 Hi everyone, welcome to the second talk in our Hidden History Seminar. We're really pleased to see you all here. My name is Ludi Price. I'm one of the co-founders of the Hidden History Series. Just a quick housekeeping here. We are going to have a Q&A at the end of the talks. So please feel free to put any questions you have in the chat or in the Q&A box. You can do it at any time and someone will pick it up. Please stay muted. You might be able to unmute at the end of the Q&A if you prefer to talk rather than type. Also, please be aware that this session is being recorded. We will be putting it up on YouTube over the coming days. We will be sharing the link with you once we're done. So I'm just going to pass this on to Farzana, who is my co-creator of Hidden History. So you also have a bit to say, thank you. Thank you very much, Ludi. Lovely to have you all with us. My name is Farzana Koreshi and I also co-chair the Decolonising Library Working Group. Quite excited about our second talk in the series. We will be looking at South Asian identity, British South Asian history, and it's going to give us a chance to really share those hidden stories that we don't hear or see as much in the mainstream media. I was going to just hand over to you to introduce the speakers today. Thank you. It's such a privilege to be here and introduce Benita Karnay, Jaswit Singh and Sparsh Ahuja, our speakers for the day. Thank you very much, Ludi Farzana and the Hidden History project team. I really enjoyed the previous lecture and I'm really excited by the whole series of seminars. Welcome, Sparsh. Let me introduce you first as you will be the first speaker. Sparsh Ahuja is a documentary filmmaker and has received numerous awards and fellowships for his important work on partition and peace building. He has received the National Geographic Explorer Award last year and has been the youngest recipient of the Catchlight Fellowship. He's also recognized for his artistic work by the Lucy Emerging Artist Scholarship. He graduated from Oxford a few years ago from where he established his project Dastan, a peace building initiative connecting partitioned refugees with their homes and native places. And as well as sharing these stories through film and virtual reality. And I believe he's now ready to share these through exhibitions across the world in India, Pakistan, UK as well as other places. So very welcome, Sparsh, and I will introduce all three of you first. So I'm also happy to have Dr. Benita Karni with us. She's a consultant respiratory physician in Manchester, and she's written about the role of race and health and medicine. She's also brought her family's personal experience of partition to the public by contributing to a BBC documentary in 2017, I believe. And since then she has campaigned for the public recognition of empire and racism and the obscuring of British colonial history. So she has gone to Parliament to obtain a formal recognition of Partition Commemoration Day, which is now recognized for August 17. So that's a good start and she has also founded the partition education group, which includes, which talks about inclusion of these histories in school curricula across the UK. And also the co-founder with just wasting of the South Asia History Month, which runs from 18th July to 17th August. So, very welcome. You, you have been active in the community for in British South Asians communities in Britain, and you're practicing family law barrister as well in London, so that keeps you busy. Along with your legal work you are a trustee and patron of several regional and national charities in the faith and minorities sector, including the city seeks and the fates forum of London. You're a regular contributor to Radio Force thought for the day, and you received the OB for your community service in 2017. Thank you very much for joining us today and we discussed partition and peace building and reclaiming the history of British South Asians. So I invite special who just to speak first, as you need to leave early for another engagement. So, thank you very much. Hi everyone. Can you hear me fine, just checking the sound. Yes, we can. Just, it's going to show my screen. Because of the technical error I think you need to make me the host again. Yes, I'm doing that now. All right, can someone give me a thumbs up, if they can see the screen should be, should be scared. Okay, great. I'm going to walk through a little of the work that project last time has been doing over the past few years and as I'm written mentioned where collective of artists and filmmakers spread out across the UK, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. So I'm going to connect partition witnesses from either side of the border to the ancestral homes, either through a combination of virtual reality, sometimes reconnecting them over social media with people they left behind if they're still alive. I thought, since the topic of this seminar was hidden histories I wanted to take you through some of the, some of the personal stories of people who have shared their journeys with us over the past few years. And, yeah, they've definitely touched me along the way so hopefully feel the same. So, these big photos taken in the 1950s of a man called Isher Das Arora, who's my maternal grandfather, my Nana. These are the oldest photographs we have in our family house and we look back at our family history. It doesn't go back. The physical records don't go back very far. And of course the reason for that is that my grandfather is a survive the partition in 1947 he migrated from a small village in West Punjab near Akta, just on the water of contemporary Hindustan to Delhi during during the migration. So my Nana is in his 80s today I think he's about to turn 83. One of the areas he's holding a picture of his own, his parents which was taken post partition again in Delhi, sometime in the 50s. So, my family, both my maternal side of my family and the paternal side left Punjab during the partition and we actually lost any connection to our homeland we don't have any records from the time. Particularly my Nana would speak, would speak a lot about his, his desire to see his homeland again, but also of a fear and trauma of not wanting to see the other side but feeling like he wasn't able to get the visa and even if he had got the visa that he'd actually just be terrified, because he would quite a traumatic journey. So, I've had, you know, I was born in Delhi but I've had, like the privilege of growing up in Australia and between Australia and the UK over the last five years and I'm, I started, I started sharing back at university, the story of my grandfather to a few of my friends while I was studying. And despite, you know, where on the South Asian spectrum, these friends were, they would tell similar stories about their grandparents despite their religion or national identity or even political identity in the present. And so we decided to come together and say look if these people can't physically go back and see their old, old homes again why can't we, as, you know, global citizens and crucially not even global citizens but citizens who have foreign passports and are able to travel across these borders is a sort of virtual way that we could facilitate this kind of desire to go back and see that long lost home. So I project us on we have, it's very simple process we interview survivors of partition. And it doesn't matter where in the world they are we've interviewed people across, I think now six different countries, including diaspora and obviously within India Pakistan and Bangladesh themselves. We then use our cross-border volunteer team, you know, for the first one and a half years and it's interesting in, in, in the participants I still share that today was one of our volunteers so thank you. But we've yeah we use a cross-border volunteer team to track down the locations of the people's old homes. And when we interview people we actually ask them very specifically about places that they remember and would like to see again so you know things like mosques, schools, temples, places they used to play, particularly fond memories that they've had. So then the volunteer goes out and by participant, participant, by participant finds the individual memories connected to these people's lives. We then film these, film