EXCLUSIVE: ‘Schools must teach British Asian history’

BRITAIN's schools are failing to teach generations of children about the millions of south Asians who gave their lives fighting and dying alongside allied troops, a prominent documentary maker has told Eastern Eye.

Award-winning journalist, Mobeen Azhar, said he was “disgusted” that their sacrifices were not being recognised, and, in 2024, were not part of the school curriculum.

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Azhar’s film about his grandfather, Nawab Din, who served in the British-Indian a

Army during the second world war, will screen this Saturday (2 November) on Channel 4.

“You can use the word annoyed or disappointed, or you can use the word disgusted, because I am disgusted,” he said.

“This stuff absolutely has a contemporary resonance.

“I believe I'm someone that's reasonably well informed because of my work, I have a particular perspective and a privilege in terms of how I view the world.

“And yet I did not know that India made up the largest volunteer force that the world had ever seen.

“I did not know that the number of people from the region who fought in World War Two amounts to half the number of all of the allied forces, it's a huge contribution.”

The national curriculum does not include anything about the sacrifices made by Commonwealth countries, which Britain colonised.

Teaching history

Indeed, the relevant parts of the government’s guidance to school’s teaching history is:

“In addition to studying the Holocaust, this could include:

• the First World War and the Peace Settlement

• the Second World War and the wartime leadership of Winston Churchill

• Indian independence and end of Empire”

“The reason I didn't know that stuff is because, primarily, the way the world wars are spoken about, certainly, World War Two is spoken about,” Azhar continued.

“Both world wars, I'd say, are [spoken about] very much in Euro-centric, explicitly white fashion.

“That goes back to my schooling, goes back to my GCSE history lessons.

“It also goes back to a lot of contemporary discussion around the world wars today.

“Who gets to wear a poppy, who doesn't get to wear a poppy, what all that stuff means, and that's a real problem.”

Mobeen Azhar

The film maker was shooting his documentary at the same time as this summer’s riots in England.

Thousands of mainly white right-wing mobs took to the streets after fake news on social media wrongly named and blamed an asylum seeker for killing three young girls in Southport on Merseyside.

“Let's call them what they were, they were race riots, they were anti-immigration riots, quite explicitly in some contexts, they were anti-brown-people riots, anti-Muslim riots.

“To be making this film, and to be unpicking in very specific detail the amount of sacrifice that people from the south Asian subcontinent, and actually people from the Commonwealth, have given to this country, pre-dating the years that my parents, or your parents, arrived in this country, really highlights that there is such a lack of understanding and a lack of knowledge amongst the British population.

“That includes Britain's British Asian population, but also includes the white population.”

It is for this reason, said Azhar, we need a formal education system which recognises Britain’s shared history.

“I do not believe that the vast majority of the people that were on those riots understand this part of history.

“I would go further and say that if they did understand how that history is interlinked, then maybe they would think twice about this notion that immigration is bad, that immigrants are a threat, that they are foreign to this nation, because that stuff just isn't rooted in reality.”

Patriotism

In October 2020, the Royal British Legion launched with the think tank, British Future, a campaign which it called, Forgotten Sacrifice.

At the time, campaigners called for more recognition for minorities who died serving this country.

They included London mayor, Sadiq Khan, former home secretary, Sajid Javid, World War Two veterans and former heads of the armed forces, Lord Dannatt and Lord Richards and prominent actors of colour.

They signed an open letter which urged, “more should be done to highlight the role of soldiers from across the Commonwealth, ensuring their contributions are reflected and acknowledged, and that Remembrance activity is truly inclusive”.

FILE PHOTO: Sikh and Punjabi soldiers from the 7th Indian Infantry Brigade of the 4th Indian Infantry Division, attached to the Western Desert Force, during a map reading lesson at an Indian Reinforcement camp, Egypt, circa August 1940. (Photo by Ministry of Information/Crown Copyright/BIPPA/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Azhar told Eastern Eye that this message was still not filtering through to most Britons.

“I'm someone that has traditionally always been very squeamish about patriotism of any kind,” he explained.

“I'm not a particularly kind of flag waving person, it's to do with my personal politics.

