File:Sir Mohinder Dhillon with Head of KBC English Service Billie Odidi at Broadcasting House Nairobi 2016.jpg

Camera location	10° 00′ 00″ N, 30° 00′ 00″ E	View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap	10.000000; 30.000000

Sir Mohinder Dhillon Born: 1931, Age: 85

Place: Babar Pur, Punjab, India;

Nationality: Kenyan

Alma mater: Government Indian High School (later, Gloucester High School), Ngara, Kenya

Occupation: photojournalist; news, current affairs programmes, frontline cameraman, documentary filmmaker, feature filmmaker, Director of Photography (DOP)

Active: 1952-present

Media Houses: East African Standard, UPI, ITN TV, BBC, ZDF, AP,

Documentary Films: African Calvary; Vietnam After the Fire; Elephant Run; We Are The Children; No Easy Walk; Khomeini’s Other War; The Shifta War,

Books: My Camera, My Life (2016); genre, memoir

Honours/Awards: Knighthood, ‘Knight Commander’ of The Imperial Ethiopian Throne

Parents: father, Tek Singh; mother, Bebe

Spouse: Ambi

Children: Sam Dhillon

Life and Career

Sir Mohinder Dhillon, fondly known as ‘Mo Dhillon’ is a world-acclaimed pioneering television news journalist and documentary filmmaker. The author of My Camera, My Life, one of the most evocative and poignant memoirs ever to be written, Sir Mohinder’s journey began in a small sand-dunned village called Babar Pur in Punjab, India where he was born in 1931. The son of an East African Railways worker, Sir Mohinder’s family moved to Kenya in 1947. Sir Mohinder started his journalistic career in 1952, as an apprentice at Halle Studio, Nairobi, which had a contract with the East African Standard, then the only daily newspaper in the region, to cover white-settler recreational and social events. Sir Mohinder's first journalistic assignment was to cover a horse race. A 20th century icon in TV journalism, Sir Mohinder teamed up with his friend and colleague, the London Fleet Street-trained journalist Ivor Davis, a Jew, to found Africapix Media, in 1961, the first such news photography and media agency in East and Central Africa. “Television, then still in its infancy, as a news medium, was expanding fast, creating a new global market for film footage, not least from Africa,” says the legendary Sir Mohinder of those heady days.

A brilliant but unassuming TV journalist and filmmaker, Sir Mohinder has covered some of the most significant and historic events in modern history, more so in Africa. Sir Mohinder began his extraordinary career as a news and current affairs programmes TV journalist. He then went into documentary filmmaking, feature films, becoming Director of Photography (DOP). Sir Mohinder witnessed the rise and fall of African leaders. Sir Mohinder’s illuminating eye-witness accounts of presidents Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Milton Obote, William Tubman, Siad Barre, Idi Amin, Gaafer Numeiri, Muammar Gaddafi, Robert Mugabe, and his reminisces of Emperor Haile Selassie, as his official photographer and filmmaker, the Emperor’s imminent downfall and subsequent arrest, are rare biographical tomes into the lives of these African leaders. Sir Mohinder had worked as Emperor Haile Selassie’s official photographer and documentary filmmaker for eight years travelling with the emperor in more than 40 countries. He sometimes felt his conscience pricked that he was propagating the emperor at a time when he had lost touch with common people. Yet when Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed, Sir Mohinder was in Ethiopia and recorded the events firsthand as they unfolded.

The Marxist Provisional Military Committee of Mengestu Haile Mariam, later to be known as the Derg, who deposed Emperor Haile Selassie handed him a prepared statement, the thrust of which was that the Emperor had resigned. Sir Mohinder writes in his memoir, My Camera, My Life, that what struck him on that day was Emperor Haile Selassie’s personal remark delivered with grace after reading the recorded statement. At 82, Emperor Haile Selassie was as gallant and magnanimous if with his tormentors: “If the revolution is good for the people of Ethiopia, then I too am for the revolution. And if I am shown to have been an impediment to progress in Ethiopia, then I shall be the first to acknowledge my want of judgment, while bearing no ill-will towards those responsible for dethroning me.” Under the circumstances, Sir Mohinder says that this statement redolent of the centuries-old imperial throne, which must have caught the Marxists unawares, was “a particularly noble and courageous parting shot.” As a frontline news cameraman and filmmaker, Sir Mohinder went to remote and oftentimes dangerous places around the world to cover stories and film documentaries. Many times he risked his life doing investigative journalism, shooting civil war, and filming capricious tyrants. He covered the Yemen Civil War in 1967 on the streets of Aden, capturing in the same frame of his camera warring combatants, acquiring an outstanding feat in war reportage yet to unsurpassed.

