My mother, Parvatiben Solanki, who has died age 86, was a pioneer of minority-ethnic publishing in Britain – with my father, Ramniklal Solanki, she launched one of the country’s oldest Asian titles, Garavi Gujarat, on 1 April 1968 from a small terrace house in Wembley, north London, as a handwritten, black and white, cyclostyle newssheet. Today, that paper, which many thought an April Fools’ joke, is the biggest-selling Gujarati newspaper outside India, published in two editions in the UK and the US, and read all over the world.
The manner in which Parvatiben and Ramniklal launched the paper at a time when there were very few Indians in the UK, with no financial capital, and when the technology to publish a Gujarati language newspaper did not exist, is an inspiring story.
