Dr Rupy: Jassa, we've done that annoying thing where we have basically chatted for like an hour before hitting record and we've lost probably lots of gold. I'm sure I'm sure we're going to get to it. But look, why don't we start off with the the book. I've I've been a fan of yours for years. I love your comedy, your acting career is just, gone from strength to strength. But this is a completely different side of you that I loved diving into because there's a sort of seriousness, there's sort of like a historical aspect and the academic side of you as well. I thought it was phenomenal. What do we mean by both not half and and how did this all come to fruition?
Jassa: So both not half really has been my way of understanding my mixed heritage identity, a way of sort of reconciling this feeling that I had within myself that I was somehow fractured and fractional and my journey to discovering and realising the truth that I am whole and multiple. And it really was born out of through my acting. I wanted to, I'd just go back to the beginning. When I started as an actor, the industry sort of taught me to be grateful for my whiteness because my whiteness was what was going to get me work. I was able to get a foot on the ladder when my brown peers were sort of struggling. And I managed to keep my name. I was sort of quite confident that Jassa seemed to stick in people's mind. And also I think because of my appearance, Jassa was not immediately identifiable as a South Asian or Punjabi name. Often people would be like, ah, they everybody would want to pronounce it as Yassa, thinking it was some sort of, I don't know, like a Scandinavian name. I think IKEA did actually have like a Jassa basket at one point. So like, it was this strange sort of ambiguity that was around it. Anyway, and I was just like, I was desperate to be working when I started out as an actor and I had some success and I was played a telegraph boy, East London telegraph boy in Ripper Street to a Soviet spy in Peaky Blinders and those opportunities really came my way because I was able to play white. But then around early 2019, sort of late 2018, I was starting to feel like there was this shift that was being happening in the industry towards telling more representative stories on screen. There was more and more conversations around diversity. And I just felt quite excluded from those conversations. And I guess in a way I'd excluded myself as well through wanting to kickstart my own career. And then suddenly realised, oh, there's this huge part of myself, my my Punjabiness, my Indianness. My first love of performance came from Bhangra. And I start the opening of the book is this story of me me dancing at a wedding in India in February 1994 and just that was my first recorded performance. And and I was like, oh, there's this huge part of me that I'm not getting to explore as part of my work. And actually it's a huge part of who I am. And it got to a point where I was like, I need to do something with this. And so I, sort of inspired by folk like Guz Khan and Jaz Rain and I shot this very, very, very low-fi video on my phone of me making some daal, nowhere near the sort of like production values of your kitchen. But it was just me being like, but yeah, like an Uncle Ji character being like, oh, what are you making? And I was like, you know, I'm making some daal and this is all in Punjabi and and then I say that I was going to put these Quorn vegan pieces in it and then my uncle sort of like lays into me about how, you know, this is your mum's fault and like, it was like just and it all just seemed, it was very fun and just lighthearted and I was like, you know what, I'll just throw that out there, see what happens. Anyway, posted it on Instagram. I wake up the next morning, it's like 10,000 views. It's like, you know, back then 10,000 views was like, that was like just beyond anything I'd ever experienced. You know, it was popping up in like family WhatsApp groups in like Canada, Australia, like it was it was wild. And then in the comments, somebody had, when I was scrolling through, had tagged their mate and said, you know, this guy speaks better Punjabi than us and he's only half. And I saw the words only half. And in that moment, I was just sort of, I realised that, oh yeah, I'm not half. Actually watching the video and seeing how people were responding, they were, you know, I wasn't just speaking Punjabi like with my voice, it was with my body, my mannerisms. I was sort of, I was fully Punjabi. And I sort of realised that seeing that comment and so I responded with this hashtag both not half. And and as I wrote it, as I then posted it, I was like, oh, that's that's quite good that is. And so I, you know, I edited the post because I initially I'd posted it and I just used the hashtag white Punjabi. Okay. But that was just like a literal description. It didn't really explain what was going on. And there were lots of people who were like genuinely confused. They just they couldn't comprehend how somebody who looked like me could speak Punjabi in the way that I was speaking it. But both not half sort of seemed to to encapsulate this whole idea and it seemed to resonate beyond just people with mixed identity. It was really just like anybody with any sort of mixed heritage. And that's why the, you know, the subtitle talks about mixed heritage, not mixed race, because I think this is a conversation that goes beyond ethnicity and race. It's about all of us. You know, I say in my TED talk, none of us are half anything, all of us are both something. And that just suddenly seemed to take off. And then it was this bizarre thing of like, what do I do with this? And I was really trying to get my head around what what does both not half mean? I don't it sort of seemed to have come from somewhere and I'd articulated it and suddenly the world made sense in a way, but I couldn't quite make sense of the story. Um, and where I was at in my own journey. And so I spent that summer and I think, you