A Race We Can All Win- Part 2 of 5

 My days at the Grammar school were generally bleak and uninspiring, though there were some silver linings that made them more bearable. It was a private all-boys school except for the Sixth Form, and was affiliated to the Armed Forces known as the Combined Cadet Force, or CCF. I was in the Royal Air Force section at the school and found some succour amongst my fellow RAF cadets, who were more intellectual and less physically inclined, and thus were more likely to be the recipients of name-calling and bullying rather than the perpetrators. Most of the pupils I had received racist insults from had joined the Army section, so I had some respite from them. I must admit that though I am now more of a pacifist, as I believe most conflict can be avoided, my time as an RAF cadet forms some of the best memories of my school days. I made some genuine friends, and got to fly in ‘Chipmunk’ trainer aircraft, once even enjoying aerobatics with an Air Commodore who had fought in the Battle of Britain. Coincidentally, my great uncle, Sabir Ali, was a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Indian Air Force, an auxiliary of the RAF. He was court-martialled for striking a British Officer who had insulted him. He was later vindicated but was unfortunately killed in action during the Second World War.

So many servicemen and women who fought for Britain were conscripted from the Colonies. Over 600,000 African and over 2,500,000 Indian soldiers fought under British command against the Axis powers. This is barely mentioned during commemorations of remembrance and seldom heard about in popular culture or seen in any films about the last world war.

                                Flight Lieutenant Sabir Ali of the Royal Indian Air Force

I remember being told off one day by an older gentleman at our local sports club for being too loud, when another South-Asian friend and I had just left the squash court and were talking as we walked across the cricket ground on the way to the exit. There was no-one else there to disturb, but he found it necessary to tell us that he had fought in the war for “our sort”. Whenever I hear about how many allied servicemen died in the war, and how their sacrifice should never be forgotten, I always think of my great uncle Sabir!

We had our sports at a field called Hartswood, which was a couple of miles from the school itself, so we needed transportation from there to get back home. I remember waiting in line for the bus and being told by another pupil not to wait too close to a boy called Lendon, because his mother didn’t like ‘Pakis’. It should come as no surprise that I ended up resenting that school and rightly or wrongly conflated racism with Conservative politics, which was part of the family background of the vast majority of the private grammar school’s pupils.

Even though Britain had initially needed immigration to aid its post-war reconstruction, there was a growing sense of fear and hatred particularly in the already socio-economically deprived areas where immigrants had been housed. It was no accident and actually enshrined in policy, that immigrants would end up living in some of these areas. Many had no choice, as they could not get a house elsewhere. This is the relatively unknown history of the rise of Asian ghettos. Mahesh Upadhyaya, an Aden-born engineer, was the first person to challenge discrimination under the racial equality act of 1968, against a builder refusing to sell him a house in an area where Asian's did not live, but the case was dismissed on a technicality.

First Case under Race Equality Act. Credit: Eachother.org.uk

There was a wave of attacks known as ‘Paki-bashing’, which targeted and assaulted Pakistanis and other South Asians, that lasted from the late 1960s till the 1980s. The national and local media fanned the flames of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and there were systemic failures by the police and the courts that indulged far-right fascist, racist movements such as the National Front, White Power Skinheads and the British National Party. This was a very difficult time for race relations and many people I knew had the mental and physical scars that reflected this. A friend I met in college told me how he used to play the keyboard in a band, until his fingers were broken by skinheads waiting for him outside a gig, leaving him with permanently disfigured fingers and an irrational distrust of anyone white. I remember introducing him to some white friends of mine, and his first reaction was very negative. He was very hostile to them as his past trauma prevented him from seeing them as anything other than potentially racist skinheads with longer hair. However, he warmed up after getting to know them and saw that not all white people were racist. He even ended up sharing a house with one of them. Many British-born friends from South-Asian backgrounds who lived in inner-city areas told stories of violence meted out to them and their families, including hateful graffiti and vandalism of their property, broken windows, and shit pushed through their letterbox. Their reaction in some cases was to generalize that British culture was racist, and thus they avoided contact with white people as much as they could. They would have business dealings with them, but no social interaction outside of work. In many of the big cities of the UK it is entirely possible to live this way, and many areas remain culturally divided to this day.

Paki-Bashing headline.  Credit: Crombie Media 

To grow up in 1980s Britain under Thatcher’s government was to experience a time of great social turmoil. Not only was it difficult for people of colour to get housing or even employment, but now they were also being harassed by the police.

Employment Discrimination Credit: Eachother.org.uk

The Conservative Party had instituted new police powers under the Vagrancy Act of 1824. It meant that people could be stopped and searched based only on “reasonable suspicion” that they had committed an offence - the so-called ‘sus law’ (suspected person). These were of course applied disproportionately to Black and Asian communities, but particularly in Black areas, which exacerbated racial tension as young black men were highly likely to be targeted. After they were arrested, many suffered violent beatings and even death under ‘mysterious circumstances’ while in police custody. Race riots were common in many of the major cities as a result.

Brixton Riots 1981. Credit: Thisdaythen.blogspot.com

 

Bradford Riot 2001. Credit: Yorkshirepost.com

Of course, there are also plenty of other examples of South Asians who did not suffer the same extremes of violence. I had many friends who had a completely different experience. They often grew up in middle-class or affluent areas where there were fewer ethnic minorities; hence they were perceived as less of a threat, and were welcomed into those communities. Some have no idea of the scale of this problem, as they were never exposed to it, in the same way a white person would not necessarily understand the issue without experiencing it themselves. The situation was and still is very complex. There is also an element of internalized racism, whereby the ethnic minorities themselves absorbed the racist messages and tropes they were bombarded with and adopted a mindset of self-hatred, or hatred of their own racial groups. Some would not have either the opportunity or inclination to associate with other minorities who were on a different socioeconomic level than themselves and thus there remains a divide in the understanding of these issues.

