falls Dam was in Jinja and that produced electricity, so you don't have to transmit or arrange for transmission of electricity all the way to Kasese. That was one of the reasons because the power was readily available nearby and they could power the smelters with that and so that’s the reason the smelter was built in Jinja, while the actual extraction took place nearly 300 miles away.  Our work not only involved dealing with the smelter in Jinja but also with Kasese where they mined the copper ore. We were set up to provide the required service.

Faatima Zannar

So was there a time where you started feeling for yourself, that things were changing?

Mohinder Singh Chana

One could sense that things were changing, for instance the government had stopped issuing business permits to some sectors for example they restricted the Asians from setting up their shops in the Main Street and they had to have them in the Secondary Street or they had to take an African partner. In business terms things were beginning to change, they were beginning to Africanise, I can understand that but sometimes I thought the pace was too fast. So in every sector Africanisation was taking place, which was quite understandable, but there were still some skills which would have taken time for them to acquire and have enough personnel in order to service those particular industries. Change was taking place and I think the Indians were, to their credit, adapting to it and some had started making alternative arrangements of sending their families abroad because they sensed there could be some political instability. And security issues. Now when the coup took place, Amin’s coup, I think that did cause a lot of anxiety, particularly about the instability of the political situation that would ensue. Even then at that time we used to do work for Ministry of Works for instance, and other textile industries and the Town Hall, we used to manufacture manhole covers for instance, which the Ministry of Works used to buy, or a contractor used to buy.  We continued to invest and manufactured manhole covers, nuts and bolts, besides doing other heavy engineering work. We had some contacts within the government circles and they all assured us that the Africanisation is taking place yes, but it's mainly on the retail side, that's why they started first on the retail side, all the shops for instance were being asked to take on African partners, or Indian shop owners their permits were restricted to trading within not the main area but minor streets. But in engineering they assured us “The engineering skills we have got, will take years for us to acquire. you are very safe, don't worry about it” and so this is the assurance we used to get from our contacts in government circles, because it was a highly skilled profession, a highly skilled service, it's not something that they would Africanise. Hence we went on and continued to invest, in fact we had ordered some new machinery from the UK which was about to be shipped, it was on a dockside when Idi Amin announced that the Asians must leave the country in 90 days. So we had to send a telegram, there was no emails or anything similar in those days, or text messages, so the quickest communication was telegram. We had to send a telegram to our suppliers in the UK to stop the shipment at which, obviously, they were very surprised, but then they found out what the reason was and they understood. That shipment was stopped when Idi Amin announced that we must leave in 90 days. So to answer your question yes we were very very surprised, everybody was surprised, in fact shocked, when they heard the news that Idi Amin had announced that Asians must leave the country in 90 days, that was a shock.

Faatima Zannar

Do you remember hearing that message for the first time?

Mohinder Singh Chana

Oh yes, I remember it yes. I read it in the paper, this message came out in August, in June I had got married, the 11^th of June 1972 was the day I got married to a beautiful girl. My wife Kulwinder Kaur Chana was from Eldoret, her family lived in Eldoret, in Kenya. In olden days there was no restriction in travelling within East Africa,  it was just like one country, you could just drive along without any problems, but when the individual countries became independent Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika, they set up the border controls and one had to make sure that one had a visa to travel to that particular country. At the border for instance you had to stop and show all your paperwork. We got married in Eldoret and then on the return journey again the same at the border we had to show our paperwork and even bribe some of the officials, not bribe, because it was a wedding they wanted some presents, so my father gave them a bit of money, actually to the immigration officials they expected it, so they just waved us through. So that was the situation there, people at the border they expected some money to change hands, and you heard of stories when people would show their passport but quietly put a few notes in the passport and hand it to the official, and the official would take the passport and remove the notes and say “Okay, okay, that's fine”, stamp the passport without any problem. Now if you didn't do that then he would find some sort of faults or some excuse and started asking questions and delay you, so that sort of practise started. In order to avoid delay and make the transaction smoother, or your immigration process smooth, this is what started happening, a practise that began to develop, and I'm sure it’s there now. I got married on the 11^th of June 1972 and my wife came to Uganda, and after that we went to Kenya again for our holidays, for our honeymoon, went to see her parents, and went to see other relations in Nairobi. In July we came back from holidays and in August he announced that the Asians must leave Uganda, so that was quite a shock in a way, and it turned quite a lot of people’s lives upside down. There were some businesses like ours, for instance, that were flourishing and people who were doing very well suffered a real loss, there were some people who were to be quite honest waiting for visas to the UK, that is, who had applied for permits or visas to come to the UK because of the difficulty in Uganda in finding appropriate jobs, the trading conditions were not that good, and then there was rightly so much anxiety about the political stability and safety of the family, and so a number of them had decided to leave Uganda, not so many business people but ordinary people, and they were waiting for the permits to be issued by the British government, the British High Commission, for them to come to the UK, which was being done in an orderly manner. Hence for them to leave Uganda altogether, that was a bonus in a way.

