Jassa Ahluwalia: “The mixed story is massively underrepresented at the moment”
At the Jaipur Literature Festival, the author of ‘Both Not Half: A Radical New Approach to Mixed Heritage Identity’ spoke about the tendency to reduce an individual’s identity to fractions and the surprisingly similar reactions to his book in UK and India
The title of your book, Both Not Half, signals a new way of looking at the mathematics of everyday living: the idea of fractions and the idea of what the individual considers as being their whole self. You note that you were interested in oneness, and not being a sum of parts. Please talk about the politics of a hyphenated identity and the prevalent desire to reduce people to fractions of who they are.
Oh, wow, where to begin? I think I began my journey with Both Not Half almost unconsciously when I realised that society was trying to make me choose one thing or the other or wanted me to be a hyphenated being. And I couldn’t just be my whole self. The reason I became aware of this was because my parents gifted me the joy of being whole as a child. It was only then, like you say, when I started to interact with the structures of society that I began to realise that my wholeness, my fullness did not fit the paradigm that society was built upon.
For a long time, I, despite never feeling it, considered this interesting sort of nuance, but I never felt half. I was made to feel half by others. I always felt whole. But I didn’t realise that my struggle was not an internal struggle. It was my struggle with the outside world imposing a fractional identity upon me. For a very long time, I did refer to myself as half Indian, half British. It was only in response to the Instagram comment that I saw on my first viral video the words “only half”. And I think the word “only” is probably quite important there. It was a sort of a diminutive way that I was understood.
But I’m not only half. I am both. I’m full.
When I started to realise that I was resisting it, I understood there was nothing wrong inside of me. There are just these paradigms, the hierarchies of society that I’m having to interact with. They are trying to impose an order on me that I, by my very existence, am rebelling against. That became a much more political rebellion as the book developed. The second half of the book is very much about my shift towards political resistance… whether it’s on the issues of national identity, gender and sexuality, class, etc. Now, I think the only mathematics really required is the mathematics of Guru Nanak Devji, which is Ik (one).
Interestingly, you never fail to mention how whiteness insulated you, but that very white world was not convinced of your being mixed, a seemingly authentic brown person for the screen. How were opportunities for you limited because of the white-dominated casting space and how they perceived you?
In a sense, I don’t think my opportunities have been limited because my whiteness has given me opportunities. What it hasn’t given me are opportunities to tell the story of people like my Punjabi family. I’m not seeking to, you know, be the next Dev Patel or Riz Ahmed. I sort of identify politically as brown, but I’m not looking to play brown characters. I’m not intending to darken my skin or do a Ben Kingsley and play Gandhi or anything like that. What I want to see is to see mixed heritage people, mixed families on screen, on stage, because there are so many of us.
At the book signing, I’ve met people who identify with mixedness. I met an ostensibly white woman who is both English and Persian. These stories are everywhere and they’re growing. At least in the UK, and I believe also in the US, the mixed populations are a growing demographic. It’s just not well understood. For me, representation in arts is crucial. And the mixed story is massively unrepresented at the moment. Or if it is represented, it’s always in a very narrow, stereotypical sort of lens: the black-and-white mix.
And, to be considered mixed, you have to, you know, have an orientalist, “exotic look”. If you look at history, it was well understood, strangely enough, during the colonial period in India. It was well understood that somebody as white as me could be of mixed heritage. That knowledge and awareness have diminished since. I mean, I’m not advocating here for a return to the East India Company. But I think it’s interesting that once upon a time it was well understood, and it’s not well understood now. The fact that these stories aren’t present in our media is a large factor in that.
But some artists also censored themselves, or a part of themselves. For example, Merle Oberon. In an attempt to be employable, she erased a part of her identity. What do you think of that?