know, just before we started recording, I was saying I had this sense of I could either become start just making loads of videos for Instagram and become like an influencer type and you know, chase views and likes and all of that. But I just didn't feel, I just found that quite exhausting. I tried it a couple of times, but I was just like, it doesn't feel like me. And I felt that there was something deeper going on. And so I spent the summer really, I wrote a personal essay for myself in which I tried to really get to the core of what does this mean? What is my story? What has led me to this point? And in doing that, I realised that both not half was this, it was like a new way of seeing the world. It was like this non-binary way of thinking of of not thinking in fractions and parts and thinking in holes and multiples. And so I felt like I'd really got a handle on what what that was. And then out of the blue, I got this DM from the TEDx Chandigarh team to go and do and I was and they were like, oh, do you want to come and do a, it was quite intimidating because the message was like, we think that you could create magic and inspire millions. I was like, that's a tall order. I was like, I don't know about that, but I do have a essay which has not been published and is basically a pre-packaged, ready-made talk. And so I went and did that and that was like January 2020, came back, then COVID hit. And then I had no idea if the TED talk would ever was ever going to see the light of day because I think the files were on a hard drive somewhere in Chandigarh and their editor was in Mumbai and like, anyway, it was only then August 2020 that it came out. And then suddenly I was like, oh wow, this is the response is then made me realise that there was something bigger going. I think I, I knew like in the in the final conclusion bit of the talk, I sort of say that this sort of goes beyond, you know, what I'm talking about today. It's about, it's about class, gender, sexuality, spirituality, there's there's all these other elements to it. But it was only after the TED talk came out that I then sat down and I was like, okay, what does, I guess I need to start figuring that bit out now, the what comes next. And that was then the journey of the book of, um, yeah, what what did happen? You know, once I sort of articulated both not half, had this sense of like, I have a better sense now of who and what I am. Um, but then suddenly the world started to look different and yeah, that that realisation and that journey is what what the journey of the book is.
Dr Rupy: It's it's phenomenal. And I I feel like we need to rewind for anyone watching this on YouTube because they're probably thinking to themselves in a non-judgmental manner, why is this bloke who looks ostensibly white talking about Punjabi and mixed heritage? So why don't we address the elephant in the room like your background and and where you grew up and your family?
Jassa: Yeah, so I've got a white English mum, a brown Punjabi dad. Um, he was born in India, moved to the UK when he was about seven years old. Um, three pounds in the pocket probably. Uh, yeah, yeah, that was always, yeah, my my grandfather's story. It always seemed to like get less and less. Like it would start, I think initially it started at 10 pounds, then it got to like the three pounds thing and then it was just like, I had no money. Um, but, um, yeah, they met in their early 20s, um, in Coventry and, um, then and I was born in 1990 and I don't think anybody expected me to be as sort of white as I am. Um, and yeah, but I was just immersed in my Punjabi culture from from the outset. You know, my mum made a real effort actually to, um, you know, when my when my dad sort of told his parents, you know, I've got a white girlfriend and, you know, we'd like to get married. Um, my mum went to visit, um, my Punjabi grandparents and she she'd painted, um, a painting of, um, Harmandir Sahib, the Golden Temple as like a, I guess as a peace offering. Um, and she had this, and just for the listeners who don't know what that is, it's, uh, the Golden Temple, the sort of the main, um, sort of the primary, um, Sikh place of worship in Amritsar, um, in India. And, um, yeah, and she, and she had this grilling from my my grandfather about, you know, like, how would you raise kids and all of that. And my mum was really insistent from the outset that, you know, that she would want to raise us, and this is her words at the time was, you know, 50% English, 50% Punjabi and that connecting us, you know, when I say us, I mean me me and my sister that, um, or any kids that they were going to have is that that we would, she would want us to be connected to our to our Sikh heritage, to our Punjabi, you know, to be immersed in the language, to go to India. Um, and and so that's what happened. You know, like my mum learned enough Punjabi to be able to like, you know, discipline me, chup kar, harja, beja, like we would use words like, um, she would be like, oh, um, do you want a glass of pani? Like just mixing language in here and there. So, and this was the, I guess the reason why my, you know, I talk about in the book like my my sense of my identity crisis came quite late in my life was because I was immersed in this total mixed, dual, um, sort of whole environment from such an early age that it wasn't, there was nothing incongruous about it. I was also growing up in the Midlands, you know, I spent, I was born in Coventry, but, um, because of like issues with getting into school at a certain time of the year, I ended up, um, starting school in in Leicester and living with my Punjabi grandparents in Leicester. So which is like just a totally mixed heritage city. You know, half the city shuts down for Diwali. Like, you know, like so so to my mind, there was nothing strange or particularly special about, you know, who and what I was. Um, you know, my granddad was also a teacher at the my primary school. So, you know, I had my turban wearing grandfather