Internalized racism can be insidious, as you do not have a sense of your own implicit bias. Unconscious processes can chart a course without you even feeling you made specific decisions about yourself or towards others. We are all subject to a degree of internalized racism, which also produces a corresponding sense of entitlement when you believe you are superior to others. I acknowledge that I was also influenced by this, and remember avoiding people because they were considered ‘FOBs’ (fresh-off-the-boat) or stereotypes of the culture they came from. There was a time when I identified more with my white British friends, because it was easier to fit in this way. This gradually changed through my college years, as I was exposed to more people from diverse backgrounds and became much more aware of my own biases. I made a concerted effort to ‘unlearn’ my own programming, aiming to have a much more inclusive and balanced view of race and ethnicity.

I once had an Atari ST computer, and would swap games with friends, making disk copies of classics like Dungeon Master and Xenon. One computer game released in the late 1980s was a hacked version of another game called Sidewinder. A friend gave me a copy, thinking it was hilarious, since he did not think of himself as racist. I didn’t play it.

                                                         Pakibash by Klu Klux Software

My experience at University was much improved, compared to my school days, and I started to take heart in the idea that progress, though slow, was on the way. In London, with its cosmopolitan population and constant state of flux, there were always pockets of narrow-mindedness and racism, but generally, it seemed to be changing for the better. People boycotted and protested against South African apartheid. Eddy Grant released ‘Gimme Hope Jo Anna’, and the injustice of a system built on ‘apartness’ became the catalyst for international solidarity. Even Spitting Image highlighted the injustice of South Africa’s apartheid system with its own comedy song, ‘I’ve Never Met a Nice South African’, shaming it for its racism. Only a few countries supported the apartheid regime, and by 1994 apartheid had ended and Nelson Mandela was president. It only took another 14 years before he was taken off Ronald Reagan’s terror list. People seemed to be more aware of other cultures; there was an international and multicultural flavour to London and I enjoyed connecting with people from all over the world. I would often attend Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, frequent cultural events, comedy clubs, art galleries, museums and theatres. I was involved in starting the first multicultural society at our university, and my view of the world grew exponentially as a result.

Eventually I moved up to Liverpool to study, and while living there, I started hitchhiking (the subject of another blog - A Hitch in the Plan). I could not afford to travel regularly down to London, so this became my new mode of transport as a student. I would often ask the people who stopped to give me a lift what had motivated them to do so. On more than one occasion I was told that my ethnicity was the reason, as they had not seen someone of South Asian background hitchhiking before! I took this very positively, particularly since I never waited long for a ride. I realized that there were many kind people around: people without prejudice, prepared to take the risk of having a stranger in their car and assisting them.

The only time I felt any discrimination in Merseyside was from the police. I had made friends with a group of dental students who lived in a big house a mile or so down the road from my own. They were five Sikh guys and one white English guy, living together. I had never seen that before, as I was so used to being the only visibly different guy in the group, and here the situation was reversed. It was refreshing to see.  Matt, from Wakefield, was very much into Indian culture, particularly the food and music. One night, I picked them up to go to an Indian cultural event near Manchester. As I was driving, Matt, who was sitting in the back of the car, kept looking out the window, and noticed that we had been followed by a police car for a few miles. I asked him not to look at them, as they might find some reason to stop me. He couldn’t help himself and looked around anyway, and the next thing you know there were flashing blue lights and a siren. I pulled over. What unfolded next was the most bizarre interaction I have ever had with police.

They asked me to step out of the vehicle and questioned me about where I was going. I told them about the event, and they wrote some notes. They asked Matt to step out of the car, and questioned him separately about where he was going. I could hear them from where I stood and thought this was very weird. They asked him if he was sure that he was not being coerced, and he replied he was sure, with a big smile on his face. They let us go. Matt then told us the police thought we might have kidnapped him!

My whole experience of living in Liverpool was generally very good. Despite the race riots of the 1980s, things had calmed down. It made sense to me that a port city with the oldest black British and Asian communities in the country would be at the leading edge of social change that undoubtedly contributed to it becoming a European Capital of Culture in 2008.

Liverpool - Capital of Culture. 2008 Credit: Moomusician-Shutterstock

I moved back to London in the mid-nineties, and started looking for work while continuing my education. This was when I realized that the rose-tinted glasses I’d been wearing were slowly being bent out of shape. On the surface, it seemed that society had embraced the idea of many cultures living together, and I believed most people treated each other with respect. However, the problem was that there had not been a deeper systemic change, and so the fundamental  issues that made a difference to people’s lives, like jobs and housing, were still creating divisions of race and class. I was about to experience these divisions first hand.

I managed to get a job in an estate agents business to pay my way through college. Part of my job was to contact landlords who wanted to rent out and sell their properties, get all the relevant  information, and then arrange viewings for tenants. The estate agency was in North London, not far from where I lived. At first, I really enjoyed working there, until my eyes were opened to the racial discrimination that made it so difficult for non-white (and particularly black) people to find a place to live. I was shocked the first time I experienced this, as I had sincerely believed that things were a lot better than they were back in the 80s, when I was at school.

I had just closed the deal with a landlord on the telephone, and was arranging a viewing for tenants, when he said to me, “By the way, I don’t want any Pakis or Indians living in my house.” I retorted that he was talking to one. He immediately hung up. Because of my ‘Queen’s English’ accent, he must have assumed I was white. I talked to Jacob, who owned the business. He told me this was not uncommon. He agreed that it was not fair or ethical, but said that this is how the world was, and we had to deal with landlords like that. One day, when I was going through the old files of properties, I found more than ten of these ‘special requests’ by landlords. I talked to a colleague about reporting this to the authorities - surely this was illegal? She told me that the business was not responsible and that although it was bad, we just had to ignore it.

That night I was mulling over making copies of the files, as I felt it unconscionable not to do something about it. I even called the Commission for Racial Equality (disbanded in 2007). They agreed it was a big problem, but as it was hidden and covert, and involved private individuals, it would be complicated to tackle. But they would try. The next day, I went to make copies of the files. They were gone.

