Can you tell how the team of 2nd generation and the people they represented thought about expressing themselves in the 1990s?
I am a second-generation British Indian who grew up in South East London. I met the team of 2nd generation at a book launch party. It was always very interesting at 2nd generation, these were people who also you know they had a had a sense of who they were, but it wasn’t going to just be limited by anybody else’s superimposed vision of who you should be and how you should behave, and you know the performative aspect it was down to you, you know they are really how you carried it, not because you were trying to prove a particular point. It happens in every culture particularly in cultures where you find yourself either is any miracle or in some other way of minority that there seems to be a special premium placed on how you acquit yourself in public it’s made its way to carry weight that perhaps it should have to carry, and I think that magazine was a very useful conduit for many of us you know it became a way to just slightly really ******* with the edges.
While working on WE magazine, my priority is to highlight the hybrid fashion adopted by diasporic communities in the West. Since you belong to this community in the UK, can you tell me your personal experiences and observations on the Indo-Western fusion style?
I have a slightly complicated relationship both to the British state but also to the idea of India itself because I’m the child of partition refugees, both my mom and dad were refugees. You know that’s if anything is going to mess with your life it’s that. There’s wholesale trauma, there were people who were Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, there were all together. And we were unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. whatever but they never not all of them but large numbers of them never really fitted in afterwards and so lead some of the earliest migrants to the UK were people to actually have that sense old stable home back in India. I’m talking about people like my father, they were in too much pain but they were playful. They did not have the a serious understanding of what accompanies the notion of cultural identity. It was like an arcade, culture and identity are going to be whatever was possible in the given circumstances. Despite of that, they looked fantastic, I am thinking about your project and magazine and the notion of fashion. I am thinking about men in the Workers Association, they were radical workers groups. there is some sort of connexion between radicalism historical experience and then that these guys were you know they were anti colonial so they were you know agitating for Indian independence way back in the 1920s nineteen 30s in the UK but also they were agitating for Labour rights here yeah so they were actively involved in you know working class struggles in this country and you know for example proper working conditions in the foundries the factories and even schools for their children. I mean it’s just you know because people were excluded from so many keys spheres of everyday life and so these radical folks but the thing that I mean you know two always stayed with me was that they looked great they look fantastic I see old images of the level of the guys who used to organise outside the factory gates there there and then they got their high waist trousers you know that that they look you know I’ve got old beautiful old image but bad where there’s a very handsome guy anyway pretty they stairs go high waist this he’s gotta pretty rakishly perched. you carried it well at funny enough that story hasn’t really been told you know, the story of Indians in the UK and it has been a version of it has been produced and that’s fine and I I don’t have any issue with that but as with all versions it’s a partial fragment then I think there are far more like ragged stories round the edges which have yet to be told you know there there the ones where that style and fashion and patter and music performance, sexuality united it’s all day till there in a mix of them and it a far less orthodox tale that needs to be out there.
What do you think about independent magazines?
The independent edge of publishing where people are taking creative risks, where everything is not subordinated with the desperate need of making money, everything else seems monetised in mean time, the idea that there are some things, some conversations that you have because you have to. This also sounds like a labour of love on your part, you want to communicate something that you are experiencing, if I’ve understood correctly.
How was the tone of 2nd generation was received?
Received fairly well, I think because it really helps when you know your editor is in your corner. Imran was a fabulous editor. That was a great help. I felt embolden to write and tell stories that I wanted to talk about the London social experiment. I wrote very boldly, I wasn’t lukewarm about having uncomfortable conversations.
What would you like to comment on the stereotypical perceptions of Indians in the UK today?
I would like to refer to it as ‘The changing same’. There’s a duality, on the surface level, politically, economically etc. But there are some elements that have remained static. It has become less liberal minded, The culture here has always required outsiders. When we came here, we had to learn how to stand up for ourselves and we managed to carve out a niche for ourselves. What’s happening now, with the notions of stereotypes and Indians, for some of the entrepreneurial people they have found a way to make the stereotypes work for them. It’s really impressive. The stereotype remains intact, there Is a cumulative value that attaches itself. There is less racial violence for sure, on a pragmatic level. There is a flip side too, there seems to be a certain loss of backbone, the loss of character whereby, to speak boldly has diminished, partly because where Indians reside is also where power resides. I think all the playfulness and young mindedness has gone, it’s a sad thing.