Faatima Zannar

How was is it for your wife and your parents, and your family? Because you're still running the business at this point in your life, you just got married.

Mohinder Singh Chana

Oh yeah we were running the engineering business and our customers, we spoke to them and they all understood, they were all flabbergasted. On our side we made sure our accounts were up to date, there was no tax owing to the government, we cleared all that. Then when we did our totalling up there was so much cash in our bank there was this property which was is free, that is which wasn’t mortgaged in any respect. Some people had their property which was mortgaged or on loan, they obviously saw that as an advantage, just leave it there. There was so much liquid cash that we had, but we couldn't bring it out, there's nothing we could do with it, our accounts were blocked. The only thing he allowed us, the Ugandan Asians, was to buy our airline tickets and one had to go to an airline office and tell them how many passengers are in the family, how many are flying out, and they will make a proforma invoice which you present to your bank manager, and the bank manager would then release the money to the airline office for you to buy the ticket. And the interesting thing about Ugandan Asians was that the majority of them bought their own airline tickets, I’m particularly talking about my community, I know in the Sikh community, the vast majority of them they bought their own airline tickets, and in fact I know one member who had some money in the UK, so he asked that money to be sent to Uganda so that he can buy a ticket. So we all bought our own tickets, vast majority of us, and the other thing he allowed was, he said the head of a family can get an allowance of £50 and that was if you were prepared to queue up for hours and be subject to the whims of an officer who is sitting there, could be asking questions and making things difficult for you with reams of forms. Many of us didn’t bother, my father didn't bother to go through that. So our bank accounts were blocked, we couldn't bring anything out, so within my family my wife and I were the first to leave, we left in, I think 11^th September, we were the first to come, and then my younger brother with his two children he came with my sister, and the last to leave within our family was my parents and my youngest brother, and just before they left they were looking at what to do with some of the remnants, in our family we had The Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy book. When my dad built his own house, 1954 it was completed, and there was a dedicated room for The Guru Granth Sahib to be installed, and that was our family prayer room. So there was that, so rather than leave that my father actually brought that himself, he carried it himself into the airports and all that, and he brought it with him, he said “I'm not going to leave that behind” because of the reverence we have for our holy book, and he labelled it saying Sacred book please treat with respect and he had no problem with the customs or anything of that nature in the UK. So that volume is still in our family and is kept in my brother's house in Shipley and so that's still in our family, that’s since 1954, it’s tremendous. So that was one aspect, the other was, in Uganda there are a lot of Catholic missions and Christian mission establishments, right in the bush, they have churches, they have schools, they have hospitals, right in the countryside, the Ugandan bush, as part of the missionary work. Obviously it’s the means to spread Christianity and convert Africans to Christianity. But on the other hand we have to give them credit that they spend their time sometimes in uncomfortable circumstances and provide various humanitarian services to the community. There were and still are missions in various parts of Uganda including those near  Jinja. We came to know some of the priests connected with such missions as they used to come to Jinja, say once a week, to do their banking and other things, and they also used to come to our workshop to have some something mended or repaired. In terms of engineering, we also used to manufacture water tanks for them, and a result we established a very good relationship with some of the priests, in fact some of them were just like friends ,and whenever they came to town in Jinja we used to invite them for lunch. So when it was realised that we have to leave, my father spoke to one of the priests, he said “Look you can have all the furniture in the house for your mission”, apart from some he gave to our domestic servants, some pieces of furniture, the rest he said “You have it for your mission” but on the proviso that “Could you look after our two dogs?”. Nobody thinks of things like that readily, we had two dogs, well what do you do with them? Two lovely dogs but he was very pleased he said “Yes I'll definitely do that”, so agreed to look after the two dogs, and took all the furniture from our house, and later on when we were staying temporarily in Coventry he wrote a lovely letter to my father, my father had given him my uncle’s address, because at that time we did not know where we were staying, so that letter arrived at that address in Coventry, and I still remember reading it, and he thanked my father for his generosity and also said that the dogs are doing fine, don't worry, and prayed for my father. So that’s a human touch. For the last two or three days in the house, because all this furniture was gone, had been given away, my younger brother and my parents slept on the floor, so in our family they were the last to lock up and travel because even up to the last moment we thought that this edict to expel Asians will be rescinded, he [Idi Amin] may say “Okay it’s all right you can stay”, but that didn't happen, so they had to leave. All our property, in fact all the good properties that belonged to the Asians, all the businesses, Amin gave it to his cronies, some of them in the army. We learnt that our house was occupied or taken over by one of the army officers, this is what happened to Asian properties. Our business was given to another African business person and we learnt that they couldn’t run the business because there were certain skills that were required in the foundry for instance, in how to operate the furnaces, they couldn’t do that for quite a while.

