Indians forcibly expelled from Uganda
Yet 20 years later, many of their descendants returned
In 1991, I watched a movie about Indian immigrants living in Mississippi, aptly named Mississippi Masala. As a person of Indian heritage living in South Carolina at the time, I related to the movie. I also developed a crush on Denzel Washington, who is frankly beautiful in the film.
The movie also taught me about the expulsion of the Asian community from Uganda by its dictator, Idi Amin.
The parents in the film, Jay and Kinnu, were third-generation Ugandan Indians who hated having to leave beautiful Kampala, which they considered their home. Their daughter, Mina, was a child at the time. While her father dreams of returning to Africa, she becomes fully assimilated into American culture. While her father distrusts black people due to what happened under Amin, Mina falls in love with the delectable Demetrius.
I won’t reveal any spoilers, except to say that if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s worth a watch.
One thing the movie did for me is to raise my awareness of what happened in Uganda, something I’d never known about before. For me, this elevated a poignant love story into something more meaningful. It fed my curiosity as well as highlighting some of the hypocrisies in the Indian…
