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Welcome to Witness, here at the British Library in London. | :00:00. | :00:32. | |
This month we have another five people who have witnessed | :00:33. | :00:35. | |
extraordinary moments in history first-hand. | :00:36. | :00:37. | |
We will be remembering a royal wedding in Japan, | :00:38. | :00:40. | |
a remarkable feat of engineering under the Alps, and a new | :00:41. | :00:43. | |
But first, we are going back to August 1947, when India gained | :00:44. | :00:52. | |
independence from Britain and was split into two | :00:53. | :00:55. | |
countries, mainly Hindu India and mainly Muslim Pakistan. | :00:56. | :00:58. | |
Partition affected the lives of millions of families. | :00:59. | :01:00. | |
Mohammad Amir Ahmed Khan's was one of them. | :01:01. | :01:07. | |
I am Mohammad Amir Ahmed Khan, known as Sulaiman to family and friends, | :01:08. | :01:11. | |
I am from a Muslim family which once ruled a very large feudal estate, | :01:12. | :01:20. | |
including the beautiful a palace in Mahmudabad in | :01:21. | :01:22. | |
But the Indian government is laying claim to my property, | :01:23. | :01:43. | |
No-one is paying for it, so these days, everything is crumbling. | :01:44. | :01:59. | |
The partition of India into two states, a Muslim majority | :02:00. | :02:11. | |
state called Pakistan, and a Hindu majority | :02:12. | :02:13. | |
It was estimated that one million people died, | :02:14. | :02:21. | |
Some Muslims went to the state of Pakistan. | :02:22. | :02:28. | |
It was not just the country that was divided. | :02:29. | :02:37. | |
In the late '50s, my father took Pakistani nationality, | :02:38. | :02:47. | |
and that is when my family's problems began, because when India | :02:48. | :02:53. | |
and Pakistan went to war in 1965, the government laid | :02:54. | :02:58. | |
There was an act of Parliament called the Enemy Property Act, | :02:59. | :03:05. | |
which empowered the government to take over temporarily | :03:06. | :03:07. | |
It was not just our family which was affected. | :03:08. | :03:19. | |
The properties are worth billions of dollars. | :03:20. | :03:27. | |
But our issue is that only my father took Pakistani nationality. | :03:28. | :03:30. | |
We had to fight our case from the lowest to the highest | :03:31. | :03:52. | |
And the Supreme Court judge said that by no stretch of imagination | :03:53. | :04:02. | |
could I be considered an enemy, and considered me the heir | :04:03. | :04:05. | |
to my father's properties, but then the government went | :04:06. | :04:07. | |
and changed the laws and the battle has begun again. | :04:08. | :04:21. | |
I suppose, like so many people in India and Pakistan, | :04:22. | :04:27. | |
we are still caught up in the repercussions of partition | :04:28. | :04:30. | |
and the acrimonious relations between India and Pakistan. | :04:31. | :04:45. | |
In a way, I have been forced to live in the past. | :04:46. | :04:50. | |
And with apologies to Yeats, I feel as if I am drowning | :04:51. | :04:59. | |
in a beauty that has long since faded from this Earth. | :05:00. | :05:07. | |
Mohammad Amir Ahmed Khan, speaking to us from his beautiful | :05:08. | :05:09. | |
Next, to the summer of 1965, when a remarkable feat | :05:10. | :05:15. | |
The Mont Blanc tunnel runs for 11 kilometres under the Alps. | :05:16. | :05:20. | |
The dream of decades has come true and the Paris-Rome motor journey | :05:21. | :05:29. | |
To both France and Italy this was an historic occasion. | :05:30. | :05:35. | |
The joint opening ceremony was performed by General DeGaulle | :05:36. | :05:37. | |
From here, this looks a pretty big hole, but when you think | :05:38. | :07:20. | |
of the size of the mountain through which it is being driven, | :07:21. | :07:23. | |
it is rather like trying to drive a needle through the granite | :07:24. | :07:26. | |
Franco Cuaz is 91 now, and long retired, but he still lives | :07:27. | :09:11. | |
Now, in 1977 a state hospital near Paris began quietly changing | :09:12. | :09:18. | |
Obstetrician Dr Michel Odent believed that childbirth had | :09:19. | :09:24. | |
He wanted a more natural approach, so he introduced a pool | :09:25. | :09:28. | |
There is something special about the relationship | :09:29. | :09:39. | |
As soon as it is lifted into the air, its lungs | :09:40. | :09:46. | |
Dr Michel Odent, obstetrician, this is his maternity unit, | :09:47. | :09:57. | |
run according to his deeply felt beliefs about women | :09:58. | :10:00. | |
The right place to give birth would be the right place to make love. | :10:01. | :10:15. | |
When I arrived in 1962, the way women were giving birth | :10:16. | :10:20. | |
was the same as in any hospital, on a table, with legs in stirrups. | :10:21. | :10:27. | |
But gradually, gradually, we reconsidered everything. | :10:28. | :10:38. | |
We have introduced the concept of home-like birthing rooms, | :10:39. | :10:40. | |
a smaller room with no visible medical equipment, | :10:41. | :10:50. | |
to help women to feel more at home in the hospital. | :10:51. | :10:53. | |
At a time when they still have the vision as hospital | :10:54. | :10:56. | |
as a place where you come when you're sick, to die. | :10:57. | :11:04. | |
1:00am, and a young couple have driven 150 miles | :11:05. | :11:07. | |
to have their first baby here, in an ordinary state | :11:08. | :11:09. | |
By changing the environment, we have attracted more women | :11:10. | :11:19. | |
to our maternity unit, women coming from far away. | :11:20. | :11:21. | |
And that is why I became an obstetrician! | :11:22. | :11:30. | |
From 200 births a year, to 1,000 births a year. | :11:31. | :11:34. | |
A pool to help mothers ease the pain of labour. | :11:35. | :11:36. | |
Babies are occasionally born under water. | :11:37. | :11:39. | |
We have painted the walls in blue, dolphins on the walls. | :11:40. | :11:45. | |
They wanted to enter the birthing pool before it was full. | :11:46. | :11:50. | |
The main objective was to break the vicious | :11:51. | :11:57. | |
All medication, all drugs have side-effects. | :11:58. | :12:10. | |
After being in the womb in warm fluid for nine months, | :12:11. | :12:13. | |
the baby emerges happily into the warm water | :12:14. | :12:15. | |
with its life-support system from the mother still intact. | :12:16. | :12:25. | |
I remember the visit we had with this British obstetrician. | :12:26. | :12:28. | |
Well, I do not think we would have room for it in our hospital. | :12:29. | :12:43. | |
And I find Dr Odent's views about it a wonderful mixture | :12:44. | :12:45. | |
I do not think the word "mysticism" is appropriate. | :12:46. | :12:52. | |
It is true that I tried to consider in a scientific language | :12:53. | :12:55. | |
TRANSLATION: It felt like a family atmosphere, very reassuring. | :12:56. | :13:04. | |
It gave you confidence in yourself, and that is what I needed. | :13:05. | :13:13. | |
I was pleased when I heard women talking in a positive way | :13:14. | :13:16. | |
We have to learn from positive experiences, | :13:17. | :13:27. | |
Michel Odent now lives in London and birthing pools are widely | :13:28. | :13:30. | |
Remember, you can watch Witness every month on the BBC News Channel, | :13:31. | :13:39. | |
or you can catch up on over a thousand radio programmes | :13:40. | :13:41. | |
Next, we're going back to August 1972 when the dictator Idi Amin | :13:42. | :13:48. | |
ordered Uganda's Asian minority to leave the country, accusing them | :13:49. | :13:50. | |
80,000 people were forced to leave Uganda, including Gita Watts. | :13:51. | :14:30. | |
We had 90 days to sort everything out, to get out of the country and | :14:31. | :14:35. | |
he sort of made the impression that if we didn't get out on time, we'd | :14:36. | :14:44. | |
be sitting on fire. More than 12,000 towns and villages like this in | :14:45. | :14:48. | |
Uganda. In every one of them, the Government is pressing its campaign | :14:49. | :14:53. | |
against the Asian traders. The Asian community was close-knit, all the | :14:54. | :15:00. | |
Asian shops inrolled together and we all knew each other. Each family and | :15:01. | :15:04. | |
all the kids knew each other. We weren't well off but we were | :15:05. | :15:09. | |
comfortable. People started rushing to the embassies and my dad had to | :15:10. | :15:13. | |
sign everything over. That means his assets and his business, over to the | :15:14. | :15:18. | |
Ugandan bank. We were given ?55, that's all he was allowed to take | :15:19. | :15:23. | |
with him. It was just unbelievable, you know, after everything that he | :15:24. | :15:32. | |
earned, he was just left with ?55. When we first got to the airport, | :15:33. | :15:38. | |
people's luggage was opened and people were checking for gold and | :15:39. | :15:41. | |
money and, for some reason, my parents put a ring on my finger. We | :15:42. | :15:47. | |
were told to get that ring off me because the ring was so tight we | :15:48. | :15:52. | |
struggled to take it off. My parents tried everything to take this ring | :15:53. | :15:59. | |
off. In the end, it was cut off. The scariest bit was that we had | :16:00. | :16:03. | |
soldiers with guns and knives surrounding us. I was panicking | :16:04. | :16:09. | |
trying to get this ring off. It was a relief that we had to go on | :16:10. | :16:14. | |
display when the plane was taking off. My dad was probably thinking, | :16:15. | :16:18. | |
you know, he got his family out of the country at last. But he was | :16:19. | :16:23. | |
leaving back something that he really loved, the country that he | :16:24. | :16:27. | |
loved. The Asians arrived in cold wet weather at Stansted, whole | :16:28. | :16:32. | |
families arriving with little cash. The few belongings they brought | :16:33. | :16:36. | |
often seemed of nothing more than sentimental. The time of the year we | :16:37. | :16:42. | |
arrived it was winter time. That made it worse as well with the rain. | :16:43. | :16:48. | |
I had not seen the snow before. We were scared because we didn't know | :16:49. | :16:53. | |
where would we go. I mean, my mum was told to take us to Leicester, a | :16:54. | :16:58. | |
town called Leicester, we didn't know what it was like, we didn't | :16:59. | :17:06. | |
know any English when I grew up and went to secondary school I came | :17:07. | :17:12. | |
through a lot of racial abuse from kids, you know, calling names and | :17:13. | :17:16. | |
waiting for me outside school and wanting to like beat me up and not | :17:17. | :17:23. | |
liking my colour. Recently, we just went back to Uganda. I just wanted | :17:24. | :17:28. | |
to see the country that I was born in and why my parents loved that | :17:29. | :17:35. | |
country so much. It was nice to go back to the hospital where I was | :17:36. | :17:41. | |
born. It really was an amazing experience. In all, 60,000 Asians | :17:42. | :17:46. | |
were expelled from you began Da, nearly half settled in Britain, | :17:47. | :17:52. | |
including Gita watts. Finally back to 1959 and a ground-breaking Royal | :17:53. | :17:58. | |
wedding in Japan. Witness has been to Tokyo to meet a TV director whose | :17:59. | :18:03. | |
coverage of the TV event entranced the nation. So he marries a | :18:04. | :18:12. | |
commoner, breaking tradition of over 200 years. | :18:13. | :18:56. | |
The ceremony lasting 15 minutes took place in a wooden shrine within the | :18:57. | :19:02. | |
walls of the imperial palace. There was no hint of any western influence | :19:03. | :19:05. | |
in the wedding ritual. In robes such as the members of the imperial | :19:06. | :19:10. | |
family have worn for centuries, the Crown Prince and his bride were made | :19:11. | :19:18. | |
man and wife. Burdened by no fewer than 12 kimonos, it took the | :19:19. | :19:22. | |
Princess three hours to dress. The total weight was 33 pounds. | :19:23. | :20:23. | |
Cheers accompanied them all the way as they proceeded on their drive | :20:24. | :20:28. | |
through Tokyo. That is all from us this month. I | :20:29. | :21:50. | |
hope you will join us next month back here at the British Library. | :21:51. | :21:54. | |
We'll have five extraordinary accounts of hiss true through the | :21:55. | :21:57. | |
eyes of people who were there. For now, from me and the rest of the | :21:58. | :21:59. | |
team at Witness, goodbye. It's certainly looking like a | :22:00. | :22:31. | |
weekend of two halves. Best of the weather today, cloud and some rain | :22:32. | :22:34. | |
on the way tomorrow. Especially in the west. | :22:35. | :22:36. |