The last straw for me was when I had arranged viewings for a Zambian doctor, and we went to see the place I had rung only ten minutes earlier. When we arrived, the curtains twitched, but no-one answered the door. We rang the bell a number of times, and waited for about five minutes, before going back to the car. As we got to the car we saw a white couple ring the bell. The door opened straight away. We went back and rang the bell again. Finally the owner answered the door, asking, “Who are you two characters?” I told him that I had only just spoken to him on the phone and had arranged to be there. Again, my ‘white’ voice had confused him. “Oh, I thought you were somebody else,” he said.  But he had never met me! He asked us to wait, since he was showing the other couple the house now. After a while they left, and he let us in, but he grilled the doctor for almost half an hour before letting him see the house, informing us that the previous couple were going to take it anyway. I was very angry. I turned to the doctor and told him I was really sorry that he had to be subjected to all this. He smiled and told me not to worry about it; he said he was used to this treatment. I resigned the next day.

A couple of years later, I was working as a medical representative in London. We were having a team meeting in a conference room in a manor house in Surrey; a senior manager was discussing various strategies on how to approach medical personnel to influence them. Since a large proportion of doctors in London where of South Asian origin, he directed his strategy on how to talk to them, and made a number of racist remarks about the Indian and Pakistani doctors we worked with. I was the only Asian on our team. I was trying to build a career, and wanted to stay under the radar, so I held my tongue, even though I really wanted to tell him that what he was saying was offensive. I was very proud of the moment that my friend and colleague Zelko saw me shifting uncomfortably in my chair: he stood, and bravely called out the manager for the blatant stereotyping and racism. Other colleagues of mine also clapped to show support for what Zelko was saying. The manager was shamed by him and a few other colleagues that day. I really felt supported by my team, secure in the knowledge that they were many good people out there, many dear friends of mine included, who stood up for their principles and the rights of others.

I observed that inclusion and exclusion within groups of friends and colleagues was complex, and linked to the interplay of identities of race, religion, socio-economic class, and of course personal qualities. I was fortunate to have some friends who regarded themselves as working class, and in many ways I felt that they were just as disadvantaged and marginalized as those who had to deal with racial discrimination. Sometimes these groups would be working together, as I saw while at college, or working against each other, as I witnessed on visits to some areas of England, including London, Luton, Birmingham and Bradford. I remember being shown around by an Asian friend, Aneel, who lived in Luton, who explained to me that the town was divided, and that “white people just don’t come here generally”. He told me there were corresponding areas in the same town where you wouldn’t see any minorities. After Asians had been subjected to violence from white racist gangs in the 70s, he explained, they had formed their own gangs, initially to protect their communities, as they could not rely on the police to do so. By the 1980s, some of them had turned from protectors of their neighbourhood to drug dealers and criminals, as a result of the time they spent in prison for their violence.

I was deeply affected by these experiences, and the stories of others who had suffered much more than I had. I found myself vacillating between challenging these things and wanting to avoid all this nonsense; to emigrate somewhere my ethnicity would be less of an issue, not just for me but also for my family.  I had previously felt I could accomplish anything I wanted in the UK, as long as I turned a blind eye to prejudice and racism and adopted a more ‘English’ rather than Indian persona. But once you have seen it, it cannot be unseen!

I generally identify as British-Indian. I remember discussing this with a friend one day, who said, “Well you were born here, so you must be British.” I told him it wasn’t that simple. Culturally I identified with India; I had spent years there as a child and ate mostly Indian food, and even spoke the language - albeit like a second-rate Bollywood villain! Of course, I also acknowledged my British birth and cultural influences, and the fact I had spent the majority of my life in the UK. I told him that not everyone would see me as English either.

I have been labelled so many different things – ‘Paki’, British, ‘Coconut’ (brown on the outside, white on the inside), South-Asian, Indian, Indo-American, East-Indian (in Canada) - that I have become desensitized to the whole identity nomenclature. Hence I revert to the simple ‘British-Indian’, as it makes the most sense in a world where being human just isn’t enough.

I felt my white British friends had a greater chance of speaking out against these kinds of injustices, and being the instruments of change, than I did. If they spoke up, they would not be judged for having a chip on their shoulder or ‘playing the race card’ (a popular way to silence dissenters), and in this way, they could affect change.

Ironically, the origins of the ‘race card’ can be traced back to 19^th century right-wing politicians propagating fears about black people to influence the electorate and gain votes. The idea was illustrated in the London-based Punch magazine, whose editors did not support Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and published the cartoon ‘Abe Lincoln’s Last Card’. Even though Lincoln was lauded for ending slavery, he still considered blacks to be inferior to whites.

‘Abe Lincoln’s Last Card’ in Punch, 1861, by John Tenniel, illustrator of Alice in Wonderland

A Race We Can All Win - Part 1 of 5

“Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently, discredited and abandoned - Everywhere is war!” sang Bob Marley.

I am thirteen years old. I have been at this grammar school barely a couple of weeks. I’m exploring the grounds on my own at lunchtime when I notice another pupil, Brannigan, and his gang advancing slowly towards me. I have an ominous feeling as I see a menacing look on his face and the expectation of a ‘rumble’ in the eyes of his friends. I naively wait till they have cornered me before acknowledging their presence. It is clear to me that there is an intention of some kind of confrontation, but being new to all this I have no idea how this is supposed to unfold.

 “Oi, Paki!” he addresses me. His friends laugh. At this point in my life, I have never been called a Paki before, though I know that it is a racial insult directed towards anyone of South Asian descent, or even of a slightly darker complexion. I stand there sheepishly, not knowing what to do. Should I try to run away, or stand my ground? Instead, I pretend that I do not fully understand. “Hello,” I reply, a little nervously. He looks back at his friends with an incredulous smile. “Paki!” he says again, more forcefully, trying to goad me into a fight with him and his friends, a fight that both he and I know I would lose.

“Actually, my parents are from India and I was born here,” I say, hoping that this will somehow make a difference. Since I’m not responding to his provocations, he decides to use this opportunity to make a political speech justifying his behaviour in front of his friends. 