these locations as they exist today in virtual reality, edit that footage and then all of it goes back to the partition witness as they, in their homes today and they get like a customized personalized experience of their past home as it is today and obviously it triggers a lot of emotional reactions for people who haven't seen their home and often 75 to 80 years depending on how they were when they migrated. So I just wanted to share particularly some, some key stories that have stood out along this journey. I'm starting with the first story that we tracked. I think this was two years ago is actually we have been at university we've been talking about this idea for a while and you know after a lot of campaigning in the crowd funder, you know crowd funder, we finally got a little bit of funds to like send some volunteers out. So, the two men on the right. The man on the third on the right is his name is Iqbal and Dean Ahmed. And to his left is his cousin, Badruddin Ahmed. Now, they both live in South London today. But both of them were born in a village called Roper, which is now the name is being changed to Rupenagar but it's, it's near Chandigarh in present day Indian Punjab. And, you know, during the partition they had a very kind of violent and yeah, like heartbreaking migration across into into Lahore subsequently Fazlabad and then, and then they move, move to London in in the 60s and you know their entire family has now grown up here. So, Iqbal's daughter got, no, actually Badruddin's daughter got in touch with us over Instagram and said look, we've heard that you've been doing these kind of virtual reconnections and we'd love you to find a place. So, on the left there's a picture of a mosque with a Sikh if you look closely there's like a Sikh man standing in front of it now this is the, as unlike, unlike my grandfather, Iqbal actually brought this photo across during the partition. And it's the mosque in his ancestral village which was the only memory he had of that time. And, of course, the man in the mosque, the man in the picture, the Sikh man was one of his childhood friends and they're in their scene. So, we went out to, we went out in 2019 to this village called Jakkarma just outside Ropa, showing people the picture of this mosque, and I'm seeing what we could find. And this is what we, this is what we saw and honestly we were a little dejected because we didn't, at the time we didn't realize that this was the same mosque obviously a lot of, it doesn't look anything like the picture. And we were about to turn around and you know tell the local guide who's accompanying us this, this, this isn't it. But as we compared the photos really closely we actually realized that this is the, this is the exact same place. And we realized that over monsoons and because the Muslim community had fled the, had fled the town. There wasn't anyone to take care of it and the mosque had kind of crumbled. So we had found this mosque and we realized we were in the right place so we went around Jakkarma and we recorded all these like memories for Iqbal and you know bother and what they'd remembered but then we realized well, there's one big thing missing in these pictures that we haven't actually seen and that's the Sikh man, Narendra Singh. So what we did was we went back to the local dhaba, if you guys have traveled around South Asia, you'll know what a dhaba is. And disturbed everyone who is eating their pranthi and their prakora and whatnot, and said look we have this picture. And that's all we know about it. This man's name is Narendra Singh used to live around this area. I don't know if he's alive or dead, but there's someone in Pakistan who'd like to meet him again. And surprisingly someone actually knew of this family and so while Narendra Singh had passed away, unfortunately, in Chandigarh which is around a two and a half hour drive away, we found his wife who was still alive. I'd just like to show you a short video which is her talking to Iqbal for the first time actually, but they obviously heard so much about each other and these families had lost contact this before the age of WhatsApp and Facebook and so on. So hopefully this place let me know if you can't hear in the chat but I think I'm sharing sounds so. Hello. Nice to meet you Mr Iqbal Uddindji. I'm calling you from Ropar, India. Cousins Iqbaluddin and Baderuddin migrated from Rootnagar in India to Pakistan during the 1947 partition. Iqbal only has one object from his time in India, this photo of a mosque in his village. The man in the photo is his childhood best friend, Narendra Singh, who he hasn't seen in 72 years. Narendra unfortunately passed away some years ago. Yet we managed to find his wife in Chandigarh and put her on the phone with Iqbal Uddind and Baderuddin for the first time in 72 years. I'll give you a call, you can talk to her. Nothing else. Okay, okay. Hello my son, I'm Puldi speaking. Dr. Narendra's wife. Oh my God! My brother was a classmate of Mr. Narendra. He was so much in love with him. You can imagine that when we were here, even then his wife came. She was so happy to meet you and talk to you. His mother loved him a lot. My uncle, Mr. Narendra's father passed away very soon. Yes, he passed away very soon. So you can talk to your brother, right? We can talk to him again. I'll tell him, he'll do it. Okay, okay. Mr. Narendra's father. Yes, I'm Dr. Narendra's wife speaking. Okay, okay. I'm your wife speaking. I'm 91 years old now. Yes, that's good. I'll be 90 next year. Okay, okay. My dear friend, tell me what I can do for you. I'm 91 years old now. I'm 91 years old now. But tell me, what can I do for you? That's good. You got it. That's good. I have your phone number. Yes, I got your phone number. Okay, okay. I'll fix everything. You'll fix everything. My wife is here. I'll be on my way. Where are you from? Chandigarh. I'm from India. I have a very expensive phone. Whenever you remember me, I'll do my duty. If you don't want to come to London, you can come to London. I'll definitely tell you. I'll definitely tell you. I'll tell you. I'll be on my way. Number two. Yeah, that was Gullby chatting to Iqbal and Bader for the first time since partition. And I guess the point of sharing conversations like these and these histories is to encourage people to think outside the boxes that national history has constructed for us as citizens of India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh, or even in the UK of what's accepted history and who we can be friends with and who we can't be friends with and look below that and seek that common humanity, which people who lived before this time can remember because they existed in a framework where nationalisms were imposed on them as much as were attained. So I've shared a little bit of the five-step process of reconnecting people to their old homes, but we soon realized that there's such a wealth of content here. And as a team, we want to make sure that, especially with next year being the 75th anniversary, that people are able to learn from these stories. And so we thought, why don't we exhibit this content to the world? So currently, we're producing two film experiences that next year all of you will be able to experience for free. The first is Child of Empire, which is an interactive VR journey of the partition told as a conversation between Iqbal and my grandfather. And as they play like a board game, we kind of go back through their childhood. So in the bottom right, you see like a holy game being played out in my Nana's village. And then there's riots in Iqbal's village and then my Nana had to take a train and so on. So you kind of go through that journey. And it exposes people to both sides of that narrative. So you're never really sure whether you're in a Hindu story or a Muslim story. But I guess the point is that it doesn't matter. And yeah, you finally end up at this refugee camp. There's also three short animations, which this will be around in film festivals and museums next year. So keep an eye out for that. And I think it will be coming to London around July next year. There's also a three-part animated series called Lost Migrations, where we're trying to take some of the stories that have been lost because of the kind of narrative dominance we see when you study partition one is like the domination of Punjab over other