Faatima Zannar

How did you learn about that, how did you find out what happened to the business?

Mohinder Singh Chana

There were some feedbacks coming through, through various people. Some had stayed behind, there were a few Indians who left later but they were for about 3-4 months after the expulsion date, because either they were in government positions, or they were in positions where the government won't let them go. I know some members of my community, who had government jobs, or jobs in the which the government said “No you can't go” because they were looking after essential services.

Faatima Zannar

So some people actually stayed, they were essentially protected?

Mohinder Singh Chana

Yes they were. There were risks, but they were protected. But that's only a few of them, and then later on they left, I mean that was only for a short while they stayed on, until the circumstances were right and they could leave.

Faatima Zannar

It was you and your wife that were the first to leave, where did you go to?

Mohinder Singh Chana

I had an uncle in Coventry, my father’s brother, and my brother Jaspal Singh Chana who was studying here, he was in Birmingham studying engineering, and in fact he was the one who came to receive us at Heathrow airport in his Ford Anglia.

Faatima Zannar

What was it like seeing your brother there?

Mohinder Singh Chana

Oh it was good, it was a relief. But we were still worried about rest of the family, because the rest of the family was still in Uganda, so we were still worried. When we came we stayed in Coventry for a while, I got a temporary job until all the family came. It was a great relief when my parents, brothers and sister all arrived safely. One of my brothers had a relation in Bradford, his father-in-law Gian Singh Bharaj, who was the Headteacher in Kisumu, after retirement he joined his son in Bradford. Hence my brother Bir Singh Chana, his wife Daljit Kaur and their two sons Hardeep Singh and Harjit Singh went to Bradford, stayed with them for a while until very soon they found a house, which they bought. Although we couldn’t bring any money out, he scrambled around to put a deposit. Because of the strict exchange control in Uganda at that time you couldn’t send the money out in the best of times, and even when I was studying here, and when my brother was studying, to get our allowance we had to get a letter from the university to tell them how much we need, in terms of fees and living expenses, and that was sent through the university to the Uganda students office, to our bank manager, who was then allowed to send this money across to us, so there were strict exchange controls. We stayed in Coventry for a short while. As I said my brother went to Bradford and he settled in Shipley, and as a result the rest of family decided let's go to Bradford, because houses in Bradford were cheaper than in London as it is now, but the main reason was my father came to see my brother's father-in-law he saw this terraced house, in front of his house, and my father ,just on the spur of the moment, just bought it for about £3,000, but we spent months “rebuilding” it. Stayed there for a few years and then moved out.