I don’t begrudge or criticise anyone who has to do whatever they have to do in order to feel safe, to work, to provide food for themselves and their family. I think we have to resist in the way that we can. I’ve taken the position that I have because I can. Because, as you say, I’m insulated by my whiteness. And I’m a straight man, too. There are aspects of my identity that protect me. I attempt to use the protection I’m afforded to help change systems.
People like Merle Oberon are interesting historical figures. They can be quite tragic and revealing. In a contemporary context, I think all I can do is try and change the system as best I can. Through my work with my trade union equity, for example, I was trying to change the casting database system in the UK to allow for multiplicity and mixed identities to be fully visible in the casting scene. That is a major shift. It doesn’t necessarily mean that casting directors and producers are going to start changing their behaviours in the way they cast. But at least the tools themselves are not reinforcing those problems or a sort of binary thinking. The system itself now is hopefully prompting some reflection.
I think your question reveals that we’re very early on in this journey. There are not many books about the sort of thing that I’m addressing at the moment. And I see interest in the kind of book I’ve written. People also want to read another book about [what I’ve written] from a different perspective. I hope I’m doing what I can to change the narrative.
LISTEN: Not a fraction but a whole – Jassa Ahluwalia on the Books & Authors podcast
While negotiating your identity vis-a-vis where you found yourself raised, you don’t seem to be invested in the idea of grieving what’s lost. Instead, you note, “adventure had begun” in terms of discovering who you are. But you also write about Rudyard Kipling, and how you liked Kim with all the problems it had with the benefit of hindsight. What sort of technical challenges were presented before you while balancing the colonial legacy and this new way of looking at yourself?
I think for a very long time as I began this search for identity, self, and wholeness, I was under the impression that identity was something out there to be found. Or it was something that had once existed when I was a child and was now lost to me and therefore it became a process of grieving. It was a sort of nostalgia. The etymology of nostalgia is essentially Greek for homesickness and I just felt that immense sense of homesickness. But then I realised that actually identity is not something static. It is not something to be preserved or protected or venerated even. It is an ongoing, fluid process. And as soon as you start to engage with that process, you get to make it what you want it to be.
I realised that my grieving, nostalgia was very much a backwards-looking idea and quite a naïve, immature way of looking at the world. Then, I felt like my Punjabi wasn’t quite good enough to communicate ideas. I felt like my connection to the land would vanish. But I’m back here, in India, with this new mindset. It has taken me 10 years to develop it. I came back in 2020 to Chandigarh and felt a connection, and I thought that there was a future for me in India. Now I’m having conversations in Punjabi with my family where I’m expressing myself more fully.
My parents didn’t bring me here. I have family in Jaipur that I’ve never met before. We met on this trip because I had the confidence to send a message in Punjabi. This is my grandmother’s niece, and my second cousins came to the festival today. They were in the audience. One of my cousins is currently out there behind us with my sister. This is not the past. We didn’t have these experiences before. I didn’t know I had family in Jaipur. This is a new future, a new identity. I’m done with grieving. I’m all about growing and developing and forging a new future now.
What sort of response did the book receive in the UK and could you juxtapose that with the response that you received in India?
What’s really interesting is that the response has been identical. That has been the most beautiful thing because we are all whole and multiple. I didn’t realise that my TED talk was going to resonate in the way that it did in Chandigarh. But on reflection, it’s so obvious. India is a land of multiple identities, of people who are from multiple faiths and traditions. There are mixed families everywhere. And I think I was incredibly naïve to think that this book would not have the reception that it has had. That’s the most magical thing: to realise that this was a universal story, that there was a universal message, that we are all both, we are all whole and multiple and we are all one. The fact that audiences, readers in the UK and India seem to be having the same response is absolutely joyful to witness.
I know it’s awful as an author to be struggling with words, but I find it very difficult to find a way to express quite what that means. It’s a deep, deep sense of joy, contentment: Ananda.
Saurabh Sharma is a Delhi-based writer and freelance journalist. They can be found on Instagram/X: @writerly_life.