The mighty C―

Five days back, I wrote about friendships lost; entirely on an impulse, I've decided to honour a current friendship which I feel straddles the worlds of friendship that have been imagined both pre- and post-Internet. You know what I mean - the constant implication wherever you look, from articles in the Metro and 'real' newspapers, to The Social Network, that before social networks friendship was a simple, long-lasting, honest affair, whereas now it's artificial, entirely temporary and probably sex-driven. These are stories that play appealingly to our common knowledge (and laziness and cynicism) about Internet friendships. They can require more effort to maintain (often due to distance), and, ironically, can lack the immediacy of having a physical presence despite offering immediate access to others.

I have to say that my experience more or less mirrors what I've just described. Certainly, there's been no social network-initiated contact of mine that made it to friendship, and no friendship of mine that's flourished through only social network contact. There is, however, one crucial friendship in my life that sprang from (of all the things) MSN Messenger (as it used to be called) and has survived to this day. I speak of the mighty C―.

Ironically, given the centrality of music to our early contact and its heavy presence in C―'s life (he makes music and has a musician's (read: strong) opinion on music, especially pop), our friendship has developed much like my relationship with most music I love. I start off being repulsed yet intrigued, something hidden and immediate encourages me to persist. Stubbornly exposing myself to it again and again, patterns start to fall into place and suddenly, thrillingly, I get it. Once that bond is established, the album and I are forever. I can go and come back any time, knowing that it will be special. Occasionally, an album may fall from grace, but for the most part, we are forever.

I met C― through a friend who had somehow ended up messaging with him quite regularly. Their connection was arcane indeed, C― being a friend-of-a-friend she knew 'in real life'. I messaged with her a lot and I think she told me something about him being rather opinionated (words to that effect, probably less flattering). So, with perfect teenage logic, we or I decided that I would join in with their evening messaging sessions. That should serve as a reminder to me, next time that I claim I wasn't really a proper teenager, that I had the arrogance (even though it never seemed that way at the time...).

I don't really remember what exactly happened, but I DO remember that C― and I interacted like an outbreak of hellfire. He was arrogant, insecure and opinionated; I was arrogant, insecure and opinionated... on some level, I think I wanted to help him? That classic 'project' mentality is so characteristic of women and young women in particular, although of course I'm not even certain if I wanted to help him, or go all Jeremy Kyle on his ass like the self-righteous schoolie I was. We fought and argued a lot in a manner that I can only describe as nothing like you see in old Hollywood films, so don't get excited, and verging on bizarrely macho.

We fought a lot (I don't know if this was in conjunction with my getting together with my ex, so I can't really tell you just how bored I was at the time), until I gave up on him at some point. The friend who had introduced him had, I think, effectively passed him on to me and I don't think she resumed talking to him regularly after I stepped off. I fell out with her, effectively, after having it pointed out to me that she was getting on my nerves (she was) and being paint-strippingly honest with her. I've reread the emails and now I find it all hilarious and definitely cringe-worthy... but not for the usual reasons. I am actually astounded at how much self-possession and self-esteem I had, for a teenage girl. What I regret is how harshly blunt I was. A little diplomacy could definitely have leavened that exchange - although I was greatly influenced by a very forthright, religious friend at the time.

I forget how we got back in touch - it probably was through MSN Messenger yet again. I suspect he probably contacted me, just because it seems more plausible than me contacting him, given how wrapped up in my relationship I was and how low my parting opinion of him had been. Maybe I hit rock bottom and reached out to whoever was in the MSN ether? Or maybe it was all an accident? Who remembers? The fact is that contact was clearly re-established. C― had had something of an extended crash-and-burn episode. After being the Great White Hope of British philosophy (he is a genius, and rather let us know it as a teen), university overwhelmed him and he decided to leave, pulling out only a short time into his first year. I forget whether I heard this first- or second-hand. What I definitely know is that it was the making of him. Who knows how he would have ended up at university - I remember him telling me that Nottingham, where he was, was full of Oxbridge rejects. It sounded like he was very much out of his depth in a highly-pressured environment. Maybe he got a touch of big-fish-in-a-small-pond, much as I did at Master's...?

