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Kavita Puri's hidden histories: the enduring appeal of archaeological sites
"Nothing beats feeling the earth in your hands and uncovering the past", writes Kavita Puri
It was late morning, but already hot enough to warrant wearing a sun hat and sticking to the shade. I was in a quiet part of Andalucía, looking at an archaeological treasure that I visit regularly. However, this time there was more activity than usual. There were scores of people digging, others with notepads, some wearing gloves – all situated in different parts of the site. It was July and students had come from across Europe to take part in excavations. A 35-minute drive from Granada in southern Spain, the hill town of Tózar is located close to La Ruta del Califato (the Route of the Caliphate). Here, the local council recently purchased the archaeological area from a private owner. Investigations started on the land in 2012 when a Mozarabic cemetery was found. Eighty tombs of Christians who lived under Muslim rule in al-Andalus (the Iberian peninsula) were carved into the rock on the highland projecting into the surrounding landscapes. The site was believed to have been used as a cemetery between the ninth and 12th centuries. If you walk below, archaeologists have found another burial chamber, known as Dólmen Pileta de la Zorra, dating from sometime between the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. There are also remnants of ancient agricultural terraces and irrigation systems. Further below is a Mozarabic village. I chatted to the lead archaeologist who told me they recently found a small refuse dump, which she excitedly said revealed what people had eaten, the utensils they used, the tools they worked with. Clues of life. And then she led me to what was once a dwelling. In the ground were three small rectangular holes. Two weeks ago, they discovered the remains of a child in one. She says they think these were graves for babies who had died before they had been baptised, which meant they were buried in the home, rather than in the cemetery above. As she spoke, enthused by the find, she described the moment of discovery, and what it could reveal about the practices and beliefs of the past. It raised so many questions from our group: would it not have been hard for the mother to live so close to her deceased child? Read more | "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history And not far away are trenches and fortifications used during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Tózar was on the Nationalist side, supporting General Franco. It was a frontline town, where the population would have been constantly aware of the presence of Republican soldiers from nearby Moclín. In one small place is so much history. Yet very few people know much about it, as it is way off the tourist trail. In the years that I have been visiting, it is now better maintained and looked after, with signs explaining the finds. The University of Granada is now one of several institutions funding the summer dig, and there seems to be renewed interest in the area and in its historical importance. With advances in digital archaeology such as three-dimensional modelling, the use of databases and virtual reality to aid analysis as well as interpretation, it is an exciting time to be an archaeologist. Applying information technology has, for example, helped in the reconstruction of the Palmyra Arch at the Temple of Baalshamin in Syria. It is also playing a critical role at the site of Herculaneum in Italy, which was preserved in volcanic ash after Mount Vesuvius erupted almost 2,000 years ago. Through the virtual unwrapping of its carbonised scrolls, scholars have been able to work out texts without damaging the delicate artefacts. But as my adventures in Spain remind me, nothing beats the thrill of feeling the earth in your hands and uncovering a remnant from the past – that magical encounter between now and then. This column was first published in the October 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Kavita Puri on VJ Day: "We don't talk about the war in Asia – which was a messy, complicated conflict"
On the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, broadcaster Kavita Puri – presenter of a new BBC Radio 4 series on the Second World War in Asia – considers why this was the conflict’s forgotten theatre
Matt Elton: Your new series, exploring fighting on the Asian front during the Second World War, is called The History Podcast: The Second Map. Why did you choose that name? Kavita Puri: It came to me after I met a man called Peter Knight, who is now 98. At the time of the Japanese attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor [on 7 December 1941], he was a 14-year-old boy living in a terraced house in Bromley, a south-eastern London suburb. He had been following the war in Europe using a map posted on the wall alongside his dresser. After Pearl Harbor, he put up another map on the other side of the dresser – a map of Asia and the Pacific. He would sit down every evening with his mum and grandparents to listen to the BBC bulletin, hearing about places for the first time, and about this other war on the Asian front, in British colonies. And he would trace what was happening on that second map. So he was now updating two maps in tandem: one covering the war in Europe against the Nazis, and the second encompassing the war against Japan in Asia. Why has the war against Nazi Germany come to dominate how we view this conflict, at least partly to the exclusion of the conflict in Asia? I think it’s understandable: that war was close by and involved places whose names were more familiar to people in Britain. And it affected people here more directly: Peter Knight had experienced the Blitz, for example. So the European war was close to home, whereas this other war was far away. It was also a messy, complicated war – and not just because it was fought in jungle terrain, and soldiers were dying of malaria and other diseases as well as in combat. It wasn’t a neat good-v-bad situation, like the war against the Nazis. The war with Japan was essentially about two empires competing with each other, so it’s a much harder story to explain. It also involved a lot of troops from the colonies, as well as from Australia. So again, it’s a story about our empire. Historians such as Rana Mitter, who helped me with the making of this series, argue that actually we should see the origins of the Second World War not in the German invasion of Poland in 1939, but much earlier in the early 1930s, with Japanese activities in China. Another aspect of that war on the ‘second map’ that we still don’t talk about much was the fact that the Chinese also fought with the Allies against Japan in some of the major battles. So do you think we struggle to see the Asian war as also being a story about the British empire? Yes – and I do think that part of the reason we don’t talk about the war in Asia is because many places that were attacked had been part of the British empire for more than a century, and the losses were humiliating. Winston Churchill said as much