Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity

by Pavan K. Varma

  For reasons that she cannot fully understand herself, Talat has begun to learn both Hindi and Urdu. ‘My mother is over the moon that I have begun to speak and to read Hindi and Urdu. She can now show me the letters her mother wrote to her. If I have children, I would like them to learn Hindi and Urdu. I’m glad that Britain is not America, where everyone is under great pressure to become Americanized and to be a part of the American way of life. Some people here have suggested, I know, that Britain too should try and impose a greater sense of Britishness on its ethnic minorities, but I would hate it if that happened.’

  There was a somewhat ironical twist to the discussion when Talat mentioned that she was having problems getting a visa for India. Although her parents were born in India, and she was a British citizen, the problem had arisen because she was born in Karachi. Her mother was visiting her sister in Karachi when she was born. Her father had migrated to England from India at that time, and her mother joined him straight from Karachi. Under the existing rules, while her parents could get a long-term multi-entry visa without difficulty, because they were born in India and held British passports, she needed prior permission because she was born in Pakistan. The real irony was that her British partner who was born in Britain, and for whom she was the introduction to the land of her ancestors, could get a visa without any difficulty. I saw her eyes brim over as she told me all this, and in a sense her predicament symbolized in a rather extreme manner the plight of those who seek to reclaim their cultural past but are on the wrong side of the political fence. Here, indeed, was a rather poignant consequence of Empire, many decades after it had politically ceased to be: a father who spent almost a lifetime in England, but wanted to be buried in India; a mother who was born in India, lived in England, and had a connection with Pakistan because one of her daughters was born in Karachi; and a daughter for whom England was home but who wanted to discover her roots and was not getting a visa simply because her mother gave birth to her on the wrong side of the political fence that came up when the British left, their legacy having divided India into two nations.

  Third-generation migrants, who were born in Britain and have very little direct or emotional contact with India, appear to be far more integrated into the mainstream. But it is not as if they have ceased to be conscious of the fact that some subtle but definite things set them apart. I have had discussions with many Asian youngsters. All of them claimed to feel at home but almost all, when probed deeper, confessed to a subconscious but enduring relationship—an attraction or attachment or yearning, they were hard put to define—with the country from where their parents or grandparents came. Also, for all their newfound affluence and greater sense of social integration, they were not unaware of the fact that they would continue to be treated by the majority as different. Such a sense of not fully or effortlessly belonging can find expression in a myriad undefined ways. For instance, Sandeep, whose family has now lived in the UK for over fifty years, told me that he is still worried when the person at the immigration counter at Heathrow is Asian or black. Coloured officials are far more difficult and aggressive than white staff because they need to overdo things in order to demonstrate their loyalty. Deepak, another young person of Indian origin, who represents the third generation of his family in the UK, said that he had many white British friends but socializing with them was mostly restricted to the pub. He rarely called them home, and nor did they invite him. When I probed him further, he confessed that there was a cultural ‘barrier’, and somehow he felt far more ‘relaxed’ fraternizing with ‘his own people’. Ruchi, in her thirties and working for a leading human placement firm, said that she could easily party with her white friends; since she is fair by Indian standards, colour was not something that had bothered her. However, for all the genuine social camaraderie, she was never in doubt about her ‘difference’. Sometimes this sense of being different annoyed her, and she went out of her way to be ‘like them’. One aspect of this was that she rarely provoked an argument or dissented from the dominant point of view.

  Paradoxically, sometimes the same young people deliberately assert attributes that mark them out to be different. Unlike their parents or grandparents, whose insecurities compelled them to be as invisible as possible, the young are not so constrained. This is particularly the case with many young Muslims who resent the derogatory stereotyping of their religion and culture after 9/11, and are not inclined to quietly accept the injustice being meted out to Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine. This, of course, provides fertile ground to fundamentalists lurking in the corners of madrasas and mosques, but often the aggression is visceral and instinctive and has nothing to do with the preaching of the mullahs. Mala Sen, the noted writer and author of Bandit Queen, told me that after 9/11 there were many incidents where Muslim women in burqa were attacked by inebriated white louts; their veils were set on fire and they were compelled to take off the burqa. But the reaction of their teenage daughters, who had grown up in England and would therefore be expected to reject their mothers’ old-fashioned choice of purdah, was unusual. They took to wearing the burqa in order to teach a lesson to the white trash that dared to harass their mothers. Symbols of orthodoxy, and indeed of tyranny, are often given a lease of life even by those committed to modern and progressive values, especially when they sense that these symbols are related to their identity in a milieu where that identity is being challenged.

  Where Asians are in a majority, as in Southall, there is often a reverse racism. Usha Kiran recalls that a white teacher, who had taught in the school for years, was called a bitch in Punjabi by two young Indian men in Southall as she shopped for vegetables. The men were not used to seeing white customers. When they saw her, one of them asked: ‘What is this white bitch doing here?’ The lady understood what he had said because she knew Punjabi. She later mentioned this to Usha, saying that she was very hurt. Usha said that the men were boors, but added that they probably said what they did only because they were sure that she would not understand. The way people respond and react is often a far more accurate indicator of change than laws and political pronouncements.