“The more important thing, and what I take as a lesson from this, is it shows anyone that needs to know, as a statement of facts that the Commonwealth and the contributions of black and brown people.

“And let's be specific, the contributions of people from South Asia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, to this country, they predate what we think of as the immigrant experience.”

And that is the crux of his new documentary, called The Soldiers That Saved Britain.

It is Azhar’s highly personal journey of discovery which cements the proposition, in a compelling but non-preachy way, that Britain has removed the contribution of armed forces personnel of colour.

The respected journalist painstakingly tracked down his late grandfather’s army records, where he fought in Egypt for the Royal Corps of Signals.

Valuing lives

Nawab Din would later serve in the Pakistan Army, after partition, and rise to the rank of major.

“As far as we know, he never actually made it to this country, but he fought in the deserts of North Africa.

“He was part of the British Indian Army before my father was born, my grandfather was a 20-year-old man, and he made this the focus of his life.

“So, for him to have dedicated his life in that way is a really big deal.

“I met my grandfather on a handful of occasions.

“I'm sure many of your readership can relate to this, [as] I grew up, every four or five years, we'd go to Pakistan, we'd go for a family wedding, we'd see everyone, it's the Punjab, everything's great.

“And I'd meet my grandfather in that context, and the fact is that he never spoke to me, and he never spoke to his own children about what happened, I think that speaks volumes.

“The first my father knows that his father served in Egypt is via this film.”

Perhaps one of the most telling points in Azhar’s film is when he goes to Park Lane and finds out that a memorial for animals killed in the two world wars has pride of place.

“What it really told me is, this is about value, it's about currency,” argued Azhar.

“What it told me is, in Britain still today, let's be frank about it, there isn't a dedicated memorial to south Asian soldiers who fought in World War Two, it doesn't exist.

“There was a plan, and we explore this right at the end of the film, that plan began and was put in writing just after World War Two.

“It never turned into a reality, and so I think the fact that even today, that memorial doesn't exist, and yet, on Park Lane, we have this very elaborate memorial to animals says a lot about the value placed on those lives, and that, to me, is insulting.

“It's insulting, of course it is, and once again, it speaks to that idea that this is a part of history that has been airbrushed.”

The Soldiers That Saved Britain presented by Mobeen Azhar is on Channel 4 on Saturday 2 November 2024 at 7.10pm.

COMMENT

'British society will remain fractured and biased unless there is awareness of our shared history'

IT IS 1986, and I’m about to graduate from Brighton Polytechnic, writes Barnie Choudhury. I’m desperately looking for a job, because I’m not sure that, as a person of colour, I’ll make a career as a broadcaster even though I’ve been one for five years.

I write 100 letters to chemical companies – my degree is in applied chemistry – and I get 100 rejections. I apply to the BBC…and to the Royal Corps of Signals to try to get a place on the highly coveted Royal Miliary Academy at Sandhurst officer selection process.

It’s Easter, and I arrive in Blandford in Dorset, the home of the signallers. It made perfect sense to me. I love Britain. At that time, I was pretty good when it came to operating technical communication equipment. And communications was my forte. But my black and Asian mates on my course thought I was mad, asking why I’d even contemplate fighting for a country which was openly anti-immigrant and anti-people of colour. With so many success stories, we tend to forget how racist Britain was in the 1970s and 80s – much more overt then, when P*** bashing was more common than rain in England.

FILE PHOTO: 24 January 1940: Sikh soldiers of the Indian Pioneer Unit, the advance Guard of the Indian Forces at their London headquarters. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)

Anyway, 12 of us gathered in the officers’ club, nervous, and on our best behaviour, trying to create the best impression. Only I failed miserably. Being a working-class kid from Coventry, I was used to elbowing my way to the front of the bar and getting the drinks in.

And that’s when the colonel shouted at me, “You boy, what do you think you’re doing?” I was about to make a quip, but I thought better of it. My foster dad, Reg Yeoman, who’d served in the second world war, warned me there would be moments like these. Night after night, in preparation for the ‘board’, Reg would painstakingly and patiently coach me. That included making sure I knew every epaulet officers wore. Until that moment, I thought it was a lesson in futility.