when Singapore fell in February 1942, describing it as one of the worst military defeats in British history. A lot of the soldiers who fought and won back places such as Burma [now Myanmar] were soldiers from the empire – and sentiments are complicated by the fact that India then won its independence in 1947. In the series, you make the point that the evacuation of Burma isn’t well known. Could you talk us through what happened there? Many people think of the war in Asia and the Pacific in terms of two incidents involving the US: Pearl Harbor, and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki three days later. They don’t really know much about what happened in between. Particularly, one element that’s not often discussed is that British colonies, including Malaya and Singapore, were attacked at almost exactly the same time as Pearl Harbor. Read more | VJ Day: turning the tide in the east Again and again in the oral testimonies, I heard how the British saw themselves as racially superior. I think it was hard for them to understand how their colonies could be overrun by people that they considered inferior. Yet as well as possessing superior tanks and aircraft, the Japanese also used bicycles: they were nimble and they moved very, very quickly. Not only was the loss of Malaya and Singapore humiliating, but it resulted in the capture of around 130,000 British and Indian troops and other colonial and Commonwealth soldiers as prisoners of war. Then Japan set its sights on Burma. Rangoon [now Yangon] fell in March 1942, and the rest of the country was lost as early as May. The result was that soldiers had to trek across vast stretches of terrain in a devastating retreat. General William Slim, who later commanded the Fourteenth Army in Burma, described men who were just completely exhausted. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/TOPFOTO-0035936webready-3a6fee8.jpg" width="1500" height="1151" alt="A black and white photograph showing a small group of people walking across a barren landscape, carrying their belongings on their heads" title="Refugees – many of whom had to flee barefoot carrying anything they could – cross into British lines during the Japanese invasion of Burma (Image by TopFoto)" /> It wasn’t just soldiers retreating, but also colonial civilians – Europeans and Indians, about a million of whom had been working in Burma. Along with some Burmese who were afraid of Japanese reprisals, they headed for India. But the evacuation was quite racialised. White British and European people were given priority and assistance. If you were Indian or Burmese, particularly if you didn’t have means, you were on your own. And that journey was so difficult: it involved walking barefoot with whatever you could carry across very challenging terrain, much of it jungle. You had very little food. You might encounter crocodiles or elephants. An estimated 600,000 refugees were on the move but, though it was such a major event, there was so much going on – not only in that region but in the wider war – that this story has often been obscured in popular memory. It was really quite difficult for me to find testimonies of people who had made that journey. Why have stories of this event not been told before? Partly because most refugees arrived in Bengal, where a terrible famine was developing. If you were an Indian or Burmese person, you were just one of many trying to survive. In addition, that was a tumultuous time in India. There was the famine, the Quit India movement, and the Great Calcutta Killings [deadly riots in 1946], then the violence in the run-up to partition – when, again, millions were on the move, a million people died and two new countries were created. So the story has been obscured in India, even though many Indian nationalists were infuriated at the racialised nature of the evacuation from Burma. It became one of the causes underpinning the Quit India campaign. In Britain, too, it’s a very difficult part of our war story to recall: not just the retreat and defeat, but also the racialised aspect undermining the moral underpinnings of empire. In the series, you speak to relatives of people held in prisoner-of-war camps, including civilians. Can you tell us about the experiences of Shelagh Brown? Shelagh was 25 when the Japanese took Singapore, where she’d been born and had lived all her life. And hers had been a grand life, like lots of colonial families. Before the invasion, Singapore had been largely untouched by the war, unlike Britain. But it was bombed just a couple of hours after Pearl Harbor, and life changed very quickly for her. Even at that point, though, she didn’t think she would have to leave. It was only when British soldiers began to cross the causeway, retreating from Malaya, that her family realised things were really serious and tried to evacuate Shelagh and her mother. They got on a small boat, hoping to get to Australia, but were bombed from the air. Shelagh was adrift at sea for 19 hours before Japanese forces caught her and she was interned for the rest of the war. In fact, it wasn’t until six weeks after the war had ended that news reached the internment camp. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/TOPFOTO-0917695webready-2c046ed.jpg" width="1500" height="1091" alt="A black and white photograph of women sitting around a table, picking" title="Smiles belie the cruel reality of the Kampong Makassar internment camp in the Dutch East Indies. Survivors who experienced trauma often didn’t talk about it after the war. But also, says Kavita Puri, “people didn’t ask” (Image by TopFoto)" /> She died some time ago, but her daughter shared some cassette tapes (never broadcast before) on which Shelagh told her story of survival while being moved from camp to camp. It’s difficult to listen to, particularly because Shelagh’s mother died in the camps, but it’s also remarkable – particularly in how the women kept up their spirits. Shelagh had been in a choir, and her father had been the choir master. So the women formed a vocal orchestra, which was really moving: she said that the notes they were singing were the only free things they had. The Japanese guards would stand outside and listen, and were moved by what they heard. Another way that she dealt with the situation was that she somehow got hold of little bits of paper on which she wrote lavish recipes in minute detail, like cakes with 12 eggs. The funny thing is that her daughter said Shelagh had never cooked before in her life, because she had servants in Singapore. But because they were really malnourished, it was just a way to deal with their hunger. So it’s an emotionally complicated story. And the stories of women like her haven’t really been well remembered. Can you tell us about the experiences of Ursula Graham Bower? Ursula’s incredible story is told in an interview with her that we found in the archives. A young woman from north London, at the start of the war she was in her mid-twenties, working as an anthropologist in the tribal regions of north-east India near the border with Burma. She was living with a group called the Nagas when Pearl Harbor was bombed, after which she was