Anyway, when that crucial re-establishment of contact took place, I received one of the most remarkable surprises I've ever had. C― was infinitely less of an Angry Young Man caricature and much more of an actual person, as opposed to a personality, falling out with people left, right and centre over the Arctic Monkeys. I liked him and it seemed that whatever it was that had drawn me to him as a teen had been justified. He is manic-depressive - I think this may have been why I cut him slack when we were younger, much as I did for my ex despite his lengthy moods. From what I've divined since, I don't think his teens were the happiest time (are they for anyone?!) and I don't know how easy he was finding it to cope with depression at that time. Adult C― was the product of quite a rebirth. People usually go to university to become open-minded, meet people from other backgrounds, etc. - he did it the other way round. His moods could still be tempestuous at times, not helped by the fact that he fell into a relationship with someone who had emotional issues of her own. There may be people out there with depression or other such mental illnesses, who are happy with others who have the same or a similar condition. Good luck to them. My experience, and as it turned out, C―'s, was that it is disastrous. Far from being in a position to empathise with you, the other person has their own demons to face. My ex and I would be moody consecutively, hence never a dull moment! I think that without TL, I would have had to struggle a lot harder to believe in myself and bolster my self-esteem.

C―, however, went through his break-up with astounding resilience. It may not have seemed that way to him, but his ex was dating one of his good friends. Somehow, he avoided setting them on fire and/or getting himself on the addiction express to Hades. He is a creative, expressive, cultured individual who had not been able to adjust to university and didn't fit in where he lived either (as he complained to me many a time, citing 'chavs' and similar). Yet, against all odds, he matured like a fine wine or cheese. I'm not sure I've seen anyone develop emotional intelligence at warp speed before, but he really was doing a phoenix. We spoke on Skype, by text, by landline, probably by mobile too... maybe by email sometimes... there were times when he zoned right out in conversation, or when I didn't really have time to talk. There were many times where I harangued him over something or another, and there were times where I talked him down from the ledge, so to speak. Never could I have imagined doing such a thing for anyone, let alone 'an Internet friend.' This should give you some idea of what C― meant, and means, to me. 

Whenever I was being his Samaritan, I didn't want to patronise him. I knew, from my own moments in the dark, that platitudes never ring more hollow than when you are suicidal, your thoughts telescoping to monochrome starkness. I am an atheist, yet being in that position was one of the earliest sensations of something greater than myself at work. Suicidal people can appear selfish (as London Underground commuters will be quick to tell you!) and I fought fire with fire. I put to use the guilty shock of love that welled, whenever I thought I might really lose him. Something felt intrinsically right about it, and persisted in feeling good; I would not let him go without him knowing that I loved him. Somehow, it seems to have kept on working. I felt almost like an absent parent and sent him what the Americans call 'care packages' at times, which I thoroughly enjoyed. We even met up once; I remember I was terribly nervous, couldn't decide what to wear and hadn't slept too well. He was wearing a jacket with elbow patches and a woolly beanie-style hat. That's my C― - eccentric in the most unassuming, even awkward, manner. It was a very brief encounter - we had hot drinks and took a walk. The nice thing about it was that it neither forced our friendship forwards, nor unravelled it; it simply felt like a path forward that we could take up again if we so wished.