Faatima Zannar

How long had you stayed in Coventry for?

Mohinder Singh Chana

Coventry, I think about three months. We gradually started moving to Bradford, my wife and my parents came first, and I worked in Coventry for short while until I got a job in Manchester as a proposal engineer with a large diesel engine manufacturing company. I think it must have been around April 1973 when I started living in Bradford, around the time when my son Mandeep Singh Chana was born. Just before we left Uganda we found out that my wife was expecting our son, so it was quite a testing time for us particularly with her with all that uprooting we were going through.

Faatima Zannar

Very intense time as well because a lot happened in less than a year for her.

Mohinder Singh Chana

Oh yes terrible, a lot happened, looking back one can sense some of the tensions and testing time we had. Sometimes I wonder how we came through it, I really wonder, because I had been in this country before and I was used to the life here in many respects, but first time for her, I marvel at her resilience and the way she coped with it. It was a testing time, and first pregnancy is often not the easy one, so she went through quite a testing time, and I admire her for that.

Faatima Zannar

I can imagine. How was it settling in, how did you find trying to settle in again, in the community in Bradford?

Mohinder Singh Chana

I think the first focus was to get the job in my line, a good professional job, which having got that, again it wasn't that satisfactory because I had to commute to Manchester. I used to stay there for the week and then come home for the weekends, and there was my wife and my parents, and my son was born at that time, young baby, so it wasn’t a satisfactory situation but we just had to cope with it.

Faatima Zannar

Did you stay with colleagues throughout the week?

Mohinder Singh Chana

I stayed in lodgings with a family near the offices where I worked in Hazel Grove. Jean was a widow with two school age daughters. They were lovely people, and we became very good friends, still in touch. I used to go there on Sunday evening or Monday morning, if I travelled on Monday morning I’d go straight to the office. I worked in that company for two years, then I got a job near Wakefield with a company which was beginning to be set up, it was slightly different from my own field but it promised a good future and I was home every day. Unfortunately that company went bankrupt after about two years or so, and so I looked for jobs around here [Bradford], but there wasn't any which were suitable. Then I rang my old company in Hazel Grove, near Stockport, I said “I’m looking for a job” they said “Okay come in”. Hence I rejoined that company on a better salary and status. I worked there for another two years, and at that time Jean didn’t have any vacancy, there was another lady Helen, bit further away from the offices, she was a widow as well, so she took in lodgers, and I stayed with her. She also became a very good friend, family friend, my wife met her also. Helen was an excellent cook.. After a couple of years, I'm still looking for a job near home, so that I don't have to commute. Then I found a position with an engineering company in Wakefield, a good job, interesting job, and I was able to come home daily, that was good, that was the good part. At this time my daughter Meerat Kaur was born (on 14^th March 1981) as well, 8 years after my son was born, so that was a happy part of the life. At that time I also got involved in various community affairs and work, for instance I was involved in the formation of Bradford Sikh Parents Association and Federation of Bradford Sikh Organisations which was set up to deal with the unfounded lies and distorted information put out by the Indian Government in the wake of the unjustifiable storming of the Golden Temple in Amritsar in India in 1984, that was a horrific thing, a lot of people were massacred by the Indian government troops, and I got involved in the ensuing campaign for human rights. At the same time I participated in the committees and work of other organisations like Friends of Bradford Art Galleries and Museums, Bradford Concord Interfaith Society, and then I used to serve on some working panels in the health sector and police committees, school governing bodies, so I was involved in community work at that time, that kept me busy besides earning a living, and so that continued and I was happy to make positive contributions in the community and life evolved here in this country. Sadly my wife Kulwinder passed away in July 2018 after 46 years of marriage, very happy marriage, she was beautiful.