recruited to work with Naga people gathering intelligence, monitoring what was happening across the border. Read more | Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Many south Asian diasporic families don’t know of their First World War links" When the Japanese tried to invade India at Imphal and Kohima in 1944, she found herself on the front line. She cabled headquarters to request weapons – and a box arrived containing grenades and guns – and she used them fearlessly. She was a remarkably brave woman – but so were the Naga people who fought alongside her. Military historian Peter Johnston says that the Fourteenth Army was possibly the greatest that Britain ever put into the field. Why don’t we hear more about the story of this ‘Forgotten Army’? The Fourteenth Army was formed after the defeats of Singapore and Malaya. It mostly comprised colonial soldiers – predominantly Indians, but also soldiers from west and east Africa as well. By the end of the conflict, it numbered around a million troops. By then, the British had learned lessons about how to lead these soldiers, who were treated much better than colonial troops had been previously. The extraordinary battles that they fought in such challenging terrain, and the conditions that they endured, are remarkable. Even at the time, people such as Lord Mountbatten and even the army’s commander, General Slim, joked that it was a forgotten army, fighting a far-away war. Partly, that’s because the Burma campaign and the battles at Imphal and Kohima were fought around the time of the Normandy landings, which of course dominated the headlines. I think there is probably a racialised aspect to it, too. The majority of soldiers in the Fourteenth Army were colonial subjects. Equally, I spoke to children of some of the soldiers in the Fourteenth Army, and they didn’t talk about it much, either. After independence, people in India and Pakistan found it hard to remember their soldiers who had fought with the British – that was not the story they wanted to tell about the Second World War. Another factor is that the collection of oral histories hasn’t been done much in India or Pakistan. The Imperial War Museum has been trying to gather oral testimonies, but it’s very late now – most of the people involved have died. There are some really important stories that we will never capture now. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/TOPFOTO-1060579webready-f742b9a.jpg" width="1500" height="1931" alt="A photo of a man dressed in a khaki military uniform and hat, with a pair of binoculars hanging around his neck. In the background, the sky is blue and a blurry group of people" title="General Slim joked that he was leading “a forgotten army fighting a far-away war” (Image by TopFoto)" /> Was there a turning point when people in Britain started to find out about these wartime experiences? I’m not sure that ever happened. When I tell people that I’m working on a series about VJ Day, most people ask: what’s that? Or: is that the American War? Yet there are thousands of homes in Britain where a family member was part of this story but didn’t talk about it. I was interviewing one 98-year-old veteran, when he said to me: “I’ve got a suitcase in my study. Why don’t you go and have a look?” His daughter said: “I didn’t know about this suitcase.” I don’t know if that generation didn’t talk about it because they saw difficult things, or if they just thought, well, everyone has a war story, what’s the point of talking about mine? Or perhaps because people wanted to hear about the war in Europe. Shelagh Brown’s daughter told me that she was the only one she knew in Chichester who put out a flag for the 75th anniversary of VJ Day – no one else knew why. I think broadly people don’t know about the war in Asia, what it was about, why it was a British war, and how our country was connected to it. Yet many south Asians in postwar Britain had their own connections to that war, too, as well as British families. One thing I’ve realised making these programmes is that each generation asks different questions about the Second World War. But it’s a race against time to capture these memories – and, it pains me to say, it’s almost too late now. How is the war remembered in Japan? Are these kinds of conversations happening there at all? It was very important for me to include Japanese voices in the series. I found recorded testimony from a young kamikaze pilot in his early twenties. He was just a kid who was told that he had to undertake this mission. He wanted to do good things for his country, but he also wanted to live. He wanted to get married, have a normal life. But, interestingly, Japan doesn’t really remember the Asian war, focusing instead on the war in the Pacific. They see the conflict particularly through the prism of America, because the US rehabilitated Japan very, very quickly after the war. During the Tokyo War Crimes Trials [1946–48], Emperor Hirohito was not part of proceedings, and he built the pacifist constitution in the postwar years. An expert I spoke to for the series observed that it took decades for the Japanese people to talk about the atrocities that their forces committed, and that talking about war memory has become very politicised. But he does say that the new generation is looking at it in a different way. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/Bridgeman244259webready-47b2ee0.jpg" width="1500" height="1154" alt="A black and white photograph shows a group of British Indian Army soldiers huddled together, preparing weapons" title="British Indian Army soldiers during the battle of Kohima, 1944. This was one of the great Allied victories of the war, but it is not widely known today (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Now that few from the generation who lived through those events are still alive, maybe the Japanese today are freer to talk about things they weren’t able to before. For example, when their soldiers came back, they were traumatised and humiliated. They were told not to talk about it. And the children of those families are now opening up about the levels of domestic violence inflicted by some of those men. It can free you up to talk and ask some really difficult questions about your country and the people who led it at the time. So many of those who took part in the war in Asia found it difficult to talk about these events – as you say in the series, it’s almost like a confession for them. Is that one reason why it remains obscure in the countries involved? It was hard to talk about for lots of reasons, not least the traumatic nature of the events. Whether you were a PoW or a civilian, or witnessed action in battle, it was difficult. So people who came back home didn’t talk – but, also, people didn’t ask. I’ve spoken to family members who were explicitly told not to ask. Read more | "The war without an end": what happened in Europe after VE Day? When one PoW, Maurice Naylor, returned home to Manchester, his family were advised not to talk to him about his experiences – that it would be too much for him. His daughter found some sketches that he’d made. She asked her mother: what is this? And