“Struggle? Look, I’m a Black man born and raised in Mississippi. Ain’t a damn thing you can tell me about struggle… I know you and your folks can come down here from God knows where, and be ’bout as black as the ace of spades, and as soon as you get here, you start acting white. And treatin’ us like we your doormats. I know that you and your daughter ain’t but a few shades from this right here. [points to his own face] That I know.”
Given his recent electoral success of the presumptive mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, I thought it would be interesting to go back to the beginning and discuss the circumstances that led to his birth. His mother, celebrated Indian filmmaker Mira Nair, was fresh off her Academy Award nominated 1988 film “Salaam Bombay!” and began work on her next film named “Mississippi Masala.”
When performing research for the film, Nair met and fell in love with the Indian-Ugandan academic Mahmood Mamdani. They soon married and gave birth to their son Zohran in 1991, the same year that this movie was released. The film itself is great, so let’s get to it.
The plot touches upon the real history of the Indian-Ugandan diaspora. In 1972, dictator and criminal against humanity Idi Amin decreed that all people of South Asian descent must be forcibly expelled from Uganda and their remaining property be repossessed by the state. We follow a fictional family who are forced to resettle from Kampala, Uganda to Greenwood, Mississippi.
The daughter, Mina (played by Sarita Choudhury) gets into a car crash with a local carpet cleaner, Demetrius Williams (played by the legendary Denzel Washington, fresh off of his first Oscar win for his supporting role in Edward Zwick’s 1989 film “Glory”), and they soon fall in love. This does not go over well with her father, Jay (played by Roshan Seth, who starred in Richard Attenborough’s 1982 Best Picture Winner “Gandhi,”) who is still actively suing the Ugandan government for the return of his family’s stolen property and somewhat distrusts people of African descent.
They meet each other’s families, and we see both the beauty and traditions of each person’s culture and their shared hostility to outsiders. Eventually, Jay comes to terms with his prejudice in a final scene in Uganda for a court hearing under the new Yoweri Museveni administration, showing how important tolerance can be.
Washington and Choudhury each have remarkable chemistry with each other, and all their scenes together have a dreamy quality to them. Their love on screen also showcases the old American ideal of the great American melting pot, where so many different people from so many different cultures come together to create something beautiful.
For those looking to see a remarkable romantic drama about what it means to be American or learn more about Zohran Mamdani, I would highly recommend you to see this lovely film. My final rating for “Mississippi Masala” is a beautiful 9/10.