Faatima Zannar

She sounds like she was such a massive support while you were transitioning so much.

Mohinder Singh Chana

Oh she was, she was a massive support. She was very hospitable and very traditional in the sense that any visitor coming to the house should not go without something to eat. She was smiling all the time, I never saw her frown in all my life. Also I admire her because I used to work away and she managed both children and the house, and then later on she started work, and she worked in various jobs some part time as the children were growing, but ultimately she worked with the University of Bradford in the School of Health Studies, and she was in the admin department, and that’s the work she liked, and she had lovely friends, and after she passed away I only realised then how well she was liked by her colleagues, even after retirement, because after she retired she became part of the service users group in the Faculty of Health Studies and continued to have contact with all the colleagues and academics. And after she passed away, the head of the nursing, and academics, even the Dean, they wanted to plant tree or erect a bench in her name, in memory of her, and they were collecting money for it. When they mentioned it to me I was obviously very overwhelmed, I told them “Don't collect anymore money. It will be nice to erect a bench as well as plant a tree in her memory. Don't collect anymore money, the family will fund whatever else is required”. So we had a tree planting and erected a bench in her memory, this is a small garden adjoining the Faculty of Health Studies building, and in that garden there are other memorial trees as well, so they put a bench with a nameplate, and then in front of the bench there's a tree, a plum tree, which had been planted, which carried a plaque as well. We had a tree planting ceremony and her colleagues and my friends they came, and it was a great day. The head of the nursing she was quite close to my wife, and even the Dean, and I told her it’s my wish to establish a memorial prize for nursing [in her name] and they welcomed it and said okay, because my wife epitomised friendliness, kind-hearted, so they have established a prize now for nursing for the final year student, and the academics judge whoever fits the bill of being kind-hearted, very caring, compassionate, so they award the prize to that person.