her mother said: don’t ask your father – he was in a PoW camp, and he has nightmares. She thought it had been a Nazi concentration camp, because that was the only kind she knew about. She didn’t even know that there were Japanese PoW camps. So one generation was told not to ask. But I would also say that not only do you need a public space for people to speak, but people also have to know what to ask. If your children are not learning about it in school, and if collectively we don’t know about that history, we won’t know the questions to pose. And now, because people didn’t ask, there is often a sense of regret. That’s what I meant by confession. They know something happened. They know a relative saw something, and it was probably not a good thing. I think there is a guilt in not having asked – and now not being able to ask. Were there other factors that added to the complications of remembering this story? Perhaps one reason is the simplified narrative we tell ourselves about our war: we fought the Nazis, and they were bad; we were good, and we were heroic. And that’s not wrong – but there was also this other war that we fought, and we need to understand that – not least because it touched many thousands of families in Britain. This article was first published in the September 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "A UK museum that tells the long, rich history of migration is long overdue"
Kavita Puri on explorations of the migrant experience
If you gaze up at the skyline in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, you might spot a new addition. Made from stainless-steel panels and shaped like a rollercoaster, the Tornado sits on top of the city’s newly opened Fenix, a museum that tells the story of human migration. Visitors climb to the distinctive Tornado up a sweeping staircase at the museum’s entrance, along a meandering route that represents the many different journeys people take to reach their destinations. On arriving at the viewing platform, you can take in a panoramic view of the city and its waterways where millions of Europeans once boarded ships in Europe’s largest port, many of them leaving for a new life in the US. Today, Rotterdam is home to more than 170 nationalities. It’s an interesting choice to open a museum to migration at a time when the subject has become so toxic, not least in the Netherlands. Designed by the Chinese firm MAD Architects, the museum displays have exhibits including thousands of suitcases, images of refugees, and a life-sized city bus. Perhaps reasoned discussions about migration can be inspired by art. Read more | "Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history This is not the first European museum dedicated to migration: they exist in many countries, including Germany, Sweden, Greece, Italy, Poland and France. So it is surprising that the UK does not have a permanent migration museum, only one that has spent years in makeshift venues. After all, millions of people have left Britain over the centuries, not least during the building of its empire, while inward migration – particularly during the postwar years – has shaped our language, culture, cuisine and art. Until recently, you could visit the Migration Museum in its temporary home in Lewisham Shopping Centre, housed in a former H&M store between Foot Locker and TK Maxx. Outside the entrance stood a sculpture entitled Wall, comprising two panels from the Berlin Wall painted by artists. During its five years in Lewisham, the museum displayed significant exhibitions including Taking Care of Business: Migrant Entrepreneurs and the Making of Modern Britain. In listening booths (repurposed H&M changing rooms), visitors could hear oral histories recounted by local businesspeople, including one Italian who ran a delicatessen and described how different Lewisham was from Puglia. More well-known voices including Lord Bilimoria who, frustrated by the lagers on offer at Indian restaurants, created his own hugely successful beer, Cobra. There was also an impressive installation replicating a Chinese takeaway. Read more | How has migration changed the world? Lewisham has a hugely diverse population, and in 1977 saw members of the far-right National Front clash with anti-racist protesters on its streets. It’s fitting, then, that the Migration Museum was embedded in the heart of that community – a place where anyone could feel comfortable, especially those who may never have crossed the threshold of a museum before. It has now closed, though, and the mall is being redeveloped. A permanent Migration Museum is planned for a new site in the City of London, which has been donated by a British Sikh entrepreneur. It’s due to open in 2028. The new space will span three floors, covering nearly 3,000 square metres. Members of the curatorial team are currently discussing how they might approach the project, including how they can co-curate with local communities. Subjects for temporary exhibitions might include local migrant stories from around the City, climate refugees, the role of humour in the migrant experience, and how protest has driven change. The story of migration in these islands is a long one, written by those who left and those who came. Britain today has been shaped by movements of people in both directions. A museum that tells this long and rich history – a shared story, one of interconnectedness – is long overdue. It does not need to be divisive, but can be a reflection and recognition of who we are today. This column was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
"Museums are magical places": Kavita Puri on a new initiative encouraging close encounters with history
Kavita Puri on a groundbreaking museum initiative by the V&A
Museums are magical places. They are the keepers of so many histories and stories from near and far. However, there’s a large part of every museum that most people never see. Behind the scenes lies another world: one of conservation, upkeep, research and the moving around of collections, perhaps for an exhibition or to loan to another museum. But what if you could walk around those areas in which objects are stored and restored? What if you could hold the object that you wanted to study or observe up close? That’s now possible in the new V&A East Storehouse in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. This huge space spanning four levels is home to some 250,000 objects and 350,000 books from the museum’s collection. Its 1,000 archives document a diverse array of subjects, including the Glastonbury Festival and the world of theatre and performance. Read more | Michael Wood on the future of the Parthenon Sculptures Dotted throughout the building are 100 mini-displays on topics ranging from resistance movements to the artistry of east London, charting how and why items are collected and preserved, and outlining the latest scholarship on their stories. They also explore the ways in which archives and collections are part of creative expression and understanding, and how we describe and contextualise the past. The workings of museum practice are made transparent here. As a trustee of the V&A, I have been watching