Too embarrassed to ask?
By Hilary Thomson (July 2001)

When I was at secondary school in South-East London, this Asian thing all seemed very simple. There were lots of Asian girls at school, the head of English was Indian, and we simply got on with it.

Like the second generation Polish, Spanish, West Indian and (in my case) Irish girls, we were all herded into assembly every morning to sing incomprehensible hymns like "Hills of the North Rejoice", and "When the Waters Cover the Sea" in our terrible twangy South London voices with an equal lack of fervour. We were all there because our parents wanted us to "get on".

R had a mother who vividly recalled her gilded youth in the Punjab ("We rode on milk white steeds, and water melons grew outside the back door".) But A had a Polish father who, to quote her at the time, was 'still very angry about Hitler'. And I had an Irish grandfather who annoyed other people's parents with off-key renditions of Irish nationalist songs. We were united in having "embarrassing" family members.

Then there were the Ugandan and Kenyan Asian girls, who arrived in the early seventies. Why did they have Abba hairstyles when the local Asian girls had plaits? We enjoyed their spirited battles with their parents, which resembled our own, but on a more grandiose scale. R regaled me with daily updates on the scandalous behaviour of her older brother, who had moved in with his European girlfriend. "My dad went round there and found him doing the hoovering....can you imagine. My brother is mad about her. He won't let her lift a finger in the house. The great thing is, it means Dad's stopped going on about me working in the Gate of India bar."

We were all trying very hard to conform and were helped in this by having to parade about in identical helmet-like hats, knee-length skirts and (for some bizarre reason) beige socks and white gloves.

Very many years later, the feeling that we should just somehow all just get on persists. What has changed in the meantime, is attitudes to ethnicity. At some point in the 70s, ethnicity became interesting and important: not something to be glossed over but something to be celebrated and emphasised. And with ethnic awareness came a new touchiness about racism that overnight made it deeply "uncool" to ask people questions about their origins and customs.

The problem is that the pendulum swung so rapidly from one side to the other that we missed a crucial stage in between. We missed the chance to ask each other about our respective cultures. And now it feels (on a day to day level at least) almost too late. Like the way you miss a crucial piece of information early in a conversation and find it embarrassing to ask it again half an hour later.

Despite being educated with, and taught by Asians, and having worked with, and done business with Asian people all my working life, I now understand even less than I thought.

Like Asian food, with its proliferation of fusion and regional cuisines, Asian culture no longer seems homogenous.

Post Keith Vaz, the Hindujas and Oldham, Asian culture is looking like a destabilising influence. The images of Asia we see on our television screens - burning temples, riots, assassination, separatists and extremists - further fuel this view. Hit TV show 'Goodness Gracious Me' gave us affectionate look at this culture diversity, but it's hard to avoid its dark side: reports of young girls forced into arranged marriages, disaffected youths trying to make their streets a 'no-go area', demands for educational separatism.

Getting answers to questions about Asian culture isn't easy. You could be construed as tactless or just plain nosey. At worst, you could come across as racist.

What we probably need is a book called 'Teach Yourself Asian People'. But until someone writes that, I think it would be very helpful if the readers of this web site could answer two very basic questions.

Question number one: how many different sorts of South Asians are there? This probably sounds a laughable question. But I'm not at all clear. There are Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans. There are Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsees and presumably other religions and sects. There are all those different Asian languages, some of which seem to equate with religions (Hindustani?) and others that do not (Gujarati?).

How much kinship do these different factions feel for each other? Can they tell from each other's names and appearance which caste or group the other belongs to - the way my parents could tell Catholics from their names and addresses?

Question number two: why is not possible for Asians to assimilate themselves into a British way of life (or at least the bits of it that appeal!!) and still hang onto their own cultural identity?

Do Asian people not risk becoming a kind of "Raj Culture" in reverse - insisting on dressing, worshipping, living and educating their children as if they were in the 'old country' and yet living permanently in this country? And with a result every bit as bizarre as those pictures of Victorian Memsahibs parading pallid sailor-suited children from their Surrey Tudor houses to the local Anglican Church?

However amused or horrified you are by my questions, I would welcome a debate on these issues. The more we know, the more we will understand.

My old school, by the way, has moved with the times - gone are the helmet hats, the grammar school status and the strange Anglican hymns. But I detect more than a flicker of its former spirit in its new school song: Unity Through Diversity.