roaming the corridors of my primary school. So even at school, there was, you know, I was sort of like this mini celebrity. I was Mr. Walia's grandson and people knew who I was. And I always thought that was sort of why I've always been quite comfortable with any degree of recognition and fame that comes with acting. But when I was writing the book, I also realised that that's probably why I always felt quite at ease in my identity because I never had to explain myself in a school context. You know, primary school years, such a formative time. My Punjabiness was just known and accepted as just, you know, part of the fabric of the school. And yeah, and even then when like I I remember having when I started secondary school and, you know, at like a sleepover, sat around the kitchen table or something, just chatting into the night, explaining to somebody that I'd had this multi-generational extended family upbringing and they were like, oh, that's kind of different. Like, how strange that you didn't actually live with your parents during school times. And I was like, oh yeah, that is I guess different. Um, but again, it wasn't like a feeling of othered, being othered. And and I and I came to reflect and when I was writing, I was like, I think it was sort of I was insulated by my whiteness again because I wasn't like some sort of like, um, I don't know, quite unquote like foreign other. I was just like, I was like a just a white dude with an interesting backstory. Um, so it just became like, it was fine. It wasn't an issue. It was only then really in my, um, early 20s when I was sort of interacting, sort of moved away from Leicester, came down to London, was interacting with the world and it's just seemed to be so much of life seems to be predicated on being like, are you this or are you that? Like boundaries, division, um, borders and and then I was like, oh right, I'm not quite sure where where this sits now because like, you know, like with like I was saying with my acting, I was having to present myself as one particular thing, which was like, I'm a I'm a white dude. Yeah. Um, and then yeah, the, and I guess in acting, you know, if particularly from my limited understanding of auditions, they want to know like what what you are, you know, what how you appear, you know, what you could what role you could play, I guess. So I guess those those definitions, those boundaries are probably a bit higher than in an average another sort of. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so much of acting is predicated on appearance. Just a quick one. If you're enjoying this kind of content, you'll love our free newsletter called Eat, Listen, Read. Every week, I send you a recipe that you will absolutely love, something to listen to, something to read, sometimes something to watch, less than three minutes, and it will help you have a healthful, happier week. You can find that in the link down below. But yeah, but it's what gatekeepers perceive you to be. So a lot of the work I've done with my, um, union Equity through the race equality committee, which I stood for election to. That was sort of part of my journey to standing fully in my mixed identity was to be like, okay, I can I can engage with the issues of race in a in a meaningful way and I wanted to sort of change, um, basically because of that, I wanted to change what how we think about mixed heritage appearance on screen, on film and TV because that's sort of how we understand ourselves. And I had appearance as like a category. And that just seemed, I initially I just sort of accepted it was like, well, yeah, well, I guess that's how the industry works. You've got to list your appearance. And I think I had like white, I did have mixed race on there, but I soon learned that mixed race was not what this is. Um, and I think I had like either like Mediterranean or, um, I think Eastern European because I'd done Russian at uni and I could like I played a Russian spy in um, Peaky Blinders. Um, so yeah, it was like, oh, appearance. And then it occurred to me as we were doing this work around like what does mixed look like on screen is that why am I listing my appearance when there's my photo there? Like my photo is my appearance. Why am I having to, um, sort of like, why am I prioritizing a casting director or a producer's assumption of what I look like? Um, and actually, so so part of our campaign, I sort of put a motion together for our annual union conference a couple of years ago and saying, look, we just need to change this. It should be, as you say, like, this is what I am. Um, and just present your, you know, your your heritage. And so we introduced through like a year of consultation, um, there's this new category that got introduced on spotlight, the casting system, which is just ethnicity and heritage. And it allows for, and this was a point that I made in those meetings is that it needs to allow for true multiplicity. Um, and not a like a hierarchy of like, well, I'm, you know, in number one, I'm white, in number two, I'm mixed, in number three, I'm, you know, whatever. Yeah. Um, so now the system allows me to list myself as white, South Asian, mixed, um, Sikh, Punjabi, English, British, and they all, you know, they're just listed alphabetically. And so now in search results, and this is the point I was trying to make to them, I was like, you know, if the tools aren't there in order to properly reflect what a diverse our diverse society looks like, then the stories we tell aren't really being reflective, um, of the society we live in and that sort of has this this feedback loop. So if the tools are there, you know, it's not going to change how people start casting overnight. Um, but at least the tools are there now. So like if somebody's casting a show and they're like, okay, you know, we're casting a South Asian family, um, and they, you know, they put in a search for, you know, actors, South Asians, I don't know, age between whatever and, um, and they need to be able to