regions in terms of the way that partition story is told, even though partition was an event as large and maybe as large as World War II. So we're trying to bring in some of those regional stories to counteract the hegemony that Punjab has over the narratives in India and Pakistan. And then the second is how male dominated some of these stories of partition are. So the three stories we're doing is one is a story called Rest in Paper, which is kind of inspired by Siddhartha Sanmando, many of you have read him, and Franz Kafka. And it's kind of showing how borders made people stateless and how paperwork encouraged that. And people forced to prove their identity. And I'm not going to name any particular laws that have been passed in India recently, but you can read between the lines of how that history is repeating itself. The second is an episode called Seabirds, which is about the Jethiyar Tamil community, who actually not caught up on that side of the border, but more towards people who came from Singapore and Burma. And we're in as much tied up in British colonization as the Japanese incursions in that region around the time. And they had to kind of grapple between this very Indian, South Indian identity, but also Southeast Asian identity. So that's told as a conversation between a small girl and her grandmother. And finally, we have a piece called Sultana's Dream, which is based off 1907 feminist text called, again, called Sultana's Dream by a Bengali author, Rukhaya Hussain. And then all of these are short documentaries, which will be available next year. So that's the project that's done in Sultana's Dream. And I think that you've learned a little bit more about the work we do. And yeah, I really look forward to sharing some of these films with everyone next year as we go on tour. So thank you so much for having me. And yeah, I'll leave it to Benita and Jaswia. Thanks so much, Sparsh. That was fascinating. And I'm sure everybody wants to know more and will attend all the events. And when they spoke to each other, I was tearing up and congratulations for that emotion. Capturing that phone call and emotion is really, really interesting. So I'm afraid you don't have time for questions. So we will ask the questions addressed to you perhaps later. And I know Benita and for Zana also associated with the project and they know a lot about it. So hopefully they can answer on your behalf. I've also left my email in the chat if anyone needs to get in touch. Oh, that's good. Thanks. Thanks very much for that. Okay. Thanks. So over to Benita and Jaswia, I believe you are presenting together and you share with us your ideas of South Asian Heritage Month and bringing South Asia and the mainstream to understand racism and capitalism. Thanks very much. Thank you, Marita. And it was wonderful seeing Sparsh's presentation. It's always, for us, seeing those stories really mean a lot to both myself and Benita. Because the reason why we set up South Asian Heritage Month and the work that we do comes from our own stories and the ways in which we have come to understand our own histories. So South Asian, I think I just need to be made a host again in order to share my screen. There we go. Perfect. So I will share my screen now. So we're going to talk about South Asian Heritage Month. We're going to talk about how it came into being, what the genesis of it was, why we think it's important to do this, and we'll also talk about what we've done last year, what we've done this year and look to the future. What are we going to be doing for next year? What are our ideas? What are our hopes and aspirations? So when we start with the story, we have to go back to 2017 to really understand why South Asian Heritage Month came into being. We've already heard from Sparsh about the anniversary next year, the 75th anniversary of the events of 1947. And the events of 1947 can be summarised in this way. There were three events. One was the independence of India from British rule, from the British Empire. The second was the creation of East and West Pakistan. East Pakistan now being Bangladesh. And the partition of the regions of Punjab and Bengal. The partition story which Sparsh is so eloquently spoken of and given such an important addressing in depth, the importance of partition, but also making sure that we talk about partition without just referring to Punjab. We referred to everywhere where partition took place and all of the difficulties that were involved and the tragedies really. Now 2017 was the 70th anniversary of all of those events. I was involved in a project that was known as the Grand Trunk Project. It was a project where we received some funding. We were able to go around the country talking about the 70th anniversary and talking about it from the perspective of those who were who had some sort of connection with the subcontinent. Now the Grand Trunk Road as I'm sure all of you are aware runs from Bangladesh go straight through India, through Pakistan and into Afghanistan. It connects South Asia in a way that perhaps very few other roads do and it's a road which can trace itself back to at least 2000 years if not longer. As a result it's an important road and we wanted to show that just as the Grand Trunk Road links up all of those areas the Grand Trunk Project was about creating dialogue, creating opportunities for people to talk and to mark the 70th anniversary as they felt best. I'm going to go a bit further back though just to talk about my own background. I'm Punjabi Sikh, I was brought up in London, born and brought up here and I went to university in London and one of the modules I did a history degree and my interest in history has always been there from my early days. Doing the degree I realised that I had, I did my degree at King's so please don't say anything too bad about King's whilst I'm here. I did do a module at Sawas and I did medieval Indian history at Sawas learning about medieval history being able to join the dots up really about my identity as a young South Asian British man living in London and connecting the dots up with medieval Indian history and seeing how that then changed over time the encroaching and the expansion of the British Empire, the annexation of Punjab in 1849 and then coming to the present day all of those journeys and all of those historical facts were really important for me and I think that's why I went on to become a barrister but as a barrister I've also realised that it's so important for me to stay connected with my roots and that was where the Grand Trunk project came from it was that idea of making sure that people can mark their history and mark their stories and the way that they feel is best so that was the work that was done in 2017 we had a series of events that took place all across the UK bottom left hand corny you can see an event which took place at the Guild Hall where we had musical performances we had theatrical performances I spoke about the importance of marking the anniversary and then we took it on a tour we went to Southampton we went to Peterborough we went to Birmingham we went to Luton and we also went to Manchester and I'm going to hand over now to Benita Thank you Jasper so I'll make the connection with that Manchester event in just a moment but my story really comes from a very very different place so unlike Jasper I was brought up in a very white rural area in North Wales I was the only Asian person in my school for many many years and I think when I was growing up I grew up in a medical family I knew very little about history my knowledge of history is GCSE history at school level and I just genuinely hadn't paid much attention to my roots and just wanted to fit in as a teenager and almost didn't want to think about my roots and I think probably carried on through life pretty much in that mode getting into my career as a doctor and then everything changed in 2017 when I was invited to contribute to this TV programme called My Family Partition and Me and my father as a young boy was caught up in the violence that happened during the partition of Bengal and I always knew that story but I think I just didn't really know the historical context and I was the first member of my family in over 70 years to go back to the village where he and his family had to flee in the middle of the night in terror from the