“Well you still come here and take all our jobs,” he announces. I think about this for a moment. It really doesn’t make any sense to me, and feel I should point this out to him.

“But I don’t have a job,” I reply. “I’m still going to school, you see.” His friends start laughing, but this time at him. He looks a bit confused but tries to maintain control of the situation.

“Yeah, but you will take our jobs one day,” he retorts.

I try to negotiate, appealing to his sense of reason. “Look, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you tell me which job you’re going to do, and I won’t go for the same one?” His friends giggle at this and somehow I have managed to diffuse the situation for long enough: the school bell rings, and I am proverbially saved.

The subject of race and migration, and the conflict with which it is often associated, is a contentious one for many. It is probably one of the most difficult topics to tackle with any objectivity, since we have all been exposed to assumptions about race and migration which we may have internalized without knowing. I will endeavour to write as honestly and openly as possible about my own personal experience, interspersing my writing with titbits of information garnered from my literature review (with links to media in blue) and some of the conclusions at which I arrived. I deliberately include racist labels for context and use colour descriptors, as well as the word ‘race’, which I completely acknowledge is itself a social and political construct.  I apologize in advance for this, as well as the stream of consciousness style.

We live on a beautiful planet, with so much potential, and have come a long way in many regards. Paradoxically, it is also a world ravaged by pollution, environmental devastation, endless wars, famine and brutal inequality, where 10 men own more wealth than 85 countries! That should give us pause to reflect on our predicament. Even those who are doing relatively well need to heed the cautionary tales of history - that without systemic change, their own good fortune cannot last forever. Their legacies will not be passed on to future generations beyond their own lifetimes. Sir Francis Galton the pioneer of Eugenics was ultimately proven wrong in his study, showing that success in one generation is not a guarantee of its continuation in others. A global pandemic and its economic implications just exacerbate this pre-existing condition.

The state of the world, and its socio-economic malaise, is undoubtedly complex.  I believe there is a roadmap to a solution which requires a shift in global consciousness, and a little imagination to dare to dream of something better for all of us on this planet.  In the world order we live in, some human beings are valued less than others. This is evident through our global economic system and its institutions that strongly favour the wealthy, feeding the ever-growing gap between rich and poor. This happens on both an internal and international level, where the powerful can siphon off the resources of the powerless. This juggernaut of consumption and exploitation is unsustainable for society and our environment.

The way we treat each other as human beings must be examined. The simple truth is that we are all interconnected, as COVID-19 has adequately demonstrated. Despite our nation states, we are essentially ‘one people’. Building a new socio-cultural-economic model is part of our evolutionary journey. We need a new set of paradigms to replace old ones that are no longer relevant or sustainable. That is what I hope to demonstrate by relating my own experiences within a historical context. I will expand upon these memories and extrapolate them to the challenges that all people face – since, returning to my proposition – our interdependence is the basis for a global community.

As a British Indian, I have had numerous encounters with both overt and institutional racism. I grew up in the 1970s and 80s, when Margaret Thatcher talked about the fears Britain had of being “swamped by a different culture”. This was apparently in response to the rise of the National Front, who were campaigning in competition with the Conservatives over the very hot topic of the time - immigration.

The National Front, 1970s.  Credit: Spectator.co.uk

The National Front is a far-right, fascist political party founded by Arthur Chesterton in 1967. He was a follower of Oswald Mosely and a member of the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists - the closest party Britain had to the Nazis. They believe in white supremacy, biological racism, racial separatism and antisemitism. They were popular in the 1970s and 1980s but have never won seats in Parliament and have now lost their power to other far-right parties such as the English Defence League (EDL) and The British National Party (BNP). They were very well known to the generation of immigrants who were the subject of their rallies - the alien cultures.

The band Alien Kulture, formed in 1979, who played in 30 shows before disbanding in 1981

Since the 1950s, Britain was desperate to acquire ‘skilled’ workers from its former colonies in order to deal with the shortage of labour of the post-war years. This was a real problem for the British economy that needed a boost and the only way to do it was to increase the work-force by importing labour. The British Nationality Act was passed in 1948 in order to allow immigration from the former colonies and Commonwealth countries.

British Nationality Act of 1948

A lot of those skilled workers, including my university-educated father, were forced to take unskilled or semi-skilled work in order to sustain themselves and their families. He had a degree in physics and had studied aeronautical engineering, yet his first job was working in a factory as a labourer. This was a typical situation in these days and remains a barrier for many immigrants where licensing and certifications are used to exclude.

My parents’ generation of immigrants also had to deal with the prejudice of landlords, many of whom imposed strict rules to keep their immigrant house ‘guests’ in line. I remember reading my father’s old letters, discovered in a suitcase in the attic of our house: a treasure trove of memories of when he first arrived in Britain.

Among them, I found several warning letters from various landlords, including one about not being able to use the heating in the ground floor accommodation he was renting. I remember my father telling me how he used to have to sit around with blankets and cardigans to fend off the cold, as landlords restricted the use of heating in their tenants’ rooms in the winter.

There were many things they were not ‘allowed’ to do, and so many restrictions that a human rights lawyer in today’s world would have had their work cut out for them. When my parents’ landlady observed my pregnant mother’s distended belly, instead of congratulating her on her pregnancy, she immediately gave my parents an eviction notice. It was so difficult for my parents to find accommodation that allowed young children that my mother had no choice but to take me, as a two-week old baby, back to India to live with my grandparents.

Notices such as these were part of life in 1960s Britain. Credit: Race Relations Board (1969)

Just a few years earlier, Enoch Powell, a Conservative Member of Parliament, had famously warned about the “rivers of blood” that would flow as a result of immigration into Britain. The Beatles even satirized this in an early version of ‘Get Back’ before the commercial release, known to bootleggers as ‘No Pakistanis’. To their credit, the Beatles used their fame to speak out against racism, they refused to play to a segregated audience in Florida in 1964 until the audience was desegregated, and their song ‘Blackbird’ was written in support of the civil rights movement.