speak Punjabi, so we put that in. And then my face pops up. Now, they're not necessarily going to be like, oh yeah, great. They're probably going to be like, why is that white dude come up in these search results? But it might prompt that conversation. And it's like, when we're telling those stories, you know, what is what is important? Have you thought about the fact could this be a mixed family? Is it important that the character is visibly brown? Because maybe that is important to the story, or maybe it isn't. Maybe what's important is that this character speaks fluent Punjabi or, um, grew up in a understands, um, Sikh Punjabi cultural practices, um, or or there's another sort of specificity to it. And actually maybe I am right for that then. And there've been some casting directors have been great. I've been seen for a couple of parts recently, um, where casting directors have been sort of encouraging that sort of thinking with producers and it's been really exciting. Um, but it's very early days and but what's interesting is like when you look at the history of mixed identity and I look at like the Anglo-Indian community in India, it was well understood at the time that this is what, you know, mixed could look like in the same way that mixed could also look like you. Yeah. That's what I found so fascinating, I think in the body of the book because you dive into the history of, uh, mixed race or mixed identities, and it seemed like it was just more accepted, particularly in that era, which is weird because we now think that we live in a sort of more progressive society where we can understand that you can be Punjabi, you can be Sikh, and and all the other sort of, uh, um, uh, people of of mixed heritage as well. But it seems like we've sort of lost the sort of recognition in in the in how divisive it seems that we've we've become over the last couple of years. Yeah, I I guess so there it's almost like, um, well, initially when the the the Brits, the the English turned up in India, like mixed marriages were actively encouraged. Like payments were made for people to, you know, um, as they call it at the time, you know, like marry native women. Um, so it was actively encouraged. Um, and so you had lots of, um, yeah, mixed families and then, um, so yeah, there was a whole mixed population. So like, you know, I find it really interesting that the first British, um, census of like British, the first census of all of British India in 1871 had a whole category, a whole table, um, listing, um, mixed races, um, in there. And mixed race as a as a census category was only introduced in in the UK in 2001. Oh gosh. So it's like, so that's how far back that history goes, the understanding. But then obviously you the mixed population got really, um, sort of marginalized and legislated against in the wake of basically in the wake of the American, um, Declaration of Independence, um, there was this fear that a that a native population with ties to the land would rise up against, um, the colonial power and sort of declare independence in the way that they had in the US. And so the, you know, as they were the Anglo-Indian or Eurasian community in India at the time was sort of seen as as a threat that needed to be, um, because up until that point, like, um, Anglo-Indians, so mixed British Indians were were sort of, um, had very influential positions within like the the civil service, military, there was almost prefer there was preferential treatment. Um, and then it sort of went the other way. Um, and it was marginalized. And so then, so this all happens within the emergence of like race science and like sort of codified racism, um, and that's and I guess that's probably what leads to we live with the legacy of that that scientific racism, um, today and that's where notions of halfness come from is and I find it interesting, you know, I say that we now know that, you know, half-caste is a slur that we would not use in order to describe someone like me. But but while we've stopped using the caste bit, you know, coming from castus, the Latin word for pure, like we know not to think in terms of purity, but we do still think in terms of fractionality. And and what's really to to me is like you can only be you can only be half of something if somebody else is somehow more whole or you can only really be really you can only be mixed in a way if if somebody's pure, you know, that's, um, so you know, the the sort of the limits of language as well. And that's why I really try to talk in terms of like mixed heritage as opposed to race because I sort of strongly believe that there's one human race and we all have a diversity of, um, heritages and that's what I always keep coming back to is that yes, this is the story of this book is coming from my experience of as a as a mixed English Punjabi, but it's really the story of anyone just trying to find out, figure out who they are in a world that sort of seems to want to put people in boxes. Yeah, absolutely. And just to go back on the sort of, um, encouragement of mixed, uh, marriages and and children in the sort of colonial areas. What were the intentions behind that? Because it feels like there there was probably something, there was some malice behind those like payments. Why would you pay, uh, to to have a a child with a a native person? Yeah, I guess it was, you know, there was, um, well they're wanting to do was like have an established population, um, and I guess within, um, in like, you know, in a in a respectable way. So if you to have people marrying, um, was was better than, you know, um, I guess like brothels, prostitution, that sort of stuff. Um, so yeah, I mean, I it might be more interesting if I just read that section because it's really, yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it, go for it. That was the quote. So yeah, on the 8th of April 1687, the East India Company's directors issued another dispatch. The marriage of our soldiers to the native women of Fort St. George, formerly