In the summer of 1972, Idi Amin, tin-pot dictator and self-styled ‘King of Scotland’, ordered the expulsion of Uganda’s South Asian community, to which my grandmother belonged. He gave them 90 days, citing a dream in which God had ordered him to banish the dukawallas (shopkeepers) from the country.
The history of South Asians in East Africa is one that is seldom told.
Many had arrived at the turn of the century, brought over by the British as labourers and clerks. In postcolonial Uganda, they started their own businesses, setting up homes in elite enclaves far removed from indigenous Ugandans.
Significantly more prosperous, the Asians were suddenly displaced, persecuted by Idi Amin for ‘milking’ the economy.
People cheered. Uganda was for the natives, they would say, heckling and jeering at their compatriots as they boarded buses and planes, embarking on an exodus into uncertainty and statelessness.
Mira Nair’s 1991 film Mississippi Masala depicts the expulsion and relocation of an Indian family from Uganda to the United States during the politically turbulent summer of 1972.
There is a particularly poignant scene at the beginning, when one of the South Asian men fleeing the country is about to board a plane to London — while waiting on the tarmac, he kisses the ground, declaring his unconditional love for a nation that has rejected his people.