We still stay in touch via Facebook chat, and for the moment, his life is the most stable it's ever been. He's got a job and is in a band. We have enjoyable, intense, random discussions and make each other laugh about all kinds of things - but he will also announce abruptly that he needs to go, or I will resort to one-word responses for a while, at times. Sometimes one or the other of us slinks off quietly and sneakily. He's exactly a month younger than me and couldn't be from a more different background. It's not like other friendships I've had - but neither of us is particularly conventional in how we conduct our friendships. We've both isolated some, cast others aside and chased those who weren't worth our time. Much to my surprise, my interventions on the behalf of a continued existence seem to have worked more and more as time goes by. Will he leave me unexpectedly someday? I don't know. Is he always there when I want him? No. He pops up most unexpectedly, and peps me when I'm not even realising my need. He has a mix of steel, fragility and downright childish vigour that is familial. Paradoxically for someone whose hand I've stayed so many times, I don't think I've ever seen such a will to live and just being around that, though I can't really elaborate how invigorating and glorious it is, I hope on some level, you know or understand what I mean. It's a bit like that novel/film One Day that everyone's suddenly on about, albeit without the romance, Anne Hathaway, Yorkshire, a film career and the '90s figure significantly less...

Friendships: a eulogy

I have been away a while - partly due to being busy, lazy, busy/lazy and also because I got wind of the possibility that someone was effectively spying on me through my blog. Ironically, it was that same person's attempt to get in contact with me that led to me writing this post.

An initial text message left me saucer-eyed with shock, because, coincidentally enough, I had succumbed to a faint nostalgia that week, wishing that we could have been friends. Talk about being careful what you wish for! Ultimately, I was too smart to indulge that lazy impulse. However, it got me thinking about friendship, and why I make the choices I do. Why had the current people in my life 'made the cut', whilst others hadn't? Given my long-standing solitariness, what did I expect of those that I had actually deemed worthy of the title - what was a friend to me?

This was a question of particular interest, given that I lost two friends in quick succession earlier this year. We expend a great deal of space and time in popular culture and the media on speculation about relationships and romantic love, but nowhere near as much on friendships and platonic love. Sure, there are the odd bits of research here and there about how people with more friends live longer, etc., but friendship just doesn't exercise us like relationships do.

Now, I know it's blindingly obvious, but the whole unexpected-contact-attempt made me realise that friendship is supposed to be between equals. So often, though, it's not, and we don't even realise, because there is no guide to friendships the way there is for relationships. I think (or rather, my impression is) that we also devalue our friendships/underestimate their importance in our lives. When we get depictions of 'true friendship' in films and on TV, however, it is often as heartbreaking and beautiful, if not more so, than great romance. At the heart of that well-known show The Inbetweeners, for example, the friendship between the four main characters is the silent, crucial constant that sustains and counterbalances their frequently disastrous, devastatingly humiliating attempts to appear 'cool,' popular and confident with women. I was struck dumb by the perceptiveness of Laura Haddock (starring in the film version as Will's love interest Alison), who described it as effectively a teen male version of Sex and the City.

To return to my earlier point, though - I think that because we tend to frequently devalue our friendships and/or underestimate the effect that they can have on us, we don't accord friendship the consideration it deserves. The two friendships that I'd lost had imploded for apparently similar reasons. However, as I pondered more, it became clear that this really wasn't the case at all. Starting with the reaction I'd had in the aftermath of each loss - once the dust settled a little, they had effectively switched around. The first friend that I'd lost, I had known a relatively short while, whilst the second was one of my oldest and closest friends. Initially, it seemed that the old friend's loss hit me harder (as one would surely expect). I was extremely unsure about what to do and spent a lot of time consulting with other friends. We fell out completely via Facebook chat, and I emailed the exchange to my closest friends to get their feedback. Had I been too harsh on her? Was I justified in feeling the way I did? What should I do next? For the most part, they were in agreement with me and made various useful comments, such as: 'If you have to ask yourself whether you want to keep her as a friend - I'm not sure that you do.'
 
