Across her filmography, Mira Nair visits (and revisits) the concept of home — the home that leaves you to fend for yourself, the one that turns its back on you, the one that you turn your back on. In Mississippi Masala, Nair explores the fluidity of home through one of modern history’s most brazen acts of racism, highlighting the resilience forced upon immigrants in the West and the enduring effects of colonialism.
Mina’s (Sarita Choudhury) journey into the United States follows a wayward line with seemingly no end point in mind. After being displaced in their birth country of Uganda, we learn that Mina and her parents, Jay (Roshan Seth) and Kinnu (Sharmila Tagore), first migrated to England before settling in Mississippi; but Mississippi doesn’t seem to be the intended landing spot for the family.
After meeting Demetrius (Denzel Washington), a young business owner born and raised at the edge of the Mississippi Delta, Mina becomes smitten. For his part, Demetrius, still hung up on his ex-girlfriend who’s in town for a visit, decides to invite Mina to a family dinner in an effort to generate envy. Naturally, Demetrius’ family shows great interest in this young woman, exotic in their eyes.
“We used to live in Kampala,” Mina shares with the Williams family.
“Isn’t that where Idi Amin is from?” Demetrius asks, which Mina confirms with a slight nod and stern eyes.
After explaining to the Williams that Indian people came to Africa as a result of the British bringing them over as indentured labourers to build the Uganda railway, Demetrius’ younger brother innocently wonders why Mina’s family ever left.
“Dexter, let her eat her food,” says Demetrius, subtly guiding his sibling away from the subject.
Demetrius understands the pain attached to Mina’s unsaid answer, the anger attached to the name he uttered — a name perhaps best left outside the confines of their family meal.
Mississippi Masala provides the unaware with an entry point into one of history’s most villainous despots. History looks back on Amin’s eight-year rule of Uganda as one of dictatorship, corruption, and inexplicable human rights abuses, including (but certainly not limited to) the expulsion of ethnic South Asians from the East African nation in August 1972 — the reason for Mina and her family’s existence in the Deep South.
Many Indians stayed on in Uganda following the completion of the railway in 1901 and the British gave preference to them over the country’s indigenous people, opting to provide Asians with education and resources. As a result, by the 1970s the majority of Uganda’s economic wealth belonged to the minority, forging anti-Indian sentiment across the country.
Amin acted upon this disparity, announcing that ethnic Indians had 90 days to leave the country, no matter where they were born: “Africa is for Africans…Black Africans,” a sentiment repeated in Mississippi Masala.
In a rather ironic turn of events, many of these expelled Indians moved to Mississippi where they could afford to buy their own businesses, which also happened to be the heart of the civil rights movement.
Similar to how African Americans have never known Africa to be home, many of the Indians forced to leave Uganda had never stepped foot in India. Upon learning about this migration pattern, in an interview with CNN in 2022, Nair recalled thinking: “What a strange trick of history this might be.”
Demetrius and Mina never engage in a war of victimhood, but the complexity of the racial dynamics in the film can be found in Mina’s father.
While Kinnu accepts her fate insofar as she keeps moving forward in the name of her family, Jay remains stuck in the betrayal of his country. A lawyer in Uganda, after the fall of Amin, Jay sues the Ugandan government to reclaim the property he left behind in the hopes of returning home, a fight that consumes him. After learning about Demetrius and Mina’s relationship, his prejudice towards Black people becomes apparent — prejudices assumed to be a result of the expulsion.
Jay’s jaded attitude and hypocrisy demonstrates the scars of dictatorship. From the outset of the film, and in flashbacks throughout, we see Jay struggle deeply with being forced to leave the only home he’s ever known, not understanding how it’s possible to be told he doesn’t belong when it’s the very place he was born and raised. It’s a sentiment many children of immigrants connect to, especially when confronting acts of racism, however slight.
Adding to Jay’s frustrations, his adopted home treats him as a visitor; granted he treats Greenwood as a temporary place to rest his head, in keeping with the motel he and his family live and work in. His desire to leave only hastens with Demetrius’ presence, revealing a nasty streak of his own: he’s happy to hire Black businesses and even share a drink with Black people, but deems them unworthy of dating his daughter.
Without addressing it directly, Nair also speaks to the remnants of colonization. In picking a favourite colonial subject, the British sowed resentment and divisiveness, presumably by design, creating a distinct advantage for one to succeed at the detriment of the other. The knock-on effects stayed with those affected, like Jay, engendering distrust in new homes made around the world.
The end of Mississippi Masala sees Jay finally getting his wish and returning to Kampala for a court hearing about his claim. He visits old friends only to discover they have long perished, and returns back to the property his court hearing concerns — the land he’s always considered home.
Following the expulsion, Uganda’s economy tanked; less a testament to the ability of Ugandans and more of an indictment to the mess the Brits left behind. Mississippi Masala reflects this downturn in the state of Jay’s old house, now an abandoned shadow of his memories. Walking around Kampala, Jay almost deflates. This isn’t the home he remembers, not the home he’s longed for all these years.
Within the film, Jay’s journey serves as a secondary plot, but through his anger, desperation, and eventual realization that home can change as readily as the tide, Mississippi Masala finds its soul.
Towards the end of the film, Jay writes home to Kinnu, evoking the old adage: “Home is where the heart is.” A rather saccharine and clichéd bow to tie the film up in, but one that encompasses the internal (and at times external) struggle people like Jay grapple with.
Mississippi Masala is one of Nair’s most celebrated films, arguably a crown jewel in her illustrious career, due in large part to the progressive nature of Washington and Choudhury’s pairing and their intense chemistry, but beyond their passion exists a conflict with no true resolution. Home is where the heart is, but it doesn’t make the loss of an old home any easier. As an exploration of home, the film becomes one of Nair’s most layered.
This review is part of our Director Retrospective series on Mira Nair. Check out our past series here, where we discuss the works of Wong Kar-wai, Hayao Miyazaki, and others!