recommended by you, is a matter of such consequence to posterity that we shall be content to encourage it with some expense and have been thinking for the future to appoint a gold pagoda to be paid to the mother of any child that shall hereafter be born of any such future marriage on the day the child is christened. So it was also about like the there was the religious element of it of, you know, it's about the christening of the child as well. Um, it's funny they they talk about it as being, I say earlier, they talk about this as being, um, they call this Dutch politics. Um, because they say, you know, um, the East India Company issued a directive imploring its officials in Madras to provide for such soldiers as are single men by prudently inducing them to marry Gentus in imitation of the Dutch politics and raise from them a stock of Protestant Mesis. But in actuality, it would have been more accurate to have called it Portuguese politics because they were the ones who sort of pioneered that sort of way of sort of establishing a colonial population. But because, you know, they were Catholic, that wasn't like that wasn't something they wanted to encourage in in in name. Um, so I pop that back. Oh yeah, you're put over there. Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah. Is that all right? Um, yeah, so it was, you know, it was about just creating a population. It's not like you could just sort of ship people back and forth from like the you needed to have like families established. Um, but you know, it was, you know, it was that's why, you know, when Anglo-Indian became defined in the Indian Constitution, um, it's very much, and this was also blew my mind like the fact that Anglo-Indian is defined in the Indian Constitution alongside such broad terms as like tax and debt and stuff like that is the Anglo-Indian. But it's all very about it's about the paternal line. It's about having a basically a European father, grandfather, great-grandfather because that was how most of those mixed marriages or pretty much all of those mixed marriages was about, you know, white European men marrying, um, South Asian women as sort of establishing mixed families. Um, so it was part of the the colonial project. And then, but then when you get ideas of like racial purity and scientific racism emerging throughout the 1800s, um, that's when like mixed kids sort of become the battleground of like where, you know, I talk about Sita Balani's book, Deadly and Slick, and she talks about, you know, how mixed kids was, um, where where the work of upholding, um, racial chastity or racial purity became visible. Um, and that's where like, you know, are you white and can you pass as as white and, um, and you get this in in Hollywood and I talk about like the early days of Hollywood, you know, Merle Oberon, um, was an Anglo-Indian, um, who was the first, um, first woman of South Asian, um, heritage to be nominated for an Oscar. But nobody knew that that was the case at the time because, you know, she passed and insisted that she was white. Um, even though she had her her mum, um, Charlotte, um, who was with her the whole time, but was just passed off as like her her Indian servant. It's like really sad, tragic stuff. And discovering this history sort of made me feel, it was very sad, but at the same time it it was quite joyous because I suddenly felt like, oh, I I feel connected to a history. I feel part of a legacy that I'm I'm not so much of the feeling that led to both not half was feeling alone. Um, and actually discovering that even in my own field in like, you know, film and TV that that I was sort of part of a, um, basically discovering that I wasn't the first person, the first sort of mixed Indian English actor to sort of come up against this, um, thing of trying to figure out like, who am I? Am I going to play this character? Am I going to play this? Am I going to play that? That actually there was a history there. Yeah. Um, and actually, and this is, I think this is really the important thing is that people like Merle Oberon passed as white. You had somebody like Anna Kashfi who was of Anglo-Indian heritage, but because of her appearance insisted that she was Indian. Um, and when I spoke to the historian, Lucy Char and Stevens, he sort of really pointed out that so the interesting thing is that even though, um, it was easier to pass as white in Anna Kashfi's case, she couldn't, so she insisted on her Indianness. In neither case did anybody assert their mixedness. And actually it's mixedness, the idea of disrupting, um, racial hierarchy, separation, this sort of binary, like you're either you're either white or you're brown, you're either white or you're not white. And that's sort of why with the work that I'm doing now, I'm sort of trying to say, actually, I want to put mixed people as mixed people on screen. I want to tell mixed stories. Um, because I think that's that's really important. You know, I think of somebody like Ben Kingsley who's sort of known for being this sort of chameleon-like performer who can play anything and everyone and he for a long time was like my only example of like somebody of mixed heritage as an actor. Um, but none of his most famous roles are are mixed people. You know, you think of Ben Kingsley, you think of, you know, like Gandhi. Um, and I was like, oh yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? That we don't have, it's not sort of commonly understood that, you know, what I was saying before that this is what mixed can look like. Yeah. And this is what mixed can look like. Yeah. Not that you are, but I'm just saying that it's entirely possible. Yeah. Um, I I want to go back to the vernacular around, um, mixed and half and 50% and stuff because I think to I agree that these conversations are super important as we, you know, we live in a, thankfully, in a in a really sort of progressive society where we're having lots of different people from background, from different backgrounds, um, uh, marrying