violence that had broken out and I got to sort of walk in their footsteps I got to meet people who actually remembered my family which was just incredible and understand the kind of horror that they had gone through at the time and it was a profoundly moving experience for me and I came back filled with this sense of wow I just didn't know so much of this history and this is me I've been through the British history and history and I've done GCSE history and I knew nothing about my own history and heritage and had never really been encouraged to learn about it quite the opposite actually I think nobody I didn't feel growing up that my history was important so I was incredibly lucky to take part in this project and I think it was it was the information I then subsequently taught myself and I learned all about what happened after the Second World War how so many people from the Commonwealth and from South Asia came to Britain and there was waves of migration they came as citizens and they helped rebuild the country and then people like my dad who has got an amazing story he went from being a refugee, penniless and losing his father at a young age after partition to making his way to being a doctor and coming and working in the NHS and devoted his life to the NHS so after 49 years he retired and I just thought well people just don't appreciate that so I think that was part of an awakening for a number of people and the BBC did a brilliant job they did a whole series of programming at that time and really raised awareness and kind of catapulted this history into the public domain in a way that it hadn't been done before and after that I started sort of campaigning really around education and trying to write that wrong I think I just felt this real sense of injustice that you know we don't teach our kids about this stuff and I was invited to go and speak at the Grand Trunk Project in Manchester so me and my dad went along and we took part in one of Jasper's events which is kind of where we connected for the first time so next slide Jasper see what's next so the campaign was really twofold but I started one was around having a partition commemoration day and invited about 100-150 people to come to the houses of parliament sorry I'll give my throat for an event where we talked about why it was so important to recognise and commemorate this history this infographic that you can see was drawn on the day it was sketched by an artist who was at the event and I could talk for a long time about this but it kind of really captured the spirit of those discussions and why do we want to do this it's about a deeper shared understanding of our British history and it wasn't just about remembering the violence and all the awful things that happened but it was also remembering some of the incredible stories like the fact a Muslim family risked their own lives to help my Hindi family escape and those stories of neighbours sheltering neighbours had really been lost I think in a lot of the hatred had been passed down the generations and I think a lot of kids growing up knew they weren't supposed to like a Hindu or a Muslim or a Sikh but they didn't really know why so that led to the kind of the idea of a partition commemoration day but also setting up the partition education group which brings together academics and teachers and students from all across the UK who are now trying to work on developing curriculum materials and it has been really complicated trying to unpick all of the education side of things it's really not as simple as just putting something on the curriculum when you start scratching under the surface and then that takes us to sort of late 2018 where Jasveer and I met up in London it was the first time we'd actually met in person because we recognised we both were trying to do similar things but coming from very different directions and we sat and had a cup of tea and we discussed how it was actually quite hard to gain a lot of traction when you're just talking about partition because it's very difficult for people to get behind that because it's a difficult subject people don't like talking about it so Jasveer suggested we need to really think about bringing that celebration element in as well and that's how the concept of having a South Asian heritage month was born and our motto is now celebrate, commemorate and educate and I'll hand over to Jasveer now to sort of talk about the dates because people think they're a bit random but these dates were important to us and maybe to tell you a little bit about the ethos of the campaign Sure, thank you Benita so yes it was about trying to make sure we could keep the momentum going there was such an appetite for people to find out about what had happened in 1947 what had happened during partition but the appetite was growing it was going beyond just about partition and people wanted to know more about South Asian identity or British history and how it's connected to South Asia now the dates are significant they're taken from 1947 as well the 18th of July is the day that the independence of India Act gained royal assent under King George VI in 1947 and August is important because that's the date that the Radcliffe line was announced the line that the famous or infamous civil servant civil Radcliffe put together drew down along a map and said right this is where Pakistan will be this is where India will be and we wanted to ensure that the undercurrent of how South Asia has its present day shape really sat behind what South Asian heritage month was it needs to be the strand that runs through it but it goes beyond that and it also other things that we were thinking about was about the kind of Northern Indian calendar the South Asian calendars the way that the months fall we've just had the Diwali and Diwali marks the beginning of the month so the way that the South Asian calendars fall is very much that the dates fall at certain parts within the year mid Gregorian calendar effectively so the 18th of July and the 17th of August falls into the summer month of Sarvan and it also falls into the time when South Asia is undergoing the monsoon season it's season of renewal we wanted to make sure that this was really grounded in what is important to South Asia even if it meant that the dates didn't necessarily marry up to the western calendar but that's part of the authenticity of it it's about owning our own stories and obviously as part of that we need to talk about how much of an impact British Empire had on South Asia there are various countries that make up South Asia and there are eight countries are listed here and you can see how South Asia looked back in the beginning of the 19th sorry 20th century and how it looks now from a Google map from a satellite perspective and Britain has had a major role to play in each of those countries it's either had those countries annexed to the British Empire such as India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and Bangladesh or it's governed their foreign policy for either a small period of time or a long period of time and that includes the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Afghanistan Afghanistan in fact Britain was controlled the foreign policy I believe for about 40 years or so in the late 19th century so when we talk about Britain and Empire it's more than just saying that it's governed parts of the Empire it's more about saying well there was British India but there were also the regions around which are important for us to remember as to the impact that Britain played in those particular countries so we have our concept launch in Parliament in July 2019 and I'll hand back to Benita to just tell you more about that day yeah this was really just for us to drum up some support and we had a really mixed audience there we invited many of the people who had been who had enabled us to really do what we have done so we were building on a lot of hard work that had been done by other individuals and groups not just around raising awareness of history like partition but who had been trying to campaign around South Asia and heritage more widely we had I think one of the highlights for me was a 12 year old girl Simea Mohammed who we invited who had a similar journey to me she'd been over to trace her grandmother's story in India as part of a news round special for