Kavita writes a monthly column in BBC History Magazine on hidden histories
Selected Articles
The 104-year-old WW2 veteran who moved the Queen to tears
BBC NEWS
When Capt Yavar Abbas stood on stage in front of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on Friday, he wasn't expecting to make headlines.
Eighty years on, Britain’s war with Japan is largely forgotten.
THE OBSERVER
As we mark 80 years since the end of the second world war, we must not forget the many thousands whose lives were taken or touched by the conflict with Japan
Susannah's grandad ran Bengal when famine killed millions
BBC NEWS
"I feel enormous shame about what happened," Susannah Herbert tells me. Her grandfather was the governor of Bengal, in British India, during the run-up and height of the 1943 famine which killed at least three million people
Bengal famine: Tracking down the last survivors of WW2's forgotten tragedy
BBC NEWS
The Bengal famine of 1943 killed more than three million people in eastern India. It was one of the worst losses of civilian life on the Allied side in World War Two.
The Unveiling of a Horror
CODA
In the middle of the Second World War, in the dying days of the British Empire, an estimated three million people died from hunger and disease linked to famine. The victims were Indians, but also…
Leicester: Why the violent unrest was surprising to many
BBC NEWS
For decades, Leicester had a reputation as a model for cohesion - but the recent unprecedented unrest between groups of Hindu and Muslim men has raised difficult questions for a place that prided…
Partition: My journey to the ‘place no-one spoke of’
BBC NEWS
Seventy-five years ago Sparsh Ahuja's family was one of millions to flee their homes as British India split into two new nations India and Pakistan. His grandfather never spoke of the place he fled as a …
The enduring trauma of partition
BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE
In 1947, British India was split in two, sparking a wave of violence that defined the new nations for decades. On the 75th anniversary of partition, Kavita Puri looks at how subsequent generations in…
After 75 years, the hidden memories of India’s partition are rising up through Britain’s generation'
THE GUARDIAN
Those whose lived through the formation of India and Pakistan are telling their stories – and their grandchildren are asking questions
South Asian diaspora recall gnawing loneliness in post-war Britain
BBC NEWS
The first generation who came to post-war Britain from the Indian subcontinent arrived with as little as £3 in their pockets - all the money they
'The phone call that brought me freedom - but broke my mother's heart'
BBC NEWS
In the 1990’s many second-generation British Asians were coming of age and breaking free - they had grown up in a different country from their parents and were forging their own path.
Bombay Jungle: How British Asians broke into London's club scene
BBC NEWS
One evening in 1993, Mits Sahni was standing in a queue in Leicester Square in central London. He was trying to get into a nightclub - but when he got to the front of the line he was turned away by the bouncer
Qian Xuesen: The man the US deported - who then helped China into space
BBC NEWS
A Chinese scientist helped not one but two superpowers reach the moon, writes Kavita Puri, but his story is remembered in only one of them.
They came from south Asia to help rebuild Britain
THE GUARDIAN
I have been recording testimonies of these now-elderly pioneers, who never thought they would have to live through such hostility again…
Remembering Partition
PEN TRANSMISSIONS
For our series on exile with the British Museum and Edmund de Waal, Kavita Puri writes on partition, memory and exile.
Break the silence on partition and British colonial history – before it’s too late
THE GUARDIAN
Many British south Asian families, like mine, were caught up in the violence of 1947. Seventy years on, some are telling their stories for the first time.
What's the best thing to do with unwanted statues?
BBC NEWS
When a country has statues of people that no longer reflect its values, what is the best solution? Is there a way of addressing the past without erasing it? And is doing nothing an option? The BBC's Kavita Puri speaks..
72 years after Partition, let’s teach South Asian history
EVENING STANDARD
Dotted across London and Britain are people who bore witness to one of the most tumultuous events of the 20th century. They were once subjects of the British Raj and are now British citizens. Yet their first-hand experiences of empire, and its bloody end on the Indian subcontinent, have been largely shrouded in silence for seven decades.
Pramila Le Hunte: 'I tried to be the first female British Asian Tory MP'
BBC NEWS
Of the 365 Conservative MPs elected last week 14 were of South Asian heritage and four of them were women. It's a far cry from 1983, when Pramila Le Hunte became the first British South Asian woman to stand for parliament as a Tory, writes the BBC's Kavita Puri.
How I became a secret daytime DJ
BBC NEWS
In the 1980s, many British South Asian teenagers were expected to spend evenings at home, so an underground club scene began to emerge in the afternoons. One of the people behind the "daytimer" trend in Bradford, a young DJ called Moey Hassan, told the BBC's Kavita Puri how it began.
Partition memories and the power of oral testimony
THE BRITISH LIBRARY
BBC journalist and author Kavita Puri reflects on the power of oral testimony. Hear more from Kavita at the British Library on Tuesday 16 July at 7pm, where she will discuss Partition Voices in conversation with Kirsty Wark.
Switzerland's shame: The children used as cheap farm labour
BBC NEWS
Thousands of people in Switzerland who were forced into child labour are demanding compensation for their stolen childhoods. Since the 1850s hundreds of thousands of Swiss children were taken from their parents and sent to farms to work - a practice that continued well into the 20th Century.
‘Partition Voices’ – BBC presenter Kavita Puri – stories we must tell…
ASIAN CULTURE VULTURE
It’s been a year-long project and BBC editor Kavita Puri writes about what it means for Britain and those who have now told their remarkable and very often heart-breaking stories…
A Country Divided
and its 70-year legacy
BBC NEWS
Told for the first time - personal stories of horror and humanity from when British rule in India came to a dramatic and violent end, and two nations were born.
The pool of blood that changed my life
BBC NEWS
Suresh Grover's family came to the UK from Kenya in 1966 for a better life and a British education. But what he saw and heard growing up in the 1970s changed him
A Country Divided - How it affected me
BBC NEWS
It was one of the largest migrations the world has ever seen - with at least 10 million people on the move..
I saw them kill maybe 50 people in the village’
THE TIMES
British Asians tell Kavita Puri of the secrets they kept for decades.
Three Pounds in my Pocket: my father and the first Asians in Britain
THE TIMES
I’d heard many £3 tales throughout my childhood. Stories of starting a life with nearly nothing. Of the women who sewed money into the lining of their saris to smuggle a little extra cash into the country. Or the taxi drivers at Heathrow fleecing new Indian arrivals for a quick trip to Southall, despite knowing they all arrived with £3. The stories seemed slightly preposterous. I mean, how could you start a new life in a new country with so little?
'You Can Shout at Us, You Can Do Whatever You Want... We Are Going to Stay Here, We Are British
HUFF POST
Last year I heard the untold story of this pioneer generation - children of the Raj who arrived in a country unused to seeing people from the former colonies on its streets…