The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC English Service radio) celebrated the legendary TV journalist by airing an unprecedented three-part special series of The Books Café, the premier literature programme for three consecutive weeks in November 2016.

Sir Mohinder Dhillon has had a brush with death on several occasions. In 1960, he was arrested and deported from South Africa with the threat of being shot. His only mistake was that he had taken photos of a bloodied Dr Henrik Verwoerd, apartheid’s architect, who had just survived an assassination attempt. In 1964, Sir Mohinder came very close to being executed in Congo during the Stanleyville Hostage taking crisis. Sir Mohinder was arrested and frog marched to the firing squad where people suspected of being sympathisers of the Simba Rebels, the disgruntled supporters of the slain Patrice Lumumba, were being executed by government soldiers. Sir Mohinder was saved by the ITN TV crew of Sandy Gall, Jon Lane and Eric Vincent, who arrived on the scene when only an ill-fated handful was remaining. Sir Mohinder survived a helicopter crash in 1982 in Tanzania while shooting a documentary.

Among Sir Mohinder’s documentaries are: African Calvary, Vietnam After the Fire, Elephant Run, The Tulip Elephants, No Easy Walk, We are The Children, Khomeini’s Other War, The Shifta War. “I made my name in documentary filmmaking, that’s where my fame came, because news after 24 hours is forgotten, but if you make a good documentary, its forever,” Sir Mohinder says. In 1983, Sir Mohinder together with BBC reporter David Smith was among the first journalists to open the lid on the Ethiopian famine that was already ravaging the country. Sir Mohinder’s footage in one of the earliest refugee camps showed “appalling scenes of hunger, disease, suffering and despair.” Sir Mohinder and Smith had outmaneuvered Mengestu Haile Mariam who had tried to suppress any news of the famine. In 1984, the Ethiopian famine became a global news item. A warm, delighting, humble, loyal, steadfast, and fearless persona, the legendary Sir Mohinder is fondly known as the gentle giant of television journalism. His humility and pursuit for equal right is inspired by his Sikh religion. “Sikhism teaches you to defend the dignity of women and of all human beings,” he says. It was his father Tek Singh who imbued in him the virtue of caring for others: “My son, if you live for yourself, it is not living; if you live for others, that is living a meaningful life.” Sir Mohinder Dhillon is an ardent human rights activist and environmentalist. “If I were to be born again, I will do the same thing – news, current affairs and documentary filmmaking.”

In 2005 Mo Mohinder was knighted as “Knight Commander” by Emperor Haile Selassie’s grandson, His Highness Crown Prince Zere Yacob Asfa Wossen Haile Selassie, heir to the throne. Sir Mohinder was honoured because of his “outstanding contribution to humanity” and for “having performed, through newsreel photography, the distinguished humanitarian service of bringing to the attention of the world community critical issues affecting the welfare of the African continent.” Sir Mohinder lives in Nairobi with his son Sam Dhillon, himself an outstanding photojournalist.

Books • My Camera, My Life

Film Documentaries

• Vietnam After the Fire • Elephant Run WITH Julian Mounter, BBC • African Calvary WITH Mohamed Amin • We Are The Children • No Easy Walk • The African Runners WITH Bud and Cappy; re-issued as ‘The Olympiad: Greatest Moments’ by Dreamworks Television in collaboration WITH US Olympic Committee • Khomeini’s Other War • The Shifta War WITH Hans Germani

Articles:

Footnotes:

References:

YouTube/Podcasts:

External links • Sir Mohinder videos • Sir Mohinder photos • Richard Vaughan address at the launch of Sir Mohinder Dhillon’s memoir, My Camera, My Life • Sir Mohinder Dhillon interview on The Books Café with KBC English Service radio present Khainga O’Okwemba (Part 1) November 12th 2016. • Sir Mohinder Dhillon interview on The Books Café with KBC English Service radio present Khainga O’Okwemba (Part 2) November 19th 2016. • Sir Mohinder Dhillon interview on The Books Café with KBC English Service radio present Khainga O’Okwemba (Part 3) November 26th 2016. • Sir Mohinder Dhillon interview on K24 December 6th 2016.

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

You are free:

• to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
• to remix – to adapt the work

Under the following conditions:

• attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0CC BY-SA 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 truetrue