What strikes me now, looking back, is that what I mistook for grief at losing my friend of several years was actually an intense mix of bitterness and disappointment. She had started off as the kind of friend who, in her own words, would 'spoil other people for you' (if I recall correctly) and chasms had opened slowly but yawningly between us. Any mild grief I felt at losing her was easily outweighed by disappointment and the sense of shock and betrayal. The exchange had been akin to talking to a member of my family, with a level of self-absorption, denial and insensitivity that overcame me and felt like a back-handed slap from a supposedly 'close friend.' I realised that, much to my surprise, not only did I not miss her particularly, but that I had no real wish to be friends with her again. A vague desire for 'closure' of some kind (fuelled by her becoming a Facebook 'zombie' - a Friend who's on your list, but who's no longer (or never really was) a friend, who you are effectively skirting round all the time) led to me contacting her. The anticipation such occurrences creates was certainly notable, but I felt relieved that I had the answer now, whether she replied or not. She had nothing really left to earn back the title of 'friend,' and a whole lot of mistrust to dissipate. I feel sad that it ended as it did, but it felt good to know that I had pulled my weight and then some. It was her time to make good; I love myself too much to let her in again without serious work on her part.

In stark contrast to that, however, my feelings about the other friend. I will call him RV, because there's a lot more to say when it comes to him. His being a 'new' friend and our friendship being somewhat tempestuous, I convinced myself that he didn't really matter that much, and that I was 'over' him. This always felt rather hollow, however, and I could not understand why. This, coupled with the fact that one friend of mine always asks if anything has changed - i.e., if I've heard from him - when we speak, needled me. In the week after the other person tried to get back in touch with me, I dreamt about RV. He had been in the back of my mind and the dream seemed to crystallise my feelings in a new way. I awoke, and realised: 'I need to get RV's forgiveness.' The release of this truth to myself allowed long-overdue feelings of mourning to burgeon, now placed into emotional structure. I didn't want to mourn him. I missed him. Oh, the relief, to admit it! I missed him, and I loved him - terribly (I am shedding some much-needed tears as I write this). I had no idea how to get this across, however. Feeling full of myself, I had tried to 'make up' with him in a childish and arrogant manner on occasion, only to get shot down in flames. Which I absolutely deserved, although I didn't realise this at the time and compounded my errors by texting him abuse.

Periodically, I attempted to re-establish contact; a later, more adult and brief email was ignored as had been all other forms of contact up to that point. Thinking he must really hate me, I gave up and he stayed in a tiny alcove in the back of my head until recently (as you know from above...). Last night, reflecting on our history and some of the amazing things he had done as my friend (getting my dissertation ready for me to hand in, travelling across London into a rather awkward social situation for me), the full horror of my stupidity and self-absorption hit home. I was floored by grief, love and regret. Realising that this was going to be one of the most difficult emotional situations I would ever have to handle, I sought another very dear friend's advice. She was astoundingly insightful and made me realise that I had failed miserably in considering his viewpoint. I had gone charging in, assuming that he couldn't live without my friendship and expecting to be let off lightly. His refusal to do so simply marked him out as a target for insults, rather than making me appreciate just what was at stake and how much emotional heavy lifting I would have to do. Not only that, but I had projected onto him so much of what I had been seeking from my ex-boyfriend, that it was a wonder that he could get any of his real personality across to me through my blinders. True, our relationship had begun to get healthier, but I had fucked it up before it could really blossom. I had fucked it up.

The greatest irony was that I had come full circle from the outrage I felt at the person who had attempted to contact me, to realising that I had become that very person myself. All the attributes that had tipped me over the edge - insensitivity, self-absorption, arrogance - I was guilty of displaying towards my friend. I doubt he'll read this, but I realised that I desperately needed to hold myself accountable in a way that I could record and remember. I will be lucky if he forgives me, and I'm not betting on it; if he acknowledges any contact from me, that'll be a small miracle in itself. Behaviour that I would normally consider beyond the pale - texting someone constantly, grovelling, being rather emo - I have been engaging in. Yet it doesn't feel wrong, as it did with the other friend. It feels like the least I deserve, but I can hope for forgiveness.

Facing up to anti-Muslim sentiment among Sikhs

So to another Pickled Politics thread. I thought I'd entered a parallel universe when I read the comments on the latest piece by Jai, titled 'British Sikh and Hindu groups release joint statement condemning EDL.' Besides the self-explanatory bit, Jai also provided some context with reference to the Sikh BNP and EDL members and set up a spiritual death-match between Guramit Singh of the EDL and Guru Gobind Singh Ji, the tenth guru of the Sikhs.