On the other hand my son Mandeep is in IT, he’s an IT consultant, and my daughter Meerat is an interesting character. As I said she’s 8 years younger than my son, when my son was born we had quite a testing time at that time. We had just come from Uganda, but I admire how my wife stood up to all the challenges, and so we thought we had done our bit for the humanity and that's it, but then my daughter she arrived unexpectedly, and when my wife found out she was pregnant she almost fainted, because we weren’t expecting to have any more children, but that's the best thing ever happened to us, honestly, to both of us, she [Meerat] brought us so much joy. She went to school here in Bradford and then she went to the university in Bangor where she did her first degree in criminology. She's very active, active in human rights, active in making sure the equality of women is enacted, she's an activist and has been throughout her life she was an environmental activist too. When she did criminology at Bangor University, being an engineer, I expected her to do something like engineering or maths related career subject, and she said “It’s okay it’s what I like” I said “Fine”. She did her first degree there and then she did a master’s at University of London School of Economics, she did her master’s in human rights. It was quite a change, Bangor University campus is a very comprehensive campus, it's quite safe as well, but then she went to London which is totally different. She did a master’s in human rights and while she was there she started doing some work for the human rights organisation United Sikhs, and during that time she also travelled, she travelled to India to investigate some human rights abuses. That was at that time quite a dangerous thing to do considering the situation in the Punjab at that time, security wise it was very dangerous with the Indian police involved in staged fake encounters and extra judicial killings. She also tried to investigate the suicide rates among farmers in India, in the Punjab, these are the farmers who are in debt. There were these money lenders who exploited the situation and the farmers some of them committed suicide because they couldn’t repay these debts, some of the money being lent at exorbitant rates, totally unfair system. Then one of the other things she did was when [Hurricane] Katrina struck, she went to [Louisiana] and she partook in the relief work there, and she was part of the team that dispensed hot food to the part of the population who the main charities had missed out, and they went and distributed that. When she was in London doing this work with the charity, she met her future husband, she met him, Randeep Singh Bindra, and she didn't tell us anything, but my wife had some sort of suspicion. And then my daughter went to India, again Amritsar, and while she was there Randeep went to the same place, and obviously they had some connection there, and when she came back from India my wife asked “What’s all this, is something going on?” and she said “Yes there’s a fella called Randeep and this is his parent’s telephone number, I want dad to ring them”. So the parents established contact, so then she got married to Randeep. I often give talks about Sikh religion and culture, often the audience are very interested in marriage arrangements, particularly the white audience, they think of these arranged marriages and forced marriages and try to find out the mysteries of it.  I tell them the benefits of arranged marriage, they think arranged marriages is like a forced marriage, I say “In an arranged marriage you see the background of both parties. In Sikh tradition we compare the family surnames, if any of them are the same the relationship doesn't go ahead, they should be different, and that means we don't intermarry within the Sikh tradition”. So I try to explain all this, and then I also say that in arranged marriages the educational background or compatibility is looked into, the physical compatibility is looked into, and so on and so forth, and then in the end the boy and the girl are introduced, if they want to go ahead or take it further, that's fine, they can talk to each other and they can find out whatever they like about each other, but if they say “No I don't think that will work out” then they just discreetly withdraw, put the matter to rest. That’s the essence of arranged marriage, it’s not like a forced marriage. I give these talks and I try to explain to them, but then I say “Oh by the way my daughter underwent a forced marriage” they are all bewildered and shocked  “Forced marriage! Gosh!” and I say “My daughter and her future husband they decided to get married, and they forced the parents to arrange their marriage!”, so they are all laughing. So they got married, happily married. I've got two grandchildren, a girl Satjoat Kaur and a boy Beyant Singh, and they live in Middlesex, and Randeep is a systems engineer, he went to Cambridge and did system engineering in Cambridge with distinction. Now Meerat has a  PhD as well which makes me feel very proud, and she got it from Imperial College London which is quite a renowned institute. Even otherwise she’s brought a lot of joy to us. So there it is.

Faatima Zannar

I've learned so much honestly. How do you feel looking back, going through your timeline essentially, what comes to you when you reflect upon everything that you've been through?