this remarkable and ambitious project unfold across recent years. I’ve admired the extraordinary care taken in all aspects of the process, from the moving and installation of objects to consideration of how the visitor experience can be enhanced. The first object moved into the V&A East Storehouse was a very large installation. It’s a significant example of brutalism: a two-storey section of a maisonette from Robin Hood Gardens. This housing estate in Poplar, east London, was completed in 1972 and demolished from 2017 as part of the redevelopment of the area. Now viewable from different angles and heights, the maisonette is sure to provoke further debate about urbanism and the interplay between people and architecture. The last object to be brought to the site, meanwhile, was an 11-metre-wide backdrop by Pablo Picasso for the 1924 Ballets Russes production Le Train Bleu. It’s rarely been seen before because of its huge size (and the fact that it weighs 350kg!), but a special gallery has been built in the Storehouse to exhibit large textiles and stage exhibits such as this magnificent example. Read more | Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Samba schools used the carnival to foreground overlooked histories" There are many other significant objects displayed here that will catch your breath. You can stand under the vast, late 15th-century Torrijos Ceiling, taken from the Palacio de Altamira near Toledo in Spain, and gaze up in wonder at its carved and gilded designs that nod to Islamic artistic tradition. And you can admire the marble arches of the Agra Colonnade, built in India in the mid-17th century, during the Mughal period. Possibly the Storehouse’s most pioneering innovation, though, is its Order an Object service. Anyone can book a one-to-one encounter with an item from the collection, whether it’s an ancient Egyptian shoe, a costume by performance artist Leigh Bowery, a Japanese tea ceremony set, or a print by the pioneering designer Althea McNish. This concept is a world first. To be able to experience the materiality of an object – to touch or see it close up, previously possible only for museum practitioners – is a game changer. It will shift the relationship between the audience and the collection, and it’s hoped that it will also inspire creativity and encourage new questions. With the museum practice opened up for all to see, to witness, even to hold, this offers an entirely new way to be part of the magic. This column was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Samba schools used the carnival to foreground overlooked histories"
Kavita Puri on the important role of carnivals in remembering neglected histories
I was recently in Rio de Janeiro, in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, admiring some of the brightly coloured floats that had featured in this year’s world-famous carnival. Each spring, just before the start of Lent, hundreds of thousands of people attend the parades in the city’s Sambadrome stadium and enjoy watching the floats. Like pieces of art many metres high, they are designed and intricately handmade in Rio’s numerous escolas de samba (samba schools), each strongly identified with a local neighbourhood. The schools are organised into leagues for the carnival, during which they compete for the prestigious design award. Pre-Lenten festivities in Brazil began in the early 18th century, during the Portuguese colonial era. The Catholic influence is evident in the name of the event, which is believed to derive from the Latin carnem vale (farewell to meat) or carnem levare (remove meat), referring to the 40-day period of abstinence leading up to Easter. It’s said that the earliest form of the festivities in Brazil evolved from the pre-Lenten Entrudo, celebrated by immigrants from other Portuguese colonies on the Azores, Madeira and Cabo Verde. During that festival, people soaked each other with buckets of water and hurled mud and food, wreaking cheery mayhem that often degenerated into street brawls. Read more | Brazil: a society shaped by slavery In the 19th century, more organised parades attracted elite participants: even the Portuguese emperor joined in the celebrations, together with aristocrats wearing masks and extravagant costumes. Carnival balls were arranged, with music from Europe such as polkas and waltzes becoming popular. By the middle of that century, street parades with horse-drawn floats and military bands had become the focal points. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that samba – the music and dance style most strongly associated with carnival today – was developed by Afro-Brazilians whose ancestors had been transported to South America, many of them enslaved, over the preceding centuries. Brazil declared independence from Portugal in 1822, but slavery was not abolished there until 1888 – more than 65 years later. One of the first escolas de samba was established in 1928 in the barrio (district) of Mangueira, a little west of the city’s historic centre. More soon sprang up, enjoying strong community links – particularly in the poorer favelas (shanty towns), where they offered people a way to come together and organise themselves while avoiding police oppression. The schools’ theme songs and floats became outlets for political expression, voicing concerns about dictatorship, hunger, the environment, education – and, perhaps most tellingly, the Afro-Brazilian experience, social inequalities and indigenous rights. The schools have also used appearances in the competition – now held in the Sambadrome stadium built for the purpose in 1984 – to foreground overlooked histories. Last year, the Portela school highlighted the extraordinary story of Luíz Gama. Born in 1830 to a trafficked African woman, he escaped enslavement and went on to become a lawyer (in fact, he is considered by many to be Brazil’s first black lawyer) and a leading abolitionist. His story was retold through four incarnations of his figure on a float. Watched live by tens of thousands of spectators in the Sambadrome and broadcast around the country, it introduced him to a vast new audience. Read more | Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "We mustn’t overlook the toll of surfacing traumatic histories" The music, dance, costumes and extraordinary floats of carnival represent a huge source of local pride. The schools spend much of each year raising money, working in the communities, and planning and preparing for the next competition. Though a joyous and hugely fun event for all, Rio’s carnival plays an important role in highlighting long-neglected stories, histories and issues. This column was first published in the June 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Social taboos are violated: a parent must decide which child to feed"
Kavita Puri on the urgent need to commemorate historical famines