The first comment was by our dear Rumbold:

Jai:

While it is good that Hindu and Sikh organisations are condemning the EDL, as the EDL is trying to split Hindus and Sikhs from Muslims, a fair number of ‘mainstream’ Hindus and Sikhs are anti-Muslim; in my narrow circle I know three Hindu and Sikh girls who have been cut off by their families for dating/marrying Muslims. It would be nice to see these organisations attempt to tackle this bigotry too (which is, as you point out, against the teachings of the Gurus).

This is a perfectly fair point, and as someone who came to where I am now through witnessing the stunning bigotry of self-professed 'proper Sikhs,' I do agree wholeheartedly with it. I can't even fault the wording of it, really.

Which is where the parallel universe element came in, in comments in response to Rumbold. Firstly, Leon:

@ Rumbold,

I’m not sure why you’re raising this now, if I didn’t know you I’d say your comment looked like spite at best and at worst an attempt to spike the conversation.

There are issues within the Sikh and Hindu communities but there is also some very good work done within those communities as Jai has rightly shown here.

We need to support them when they’re doing right, and put pressure on them when they are doing wrong, but doing both at the same time just confuses the issue at hand, and sadly plays right into the hands of fascists and rightwing nut jobs like the EDL.

This comment left me aghast for a number of reasons. Earwicga endorsed it, saying 'What Leon said.' With admirable composure, Rumbold responded, touching upon a point I would go on to address:

Leon:

So groups release a statement condemning an Islamaphobic group. Good. I then wonder what they are going to do to challenge Islamaphobia in the wider Sikh and Hindu communities. That seems a reasonable point given the wider battle against anti-Muslim prejudice.

To return to the problems I had with Leon's post... I can fathom why he might have responded as he did (I'm not saying I'm right, merely speculating) - Rumbold being a white, middle-class man, could be seen to be effectively appropriating Sikh/Hindu/Asian concerns and voices. It seems almost as though Rumbold is being accused of concern trolling.

However, while Rumbold certainly cannot speak as a British Asian Sikh - neither can Leon, nor Earwicga. Leon is mixed-race and Earwicga is white. One way in which allies of minority communities - whether they're white, OR of another ethnic minority community - can fuck up is by enthusiastically shooting down people they perceive to be attacking a particular minority so that they, too, end up speaking 'for' that particular minority.

I am a British Asian Sikh - still in many ways culturally Sikh, if not religiously - and I am going to speak in that capacity, with full awareness that I do not represent every Sikh. I do, however, as a woman, represent a section of my particular minority group whose voices are barely tolerated, ignored, silenced and in many cases our opinions are just assumed. Being religion-free is even an advantage here, I would say, as it means I have no overriding interest in protecting 'the community'.

I've addressed the first point in Leon's comment - the defensive reaction to Rumbold's criticism, and I'll now address the second:

There are issues within the Sikh and Hindu communities but there is also some very good work done within those communities as Jai has rightly shown here.

This lazily trades on stereotypical assumptions that Pickled Politics itself started out trying hard to combat, with its fight against self-proclaimed 'community leaders'. There are no 'the Sikh and Hindu communities.' There are no closed, monolithic groups of Sikhs and Hindus as this statement implies. The reference to 'issues' is deliberately minimising - there are many 'issues' in Sikh and Hindu communities, just like there are in all communities, and reference to 'good work' is vague - so what? Christian missionary groups do 'good work' of various kinds - does this mean that they can't be criticised? I think not. A much more honest and accurate statement would have been to say:

There are issues with anti-Muslim sentiment within Sikh and Hindu communities but there is also some very good work done to combat it within those communities as Jai has rightly shown here.

