(Ep 1: Between a Rock and a Hard Place)
A few words about being a British woman of Pakistani–Muslim–Indian–Hindu descent.
While I define my identity quite easily in my recent post “Advantages of Being Second-Generation British“, I can understand why (at first glance) my identity and background can appear to be quite complicated. To the unsuspecting reader, this background is a clash of cultures that have long plagued both India and Pakistan, and the relations between some Muslims and Hindus as a result.
I hope to make a series out of Between a Rock and a Hard Place to shed a light on some of my experiences and write about some of the ways that my somewhat complicated background has manifested over my 21 years.
First off in the series, I want to introduce the idea and give some background as to why I have started to open up about this.
An Introduction to Between a Rock and a Hard Place
I have always been curious about the notion of cultural identity and nationalism, ever since my teacher in my Politics classes introduced the concepts, not realising at the time how prevalent this would be in my life. In my bones, if you look close enough, you will quickly learn of the never-ending conflict that is engrained within me: Pakistan vs India, Muslim vs Hindu, Conservative vs Liberal, British vs Other.
I am a physical embodiment of a melting-pot of clashing cultures, values, and practices this ever-shrinking world has to offer, and a testament to what happens when you bring people together. We are not as different as we are portrayed to be. I was born in the UK in 1998, born and raised to be a British-Londoner with a father of Pakistani descent and a mother of Indian descent. So, I ask the question: can you feel patriotic to nations that you have visited twice when you were younger?
To what degree do we continue to hold on the practices that have been taught to our parents by their parents from the motherland? In my case, what do I do if the motherlands available to me are painted to be polar opposites of one another?
I like to think that I am (and others like me are) in a better position to navigate the world around me (us). We are raised with a Western ideal of how things should be handled and experienced and get a flavour of the traditions that our parents were brought up with, deciding what we take on and what we leave behind in the forward-stepping movement of the future.
Progress doesn’t necessarily mean the abandonment of the traditions that make us Asian or make our heritage ‘Other’. No, progress is understanding what aspects of these traditions we want to continue with, and which stand in the way of the values that we take on in a Liberal society. While I am patriotic to Britain, I do not reject the more conservative aspects of a Pakistani/Indian culture that make me up genetically and are engrained in my upbringing.
This idea of “other” is engrained in my nationality. On nearly every form, I fill the quota for British-Asian Other; I represent not fitting into a neatly-wrapped package of a nationality. I look to explore these differences at length in this series, to analyse with an innate curiosity for the parts of my life that make me stand out and to see how exactly worlds collide in this world of being the ethnic Other.
I hope you stick around as I start to explore my parents’ backgrounds, the differences in my extended families, my schooling and, eventually, come to a conclusion about what exactly it means to be a British woman of Pakistani–Muslim–Indian–Hindu descent.
– Freeing Freida –
Freeing Freida 