Celebrating South Asian Heritage Month
South Asian Heritage month is still quite a new addition to the calendar so I wanted to write a short piece to bring more awareness to it, to talk about my cultural background and to also shine a light on how the creative industry has started to make some positive changes to attract people from Asian backgrounds but we still have a job to do when it comes to retention.
So what is it all about? South Asian Heritage Month (SAHM) exists in order to commemorate, mark and celebrate South Asian history and culture, as well as to better understand the diverse heritage that continues to link the UK and South Asia. It was launched in the House of Commons in July 2019.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the independence of India, Partition, and the creation of Pakistan (later known as East and West Pakistan). The 3rd June 1947 also happens to be my mother’s birthday. She was born in Srinagar, Kashmir; a place that has been called paradise on earth but also a land that sits in-between India and Pakistan and sadly continues to be a disputed territory.
Looking back 75 years ago on that day the sequences of events for my family led me to be here in the UK. My grandfather was serving in the army as a doctor and ended up being based in Pakistan and was not allowed to go back to his family and home in Kashmir. Caught up in a land that was not his home with a young family he bravely made the decision to come to England to set up a new life for his family here.
He always spoke with pride about how amazing Britain had been for him and his family and the opportunities that followed. I also know that there were times where he and his family suffered racial abuse and discrimination.
My mother was raised in a liberal Muslim family that was proud of its heritage but also recognised the need to work harder that the average white person to get by in life. That 1st generation immigrant mentality was also something that my father brought to our family and he worked tirelessly as a human rights lawyer to bring about positive changes in the legislative system. He was awarded a CBE for his efforts and was also the first Muslim judge in the UK.
My childhood was a challenging one where I was a minority at school and where we grew up in Hampshire. I was raised to acknowledge I was different to everyone else, and I remember how much I rebelled against it. I just wanted to be like everyone else and ‘fit in’. I’d always be asked ‘Where are you from?’ and my reply of Winchester didn't quite seem to answer people’s question. I remember being asked by a friend’s mother when I went over to their house for dinner if I had ever used a knife and fork before. Growing up in Winchester back in those days I was quite a novelty for some people.
Whilst my school friends would holiday in Europe, we’d visit Kashmir as often as we could during our childhood, and it connected me to my heritage and ancestry which I am so grateful for. As time passed my need to fit in started to fade and my pride around my heritage shone brighter. The music, the food, the art brought vibrancy into my life along with a great friend I made who happened to be Guajarati. We’d watch Bollywood films together and she’d help me with the translations, or we’d go to Green Street to buy shalwar kameezes and eat masala dosas.
As the eldest daughter of 4 I know I pushed my parents hard but the support and love was always unconditional. I travelled around the world on my own at the age of 24, my first job was a Recruitment Consultant in the City and even though the career path I had chosen was not a traditional profession like theirs they were always proud.
So here I am now, an owner of a business that works predominantly in the creative industry, an industry that is known for its lack of diversity, and my mission and purpose is to help founders of businesses to create great places to work. Great for me means inclusive.
On my journey over the last few years I’ve met some brilliant South Asian people who are doing great things in our industry and wanted to take a moment to recognize them. Over the course of the twelve years at JourneyHR I have had the pleasure of meeting and working with two incredible founders Gush Mundae and Ash Nehru, I’ve joined the incredible Media For All Network (MEFA) created by Naren Patel, worked with Uzma Afridi at NABS to roll out mentoring training for everyone at MEFA, and been fueled with energy by a talk Leyya Satar from the Other Box gave my team during the pandemic.
We all know from the All in Census results that 27% of Asian respondents reported that they are likely to leave the industry due to a lack of inclusion and/or discrimination faced. These stats should not only be a wakeup call for HR and business leaders but for everyone in our industry. We need to do better so if you are reading this and wonder what you could be doing during South Asian Heritage Month I would always start with education and this is a great book by Sathnam Sanghera called Empireland; if you fancy listening to my Spotify playlist that I shared with my team last week here’s a link; there’s a huge variety of events being organised across the country you can check out here, and finally this documentary filmed in 1973 which shared stories of 1st generation Muslim immigrant families happens to include my parents wedding and the story of my grandfather and grandmother’s journey to the UK (The Drabu’s of Manchester and Srinagar).
“I was raised to acknowledge I was different to everyone else, and I remember how much I rebelled against it. I just wanted to be like everyone else and ‘fit in’. ”