Mum! Look! An Indian on the TV!

When I was growing up it was not uncommon to cry with excitement when an ethnic person appeared on the box from heaven i.e. the TV. The television has been a primary artery in the body of education I call ‘life’. I don’t think for a second that TV has corrupted me. In fact, TV has helped me to learn more about the cultures, societies and environments that surround me. So when I saw a black person appearing on TV for the first time, I was pretty happy about it. When an Indian person appeared on TV I was very excited. But when a Sikh appeared on TV exemplified by his turban I was ecstatic!
‘Singh, Singh!’ I would scream and jump up and down with joy – I was like a raver on acid. It was so uncommon to see a Singh on the box that if I did see one I would question whether Uncle Malkit had secretly climbed into the TV.

Come to think of it, how many Sikhs who display outward religious symbols do we see today on TV? I can only think of three and I am pushing the boundary in terms of talent. It is late but I am really scraping the ethnic barrel here.

1. Hardeep Singh Kohli (pictured) – clearly a talented individual who appears on the BBC’s One Show. With his extrovert turban often of varying colours (I think the last colour I saw him wearing was purple or maybe it was mauve, lilac or lavender?). He is actually a role model to me. An outward Sikh with an equally outward turban that even my uncle ‘Shipwreck’ would wince at (and they don’t call him shipwreck for nothing I can tell you). A great individual and a brilliant sense of humour.

2. The Sikh with no fashion sense whatsoever who challenged Peggy Mitchell as Walford councillor in Eastenders not too long ago. She subsequently gave an ‘emotional and inspiring’ speech at the councillors session and then collapsed afterwards in the Vic. That awful speech must have really taken it out of her eh? The Singh in question wear a turban that looked like it had been tied by David Blunkett. Religion and politics never mix – lesson learnt.

3. The third Singh I make reference to is also part of the Eastenders faithful. The extra in Eastenders! I never fail to miss him and always point him out to my fellow Eastenders audience whenever he appears. Quite embarrassing really when your grandma who is a devout Sikh watches with you deciphering the cockney dialect when she cannot utter a word of English but still somehow manages to work out that Heather is pregnant, Billy is a twat and Jeneen is an evil schemer and the offspring of Frank Butcher! So when I scream ‘Singh, Singh!’ my grannie shoots me a disapproving glance and continues to listen to Shirley talking crap about how she loves alcoholic Phil Mitchell.

Is Eastenders a representation of multicultural Britain or purely just a realistic and disappointing interpretation of a London suburb or even the UK? I think the latter. How come there isn’t a Singh family anyway when Punjabi Sikhs make up a massive percentage of the ethnic British population? Maybe I should make a case and send them my credentials as a new Sikh character. I can imagine my story line: Sikh lad enters the Queen Vic and sits within shot of Phil’s barmaid not saying a word while Ben wets himself because Phil just downed his 56th vodka and orange. All this while I chat away to the mute that is ‘Singh in Eastenders’. He is so popular that he even has a facebook fan page (and guess what I’m in it).

Another one of my pet hates in Eastenders is the race proofing… filling the ethnic quota by replacing one defunct Asian family (the pesky Ferreiras) with another, the Masoods. And the recent addition of Syeed, the forgotten son who happens to look nothing like either his parents or his younger brother. Why on earth does Zainab still have the most infuriating Pakistani accent that changes constantly? Once she sounded Punjabi and my gran pointed out that ‘her English good’. No it’s not gran.

Lenny Henry recently pointed out that TV when he was growing up was white with only a smattering of black. “America was light years ahead of us when it came to on screen diversity. Unfortunately I wasn’t living in America – I lived in Dudley”. I share his pain, being a fellow West Midlands and Black Country contemporary. Just like Lenny loved to see a black person on TV, I like to see an Asian and more importantly one that is a Sikh – an identifiable Sikh.

I have had my own conflicts with having a turban in the past. I wanted to be like the other cool boys when I was growing up. I told my mum that I was going to cut my hair. The finger prints of my mum’s slap around my face remained for 3 days. Sathnam Sanghera didn’t ask, he just went and cut his hair and then wrote a story about it! ‘The Boy with the Topknot’ was like reading about my own life only my hair stayed where it was.

My serious point is this; on-screen diversity in the UK has come a long way (in my last post I made reference to the many Asian newsreaders I see nowadays!). But as a Sikh, I fear that some stereotypes remain – Sikhs are under-represented by a mile. Does the West still fear the turban? Is the turban threatening and do people liken a turban to Arabian attire? When I have a conversation with somebody and their eyes wander north of my eyes, I sometimes wander what kind of society I live in when I can be judged not by skin colour (the classic) but by an outward religious symbol that now seems to get in the way for some people. It’s fucking annoying. What do you think?

Lenny Henry got it right when he asked TV decision makers how far we had come in the UK TV industry in relation to ethnicity and stereotypes… “And while we’re about it - lets cut the stereotyping right now: when you can cast a Somalian girl in your piece simply because she is the best actor for the job, when you can cast an Asian actress and she’s not the victim of an arranged marriage, when you can cast a Jamaican man with dreadlocks and he’s not a drug dealer… then we will have achieved something”.

Just because there are more and more ethnic faces on TV, it doesn't mean that society is represented appropriately... Just ask a Sikh.