“I’m so sorry colonel,” I stammered, doing my best Cary Grant impression – Hugh Grant wasn’t that big in those days. “Sir, I notice you’re drinking a whiskey and ginger ale, my foster father’s favourite tipple, let me get one for you.” His puce face relaxed, and we spent the next minute his accepting my grovelling apology.

The following day, I walked in for my interview, convinced that it was a waste of time.

“You’re in Barnie,” were the major’s opening words.

“Why?” I queried, thinking the signallers would take anyone of colour.

Somehow, the six foot tall major, with taut, bulging muscles, thinning blond hair and a bushy moustache, understood what I was thinking straight away.

“We spoke about the way you handled yourself yesterday in the club. Not only did you know he was a colonel, you addressed him as such and called him sir. You de-escalated the situation. In other words, you assessed, adapted and overcame what would have left many floundering. You made a mistake and owned it. These qualities are what we’re looking for in our leaders.”

We spent the rest of the interview detailing exactly how I was going to negotiate successfully the testing rigours of the selection board, and how he was personally going to make sure I graduate as a second lieutenant in his regiment. I never did take up the major’s kind offer, but that’s another story.

My telling this story is that, even though my father and uncles told me that they were in the British-Indian Army, I didn’t have a clue about the millions who died fighting for their colonial masters.

And sadly, that remains the fact for millions of south Asian children today. What Mobeen Azhar’s film delves into is the emotional history of a time which the current generation of south Asians will probably never know or appreciate. The sad fact is that in World War One, 1.5 million men and women fought for British-ruled-undivided-India. More than 21 years later, in the second world war, that number would climb to 2.5 million by 1945.

Yet in our schools, we’re never taught that. We’re never taught about the patriotism or the fact they volunteered. They were part of the ill-fated mission in Gallipoli in the first world war. And while the Australian and New Zealand troops returned home hailed as heroes, the Indians who fought and died alongside were forgotten.

Barnie Choudhury

We’re never taught that Major Mohammad Akbar Khan, an Indian soldier, led 300 Indian soldiers and 23 British troops along East Mole in the successful-turning-point-event in Dunkirk. This was the almost mile-long wooden jetty Christopher Nolan featured in his 2017 film about the evacuation and rescue of a quarter of a million allied troops in World War Two.

We’re never taught about Noor Inayat Khan, the betrayed British spy, and who the Nazis captured and tortured in Paris in the second world war. Khan was a Special Operations Executive (SOE) radio operator until her capture. Despite the Gestapo beating Khan, she never revealed her fellow spies. Her captors transferred three other female SOE agents and her to Dachau concentration camp in 1944. On 13 September the Nazis shot them dead. Britain posthumously awarded her the George Cross. Ironic, considering her great-great-great-grandfather, Tipu Sultan, a Muslim ruler, fought British rule.

No matter what, today’s Britain is divided, as it has been for decades, along the fault lines of race. I’ve reported it for decades, and I lived through this unacceptable divide for most of my life. But I remain fiercely patriotic for I know I would not and could not live anywhere else. We Brits have a shared history, shared culture and shared language with our brothers and sisters in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

But like me, Azhar feels the slight and hurt and erasing of his grandfather’s and millions of others who contributed to Britain’s, Europe’s and America’s victory over the fascists. It is why, when actor-turned-far-right-extremist, Laurence Fox, questions why Nolan showed a Sikh soldier in Dunkirk, we despair.

This is about our nation’s history. This is about demonstrating that immigrants of all shades contributed, and continue to contribute, to our island’s story. This is about fighting prejudice, intolerance and extremism.

Every time I come out of Leicester train station, my adopted home, and I walk towards the city centre via Charles Street, I see a British Army recruitment centre. On its glass front is an unmissable photograph of turban-wearing officer, and a south Asian woman in British military uniform. I get a lump in my throat, because I know that for all their answering the call, and being posterchildren for the British, yes British, Army, they will be forgotten and written out of our history books. Unless, of course, we start to acknowledge their remarkable service, bravery and sacrifice in our past, present and future. Surely, telling that story begins in our schools, and their teaching of true British history.