During the Second World War, Deaths related to hunger matched or outnumbered military losses. Famines afflicted regions including the Soviet Union, China, India, Vietnam and Greece. Yet those who perished are rarely remembered in the same way as fallen soldiers. Starvation is not relegated to the past. The latest UN Hunger Hotspots report identifies places of highest concern as Haiti, Mali, Sudan, South Sudan and Palestine. Sadly, the list of countries where hunger persists is much longer, with violence and conflict the key drivers. Professor Alex de Waal, research professor at Tufts University and a leading expert on famine, explains that part of the reason famines are not remembered and memorialised is that the experience is so painful to recount, and so full of shame, that people want to forget it. In extremis, social taboos are violated: a parent must decide which child to feed; a neighbour refuses to give food to a neighbour; forbidden foods are eaten; people sell their bodies to survive; some profit from scarcity. The authorities who engineered a famine, or who neglected the population, have no reason to remember it, either. Read more | Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "We mustn’t overlook the toll of surfacing traumatic histories" In Ireland, it wasn’t until some 150 years after the start of the Great Famine, which began with an outbreak of potato blight in 1845, that victims were widely memorialised. Around a million people died – from a population of fewer than 9 million – and close to 2 million emigrated in a bid to survive. An expression of remorse by the British government of its role in the famine came only as recently as 1997, though there is still debate about whether the statement issued on behalf of then prime minister Tony Blair constituted an apology. Monuments to the victims and those who fled the country are now dotted around Ireland, Northern Ireland and Britain – though none are in London. There are also significant memorials in places to which Irish people emigrated, mostly the US, Canada and Australia. In Ukraine, many millions died during the 1932–33 famine known as the Holodomor (literally ‘death by hunger’), the result of Stalin’s policy of forced agricultural collectivisation. Under the Soviet regime, the subject was taboo; after independence in 1991, though, the famine became central to Ukraine’s nation-building project. There are now Holodomor memorials across Ukraine as well as in the countries in which its diaspora settled, including the US and Canada. Starvation as a weapon of war was not criminalised in the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which governed the treatment of combatants and civilians during conflicts. The first step to revise that was an additional protocol introduced in 1977 stating that “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited”. Just over two decades later, an article in the Rome Statute of the International Court proscribed “intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival”, making it a war crime. To date, there have been no successful prosecutions for such acts. Read more | Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Many are turning against prejudice. But we cannot be complacent" The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, developed in 2004, identifies five phases of deprivation, with 5 being the most extreme, designated ‘Famine/Humanitarian Catastrophe’. The UN has voted that action is mandated only at Phase 5 – when families are at or beyond breaking point, when taboos have already been violated to find food, when widespread malnutrition has set in and mortality rates are high. Critics say that point is far too late. Memorials to famines are, de Waal says, exceptions to the rule, yet he believes that there is a connection between remembering famines and preventing them. In this 80th anniversary year of the end of the Second World War, as we commemorate those who fought and died in the conflict, we could start by remembering those millions who also perished through starvation. This column was first published in the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
“Some say that the first Jews sailed here on King Solomon’s ships”: Kavita Puri on India's long Jewish history
Kavita Puri explores lesser-known stories from our past. This month she explores the long-standing but now dwindling Jewish community of Kochi
In the warm winter sun of Mattancherry, a district of Kochi in Kerala, I wandered the labyrinthine streets of Jew Town. The main thoroughfare, Synagogue Lane, is lined with shops sporting names such as Shalom, some displaying the Star of David in their windows, and selling Kashmiri shawls, spices and handicrafts. This is the historical heart of India’s Jewish community – though today there are hardly any Jews living here. Kochi (formerly Cochin) has a centuries-long Jewish presence. The date of the earliest arrivals is debated; some say that the first Jews sailed to south India on the ships of King Solomon some 30 centuries ago. Certainly, references to Jewish traders in India have been found in documents dating back to the eighth and ninth centuries AD, kept in a synagogue genizah (storage area) in Cairo. A number of Jews settled in the ancient trading port of Kodungallur (formerly Cranganore) and, from the 14th century, dispersed; many moved to Kochi, around 20 miles to the south. Over the following centuries, European Jews, known in the local Malayalam language as Paredesi (literally, ‘foreigners’), began to arrive in India. Many of them were refugees fleeing the Iberian peninsula during the Spanish Inquisition and following the expulsion of Jews in 1492. Over later centuries, more Jews came from western Europe, as well as from north Africa and the Middle East. At its height, Kochi’s Jewish community numbered around 2,000 members. In the 19th century, though, some began leaving to pursue opportunities in Bombay (now Mumbai), and Calcutta (now Kolkata), and then, from 1948, to live permanently in the newly created state of Israel. The Paradesi Synagogue, built in 1568 by Sephardic Jews, still stands next to Mattancherry Palace. As you enter the courtyard today, you can see that it shares a wall with a Hindu temple. The synagogue remains open for visitors and for worship, and is cared for by the local Indian community. The small but colourful interior features hand-painted 18th-century Chinese floor tiles and grand Belgian chandeliers. It also preserves engraved copper plates from the Hindu ruler of Kodungallur, given to a Jewish leader in around AD 1000. The last major celebration held here was in 2018, when the synagogue marked its 450th anniversary. Some 150 émigré members of the Paradesi Jewish community arrived from their homes across the world to mark the occasion. Generations of family members who had only heard stories of the synagogue came to visit, and to walk the same streets that their ancestors had strolled decades and centuries earlier. The oldest member of India’s Paradesi Jewish community, Sarah Cohen, died a year later, a few days short of her 97th birthday. Her embroidery shop still stands in Mattancherry, and still bears her name. It’s now looked after by Thaha Ibrahim, a Muslim who had known Sarah and her husband for decades. He looked after her in her old age, and was treated by the couple as their son. He carries on her legacy today in the same place she lived, making embroidery following her patterns. The Paradesi Synagogue is the only one out of eight in Kerala that is regularly active. I was told that the current rabbi is from overseas, and that the congregation for the Friday night service is typically made up of émigré Jewish visitors. A portion of the Torah scrolls is read every Shabbat and during religious holidays, retrieved from the silver cases in which the synagogue’s texts are kept. These cases are topped with gold crowns, some of which were gifts from local maharajas. Though Kochi’s long-standing Jewish community has largely gone, their memories and ancient traditions are kept alive still. This column was first published in the April 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Many are turning against prejudice. But we cannot be complacent"