The problem, of course, which both Rumbold and myself pointed out, is that actions do not necessarily equal words. As anti-racist activists and womanists know, it's easy to release a statement condemning the most extreme examples of bigoted behaviour in a community without addressing much more common casual bigotries. We are constantly told to take white people's condemnation of the BNP, KKK, etc. as proof that we are 'post-racial', for example, which is absolutely fucking laughable when you consider that there is an established, overwhelmingly white movement in the US to discredit the black President by claiming that he was not really born in America and is not therefore American and also that a bunch of middle-class white men on an inexplicably-popular BBC show recently made the most appalling comments about Mexicans - straight out of the Republican playbook - and got away with it in the name of 'humour.'

White people fall over themselves to defend racism (and other bigotries) on the grounds of 'humour,' 'irony', and sometimes evoke the current trendy dead horse, of 'privacy' as in this shockingly shit piece by Charlie Brooker. The fact that the people that they are belittling are equal human beings never seems to count as a serious point worthy of consideration, should make it clear that we are not, in fact, equal human beings. I have seen and heard members of my family make 'humorous' anti-Muslim comments, but on the whole, the anti-Muslim sentiment that I've seen in Hindus and Sikhs comes from deficient self-awareness, massive, massive ignorance about Indian history and the lack of a secular political discourse in India. I probably won't elaborate just now - I'll save it for another post - but these are things which need addressing quite urgently. Since organised religion is about the religious group, not just individual belief, the signatories to the statement need to make sure that they are actively working to combat anti-Muslim sentiment in their communities wherever possible, not just by (in the case of Sikhs) pointing out how important Muslims have been in aiding the Gurus in Sikh history, but by encouraging Sikhs and Muslims to interact socially and not treating religion as a zero-sum game. Just because the Abrahamic religions all have a tortured, competitive relationship with each other, does not mean that Sikhs need to play that game - can we not just set ourselves apart, in the way that Buddhists seem to have done?

On to Leon's final point, while left me utterly enraged. I've split it into two parts:

1) We need to support them when they’re doing right, and put pressure on them when they are doing wrong 2) but doing both at the same time just confuses the issue at hand, and sadly plays right into the hands of fascists and rightwing nut jobs like the EDL.

1) Who the fuck is this 'we', and who the fuck are 'them'? Just who speaks for who here? If, as I suspect, Leon's 'we' refers to the likes of Rumbold, Earwicga etc. - then I would say - good, you see that NONE of you has the right to frame this debate. It comes across as unbelievably patronising - somewhat reminiscent of cultural relativism. We don't really understand the Other, and we don't want to be seen to judge, so let's hold our noses and let 'them' self-regulate! I thought Sunny and PP's good work combating community leaders was supposed to expose how contentious all this 'we' and 'they' BS is. Do I not belong to 'they' because I am an atheist? Or because I am a woman? It's just that, the kind of people who have the official authority to issue these kinds of media-friendly statements, don't generally get to where they are by giving a shit about people like me. They generally try to discipline and/or disown me - I have had this happen with the Sikh commenters on PP as well as in 'real life.'

2) Reading this, you would think that the EDL have some kind of direct line to every media outlet, imminently on the verge of being voted into office/picked to present Desert Island Discs/hired to write for the Daily Mail. As Jai's post points out, these are people who are so thick that, despite having a non-Muslim of Indian descent in their ranks, they couldn't tell the difference between Muslims and Hindus:

The EDL’s previous claims to be opposed “only to militant Islam” are further thrown into question by the fact that, for example, in October 2010 they held a large demonstration in Leicester, a city where the majority of British Asians are actually Gujarati Hindus. Furthermore, the rally was held during Navratri, a major annual Hindu festival which is of particular importance to Gujarati Hindus and which occurs just a couple of weeks before Diwali itself. I expect an “anti-Islam” rally by the EDL outside the Hare Krishna temple in Watford is next; and yes, I’m obviously being sarcastic, but you get my point.