and and having relationships. I'm personally in a marriage where my wife is, uh, what would be classed as white. She's Italian on both sides. She grew up in Australia. Yeah. Um, and so I think it's pertinent to sort of like figure out the right way of talking about this in a sort of non-judgmental manner. On the other side, I think to play devil's advocate, there will be some people who perhaps haven't had sort of, uh, primary experience of what you're talking about, who might push back and just be like, well, you know what I mean. I'm not saying 50% out of malice. I'm not saying you're half out of malice. I just want to sort of navigate this confusing world for me and things that I don't really understand in a way where I'm not treading on other people's toes. And I feel like I'm always getting things wrong. And if you do get things wrong, then you're sort of chastised for it. And I think that can sort of breed antagonism to the whole idea to the point where you go down the extreme way of like, well, English should be white anyway. This is a white country. You know, I I can see the sort of thought pattern. And I think, you know, you can either shy away from it and call those people bigots or you can actually embrace their viewpoint from a from a place of, um, non-judgment and patience, which is very hard to do. It's very hard to do. So I I wonder if you sort of have any any thoughts on on like how we can sort of be better addressing our children and becoming and creating a more, uh, welcoming environment for them so they don't feel that sort of like the halfness, they don't feel the less wholeness that you describe so eloquently in the book. Yeah, like, um, I think it's fine to make mistakes. Um, I don't think, I don't think there's an issue with that. Like, I don't, you know, I I it's not like if I hear somebody describe me as half Punjabi, I'm like, you know, um, I don't know, being like, you're cancelled. Like it's not it's not that. Like it's, um, I guess what language is, it's a means of trying to articulate very complex ideas and thoughts in a very simple, easy to understand way. And the words we use are a reflection of our our thinking. And so, so for me, when I say both not half, it's about challenging the idea that I am, you know, half is something that is that is lesser, is incomplete, um, it's diminished. Um, whereas both is, like I said before, you know, it's something that is multiple, is whole. Um, so when I'm challenging use of language, I'm sort of being like, it's not just, it's not just about the words that we're using. It's about what are the, what's the sort of the the actual the thoughts and the ideas that that influence those word choices. Um, and it can it can be challenging to change how we think when we've sort of grown up and inherited such fixed ideas. And those ideas are really just, they're like narratives, they're ways of thinking and it's entirely possible to change ways of thinking. And I talk about, you know, I went on my own journey with this in I have a chapter on like gender and sexuality and, um, the conversation around like trans and non-binary identities. And I really started to recognize the parallels in my experience and trans and non-binary experience in the way in which the way I understand and know myself, um, is not necessarily the way that society reads me or the way I understand myself is sort of incongruent with the way in which society reads me. And through that, I came to really understand, um, the conversation around trans liberation, queer liberation, non-binary gender identities. And and that was my own learning. You know, I say quite openly in the book, when I first came across the phrase, trans women are women, I struggled to understand what it meant. And then I applied the lens of both not half. And I was like, well, I guess in the same way that, you know, you know, like white Punjabi is Punjabi. It's like, yeah, like to I'm, um, it doesn't make me any less, um, Punjabi. Um, there's not like a a hierarchy of Punjabiness. Um, I'm equally valid in my experience of my Punjabiness in much the same way that a trans woman is equally valid in their experience of womanhood. And but that was a I had to learn and I made mistakes, you know, got trans non-binary friends and family and there was, you know, my sister had just, um, was in a relationship with somebody, um, who was non-binary and it took me a while to get used to pronouns and and stuff like that. I made mistakes, but I, you know, apologized, corrected myself, moved on. I learned and I and it I was able to, you know, expand my thinking. And that's, you know, really the second half of the book is how both not half helped me to better understand the complexity and nuances of the world. And I think that's sometimes sadly what the challenge is or the the what leads to that bigotry and the narrow-mindedness is sort of a refusal to engage in nuance and complexity because the world is can be difficult and complex and it's it's can be hard to understand and we want to simplify, um, for our own, I guess sanity basically. Um, but but it's almost like a refusal to think when you when you want to, um, yeah, I think I say at one point in the book like, you know, like, um, like binary thinking in many ways is a is a refusal to think because you're you're being like, no, I need a simple story and that's the only way I'm going to understand it and I don't want to have to, you know, challenge the ideas that I've been taught growing up, my sort of preconceived notions of like how the world is. Yeah. Um, because actually that's quite scary and I often feel that people seem to feel like they're under attack in some way. And it's not, they're not, they're not nobody's attacking anyone. Um, but I think what these conversations and these prompts do do is that they they they force you to reflect on yourself. And actually, I think that that is quite scary, um, to sort of confront yourself. This whole book is me confronting myself basically and it