  Successful Indians in the UK now sometimes speak disparagingly of the whites: they don’t work hard enough, show no initiative, are not resourceful, live too much on credit, have become too soft, prefer the easy life and lack business sense. This must mark a strange reversal. The British, as rulers, had similarly derogatory notions about Indians: the natives were lazy, venal, sunk in unmentionable superstition, incapable of leadership and only fit to be ruled. One of the constant gripes of the British was about the hot and sultry climate in India. The British were convinced that the enervating weather was greatly responsible for making Indians flabby, passive and unenergetic. Now some Indians argue that the constant grey and rain and cold are responsible for the congenital inadequacies of the British. Both allegations are without merit, but illustrate the underlying hostility and unease that often taints perceptions from across a cultural divide, no matter how long two cultures have been in close contact.

  In the small basement auditorium of the British Film Institute in London, I spent one afternoon watching documentaries made by Asians. I was on the jury for the Satyajit Ray Memorial Award, given to a young Asian every year for short films. One film, made by a Bangladeshi director, was only three minutes in length. It was called ‘A Place to Be’. The film, without any commentary, showed a Bangladeshi family at dinner in their modest London home. The faces could not be seen, but the conversation could be heard. The camera was still and unmoving, almost meant to be invisible, but intrusive nevertheless as it kept its gaze steady on the hands and the food and the serving and the eating. The food consisted of fish curry, rice and some vegetables. One could see it being ladled into plates. The family sat on the ground around a dastarkhan and everybody ate with their hands. The camera merely watched as plates were swabbed clean by fingers working dextrously and uninhibitedly. From a western point of view it was a messy process. Apart from me, the
other members on the jury were all white British. I felt a little uncomfortable because the film was so stark in its portrayal of ‘native’ eating habits. The family ate as it would normally when in the privacy of its own space. But that normalcy was rarely ever exhibited to the ‘outsider’. In the outsider’s presence the same family would pick up a knife and fork in order to prove that it was not ‘uncivilized’ and had the requisite social graces. This duality, which requires people to become practiced schizophrenics, is a burden a migrant has to live with. On the one hand is the persistence of his inherited way of life, and on the other the demands of officially correct behaviour, and between the two is an entire world of aspiration, shame, denial, camouflage, resentment and emulation.

  Aggression, insecurity and deference are constant companions in this unresolved world. Paramjit Singh Gill, the young MP of Indian origin from Leicester, whose father came to the UK in 1962, spoke to me about the rampant racism when he was growing up. He became involved in student politics because you had to become political to challenge it and fight it, he said. Margaret Thatcher was rough on the minorities. She then saw the backlash from those who refused to be quiet victims. So she co-opted them into the system by setting up committees on race relations. But this did not really reduce the racist undercurrent in society, although it did assuage to some extent the anger among the minorities. The real change came about unintentionally, as it were, as a result of her privatization drive. Organizations which became private had to work to be financially viable; for this they needed to hire cheap labour which was efficient. This provided an opening for the ethnic minorities, especially Indians, because the hitherto state-owned bodies were large employers. The work is unfinished, says Paramjit. Some of the largest public utilities such as the National Health Service (NHS) are still not privatized. In his well-cut suit and fashionable rimless glasses the soft-spoken Gill is today a political star, but I could sense that behind his pleasant demeanour the memory of the struggles of the past were still very much alive. Unlike him, some young Asians have reacted to racism and ridicule, or to exclusion, in less mature, more violent ways.

  Insecurity always shadows the ethnically apart, because anything can happen that may suddenly mark them out for reprisal or unwarranted attention. Young Asians in Britain today feel this more keenly perhaps than at any other time in recent years. After the 7/7 bomb blasts in London, all Muslims became marked as suspects, and even non-Muslim Indians became acutely conscious of their marks of identity. They could do nothing about the colour of their skin, but they were left in a dilemma about other attributes. Was a beard on a brown skin a red rag? Would a salwar-kameez attract hostile stares? Could a bindi play a protective role, establishing a Hindu identity? In the London of the 1990s and early 2000s, ethnic minorities had been getting used to being less reticent about displaying their cultural attributes. But now, in an atmosphere of terror, with all its attendant irrationalities, including the fear of a backlash by the bigots or boors in the white majority, Asians are seeking to hide their difference, and to somehow merge with the mainstream, at least in terms of their outward appearance. It is an act of self-defence, of preservation, but for entirely the wrong reasons.

