{"id":12327,"date":"2019-12-20T17:00:12","date_gmt":"2019-12-20T08:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/dec\/20\/south-asia-racism-testimonies-hostility"},"modified":"2019-12-20T17:00:12","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T08:00:12","slug":"they-came-from-south-asia-to-help-rebuild-britain-the-racism-they-saw-then-is-back-kavita-puri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=12327","title":{"rendered":"They came from south Asia to help rebuild Britain. The racism they saw then is back | Kavita Puri"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have been recording testimonies of these now-elderly pioneers, who never thought they would have to live through such hostility again<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know what it is to be British any more.\u201d This from a man who is a professor at a prominent university and part of the British establishment. So how did it come to this?<\/p>\n<p>For the past five years I have been interviewing the generation that came from the Indian subcontinent to postwar Britain. These <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/uk-news\/2013\/nov\/06\/britains-asian-past-longer-than-think\" title=\"\">early pioneers<\/a> arrived with as little as \u00a33 due to strict currency controls. They are now elderly people. I have watched as they have grown older, frailer, their voices weaker. Some have died. Their stories are an overlooked part of British history. It\u2019s important to record them before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2019\/dec\/20\/south-asia-racism-testimonies-hostility\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been recording testimonies of these now-elderly pioneers, who never thought they would have to live through such hostility again\u201cI don\u2019t know what it is to be British any more.\u201d This from a man who is a professor at a prominent university and pa&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":789,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[327,528,717,62,4,362,61,52,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bangladesh","category-brexit","category-immigration-and-asylum","category-india","category-politics","category-race","category-south-and-central-asia","category-uk-news","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/789"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12328,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12327\/revisions\/12328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}