Co-founder of South Asian Heritage Month says 'we don't want the month to exist'

The co-founder of South Asian Heritage Month has said that commemoration months exist because of the lack of knowledge about these communities.

Dr Binita Kane is a respiratory consultant at the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) and co-founded South Asian Heritage Month (SAHM) after taking part in a journey to find out more about her heritage.

After visiting Bangladesh where her father was born, she realised there were people across the UK - including people within the South Asian community - that didn't know about the history of partition.

"People from a white Caucasian background were very much like why don't we know about this?

"And people from South Asian Heritage were like I wish I talked to my grandparents about this, because there had been this wall of silence about that history for a number of years," said Dr Kane.

Binita and her dad at an awards ceremony. Credit: Dr Binita Kane

Partition was when Britain split up the subcontinent into two independent nation states: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.

It resulted in one of the biggest migrations in human history as millions of people moved across the new borders.

Alongside Jasvir Singh, a barrister from London, Dr Kane set up the campaign.

SAHM seeks to commemorate, mark and celebrate South Asian cultures, histories, and communities.

This includes a hope to change the school curriculum to teach about South Asian history, especially as it's so connected to British history.

"Our strap line is celebrate, commemorate and educate," she said.

"The campaign is really about us understanding our heritage, our stories and our place in Britain 75 years after empire ended.

"And, to celebrate all the amazing, wonderful things South Asians have brought to this country."

"One of the things we have to move away from is that this has to be part of a history lesson, you can teach this history through drama, debate, art and music."

For Dr Kane, her father's story of Bangladesh and his work in the NHS is really important.

This year, the NHS celebrated 75 years and in that time the contribution of South Asian people is massive.

In post-war Britain they made up over 30 per cent of the workforce that helped create the NHS and still today, make up around the same proportion.

Her dad was a part of that primary workforce and ended up working in the NHS for 50 years, and getting a CBE.

She continued: "So my own father, having fled the violence of partition became a refugee and them somehow through amazing resilience became a doctor and was one of the waves of people recruited from the Commonwealth in the UK after the war when we were short of workforce and helped build the great institution that is the NHS."

Though SAHM has only existed for four years, for Dr Kane, she and others hope these months don't have to exist in the future.

"Our goal in SAHM is to become completely obsolete, we don't want to exist because we shouldn't have to exist, until we have complete equality in society," she said.

Want a quick and expert briefing on the biggest news stories? Listen to our latest podcasts to find out What You Need To know...