Enoch Powell. 'Rivers of Blood' Speech. Credit: birmingham-rep.co.uk

 For a long time, I believed there was no sense in dwelling on these past memories, as they could not be of any benefit. I had previously believed that incidences of racism were diminishing as the world was changing, and that racism itself would soon be a relic of the past. Living in Philadelphia in the second decade of 21^st century USA, I now doubt whether this is really the case. Anyone who had spent time in Philadelphia will know that racism and prejudice are alive and well in the ‘city of brotherly love’.

Philadelphia magazine 2013

People of diverse cultures and ethnicities still face barriers of exclusion, and socio-economic hurdles, that many of their white counterparts do not. Clearly there is a power dynamic that needs to be addressed. There is such a thing as white privilege; it is difficult to quantify, and even more difficult to explain to a person who does not see that it exists, because they themselves do not feel they have been privileged at all.  Arguably, there are also many white working class people who suffer discrimination too. This is a nuanced issue complicated by class, gender, and other visible signifiers that may make skin colour less relevant.  I do not want to diminish these experiences and I will revisit this later. However, the suffering of these people is not primarily defined by race, which is the issue I would like to focus on for now.

Until I was eight years old, we had been living in Harrow, a very diverse neighbourhood in London, and then moved to the countryside, where I grew up surrounded by mostly white working- and middle-class people. At the local junior school, my best friend was a British-Chinese guy, whose parents had emigrated from Hong Kong. I did not personally experience any discrimination there, except for the time when I helped my friend defeat one of the school bullies. It was also the first time I experienced racism directed at someone else.

After school one day, Ken and I were leaving school when a bully, ‘Smith’, called out to Ken, “Bye Chinky!” Ken had been told by his dad that he should always stand up to bullies, or the bullying and name-calling would never stop. He squared off against Smith, who was two years older than us.

“What did you say?” Ken asked.

Again, Smith repeated,“Chinky!” Looking down at him, he was almost a foot taller than Ken and did not expect him to retaliate. He put his fingers in the corner of his eyes to simulate epicanthic eye-folds, and goaded, “Slit-eyes!” 

Without hesitation, Ken landed a punch right in the bully’s face and the now red-faced Smith, both surprised and angry, rained blows down on Ken. I could not stand there and watch my best friend being beaten up, even though I was scared of the older boy, so I summoned up some courage and landed a few punches of my own. Smith was so taken aback at these two smaller kids working together in unison that he decided to retreat. He turned away and ran off. We were both high on adrenaline, feeling victorious that we had seen off this bully, and walked home recounting the fight, blow by blow.

Picture of myself and Ken around the time of our fight with Smith

As far as I can remember, Smith did not bother myself or Ken again. That was one of my few successes in fighting off a racist using brute force.

There were other fights that I had later at the grammar school, but I had no allies, and found myself facing more than one opponent at a time. Luckily, most of these fights were broken up by a teacher. For most of my teen years at school, I had a fair share of racist abuse. I was called ‘Paki’, ‘Nigger’, ‘Coon’, ‘Chocolate-face’, ‘Black bastard’, ‘Wog’. Whenever I hear racial slurs and names also being used to insult people of different backgrounds than mine I find it just as abhorrent. The hatred comes from the same source of ignorance, and could therefore just as easily be directed at me. I still remember some of the chants that were used against me: “Pull that trigger, shoot that Nigger - Join the National Front!” Another was, “There ain’t no black in the Union Jack!” Even today when I see the British flag, it triggers memories of seeing it being brandished aggressively as a symbol of extreme nationalism. Rationally, I know it is not, but the association was there. The English flag, or St. George’s flag, is also used by the English Defence League, a far-right, racist organisation. This is quite ironic as St. George was born in Cappadocia in Turkey, of Greek parents, and is regarded as a saint in both Christianity and Islam.

 At this early stage in life, It became quite apparent to me that even though I was born in England I was not regarded as being English by everyone. I remember feeling very alone in my school days, particularly at the grammar school. I was called names and had to deal with racial abuse on almost a daily basis.  I eventually learnt to ignore the name-calling, even though it did still get to me, and this was reflected in my educational performance, which declined. I didn’t tell my family, as I felt shame, so they didn’t know about it till much later. I remember even a teacher at the school making fun of my name for cheap laughs, and I had a general feeling of hopelessness. I felt I had no-one who would stand up for me the way I had for my friend Ken a couple of years earlier. There was only a handful of boys in the whole school who were from any ethnic background and only two I remember who were black. If you were good at sports, which I was not, that made a difference to how you were perceived, so a couple of those minority students’ skin colour was overlooked because of their physical prowess.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, which we had to read for English, became my favourite book, because I felt I could really relate to it. The descent of a group of boys into a groupthink pack, and the resulting tension that leads to the bullying and eventual death of Piggy, the child perceived as ‘different’, seemed to sum up my own predicament.

The film Lord of the Flies (1963), based on William Golding’s book 

Indian Words

When I lived in London, an Indian friend Raja would always say, “Hey Man!” whenever we met. His name was ‘Raja’, but everyone called him ‘Roger’. He used the word ‘man’ quite liberally and would add it into any conversation at least a few times, the same way some people do with profanity. He had long hair, was extremely chilled, a bit of a hippie, so I kind of expected him to say something like that. One day he must have said it about ten times in one conversation that I simply had to point it out. I suggested he was overusing it just a little. He raised his eyebrows and looked at me very seriously and told me that I did not realize the true significance of what he was saying. I asked him to elaborate and he told me that this was one of the earliest greetings and words used by our ancient Indian ancestors, and connected them to their humanity. I must admit even though I was intrigued, I still thought this was the ramblings of an eccentric at the time. Still, I wanted to hear what he had to say. He explained that the word ‘man’ originally came from Sanskrit that was part of the original language that all European languages had branched off from, over centuries as people migrated Westwards. The Sanskrit word itself was ‘manu’. The original meaning of ‘manu’ was similar to the gender-neutral word ‘human’, as in mankind. After learning about this from him, I researched what he had talked about and found that indeed he had a point, based on the study of language – linguistics.