children and she did this real rabble rousing speech about why it's so important to teach our next generation where they come from and about their histories it's just brilliant but we had we had the world of media there we had museums we had artists we had all sorts of people and you can see on our panel there we've got Kavita Puri who wrote Partition Voices very harrowing but fantastic read if you haven't read it we had a number of members of parliament as well and people like Anita Rani Babita Sharma have been really big supporters of the campaign but you can see here the infographic again done by us the same artist British children we have the right to learn our shared history in its entirety and I just thought that was really powerful so that was really great and we then got lots of support to launch South Asian Heritage Month proper in 2020 and we had planned a number of sort of face-to-face events then of course in the new year the pandemic hit I'm a respiratory doctor I got very distracted with other things for about six months and it kind of there was a lot of uncertainty about what was going to happen and all of our plans basically went to pot and about five or six weeks before the month was due to kick off I just got together and said we're just going to have to can the whole thing but why don't we try and do something online so at this stage it was just the two of us Anita got involved we had some help from Manchester Museum and we just came up with a hashtag we didn't even have our own website we had nothing and we just did a call out saying we want to do this we just put it out on Twitter on Instagram and said come and get involved and people did in their droves and before we knew it we had a bunch of volunteers who were going to help us do this they quickly set up social media accounts for us and pulled together this incredible program of around 60 odd, 50 odd events that we put on during the month with no resource whatsoever and goodwill and passion we ended up launching it on BBC News Anita got some of her high profile friends like Nadia Hussain and various other celebs to tweet about it and do videos and by the end of the four weeks the hashtag which was a brand new hashtag had made 87.2 million impressions across social media reaching over 30 million individuals around the world which just exceeded all of our expectations by such a long way and it just kind of blew up which was amazing it really did and it was just such a I think it's weird to say this but in a way for us to then have to go online was a blessing in disguise was we made far more of an impression than we would have done if we kept to the events in real life I think we were only talking about something like half a dozen events in London half a dozen in Manchester maybe a couple in Birmingham if we could stretch that far but it was amazing the way in which we were able to with the support of so many people with NRT to change very quickly change tack I mean on our first day on the launch day I think we worked out with so many people via Radio 4 where I did my thought for the day Anita Rani was on Radio 2 with Zoe Ball and then the BBC Breakfast so collectively we managed to reach 15 million people on a single day which really set the bar quite high for us didn't it it certainly did and then we were almost left with a bit of a problem that we just didn't have infrastructure and people thought we were a thing we weren't at that stage but it was all good problems to have and so then the following year we worked really really hard on trying to get a bit more infrastructure in place trying to register as a charity developing the volunteer team a little bit more and then we came up with key topics and themes for 2021 which were around identity, history kind of the creative arts sector sports and health and well-being obviously close to my heart and again we just put a call out to the public around about Maytime and said look we've got no funding, we haven't got really very much at all but we want to do this really help us and again managed to put together this really rich calendar of events with so many different topics wasn't there Jasper it was just so much things that people wanted to talk about it was, it was incredible so we had things such as talking about South Asian arts within medicine or poetry nights we had art being created we had various exhibitions that were being spoken of we had parties, we spoke about Brick Lane, it's past and future we had a specific LGBTQ strand of events as well one of the things about what we're trying to achieve with South Asian Heritage Month is to make it as inclusive as possible and so whereas many other festivals of this nature or awareness months may want to focus on certain things and not others we're taking the approach of if this is what people want to talk about let them talk about it it has had its kind of ups and downs and if you have a look on the 27th of July Tuesday the 27th which was about policing which we then didn't take didn't take place because of the way that it was put together the way that it was being described we felt that it needed to be far more nuanced than what it was being described as but this is part of our learning process and one of the things that I like to talk about is to point out those sorts of events and say we work with our audience and we hear what the audience says so if we get feedback about actually this particular event shouldn't be taking place for X, Y and Z reasons we'll think about it, we'll consider it and then we'll act upon it and I think that's one of the reasons why for this year the engagement has been even greater than it was last year because we've had that sense of fluidity we've got our own website now at some time to build up an infrastructure last year our team was four people strong this year our team grew to 15 people strong and it continues to grow and we've also had a real increase in the number of people who engaged with us this year via our hashtag we had over 70 million reach and I think we had just about a quarter of a billion impressions over the four and a half months and that's a substantial increase from what it was last year but again it feels like we're raising the barrier each year and it's more entirely voluntary we're all doing it for free so we've had no money come to this so far we've spent no money apart from our own pockets we're now trying to fundraise in order to make this a slicker machine but also just to make sure that the movement as we'd like to describe it continues to grow and expand but continues to be as inclusive as possible and you said four months but as it was four weeks that the hashtag made that impression so it kind of it was a massive engagement and then we sort of found that companies like Apple were doing stuff for South Asian Heritage Month that we hadn't even actually directly approached them about it they'd kind of heard about it and had put together some events with these really huge corporates like HSBC and Apple and Spotify and various others who all did something for South Asian Heritage Month just organically and that's kind of how we would like it to grow although we'd clearly like to go with our cap in our hand to some of those companies as well and say can you help us and I think what was nice was we had a really good mixture between kind of things that were fun like the cooking class and the BounceBangra brothers doing some aerobics and things to some really thorny topics as well and certainly around the health side of things people just wanted to talk about things that are stigmatized you know menopause and mental health and cancer and domestic abuse and some topics that there isn't really this platform to talk openly about what I was really proud of is that people said thank you you've given us a platform to talk about these things and yeah that's a really important aspect of this the fact that we've been able to create this platform but it's really for others to occupy the space I like to think of myself and Benita as being the custodians of South Asian Heritage Month but we don't necessarily own it this is for everyone to participate do events that they feel are relevant and as we're talking about history and hidden histories make sure that we start having those discussions about the journeys which took place the empire that