Mohinder Singh Chana

That’s quite a challenging question. Well I'm thankful that I still have reasonably good health. Going back to the days of Uganda I feel very sorry for the tremendous damage Idi Amin brought to that country not only materially, but in human lives, a lot of people were killed and massacred under his regime, rule of law in fact was not really observed, his henchmen just went around wreaking damage, not only to humans but to animals as well. Amin’s army went around shooting elephants. So that’s one thing, the other thing is AIDS. Because of the economic situation and many other reasons Uganda suffered through the AIDS epidemic, so I feel very sorry for that. Yes we lost our property, my father built up this business from scratch, he worked terribly hard, and we all worked terribly hard, even the days when the business was doing going good we worked six/seven days a week, Sunday afternoon was often the only time we would really take off and relax and go around say for walks, but we worked very hard. We taught the Africans a number of skills, the contribution of Asians is definitely not acknowledged. These families, Indian families, they went there, they worked hard, and established all these estates, sugar cane industry and manufacturing. Their contribution to the economy has been tremendous until Idi Amin announced what he did and then he ruined the country, and after that when the new government came in and things stabilised a number of Indians have gone back. It shows that the contribution of the Indians is there but still not that much acknowledged. Looking back my main concern and my main complaint is that the tremendous contribution of Asians of Indians in East Africa is not really acknowledged and is not being documented, that’s my main concern, disappointment rather. Looking back personally, personal life, in our Sikh religion there is a philosophy called Chardi kala, that means that in times of adversity you just rise up, positive thinking and being optimistic all the time, and when things go bad you just rise up, get up, shake yourself [off] and move on, and that is the spirit which I think has endured me, that is the spirit which has endured many of my friends and relations, that is the spirit of Chardi kala. It’s a disappointment that my father built that business from scratch and his dream was, he influenced me and my brothers as well to go into engineering, because his vision was that there is an engineering works and you will go into engineering, my sister would become an accountant and we have a family business which would hopefully prosper in future, so according to him he had laid the foundation of it. Now I feel very very touched and sorry about him because he built all this and it has crashed before his very eyes, and the interesting thing is when he came over, again the spirit of Chardi kala took hold of him. He found a job, he was a very skilled engineer, he found a job, he worked with a company in Bately near Bradford until he retired. A year or so before his retirement age, he had some issues with his knees and his employer saw that he's probably struggling and asked if he would like to retire early and take benefits, he said “No” he said “I’ll retire when my time comes” and he soldiered until he was 65, and then he retired. And obviously the racial discrimination [in the UK] was a lot more then, than it feels to be so at the moment, it is still there, and we had difficulty finding jobs. As I said I had difficulty finding a job, although one then has to keep trying until one finds what one can do. My father had difficulty then, he was recommended by somebody else and found a first job, then he wanted to change the job. He went to this engineering company and he said to them “Look I’ll work for 3-4 days, whatever you want, free of charge, you don't pay me anything, you give me a job and see if I can do it”. My father did that, this was a machining of certain parts, they gave him [the work to do] and said “Okay this is the job”, he said “Alright”. He did that and did it in twice or three times [quicker than] the time they normally do, and the foreman was so surprised he said “Are you sure you did all that?”, he counted and it was okay, and they found out that my father was working at a slightly higher machine speed then they had allowed for, and they were so surprised and impressed that they said “Oh gosh that’s very good”. So immediately they offered him the job and he worked there until he retired. So there are these reflections which come to mind. We had difficulty early on when we came here, racial discrimination was rife, National Front was on the rise, so it wasn’t an easy situation. I first went back to Uganda 1999, with my wife.  With the changes of government, our properties were returned mainly because we didn’t owe money to anyone else and our paperwork was straight and all that in order, so our properties were returned. There was someone in Jinja who looked after the Asian properties, an Asian man, a lawyer. My brother Jaspal Singh Chana was the main person in our family who dealt with our Ugandan affairs. So in 1999 myself and my wife Kulwinder first went to Kenya, and then to Uganda where we met up with my youngest brother Harvinder Singh Chana who had flown from the UK.  We went partly to look at the returned properties and sort out some issues, [but] mainly to have a holiday. In Uganda there were two things which I noticed and which made one think of the changes that country had gone through. One was the population, there was hardly any old [men] with white hair, it was youngish population, all the old men had been wiped out by AIDS, a large number of them. From where we had hired the car there I saw an African man with white hair, apart from that it was all youngish population. So AIDS had had a tremendous impact on that country. This was our first visit and later on we went again a couple of times and then we went to Murchison Falls and then we said “We'll have a drive and see the game”, the elephants particularly. And you could hardly see an elephant, and then after a long drive and searching we came across a family [of elephants], and as soon as they saw us they ran away, and this is totally opposite to what used to be the behaviour of the elephants in the early 1960s. In the early 1960s before I came to study here [in the UK], I remember going to Murchison Falls and there the elephants were not scared. One time I went to take a photograph of the elephant and I went a bit too close, it turned around and tried to chase me, it was a fake type of attack, he just chased me a couple of feet and then went back, so elephants were so used to humans and there were humans around, they weren’t bothered. But this family of elephants they ran away and the reason they did it, elephants have got a tremendous memory, it's a very intelligent creature and I love them. Because Amin’s soldiers shot them for their ivory, and for their meat, and elephants still remember that terrible human behaviour and this is the reason, I reckon this is the reason, they ran away when they saw us.  So these were changes I noticed apart from abject poverty and rise in the number of orphanages.