I wanted to explore the archaic and modern influence of the Indian languages on English. We know that hundreds of words were appropriated into the language from the colonial age when the British ruled India. But well before this, there were already ‘Indian words’ in the whole of Europe. This was observed in the 16^th Century when visitors to the Indian subcontinent noticed similarities among Indo-Persian and European languages.

A hypothesis was formed that there was a relationship between them. Sir William Jones, a philologist, remarked in a lecture on linguistics in 1786 that the structural similarity between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin had to be more than a coincidence, suggesting that there was a common source. Just a few decades later, the term Indo-European was used to describe the relationship and by the mid-1850’s it was accepted that there was a strong historical and geographical relationship which has now been researched for at least the last two hundred years. Proto-Indo-European is the root of these languages that are interconnected like the branches of a tree.

Credit: Wikimedia Commons

This also parallels the movement and migration of people known from the genographic project, a genetic anthropological study to examine the migration patterns of people over thousands of years using gene markers in their DNA. There is a strong correlation between the migration patterns and the prevalence of languages related to those people who migrated. 

Ancient DNA and the Proto-Indo-European Homeland Credit: Anthrogenica.com

It is thought that somewhere on the Eurasian Steppes the archaic Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language was born. There are many competing theories about when and where this happened, but many point to the area of the fertile crescent and the rise of agriculture, around 12000 years ago, being the catalyst for the spread and differentiation of these languages. Indo-European languages then flourished over this area as migrations continued in all directions. As a result, we have language trees and common roots of many words in the modern languages that resemble the original words and sounds very closely and others that have changed over time.

Spread of the Proto-Indo-European word for ‘Brother’ Credit: Bigthink.com

I was particularly interested in the connections between the Sanskrit words that had given rise to many of the Indian languages including Urdu and Hindi and the Germanic language- English. English was first used in India as early as the 1600’s, but the official language of the East India Company was originally Persian and later replaced by English in the 1830’s, together with Urdu and Hindi. This was maintained when the British Raj took over governance of the country from 1857 until 1947.

 Urdu and Hindi are both very similar in their syntax and phonology which makes them interchangeable in general speech, although they have totally different scripts. Urdu has a Perso-Arabic script with grammar derived from Persian influence and Hindi has the Devanagari script drawn from Sanskrit. The core vocabulary of both Hindi and Urdu are almost identical being derived mostly from Sanskrit with a substantial component of loanwords from Persian and Arabic. ‘Hindi’ denoting the language comes from the word ‘Hindu’, which is the Persianized version of the Sanskrit ‘Sindhu’ meaning a large body of water or river. This was not originally a religious label, but referred to the civilization of the Indus river valley and was an ethno-geographical term. Since the 16^th century and colonization, the languages evolved into cultural identities of the speakers, but this incontrovertible relationship between the two also gave rise to the concept of ‘Hindustani’ as a pluricentric language with two standardized registers and was endorsed by Mahatma Gandhi as a unifying fusion language. It is also the third most commonly spoken language in the world after English and Mandarin.

The interaction between speakers of the English language and Hindustani during the time of the British Raj left an indelible mark on both languages. There are many English words that have been incorporated into Hindi, particularly during the 19^th and 20^th centuries where modern inventions which had no Hindi equivalent were used. Likewise, there are over 700 words that were learnt by English soldiers, administrators, governors etc, that were transported back to Britain and adopted into the English language. These Indian words came from a variety of languages including Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and the ancient language of Sanskrit. Of course, there are literally hundreds of languages in daily use in the Indian subcontinent with at least 22 scheduled languages and two official languages of the government of India, Hindi and English.

Here is a compiled list of favourite words that are commonly used in English that have Indian origins:

 

Avatar- originally from a Sanskrit word avatarana meaning descent, referring to the descent from heaven by a Hindu god into an earthly incarnation. Later on it became a reference for the embodiment or personification of something and is now commonly used as a graphic representation. 

Bandana- from the Sankrit roots of the Hindi word bandhna, ‘to tie’. A piece of cloth worn around the head or neck originating from the Indian subcontinent.

Blighty- A corruption of the Urdu word vilayati, meaning ‘foreign’. Originally used by British troops in Colonial India as a term of endearment for home. It was then commonly used in the early 20^th Century to refer to Britain and is still used now.

Credit:Sepiamutiny.com 

Bungalow- from the Hindi and Urdu word baṅglā, literally meaning ‘house’ in the Bengali style

Cash- This word is controversial in that it may have also been derived from the Middle French word caisse, as in a case where money was kept which would have been a more local explanation. However there is evidence from logs on ships in the 16^th century that it was only used to denote money after the establishment of the East India Company and the word kasu was already used in Tamil, itself derived from the Sanskrit karsa. 

Cot- from the Hindi khat, a small light bed or crib for a child.

Cummerbund- Urdu origin from the Persian kamarband. Kamar meaning waist.

Cushy- from Urdu and Hindi Khushi which was derived from the Persian word khoši meaning easy, happy, soft.

Dinghy- from ḍīngī in Urdu and Hindi denoting a small rowing boat used on rivers and lakes in India.

Doolally- from the town of Deolali, which in the 19^th Century was the location of a British army base and sanatorium where soldiers were sent before leaving for Britain. Those that became mentally deranged after contacting a fever, or Tap in Urdu, were said to have ‘gone Doolally’.

Dungaree- from the Hindi ḍūṅgrī referring to the coarse calico fabric that was worn by labourers in the Dongari area of Mumbai.

Guru- from Sanskrit Guruh which literally means weighty or heavy used to denote a spiritual leader, as a teacher or one to be honoured.

Jodhpurs- Named after Jodhpur in Rajasthan where similar full-length trousers, baggy around the thighs and hips and narrowed down to the ankle were worn by the Rajputs for horse-riding. They enabled more freedom of movement and were based on Churidar pyjamas.

