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Compiling the list

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British South Asian is a label, it does not define an experience but broadly it can be applied to people from the Indian subcontinent. As outlined by Minority Rights Group International, the South Asian minority group includes people from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and some from the Middle East (2023).

The British South Asians in Film list is an ongoing project by Hamish Mèk Chohan. Titles are added to the lists as they are discovered or are recommended. British South Asian is not a genre; British South Asians in Film began as an intervention instigated as an act of decolonising higher education. Allowing for discussions about watch-lists to prompt a reflection on being “seen”.

As stated in James Muldoon’s article, Academics: It’s Time To Get Behind Decolonising The Curriculum, “Advocates of decolonisation don’t want to abolish the canon; they want to interrogate its assumptions and broaden our intellectual vision to include a wider range of perspectives.” (2019).

“Many political and educational plans have failed because their authors designed them according to their own personal views of reality, never once taking into account (except as mere objects of their actions) the men-in-a-situation to whom their program was ostensibly directed.” (Freire, 1970, p. 67).

For students of colour studying in the UK navigating predominantly white canon curriculums, taught within majority white lecturer departments; there is a difficulty faced when the work they choose to produce or reflect on extends beyond the perpetuated Western narrative. This website was created as there was an observed absence of this type of extensive list existing. A representation of the legacy of British South Asians in film should be greater than an arbitrary top ten list lazily selecting the same films. This list aims to substantially broaden the scope of how British South Asians are depicted or indeed depict others.

Equally, and as observed by Dilan Tulsiani in their Brown History article, The Problem with Brown Asian Cinema, Tulsiani writes, “South Asian culture has historically been displayed as something to observe in an orientalist fashion as seen in British Empire Exhibitions ... Televised and cinematic representations have also fallen into a similar tradition of using comedy as a device to present caricatures of South Asian identities. The stereotype of British Asians as timid, hard-working, ideal immigrants is further illustrated with characters who are hyper-accented, “backwards” with mystical orientalist beliefs, and usually display an authoritarian attitude towards their children ... Visual mediums communicated to the general public hold an enormous amount of weight to them. They can display racist stereotypes without context, as is historically seen in the representation of Black Britons, or done so much more subtly in the case of British South Asians. We should rightfully question what’s funny about certain representations, especially when they can be socially harmful or may distract from more important and accurate narratives. If South Asian culture is presented as an inherently “backward” and funny identity, the likelihood of seeing more serious films, such as that on colonial history etc. is extremely low.” (2023).

Our identity extends beyond parody and there is a legacy of depiction to be championed and revisited, many of which has never made it to physical media or has been curated out of streaming platforms. From the good to the bad and all that is in between, British South Asians in Film has been created, and aims to be maintained, to offer a starting point from which British South Asian representation can be sought, accessed and discussed in a more informed way.

As Bell Hooks states in Reel To Reel, “Whether we like it or not, cinema assumes a pedagogical role in the lives of many people ... I began to realize that my students learned more about race, sex, and class from movies than from all the theoretical literature I was urging them to read. Movies not only provide a narrative for specific discourses of race, sex, and class, they provide a shared experience, a common starting point from which diverse audiences can dialogue about these charged issues.” (1996, p. 2).

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