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Series 1: 1. The Viceroy of India

Dr Yasmin Khan explores an extraordinary collection of ships' passenger lists to trace the changing story of migration from the Indian subcontinent to Britain over three key decades.\n\nIn this first episode, she tracks down passengers who travelled from Mumbai, known previously as Bombay, to Britain in the 1930s on the luxurious P&O liner The Viceroy of India. Yasmin discovers the challenges faced by these new arrivals as they tried to build a life in a strange land and reveals how their individual stories reflect the increasingly strained relationship between Britain and its Indian Empire.\n\nYasmin traces the story of a 21-year-old student Netra Dutt, to discover the real reasons why his Bengali parents panicked and forced him to come to Britain. At the Indian High Commission, Yasmin finds out from his daughter about Netra's struggles with his identity as he tried to fit into an overwhelmingly white London. She uncovers the extraordinary story of Mulk Raj Anand, one of the most famous Indian authors of the 20th century, who despised the British Raj and travels to Cheltenham to meet his niece and the surprising family he married into.\n\nRaja Stokes, an 86-year-old surviving passenger from the Viceroy, sheds light for Yasmin on the fascinating variety of relationships that developed between colonial families and the local Indian population - from his deep bond with his ayah who cared for him from birth and travelled with the family to Britain, to the maharajah who was his father's patron.\n\nYasmin also traces the story of Viceroy passenger Sir Lancelot Graham, who became one of the last colonial governors in the Indian Empire. She tracks down evidence of a bloody revolt in the Sindh province to share with his grandson.\n\nAnd she travels to Essex to reveal the sacrifice Ghulam Mum-taz, a law student from Madras, made when he married a white woman and started a family.\n\nStories of courage, identity and alienation form a fascinating new perspective on these early pioneers of today's British Asian communities.

Source: BBC 2