was it was difficult and it's challenging and, um, you know, as I'm sure you got towards the end of the book, you sort of realized like quite how challenging and difficult that that had been. Um, yeah, that's the, so for me, yeah, I I hope that, you know, um, in sort of prompting people to reflect on language and all of that, it's not a, um, yeah, I'm not looking to cancel anyone. I'm just being like, just like maybe, yeah, it's possible to change how you think. Yeah. And I think there's just so many parallels there because I think I've also struggled a few years ago to understand the journey for people of, uh, different sexualities and and the the need to express themselves or the need for pronouns, for example. And I think just to put it the the shoe on the other foot, so to speak, this isn't just a an issue with with people of, um, sort of, uh, European ancestry or, you know, white people. It it exists on both sides. You know, you know, I I think we're all sort of guilty of wanting to simplify things and you're a Sikh, you marry another Sikh, or you're a brown, you you marry someone from India and you know, I I think the the sort of, um, the prejudices, uh, are on both sides, um, in a lot of ways. And, um, and the I guess the reason why I'm really interested in your experience is, um, so my my wife and I are expecting our first child. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. Thanks. She's, um, you know, it's, uh, the due date is like later on this year and and he's obviously going to be of mixed heritage, you know? And, uh, I think I remember having conversations with my wife and saying, yeah, he's going to be 50% Sikh Punjabi and 50% Italian Australian. Isn't that amazing? You know? And it wasn't said from a a sense of malice, obviously, as you can tell. Um, but in having and reading your book and listening to your story, I want to ensure that this child never feels less than whole. I'm sorry, getting emotional as I'm talking about it, but like, um, I I never I don't want them to feel like they don't have a place. Yeah, yeah. And that has actually been some of my experience, you know, as as someone who grew up as, um, Sikh Punjabi with, um, parents on both sides who are Sikh Punjabi, I've always felt very disconnected to my, um, origins because I don't speak Punjabi. I don't speak an Asian language. And I think there is a depth of, um, connection that I've always lacked, um, from childhood because I was never able to truly sort of understand what was going on at the Gurdwara. Yeah, yeah. What the Gyanis were talking about, what the sort of, um, the Kirtan was actually saying and how to get to a higher power. My experience was basically how you described it in in the latter part of your book of you go there, you you sort of like have this, uh, crowded sort of, um, chaos in sort of the reception and there's this calm as you go into the temple and the familiar smells of the prashad as it comes out and you know, all that kind of stuff, like it evokes so much memory. I have somewhat of a connection, but it's always felt very superficial. And so just going back to my my point, I I don't, I would say that was also, so it's just briefly interrupt is that that was also my experience of the Gurdwara and Sikh as a kid. Um, so it's only been in my in more recently as I've been deepening my understanding that I've sort of found a a deeper connection. And I think it's possible as well, like I I think we often think of like, well, if we haven't, if we didn't learn this stuff as when we were really young, if we weren't immersed in it in a in a way from from childhood, it's somehow lost. Um, my experience with with this book and my own journey is that it's not lost. It can always be found and accessed and built upon. Um, and this, I think we often, we have this sense of like, we get caught up in our nostalgia for our lost childhood. And actually, it which blinds us to the fact that it's possible to sort of consciously gain wisdom as we grow older. And for me, this expressed itself in, you know, I felt in around 2014 that I was somehow losing my Punjabi because my grandparents were, they weren't going to be around forever and that I wasn't speaking Punjabi on a daily basis with my grandparents that, you know, there would come a point where I would start to, I was I felt I was losing my fluency. Um, and then I was like, oh, and then I found a way to like learn Gurmukhi, start using dictionaries, found these other ways of engaging with the language. And so was able to then imagine a future in which my Punjabi and my connection to culture got got stronger and deeper. Um, and I think it's really is a case of, you know, resources, like having resources available to be able to learn, you know, you can learn Klingon and High Valyrian on Duolingo, but you can't learn Punjabi. That's that's that's probably why people find get upset that they that they're not able to speak Punjabi is that the resources aren't there. Similarly with like understanding what's going on at the Gurdwara, like so much of like Sikh has been taught and shared through the medium of Punjabi and actually the work of people like Satpal Singh, Nanek Nam and stuff that are that are sharing this in English, that's how I've come to it. Um, so yeah, I think, yeah, sorry to interrupt. It was just that I I'd really like to challenge this idea that that somehow if it wasn't learned in childhood, it's it's lost. I don't think that is the case. Um, yeah, it's entirely possible to to learn as we grow older and and get a deeper, more conscious understanding as well. Absolutely. Yeah. And I feel like I want to come back to this point you make in the book around, uh, Sikh heritage and how you describe yourself as religious or or Sikh or, um, but my my initial sort of train of thought, if I can remember back to it was, um, words matter, right? Um, and both not half just encompasses so much in just three words. And I think people can read this book and understand, uh, their sexuality