empire has had on British identity as well as on South Asian identity and continues to have we've obviously all heard of the horrible and absolutely horrific abuse that Azim Rafiq has had to endure whilst as a cricketer unfortunately I think many of us have had to deal with similar things perhaps to a lesser extent sometimes to a greater extent and those are stories which need to be spoken of all of this is about making sure that in my word certainly we can get to a point where we don't need to have South Asian Heritage Month my hope would be that our history identity is so embedded within British identity and within British society that we no longer need to have this awareness month but if we have a look at how long Black History Month has been running that's 34 or 35 years and it's still necessary now more than ever perhaps so who knows how long South Asian Heritage Month will be around for and whilst it's around myself and Benita will be doing all we can to keep it going we've thought of an idea as to what we'll be doing for South Asian Heritage Month next year we're going to be looking at the major anniversaries which are taking place next year such as the 75th Anniversary of Partition Independence and so on and we're also going to be looking at the 50th anniversary of the flight of the Ugandan Asians and their escape effectively virtually overnight and having just a couple of months to do so so our theme will be quite wide I don't think we're ready to announce it just yet but it will be connected to those particular areas so please do watch this space I think that brings us to the end of our talk and we'd love to have any questions or hear your ideas really to get involved as well we're always looking for volunteers so we can pop our email and address it in the chat as well and if people want to get in touch that's fine Thank you very much Benita that's a great introduction and an invitation really I feel you've presented it so openly and welcomingly I feel I should volunteer tomorrow for it it's an exciting project it's really as you describe it it's building and growing and it's really something that's quite capacious that has space for so many different things I thought I'll start off with a couple of questions just to start the conversation and I thought the really most important thing for me was that you have not focused on community groups in South Asian heritage and you haven't described the heritage month as a month for communities which I think because they're caste based religion or sectarian groups or national groups even going back to South Asian nationalities but you have tried to keep it open for all and maybe if you'd like to describe how how that process went did you have to deliberately or consciously do this or is that just how it happened so I'll start first when it came to the work that I've been doing for many years I've been involved in various faith communities I'm an interfaith activist I do thought for the day so I'll talk about my faith and my identity openly but when the Grand Trunk project was launched back in 2017 we specifically ensured that it was inclusive of all religions so we said it was a means of bringing together Hindu Sikh and Muslim communities but also other communities from the Indian subcontinents and that worked well because we were then overcoming some of those differences and in fact one of the events that I remember quite clearly is going to a Ravidas Gordora in Luton Ravidas is formally a Sikh sect some of whom have now left the Sikh community and others wish to remain in the Sikh community and this was a Gordora which had decided to remain in the community but we had a story there where two people one was a Muslim individual who was from Pakistan another was an Indian Sikh who now lives in Luton they spoke about the horrors that they experienced during partition they said that they saw people of other communities killing their friends killing their families one of them I believe saw his uncle being killed before his eyes and yet at the end of their respective stories the two of them hugged each other and they hugged each other because they said that that's the past and we have also seen others who helped us from the various communities and who supported us so seeing that in such an emotive setting seeing all of the people who were there with tears really touched by their respective stories made it quite clear that this needs to go beyond any kind of sectarian identities beyond any faith identities faith is important and so that will be discussed within the events but this is about it's a two-fold thing and perhaps this is the best time for us to explain the motto our motto is celebrate commemorate educate commemorate the South Asian heritage in all of its glory including its history arts and identities commemorate the important dates in the past which is why the South Asian Heritage Month has those particular dates and then educate make sure that everyone leaves having learnt something new from the month I learnt so much from the month and I know that Benita did as well and as part of that we kind of worked two-fold which is we work to promote this within the South Asian communities in the UK and elsewhere but also within British society more widely so that they can better understand South Asian communities and history in particular I think for me it was I go back to that realisation that I didn't know about our shared heritage because I think we don't focus on that I'd heard a lot of sentiment growing up about hatred and people killing people but actually when I went back to that village the elders who I spoke to remembered my family talked about how my grandfather's house was the centre of the village he was quite a wealthy Hindu land owner he used to employ many of the local Muslims so they all used to eat together and they used to drink together and they were neighbours and friends and actually in that village there was still kind of monuments to the Hindus that were there the little sort of you know the temples and it was just like I didn't know that I always just thought they always hated each other because that's what I had been taught to believe and I thought we don't speak with one voice and why don't we speak with one voice and another kind of thing that really struck me was when I went back to Bangladesh I'd never been there before but to Bengal I'm a Bengali and I get the most incredible Bengali food I've had in my life in this tiny little village in the middle of nowhere and they were speaking Bengali that I can understand and I'm thinking this is a Muslim country it's completely different to anything I know and yet I feel strangely at home here because I can understand the language and the food just is my food so Bengalis are Bengalis and we kind of wanted to capture that spirit whilst still celebrating people's differences we think difference is strength not a weakness so it was kind of trying to wrap all of that up into the campaign so we come at it from very different angles but ultimately want the same thing I think Jasper and I we kind of balance each other quite well we really do, yeah we do and I think that's we kind of reflect the diversity of the South Asian experience within Britain as well as you know a lot about their heritage and those who don't and those who want to learn more and those who want to educate That's marvellous really and I like the subtext of opening up to not just South Asians but speak to the whole British community and educate non-South Asian heritage people as well and it's really marvellous and do you feel that there is some connection with Black History Month and other minorities who do you think there's something to watch out for in terms of people feel they are being taken over by South Asian Yeah, no not at all and we've worked really hard to foster kind of a relationship where we support Black History Month and they're supporting us, it's about all of our stories we don't have a monopoly on trauma or the experiences of diaspora so we're very collaborative in that sense and we've not had any problems at all as far as I'm aware in that space Jasper have we? No we've had no problems at all and in fact one of the things that we're looking at doing for next year is talking about the Black Indian experience and the Indian groups so that could fall into