Kavita Puri explores lesser-known stories from our past. This month she explores how the far-right violence seen across the UK in the summer of 2024 fits in with the history of race riots, and the fight against racism troubling history of racist attacks in Britain
Far-right violence erupted across Britain following the horrific mass stabbing of children in Southport on 29 July. Attacks in towns and cities were driven by anti-immigrant sentiment, racism and Islamophobia, and fuelled by misinformation on social media about the Southport murderer. As I watched news reports, I heard words being said out loud that many of us had not heard for years. I saw shops vandalised, mosques attacked. And I thought of the people I have interviewed, and the memories that these scenes would have brought back. The generation who came from the colonies (or who were once colonial subjects) invited to Britain after the Second World War to do the hard jobs – the worst shifts in the factories, or in the newly established National Health Service (NHS) – went through so much to be accepted. They began the long and ongoing struggle for equality. Then their children, who were confronted by overt racism and violence, even murder – like that of teenager Gurdip Singh Chaggar, stabbed to death in Southall in 1976 – took to the streets, alongside black Britons and white anti-racists, to defy the National Front. Read more | “London is the place for me”: David Olusoga on the Windrush generation I’m reminded of something one of my interviewees told me after riots that flared in 2001 in Oldham, where the British National Party and National Front were agitating among British south Asian communities. Abdul was a youth worker in Oldham whose family had come from Bangladesh in the 1970s. Back then, his dad had stood up to the National Front, and he himself had faced bitter racism at school in the 1980s. “There’ve been times when we thought: should we up and go?” he told me. “But the question is: where do you go? This is your home. We fought for this country – my forefathers were in the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War. So we’ve got a stake in this country. We don’t just take – we give.” When things flare up he experiences a familiar feeling. “Once again, you think about whether you’re welcome here, and about the anxiety and the stress that you have to go through,” he says. “And then you think: when is it going to end?” Race riots have a long history. Some of the earliest and most significant occurred after the First World War, and were reported on in the national papers. In 1919, a series of violent riots in Glasgow, South Shields, Salford, London, Hull, Newport, Barry, Liverpool and Cardiff saw street fights and properties vandalised. Five people were reported dead. Huge crowds of white working-class people in these towns and cities directed anger at postwar employment shortages towards black and minority ethnic communities, blaming colonial workers invited to Britain to meet wartime shipping needs. Later, in 1958, race riots broke out in Notting Hill after 10 white youths committed serious assaults on six West Indian men in four incidents. They were part of wider unrest fuelled by resentment at the growth in the West Indian community in London. This came after the 1948 British Nationality Act created the status of Citizen of the UK and Colonies, smoothing the recruitment of workers from places such as the Caribbean. These riots, which lasted around a week, resulted in more than 100 arrests. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/GettyImages-2659500cmyk-02ae4a8-e1731923050539.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Protesters march in Whitehall after the 1959 murder of a young Antiguan, Kelso Cochrane, by a gang of white youths in Notting Hill (Photo by John Franks/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="Protesters march in Whitehall after the 1959 murder of a young Antiguan, Kelso Cochrane, by a gang of white youths in Notting Hill (Photo by John Franks/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> Yet though the recent events feel disheartening and regressive, seeing the thousands who took to the streets peacefully in anti-racist protests was both moving and hopeful. Many reports show a dramatic shift as people, across generations, turn against prejudice. But we cannot be complacent. Perhaps if the longer history of empire and immigration was better understood, the people attacked – some of whom were born here, some from families who have lived here for three generations – would be recognised as being as British as the far-right attackers, even though their skin colour might not be the same. I hope there will be a time when the descendants of empire do not have to ask themselves: “When is it going to end?” This article was first published in the November 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "I wish that there was no need for specialist history months"
Kavita Puri explores lesser-known stories from our past. This month she questions why we celebrate diverse histories only at particular times in the UK – like Black History Month in October and South Asian Heritage Month in July and August – rather than all year round
South Asian Heritage Month (SAHM) is celebrated each year from 18 July to 17 August, although it is still a relatively new addition to the calendar. Incredibly, 2024 marked only its fourth edition. I well remember its inception. In 2017, the TV documentary My Family, Partition and Me aired on BBC One. One of its strands followed SAHM co-founder Binita Kane as she retraced the journey taken by her father, Bim Bhowmick, from East Pakistan – now Bangladesh – to India in 1947. It was a deeply affecting programme, and a transformative moment for her. Binita had grown up in Wales and had previously known little of her father’s history – the story of his migration across a border, but also of the devastating loss of family members during the partition of British India. After participating in that programme, she made it her mission (alongside her day job as a doctor) to make sure that no one else ever felt cheated of their history. I’ve watched how, in a short space of time since its launch, SAHM has gained momentum, its reach expanding from museums to blue-chip companies and media organisations as staff hold sessions on British south Asian history and culture. It