Juggernaut- after the Sanskrit jagannātha a form of Vishnu- lord of the universe in Hinduism. The massive Jagannath Temple in Puri, Odisha is well known for its festivals of Rath Yatra when thousands of devotees pull large wooden forms of Vishnu along with his brother and sister along on giant chariots through the streets. Used in English to describe a large vehicle as well as being used metaphorically.

Credit: nationalheraldindia.com

Jungle- from Sanksrit jaṅgala, meaning sparsely grown, arid and uncultivated land. Now used in English to mean any mass of wild and tangled vegetation. 

Karma- from Sanskrit karman, the sum of a person’s actions in life as well as the effect of the actions, hence fate. The cycle of cause and effect is embodied in karma.

Credit: karma-a-osud.cz

Loot- from the Hindi luti, the one who plunders or steals 

Mogul- From Hindi and Urdu originally from the Mongol Emperors known as Moghuls, such as Sha Jahan, the chap who commissioned the Taj Mahal. Used in English to indicate the leader in a field such as a ‘Media Mogul’. 

Punch- From the Hindi and Urdu word panch meaning ‘five’. The drink was originally made up of five ingredients and was particularly popular with the East India Companies’ Employees. 

Pundit- From Sanskrit Payndita, a learned man, scholar or teacher, also a priest.

Pyjamas- From Hindi and Urdu paijaamaa, meaning garment of the leg, originating from Persian. These are still the traditional dress in many parts of India, loose and comfortable that are now worn at bedtime in many Western countries.

Credit: movies.ndtv.com 

Shampoo- derived from the Hindi champo, meaning ‘to knead’ or massage.

Tickety-boo- My personal favourite and an interesting story behind this one. Originally it came from the Hindustani reply to an officer enquiring how everything was going. ‘Thīk hai, bābū’ literally meant, ‘It’s all right, sir’. This was shortened to Tickety-boo!

Credit: Buzzfeed.com

 

You can’t control the tide, but you can learn how to Surf!

 The first time I tried windsurfing I nearly ended up with a severe concussion. It was in Lorient, In Northwest France and I was about 22 years old. I had taken a coach from London to Paris with my friend Malcolm and we were very excited about the prospect of learning to sail. We were staying at a friend’s villa on the coast and we were expecting some good strong winds for the 2 weeks we were there. We had driven up to Lorient from Breuillet, a village south of Paris, where we were staying at our friend Arnaud’s house. It had taken us a good six hours to get there and all along the journey we were talking about windsurfing which was still a relatively new sport that became popular in France in the late 1970’s. Arnaud was quite an experienced windsurfer who had sailed competitively and for pleasure. He had taught others to windsurf and was going to be our instructor on this trip. Little did we know that there was a storm brewing and our single day out on the water turned into the first and last time it was safe to venture out. We arrived in the evening at the villa. Arnaud and his friend Herve, prepared dinner and discussed the plan of action for the next day. They were a little concerned about the weather, but we all wanted it to be windy because, without that, we would not be sailing anywhere. 

The next morning, we got suited up in our wetsuits and Arnaud brought the boards and sails to the beach where we prepared to launch. After some basic instruction, I was out on in the water and struggled to get the sail up while kneeling on the board. The wind was so strong that for a beginner like myself, it was impossible to control the sail and the mast came crashing down on my head, not once, but a total of 3 times. After the 3^rd time, I had enough and gave up, deciding that this windsurfing stuff was not for me. The next day, the wind was even more powerful, and a small craft warning was issued on the radio. Needless to say, we did not venture out that day or for the next two weeks of our stay. We saw boats being wrecked by the high winds and many had capsized in the marina, so our windsurfing adventure turned into a storm watching experience. Although I did not learn to windsurf on this trip, I did get quite good at ‘WhiteWater’ pinball instead which we played daily at the local arcade. 

‘White Water’ The machine that lead to us becoming Pinball Wizards instead of windsurfers

Incidentally, the earliest windsurfers were ‘invented’ by Polynesians who had been riding the wind and waves for centuries, early accounts told of people standing upright on an adapted voyaging canoe with a vertical sail. Much later, in 1948 Newman Darby invented the first ‘sailboard’, but did not have the funds to patent it. The basic design was a rectangular board with a sail attached by a universal joint that allowed the sail to be moved in any direction. The first patented design was actually developed by an aeronautical engineer, Jim Drake who applied the principles of flight to design the sail to function like the wing of an aircraft, pivoting on the universal joint as before. The sail was manoeuvred by adding a wishbone boom, so it could easily be moved in the universal joint while standing. He and his surfer buddy, Hoyle Schweitzer, also changed the design to resemble a surfboard with a fin and added a keel and the windsurfer was born!

Illustration from Patent of windsurfer filed in 1968 Credit: Wikipedia.com

About 10 years later, on English Bay in Vancouver, British Columbia, I was given the opportunity to try again under better conditions, when my friend Charlie suggested I have a go on his windsurfer. I really did not think it was even worth trying as I was much older then and thought that it was too difficult to learn something new that required both technical skills as well as balance. I declined at first, but Charlie insisted that I at least try and balance on the board and see if I could even stand up on that without the sail. He was a better motivator than he was a teacher but sometimes that is precisely what you need to start anything!

I found it easier this time as the water was much calmer, so I managed to get up and stay up for a while. When he saw this, he took me through the basics of how to pull up the sail and hold it, rehearsing on the beach with the mast planted in the sand. Again, I did not have much confidence in myself and half-heartedly went through the motions, though it was more to please my friend than myself.

I managed to get the sail up with the board on the water. It was a beautiful sunny day; the water was calm and there was a gentle breeze. I was standing on the board with the sail correctly positioned and I was just about to lose my balance…when the magic happened! The sail swelled and distended. At the same time, I felt a sensation of being propelled forward with a great force. It was an incredible feeling. The wind had caught in the sail and I was pulled as if by an invisible hand out to sea, not too fast but enough for it to be exhilarating. I heard a friend’s voice shout from behind, “You’re doing It…. you’re actually doing it! It only lasted for about 30 seconds but that was enough to get me hooked. For the next few weeks, I was down at the beach every afternoon, hauling up the sail, practicing the “chicken wing” and falling in the water most of the time. I didn’t manage to actually sail for as long as the first time, but now I couldn’t give up. I was now addicted!