better, their heritage better, their religion better, their environment, other people's experiences better. I think it's a way of really connecting. And from a selfish point of view, from my point of view, I want to ensure that, um, the way in which I address my unborn child and, uh, the extended family that they're going to be born into is welcoming and they don't feel like I might have done, you know, early in childhood, you know? Um, I definitely feel a deeper sense of connection, but that's through reading and having great conversations like this one is going to go down in the hall of fame for me. Um, but I I wonder if you sort of have any any thoughts on on like how we can sort of be better addressing our children and becoming and creating a more, uh, welcoming environment for them so they don't feel that sort of like the halfness, they don't feel the less wholeness that you describe so eloquently in the book. I I think there's a couple of things. I think, yeah, so firstly, I think the language of very simply, the language of describing ourselves or our children as as both is actually quite big. Like I I've had lots of messages from from parents, um, who have said like just that that little change in language has had a huge impact on the way in which they've, um, been communicating with their kids and how their kids are then seeing themselves. And actually for for a child, it's a it's very easy because they believe they're half because they're told they're half. If you tell them they're both, they're like, oh, I'm both. Cool. Like and so they've I've had like DMs from people have been like, yeah, like, um, my, you know, my child was sort of struggling with this in school and then like I saw your thing and then I was like, oh yeah, you're both not half. And then and then my like four or five year old was like waltzing into school the next day and was like, I'm both. And it's like, it's great. And I'm like, that's wonderful. It can be as simple as that. Um, I think more widely though, I think it's not necessarily about just creating welcoming sort of safe environments in in our families because that's that was my experience. I had I had a both upbringing. You know, um, that's what I talk about in the book is that actually I think both not half came from the fact that I did, I've always felt both. Even though I use, even when I was at school like age 16, I actually sort of embraced half-caste for a while as an idea. I liked that there was a special word for me. But because I wasn't aware of what it meant in a sort of a wider historical, social, political context. Um, it was only then, yeah, because you know, like I said, I was in Leicester, there was like Diwali celebration. Well that it's like it didn't really matter to me. I didn't feel diminished. Um, I think widely and this is sort of like, I guess the the sort of the the sort of the the manifesto element of this is be like, this should be everyone's experience. We should be creating a world in which everybody feels whole. Um, whether that's because of your gender and sexuality, your your class, your religious background, um, your sense of national identity, um, your sense of citizenship and your ties to the country that you call home. It's about fostering a whole society which is like deeply empathetic, welcoming, defined by diversity. Um, so I think it's it's quite a big, I mean, that sounds quite daunting and it is daunting, but I mean it is it is a it is a challenge that you can't just create that welcoming, wonderful environment at home. Um, it's got to be a part of a wider societal sort of project of like reshaping how we think about what what is belonging, what is community. Um, because if we just think about community being about like a community is only people who look and sound like me, then that's that's not really going to create that world that we want, which is where we do feel whole and multiple and like like we do belong. Um, so yeah, I think, yeah, I don't know if that really is the the answer you're looking for, but I think you can create that at home for sure, but I think understanding that, okay, I think it's like it's this thing of solidarity and this is what I've really learned through my trade unionism and my other activism is that the reason I turn up to, you know, um, like, um, there was a counter protest that I went to that like the the far right were sort of, um, targeting a drag story story time, what was it like drag story hour, um, event. The reason I'm turning up to those things is because I recognize is that my fight is your fight and your fight is my fight that the world in which, um, a trans person feels safe and welcome is a world in which a mixed person feels safe and welcome. It's the world in which, you know, um, somebody who's just arrived, um, from India, um, or from Syria, that that that is the world in which they will also be made to feel welcome. They're all these struggles are are aligned and are actually the same. And I think really understanding that on a deep level, um, is is what's needed to sort of create, um, you know, I think it's like, I guess it sort of speaks to your work as well. Like as a with the work that you're doing with the doctor's kitchen is that you recognize that health is about more than, you know, turning up sick to the doctor and getting an injection. So you've got to create a world in which you can be healthy. And you know, you're tackling it through food, but also is it's doing food but it's like access to food. That is a that is a issue of class and economics and the sort of the political world we live in is that, you know, if we've got so many people relying on food banks, um, and you can't don't have access to, you know, fresh fruit and veg, and that's putting a strain on healthcare, like health outcomes, life expectancy. It's all connected. Um, so it has to be tackled at a societal level as well as creating those environments at home as well for our kids to feel like, yeah, we are full and whole. Yeah.
