In my role as part of UCL Arena we talk a lot about first in family, widening participation, inclusion, diversity, the needs of overseas students etc. This is nothing new and I want to share with you the narrative of someone who flourished despite all the obstacles placed in her way. She is my role model and someone who was first in family, faced discrimination and numerous other challenges when coming to study postgraduate medicine in the UK at a time when the NHS needed doctors and particularly anaesthetists – she is my mother, Dr. Shahbanu Mukadam.
Her journey began in Ahmedabad, Gujarat (India) where she was the youngest of six children and daughter of a land owner.
Her father encouraged her to study (above is her graduation photo – she’s on the far right) and as it was during the time of partition she studied medicine in both Bombay (Grant Medical College) and Delhi (Lady Hardinge Medical College). Her family affectionately call her ‘Shah’ and her colleagues and friends, ‘Banu’. Below she is pictured as a medical student sitting next to Jawaharlal Nehru (India’s first Prime Minister):
and later with the Imam, HH Aga Khan IV, leader of the global Nizari Ismaili Muslim community.
Her journey to the West began from Bombay (now Mumbai) on a ship sailing into Venice where she was accompanied by other qualified doctors heading to England and Ireland to study postgraduate specialisms. They then caught a train to London – enthusiastic and eager to begin their new lives. Like most migrants of that time they had no intention of staying – this was just a year or two to gain further educational experience and then head back home. Life had other ideas for my mother and she was swept off her feet by my father who had come to London from Bombay via East Africa to study architecture. She was so traditional that she sent him to Ahmedabad to ask her father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. After a year, I was born and we have been inseparable ever since:
She followed my father to Zambia, Nigeria, Pakistan and India so that he could pursue his career as an architect (he faced tremendous discrimination and felt suffocated working in a small office in London where his colleagues couldn’t pronounce his name, Amir, and instead for some bizarre reason used to call him ‘Jim’!!). Wherever she went she readily found work and was very successful, but she wanted her children to settle in England so she decided that boarding school was no longer a viable option and moved to the leafy suburbs of Bromley and Chislehurst. Sadly my father passed away at a young age and the responsibility of raising 3 children single handedly fell on my mother. She was now a single parent with no family support, but had some amazing friends, especially Dr. Bala Doshi, Dr. Pali Bhatia, and Dr. Beni Kamdar…doctors like her, working in the NHS. Her hard work and determination enabled my brothers and I to all succeed in life and education was paramount in that journey (between us we have quite a collection including MBBS, MBA and PhD).
On retiring from the NHS she joined St. John’s Ambulance and volunteer work became her mission – she went to the Queen’s garden party, plays at the Churchill Theatre in Bromley, Air shows in Biggin Hill and so much more. She’s still going strong and enjoying life:
We hear of immigrants ‘taking our jobs’, ‘not contributing to society’ and they are generally portrayed as mooching off the State…we saw Rishi Sunak’s story dismissed of how hard his parents worked and struggled – despite becoming Prime Minister he was still labelled a ‘P…’. As part of my PhD I interviewed Lord Parekh who talked about how the first generation were grateful to Britain for taking them in…perhaps Britain needs to show a bit of gratitude to a generation who despite all the barriers stayed and contributed to its wellbeing. A few months back, I went to visit Lord Parekh at The House of Lords, just as I had done all those years back when interviewing him for my PhD, only then I was terribly nervous and dressed in a suit – what do you take for someone like him? I settled on a box of mixed mithai (Indian sweets) from Ambala on Drummond Street (next to Euston station) and wore an Indian kurti (blouse). He looked the elderly statesman and it was a privilege to spend that time with him.
Significant progress has been made since the arrival of the first generation on England’s green and pleasant land; sadly, subsequent generations are still facing discrimination and continue to be judged based on the colour of their skin and cultural heritage. As Indobrits, we have the potential to integrate the strengths of both cultures, and there is a resurgence of pride in our ancestral heritage—now celebrated openly rather than concealed. As William Dalrymple articulates in his recent publication, “Indian learning, Indian religious insights, and Indian ideas are among the crucial insights of our world.”
My mother left India, gave up her Indian passport and is more British than I am, but she shared with us her love for all things Indian – language, music, literature, clothes, cinema, food and above all an ethic of ‘insaniyaat’ इंसानियत (humanity). I would have discarded all of this had I not gone in search of my identity and realised the sacrifice that the first generation had made – it brings tears to my eyes, but it is never too late to reclaim that part of you that’s been hidden and to celebrate its richness without fear of being judged.
I leave you with this poem by Rabindranath Tagore:
চিত্ত যেথা ভয়শূন্য Where the mind is without fear
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.