  And of course the deference towards the whites that is a legacy of colonialism is also very much alive among the coloured immigrants in Britain. The colonial rulers assiduously cultivated this deference. The Ugandan writer Norman Miwambo writes that ‘when a person was punctual, strict in all his dealings and not corrupt, that person was referred to not as African but as British’.4 A conscious contempt for the natives—which unfortunately a great many natives internalized—also helped in putting the whites on a pedestal. Many decades after the end of colonialism, aspects of that legacy persist. Young Asians and blacks in Britain do not admit to it, but often behind their swagger is an element of self-deception; deep inside, many of them continue to harbour an inferiority complex, although the manner of its expression may be less apparent or fawning. The elder generation is more honest. Yasmin Alibhai Brown, the only established brown columnist in the mainstream British press, is a migrant of Indian origin from Uganda, who came to Britain in the 1970s. She is familiar with the subtext of racism and discrimination in Britain and writes with flamboyant ferocity against it. Her second husband is white, and she recalled what transpired when he accompanied her to an Indian jewellery shop in London. There were dozens of Indians with bulging wallets crowding the shop, but the moment Mr Brown stepped in the owner of the shop waved the Indians aside and came bowing towards him, quite overwhelmed that a white Englishman had come to his shop.

  Everywhere in the west, including Britain, there is proof that beyond a point assimilation—often just another word for homogenization—is not possible. Colour, faith and language—above all, origin—create boundaries that can be minimized or camouflaged but not negotiated away.

  Yasmin Alibhai Brown, however, rails against this truth. She resents the fact that ‘twenty-eight years after arriving in this country, I am still frequently asked “where are you from?” For all the talk of multiculturalism, people who look like me are not ever expected to be of this country. The questioner cannot accept Ealing or London. Only elsewhere will do.’5 Clearly, Yasmin is aware of the fact of difference—‘where are you from?’—but is unwilling to accept that this difference is irrevocably linked to a fundamental part of her identity, to her colour, her background, her faith and her origins. She wants to be a part of the mainstream. But instead of accepting who she is, and then seeking to build realistic bridges across divides that are there to stay, she lashes out against the policy of multiculturalism, arguing that it is inward looking, ‘erecting new barriers between groups in our own society’ and taking people ‘not to our shared future but much more to our past’. The next phase, she asserts, must be ‘about collectively reimagining ourselves and the society in which we live’.6

  Societies can reimagine themselves; instead of a simmering acrimony between competing ethnicities they can aspire to a harmonious heterogeneity. But imagination, however well intentioned, cannot do away with realities. If ethnic minorities do not wish to be constantly noticed for their difference it is because often that attention is racist or humiliating. Yasmin recalls one such incident in France: ‘In 1995, we were in one of those dull French villages which never really light up, not even in the summer. To the villagers my children and I were Algerian, therefore scum. In a patisserie, my daughter, Leila, only a year old, touched a scarf worn by a middle-aged woman. Her hand was brusquely waved away and the woman swore in French at Arabs. I left the shop and burst into tears. I was that detested stranger again, just as I had been in 1972 when I had arrived in the UK from Uganda when white Britons used to abuse us and tell us to go back where we came from.’ Memories of such incidents make minorities yearn to merge with the mainstream. Ziauddin Sardar, the well-known writer, broadcaster and cultural critic, speaks of the fear that this ‘otherness’ produces. ‘It was my difference—noticeable in my colour, accent and general demeanour—that was the source of fear; a fear expressed so vividly in the famous “rivers of blood” speech by Enoch Powell.’7 In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when public resentment against coloured migrants to the UK was at its peak, extreme right politicians like Enoch Powell had a responsive audience. In one of his vitriolic speeches against the minorities, made in 1968, he threatened that ‘rivers of blood’ would flow if coloured migration to the UK did not stop. A survey immediately after the speech showed that almost 75 per cent of those polled agreed with Powell’s speech.

  Sardar concedes that much has changed since the heyday of Enoch Powell, and that the policy of multiculturalism introduced in the 1980s has made cultural differences far more acceptable. But even today he has, like Yasmin, a problem when someone asks him where he is from. ‘When people ask me where I am from, my standard reply is “Hackney”. I wasn’t actually born in Hackney but Hackney shaped my formative years and provides me with most of my childhood memories. It is ho
me; and that’s where I come from. This is difficult for most people to grasp. They look at me and exclaim: “Surely, you’re Asian.” It is hard to imagine a more ridiculous statement.’8 The statement may be inaccurate because it bunches a host of ethnicities under the omnibus awning of ‘Asian’, but it is not all that ridiculous. For all his hankering after Hackney, Sardar admits himself that his colour and accent and demeanour are different. And Britain, he argues in his latest book Balti Britain, ‘still fears difference. It is not possible to belong to a nation that sees itself in terms of a narrow and exclusive identity …’9 But if one part of him is aware of that difference, another part wants him to be recognized only as British and not be ‘celebrated’ or racially derided for his ‘otherness’. He accepts that he is racially different but he does not want ‘colourful or ethnic labels appended to my person’. In white-Christian-majority Britain, he is willing to go so far as to say that ‘there is one label that I identify with more than any other—that of being a Muslim’;10 and yet he wants to somehow transcend the ‘racial dichotomies of Self and Other’, to never be asked about his origins, what his faith is, and why his colour does not make him an organic resident of Hackney.