Black History Month that could fall into South Asian Heritage Month we need to remember that we don't all fall into neat silos so whilst some people like to say that South Asian Heritage Month there's a Brown Heritage Month or Brown History Month it's beyond that because are we then excluding those who are of Anglo-Indian heritage who have had an extraordinary presence in South Asia for a considerable period of time and their stories are valid and their stories often get hidden behind certainly in kind of post-independence India and Pakistan and Bangladesh no one talks about the Anglo-Indians who've been left behind we have the Parsis who don't have their histories being spoken about quite as openly and so it is about making sure that any minorities within South Asia have the opportunity to be included within South Asian Heritage Month and then also talking about those stories where we may not know too much about how this came into being such as you know, Sofia Dalip Singh who's used often as a very good example of someone who was very much embedded within British aristocracy and yet was South Asian and was of open-jobby heritage was of Sikh heritage but was a baptized Christian and was very much a member of the Church of England so how do you start disentangling that and saying this is someone who's South Asian or is this someone who was British? You can't she was all of that Sorry I was just going to say there's a nice question in the chat that was for Sparsha actually around the Yes, I was just coming to that and I would say the Khabib want to ask the question himself is that allowed or should I just read it out? I think You have to read it out Yeah, you do Yeah, so Binita would you like to you were going to it Yeah, it was a question for Sparsha just saying that his his talk was incredibly moving and thank you but speaking as a Portuguese South Asian what do you think about the idea of developing collaborations to explore other post-colonial and post-partition diasporic roots is something we've discussed isn't it Jasper because when you sort of get into all of this there is just so much and so many different groups who don't feel celebrated in any way Yeah There is and it's about creating the space so that those stories can be spoken about last year we had events where the going experience was discussed and I think we had the the Attorney General Soela Braverman I forget her name I'm afraid she spoke at that particular event and it was organised by the Goan Association of Britain if I remember correctly but it's important because so many of us forget that Goa wasn't part of Britain it wasn't part of the British Empire it remained a distinct area under Portuguese rule so it was a considerable period of time and so that's why Goan cuisine is very different to Maharashtra there are differences there as well which is very important for us to bear in mind when it comes to what it means to be South Asian I have a good friend of mine who's of a Goan background himself and I remember talking to him and understanding why he was called when he was brown and just trying to work out why he had a Portuguese surname so those are important conversations that we all need to have but there's always going to be scope for us to discuss those other areas including for next year the Ugandan and East African experiences Yeah and I think well next year is going to be a really good opportunity to start talking about the journeys of empire because that's our theme so Sadiq there might be an event or something that you might want to think about putting on because we rely on the communities and the public coming to us with ideas and say we want to talk about this and we can support that then Definitely so please do get in touch with us Sadiq if you want to organise that event or if you want to say something would you like to unmute us? Yeah sorry thank you I just wanted to ask thank you so much for that that was fantastic and it's just so great to hear all the wonderful work that you're doing can I ask a little bit more about the sort of family perspective to it I mean I saw your program it's amazing so how much do you get future generations involved in your community So we've got a big team around schools and the Partition Education Group is doing a lot of work around that but also what happened this year is that various councils reached out to us so probably the best example of that is Telford and Reakin council who actually put on a whole programme of events for both primary and secondary schools one of the big downsides of the dates we've chosen are that it falls largely in the summer holidays but the way we're going to get around that is that we're going to encourage schools to have an engagement week that will probably fall before the summer holidays kind of in the last few in July sometime and the council did some wonderful things they did a whole programme for the kids to learn about the different countries one of the councillors Raj Mehta went around the schools doing talks and engaging them in like some fun stuff and then some kind of educational stuff and it was brilliant so we're now working with a wider group including the BAME Education Network to try and create a toolkit for schools that they can kind of then just reach for and say well we want to do something for south asian heritage here's some things you can do and we want to build on that year on year so it's kind of last year it was one this year it was one council with other individual schools interested we want to spread that to more councils and eventually we hope that everybody will it'll become part of the school calendar and there's the secondary schools both primary as well primary as well so we think sort of that key stage to age is a really good time to start these conversations about time they get to 11 and above many of their biases will already be very ingrained and so actually you want to start these conversations early the earlier the better but then there's obviously certain things you can't really that's when they're too young because it's difficult so because I know talking to sparse I know that sorry go on jasmine no I was just going to add that when it comes to that it may even be something that some of the attendees can help us with actually still have connections with your schools and if you're able to reach out to your secondary schools or other schools that you have connections with please do drop us a line see how we can build up those networks where we want to expand all of our work is done voluntarily so the more volunteers we have helping us the better really that's wonderful and there's a question in the chat from Sanjukta Ghosh she says in your survey of the diaspora do you think most people would want to forget the political legacy of partition in that case how do we present hidden histories and curriculums for future generations yeah it's a really great question because that is a view that we do get thrown at us you know forget about it now it's in the past you don't need to keep bleeding on about partition and I think the discussion we had in parliament about the partition commemoration day captured it really well I think to really understand modern-day Britain you can't skim over these topics partition was the biggest mass migration in the history of humanity 15 million people displaced overnight it's responsible for so much of what is going on in the modern world to just sort of go oh well that was then this is now it's it's you have to understand your past if you're going to make a better future so that's kind of the response we have of course some people would rather forget about it because the memories are very very painful and I think it has taken this generation my generation the one below us to want to talk about it because my dad's generation certainly didn't want to because of what they witnessed and the trauma then gets passed down as well so yeah it has to be done sensitively and what we've discussed really is that the best way to do it is through storytelling bit like we did in the documentary it got such a huge response because it wasn't a history lesson it was telling people stories which is kind of what Sparsh is doing as well yeah I think it also helps to see the work that's being done by others in the UK at the moment one thing that comes to mind is Empire Land