is long overdue. First marked in 1987, UK Black History Month is now well established, particularly in schools. That is not the case for SAHM. It’s not helped by the fact that the designated month runs from mid-July to mid-August – timed to coincide with the anniversary of India’s independence from British colonial rule on 15 August 1947, and the creation of India and Pakistan, but outside the school term. The 2021 census revealed that British Asians are the largest ethnic minority group in Britain. Yet we are only now starting to understand British south Asian history more widely, let alone its complex nature. Rather than one homogeneous subject, it encompasses various south Asian countries, regional histories and socio-economic factors affecting different populations in Britain in different ways over the years. South Asians have had a presence in the UK since as early as 1600. Rozina Visram’s seminal 2002 book Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History tells this longer history, beginning with the early settlers brought to Britain as employees of the East India Company, which was granted a royal charter by Elizabeth I. The first arrivals were mostly servants but also lascars – seamen who came to ports such as Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool and London. Exploring these histories is important. I wish, though, that there were no need for ‘months’. It would be better if British black and south Asian history simply became part of talking about British history. So, when learning about the Suffragette movement, we would hear about the significant contribution of Sophia Duleep Singh (1876–1948). When teaching working-class history, we would share the story of Shapurji Saklatvala, MP for Battersea, who spoke out passionately on behalf of those living in poverty in the interwar years. And when exploring Second World War history we would encounter the story of Noor Inayat Khan, who was sent from London to work as a secret agent with the French resistance before being captured by the Gestapo and executed in September 1944. These are part of wider British history, not only British south Asian history. On her mantlepiece in Manchester, Binita Kane keeps a vial containing soil from east Bengal, where her father was born as a subject of the Raj. He later migrated to Britain, where he worked for many decades as a doctor in the NHS. His story embodies the point that the history of Britain and south Asia is long and intertwined. It is time we better understood this shared history, not least because it helps us comprehend contemporary Britain. And it would be nice if this focus wasn’t limited to just one month each year. This article was first published in the September 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "We mustn’t overlook the toll of surfacing traumatic histories"
Kavita Puri explores lesser-known stories from our past. This month she considers the emotional trauma that historians can endure while researching the most horrific events of the past, and talk about the unspeakable
I’ve been researching a new project and have just finished one of the most harrowing books I have ever read: Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. Written in 1997, and drawing on interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Chang chronicled the devastating weeks during the Second Sino-Japanese War in December 1937 when the Imperial Japanese army swept into the ancient Chinese city of Nanking (now called Nanjing). What followed was the systematic rape and torture of tens of thousands of Chinese civilians. What is so disturbing about the book is the excruciating detail Chang goes into of the crimes inflicted. I imagine she didn’t shirk from including the specificity of what the victims endured because she wanted to document the horror in its totality, and leave it for the public record. But there were points at which I could not continue reading. The book was a sensation. It made me think of the toll that researching, interviewing survivors, documenting, editing and promoting the book must have had on Chang, as well as the responsibility to do justice to the victims. Years later, in 2004, Chang was working on another book about another Japanese war crime, featuring the stories of Filipinos and Americans forced to travel across the Philippines on the 1942 Bataan Death March. One morning, Chang took her own life at the age of 36, after experiencing depression. It’s impossible to know what connection, if any, there was to her work. Read more | From the Napoleonic Wars to Vietnam and Iraq: a history of war trauma The author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera, in his 2024 book Empireworld, considers the impact that reading about colonial violence has on historians who analyse such accounts on an almost daily basis. He quotes James Robins, author of 2020’s When We Dead Awaken: Australia, New Zealand, and the Armenian Genocide, who lost the ability to fall comfortably asleep during the five years he spent studying that subject and had uncovered “a reservoir of pain” among scholars of such events. Writing in the The New Republic, Robins documents the symptoms experienced by historians involved in traumatic research, including “insomnia, rapid weight gain or loss, abuse of booze or pills, unexplainable anger or fear, paralysing anxieties”. “Some reactions,” he continues, “are more subtle: the sudden unwillingness to watch a particular film or read graphic news reports, claustrophobia in a crowd. Traditionally, we’ve supposed that these kinds of reactions would afflict only first-hand witnesses to violence: the victims, the bystanders, maybe the journalists… Historians, by contrast, have neither seen nor heard the catastrophes they study – they’ve reached them through imagination and immersion.” Robins is not alone in hearing these kinds of stories. I’ve spoken to fellow oral historians about the heaviness that comes from collecting traumatic testimonies, and from sifting through archival accounts of the worst of crimes. It doesn’t make for great small talk when you’re asked what you do for a living. I remember, at one of the first events that were held to publicise my book based on recordings of first-hand partition testimonies, being asked by an audience member about the impact of hearing so many harrowing accounts. I was completely floored. What my interviewees had gone through was far, far worse than listening to them. Although I still believe that, I am now less dismissive of the emotional effect of documenting such stories and events. Many factors shape which histories are remembered and recorded. One reason some histories remain hidden for as long as they do is that testimonies recounting horrific crimes are too awful: too awful to research, to say out loud, to hear or to collectively acknowledge. This is all the more true when they bring up questions of shame, guilt or justice. Historians can take some solace in the redemptive nature of surfacing these histories, but we mustn’t overlook the toll it takes on the bearer. This article was first published in the July 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine