When Rana came to Britain from India, aged 16, he encountered racism for the very first time. Soon he was dedicating his life to the fight to end it
Balwinder Rana was 16 when he first spoke to a white person. It was 1963, on a sunlit but freezing spring day, and he had just landed at Heathrow airport, after taking his first plane journey, on his first trip outside Punjab, India. He had arrived to join his father and his brother, who had moved to England two years earlier.
“How long are you staying here?” the white immigration officer asked. “It’s up to my father,” a sheepish Rana replied.