by Satnam Singh Ghaira which is an incredible book I ended up reading it over the course of a weekend I just got so entrenched in it and it's a kind of easy to access book for people who aren't necessarily historians but who want to see the impact that Empire has had on our identity in the present day and I know that there's the Channel 4 series which has started this week which I haven't seen yet but it's on my list of things to do it's a fantastic book because it kind of opens up how we can have those discussions I mean even things like if we start thinking about partition and the impact it had it had a political impact in the UK as well because it was a labour government which ensured that partition took place but then it was the establishment and the established civil servants who ensured that the partition line took place in the way that it did so when we start looking at how that happened and how the political elite didn't necessarily do what the government of the day was hoping to achieve and how those discussions which took place during the summer of 1947 which led to partition led to what we continue to see as the fault lines in South Asia at the present day there's a huge legacy that's been left behind and that's before we even start to talk about the one to two million people who were killed during partition the greatest migration in living history before we start looking at the partition museums in Amritsar in Pakistan in India more generally there's a lot that still needs to be done for us to learn from it and yes people want to forget the political legacy of it but I don't think we can and I hope that future generations will make sure we never forget I would also just add to that that's something that I have done as a result of this epiphany I've had is that I've started doing some really proper work around health inequalities and when you start looking at health inequalities and how they have how we have had for example the outcomes we've had in Covid and the disproportionate effect on brown and black people when you start scratching the surface of that it's so multi-layered but there is a part of it that is the hangover of empire and the legacy of empire and migration and until you start really understanding that it's quite hard to unpick how to tackle health inequalities so the East African migration story is very different to the asylum seekers we're seeing now from North Africa to the Pakistani experience and yet it's all lumped together as BAME and it's not surprising that all these health inequalities exist it's given me a much deeper understanding I'm now able to start leading some work around this in Manchester where I work and that understanding of history is so important for that No totally and as you were saying it's not just the history of the violence it's the history of the saviours because I have students in my I teach partition at Surah and I have students who say why did my family not migrate and the presence of the numbers of Muslim and minority groups in India is really important to recognise their presence they felt comfortable and safe in their neighbourhoods and that's not to forget that either and to recognise that given the current political temper in the country it's important that there's a different message in Britain that has to go back home as well because there's a lot of diaspora nostalgia that sometimes feeds the exclusivist mentalities in South Asia so I mean it's so important to have this open conversation in Britain to feed back also to South Asia and I think that's important to remember and to always link partition with peace building it's impossible to to remember it as a horrors day I feel it's not we don't want to remember it as a horrors day we want to remember it as a celebration and I think that's really important and your message there is really very very relevant both for Britain and South Asia yeah and I think it's that lack of knowledge in the wider British public that then just perpetuates the inequalities and there's a really nice bit in Satnam's programme that went out on Saturday night where he goes back to Wolverhampton and he talks to the lady who lives in the house he lived in as a kid and mentioned something about the empire and she says oh yeah I don't really bother with all that stuff because no one's told that she needs to and it's a great programme do you watch it quite hard hitting at times I think the other thing to bear in mind is that when you look at South Asia today it's taken diaspora communities to ensure that for example we've had Remembrance Day Remembrance Sunday talking about the number of people who fought in the first and second world wars and the impact there it's been the diaspora communities who've ensured that that history hasn't been forgotten because India and Pakistan wanted to wellfully forget that they had fought in a war that supported the British which is why you never saw any Remembrance services taking place in India or Pakistan for ever since partition took place really and so we're seeing that changing with Remembrance services now taking place in Delhi I think for the first time I saw them this year a couple of years ago but it's something which has only started very recently and those are histories of soldiers from the Punjab region which is I think it's Punjabwww.com which is a new resource that's been set up by the UK Punjab Heritage Association and the University of Greenwich which is a fantastic resource showing you can trace family members from Punjab to see where they fought with what their involvement was within the First World War in particular and those resources are things that the media in India in particular has been singing the praises of so there's a lot of work that we can do in the diaspora which ensures that those stories are not forgotten in South Asia itself Absolutely and remembered yeah that's excellent Thank you Josie if you could share that with us the details of that resource would be really invaluable Absolutely Thank you Is there any more questions? I can't see any audience so it has to be in the chat box Yes we're asking participants to put their questions there Yeah So I had one last little thing in terms of future you said this month the coming year 2022 you're already working on a theme and do you and how would somebody volunteer for that or just write to you on your emails or do you have any system for the future planning? Yeah we do also have some vacancies that are advertised on the website so we've got to put that in But the best thing is just to have a chat so we can understand what all skills are and then maybe get them you know fit them into the right place in the campaign That's marvellous I'm going to do that soon I'd love to participate and so lovely thank you so much for speaking with us and if there are yeah I see you've put the South Asian Heritage vacancies up as well I'll just put it in so everyone can see Yeah I can see that Thank you very much just for saying and Benita Khaane it's been lovely listening to you and hearing about South Asia Heritage Month and all your education programs as well that the education project also sounds amazing and thank you and keep in touch with SOAS I'm sure there'll be other events we would all like to follow up with and Sparsh, though he is not here he's bringing the exhibition to SOAS next year from December so keep in touch in this space for the audience and join us again Yeah I just wanted to say thank you so much to you all for a brilliant panel talk and yes please let's keep in touch let's see how we can collaborate would love to work further with South Asian History Month and yeah and Project Dastan as you said yes is coming to Brunei Gallery it'll be coming between October and December of 2022 and there's hopefully more outreach work to go with that we're hoping to take it also to schools and be more of an academic angle to it as well which I'm looking forward to working with Thank you very much Thanks, thank you very much Thank you for having us take care, bye bye now Thanks for having us and thanks everyone for coming as well we're going to put the recording of this up on YouTube so if anyone's missed it or came in late then don't worry it will be up on YouTube and feel free to share it widely as well so thank you everyone we will be calling this the day, thanks Bye