London:
A unique oral history website has brought to
light several poignant stories of the Indian
diaspora, including those of former Test cricketer
Farrokh Engineer and hockey player Sutinder Khehar,
the first British sportsman of Indian origin to lead
an English team in any sport.
Historytalking.com,
the website, developed by former BBC journalist
Vijay Rana, hosts recordings of first person
narratives of leading personalities in the Indian
diaspora.
Its latest addition is Captain Abbas Ali, an old
Indian National Army (INA) soldier and freedom
fighter. The INA was founded by Netaji Subhas
Chandra Bose.
"I saw Netaji (leader) alive after his
alleged plane crash (in Taiwan)", Ali says in
his talk on the website.
Ali, a graduate from the Aligarh Muslim
University, joined the British Army as a
commissioned officer in 1939. A year later the young
officer was sent to Southeast Asia to fight against
Japan.
But in 1944, after hearing an inspiring speech of
Netaji Bose in Singapore, he joined the INA.
Speaking to Historytalking.com,
he remembers the speech Netaji Bose gave in Yangoon
(then Rangoon), on the tomb of the last Mughal
emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar.
Ali claims that Netaji Bose did not die in the
alleged plane crash in Taiwan in 1945 and adds that
he met Netaji at least 10 days after he is said to
have died.
Among other stories on the website is that of
Virendra 'Sam' Singh, who headed Du Pont's South
Asia operations.
After staying in the US for 35 years, he returned
to his village in India and found it had changed
little since he left it.
He realised it would never change unless
something was done. He opened a school for the girls
of the landless farmers.
He gives free food, free clothes, free education,
free vocational training and Rs.10 a day to the
children to keep them in school. Singh's school has
now 350 girls.
He has so far spent 250,000 pounds on this
project.
Other stories include:
* Cricketer Nasser Hussain was not the first
Asian to lead a national English team; it was
Sutinder Khehar who captained the English hockey
team in the early 1980s.
* If you were an Indian woman in England during
the 1960s and wearing a sari, you would not be
allowed to supervise English staff. Raksha Tandon
was sacked before she could begin her managerial job
only because she refused to abandon her sari in
favour of English dress.
* In the 1960s, the Ealing Council in London had
a policy of having not more than 25 percent Asian
children in a school. To keep the racial balance
right, young Asian kids were sent to schools outside
Ealing.
* After playing an important role in India's
first Test victory at the Oval in 1971,
wicket-keeper Farooq Engineer thought he would be
booed by the Lancashire crowds, where he is settled.
Instead he got a standing ovation.
* Tennis ace John McEnroe could never tolerate a
Sikh, Raghubir Singh Mahajan, umpiring at Wimbledon.
* Legendary Mushtaq Muhammad, the youngest ever
Test player from Pakistan, now lives in Birmingham,
passing on techniques of the trade to the future
Asian stars of English cricket.
The website was launched by veteran Saeed Jaffrey
in June 2003, and aims to create a valuable online
educational resource of oral history.
It invites people to volunteer information,
eyewitness accounts and life experiences about some
of the socially and educationally relevant events,
social trends and cultural themes.
"Most of our contributors are senior
citizens narrating their life experiences. While a
large number of our visitors belong to the web-savvy
younger generation. By bringing them together we
hope to build bridges between the two
generations," says Vijay Rana, editor of Historytalking.com,
told IANS.
New stories appear on the site every week -
stories of courage and determination, stories of
social discrimination and stories of the pioneers of
the social and cultural movements in Britain.
Indo-Asian News Service