The harnessing of this great force of nature, the wind, to move through the water is a Zen-like moment. There is a strange calmness of mind and body working in unison at a task that is both peaceful as well as exciting, particularly when I reached that instant when all forces were working together. The wind, the waves, the force of my arms pulling in the sail and my balance- everything had to be in the perfect proportion to make the whole system work and propel me forwards. I would imagine the wind as an invisible creature that could be summoned by will and sometimes it seemed like it could. The waves were another kind of animal, sometimes angry and unhelpful to my endeavor, other times calm and serenely guiding me along. I would come down to the beach every day after work practicing, many times just losing my balance and falling in with the sail landing on me unceremoniously.

I was dumped on the beach regularly by the waves 

Sometimes I felt that the wind was playing with me, gusting at just the right moment to send me for a quick burst of speed, only to overpower me a moment later and push me over like a mischievous child. I would continue trying again and again, day after day until the sunset reminded me that it was time to go home.

Summer came and went, and the water became too cold, so I waited till the next summer and took lessons at Jericho beach where there was a sailing school. I perfected my balance and learnt how to tack and jibe. 

Finally getting the hang of it.

By the end of the summer I was confident enough to go out on my own and was now sailing for an hour or more each time. I became good enough to go out in high winds and choppy seas. I was constantly watching the wind radar to see when the wind was strong, and I would particularly go out on those days as I had a need for speed!

English Bay, my home for the summer

 I eventually bought a board and sail from a friend and would sail around English bay on summer afternoons with Charlie. Sometimes we would play “chicken” and sail our boards at each other to see who would be the first one to change course at the last minute.

 

Charlie playing Chicken with his rig

I have never been a great swimmer, but I could always swim far enough with the added buoyancy of a board and lifejacket to get back to shore if there was a problem. It was this lack of respect for the power of nature that was to be my undoing and taught me a lesson I shall never forget.

  I woke up one Saturday morning and looked at the wind forecast for the day. It was about 20-25 knots- a pretty good speed for some high-octane sailing. I made myself some eggs for breakfast to prepare for the day and drove down to the beach. After setting up my rig I looked at the horizon and saw the bent-over sails of some morning sailors and thought I would have some fun that day. As I paddled out on my board, I realized I didn’t have my lifejacket with me, but I had become quite confident in my abilities that I felt I didn’t always need to wear one.

Even if I fell off the board it was not usually too far to get back to the board, so I foolishly carried on. I got up on the board and caught a good strong wind that was constant and not gusting- perfect! In no time at all, I was planing across the water and could feel the wind and spray on my face. The adrenaline was pumping through my body and I did not want to stop. I managed to get to Jericho beach in just 10 minutes and zig-zagged my way out to the mouth of the bay where the water changed colour to a deep blue and the waves and swell where much bigger than I had ever previously experienced. 

I was still unaware of the dangerous situation I was in until a huge gust of wind pushed my sail with such force that I catapulted right over my board and into the water about 15 feet away! The arm that had been holding onto the boom had been yanked so hard, that It felt it had come out of the socket. It hadn’t, but I was in pain and I could not swim as fast as usual. As I got closer to the board, suddenly a wave would take it away further from me. I panicked as the realization dawned on me, I was not wearing a lifejacket and was now out in the open ocean. I prayed that I could get back to my board and put all my effort into swimming as fast as I could before another wave pushed my board further from me. With great difficulty and on a wing and a prayer I somehow managed to grasp my board just as another wave came in. I pulled myself back up on the board while still gasping for breath. I knew that I could not risk being separated again from the board, but I still needed to get back to safety, so I pulled up the sail very slowly.

 Every time I tried to grab the boom the swell of the ocean would unbalance me, and the wind howled around me. It was an impossible task. After about half an hour of struggling with the sail I was out of breath and very tired. I sat on the board, bobbing around in the waves, despondent and somewhat defeated, wondering how on earth I had got myself into this situation. I vowed never to sail without a lifejacket again in high winds or even go out in such conditions this far away from the shore. As I sat there pondering my predicament, I noticed a red dot on the horizon getting bigger and bigger. It was the coastguard who had come out to rescue me! I felt a mixture of embarrassment and relief as they threw me a rope and said they would tow me into the shallows. I talked to the crew as they towed me into shore, and they told me that a small craft warning had been issued and they were telling all the small vessels to come into shore.   

 This incident gave me a healthy respect for mother nature. I have been humbled by the first-hand knowledge that the great forces of water and wind can toss us mere mortal humans around like rag dolls. This just reaffirms the feeling of awe and wonder at the delicate balance of forces that hold our fragile planet together. Now, whenever I decide to go out for a sail, I will usually spend a little time on the beach first looking out at the water and watching the movement of waves and any sails I see on the horizon. I do this partly to gauge the conditions, particularly on windy days, but I also do it to out of a need to maintain that spiritual connection. I know I cannot control these powerful forces, but I can appreciate them and work in unison with them. Since those early days, I have had the good fortune to windsurf in numerous places around the world, including, the Jersey shore in the US, Canada, India, Mexico, Cuba, and Morocco.

Windsurfing in Essaouira, Morocco near one of the ‘Castles Made of Sand’ Jimi Hendrix sang about.

I recommend it to both young and old as a very enjoyable sport, the equipment is much lighter than it was 40 years ago, and it is more about technique than strength. I recently sold my old board and sail to a 70-year-old woman, who was an avid windsurfer in her younger days and recognized my board as the same brand she had previously owned. When I met her, I was reminded of my lack of confidence to try windsurfing in my 30’s. My self-imposed limitations and assumptions came back for a moment. I watched as she balanced herself carefully on the board. Seeing her give the rig a test-run and taking off as easily as if she were riding a bicycle just confirmed you are never too old to do something you enjoy.