While the bigotry of such a group should never be underestimated, we British Asians should also not have to carry with us the perpetual fear that 'something might happen.' This is our country too and we have just as much right to it as fuckwit bigots - our parents and predecessors took on racists more shameless and violent than this, in a public climate vastly less favourable to them (I think it was mentioned in the Sanjeev Bhaskar episode of The House That Made Me that during the Southall anti-NF demo in which Blair Peach died, the police were protecting the racists - I wouldn't be surprised). Central to that is not just highlighting the odd PR moment of 'unity' and trying to educate people about religious history, but acknowledging that people do say these anti-Muslim things in our community and taking them on. Failing to do so simply encourages a 'business as usual' approach where people provide the odd utopian soundbite and then go back to segregated lives of fear, ignorance and communalism.

I have also come to have a major bee in my bonnet about this 'you can't do two things at once' bollocks. It reeks of culturally-relativist arguments, as I said above, laden as it is with the sense of giving cookies. Let me explain the feminist concept of 'giving cookies' (WARNING: no actual cookies involved):

A feminist cookie is the term for the reward some men seem to be seeking for saying or doing something feminist. (There are equivalents for, eg, white people and being anti-racist or straight people and being anti-homophobia.)

In short, when people ask for cookies, they are essentially seeking credit where it's not really due. It's like when my brother thinks he should be thanked for loading the dishwasher, when my mum has done it every day for over 20 years. Even when people/groups aren't or don't seem to be seeking cookies, that doesn't mean they should be given. This goes back to what I was saying about Leon's comment being patronising: why t-f should we give these prominent Sikhs and Hindus cookies for releasing a statement?! How many people in their congregations are going to actually read or process it? Furthermore, how does effectively saying 'Islamophobia is bad, it hurts us all, I despair of it' actually translate to standing with our Muslim brethren? If there are actually going to be efforts in place, from here, to increase understanding between people, then great. My parents and family know that anti-Muslim sentiment is bad, which is why they get so defensive when I contend that Muslims are people too - it doesn't stop them from making bigoted throwaway remarks and going on lengthy rants about how Muslims are 'taking over' which verge on BNP/EDL rhetoric.

As a result of the way I was raised, I had a lot of pre-conceptions about Muslims and apprehension about social contact with them. A co-worker and students at my university helped me to start dumping the dirt from my mind, and then I met ACTUAL MUSLIMS via another job and Pickled Politics and a former Islamist is now one of my best friends. I still have my issues with Islam, but I have TRIED to challenge what was presented as reality to me. That is the kind of thing we need if we want to make a difference.

Ironically, given the reference to 'divide and rule' in the statement itself, Leon employs that classic tactic against dissent when he says that:

doing both at the same time [praising and criticising Sikh and Hindu groups for their reaction towards anti-Muslim sentiment in their ranks] just confuses the issue at hand, and sadly plays right into the hands of fascists and rightwing nut jobs like the EDL.

As I said in my angry comment in the thread - this tactic was used against women during the nationalist movement. Indian men emotionally blackmailed women in the emergent women's movement, presenting them with a choice between rights for women and rights for the nation as if the two were incompatible with each other. The idea of women as a transcendent political grouping threatened the oppressive edifice that nationalism was built on - the bodies of women imprisoned within the home, Indian clothes and domesticity. Thus Gandhi could present himself as being on the side of the suffragettes, while he promoted deeply regressive ideas about women that reduced them to a male-created ideal of femininity even whilst fetishising this ideal. The result, as Geraldine Forbes points out, was 'the development of [...] 'feminist nationalism'' in which female activists and their energies were co-opted to the national cause - exactly as happened with British feminists during the First World War.

Furthermore, it is not the '70s and '80s any more. A lot of British Asians feel comfortably settled here now, and the urgency that drove them to overcome their prejudices and unite with people they are normally so dismissive of - blacks, Muslims, etc. - isn't pressing any longer. There is never a 'right time' for criticism, as the Egyptian protests show - you just have to seize your moment, and a moment when cookies are uncritically being given to organisations for being seen to be 'doing' something is just perfect for me. Shocking though it is, I think we are all adult enough to handle the idea of communities as being permanently complex and multi-faceted, not lurching between 'doing right' and 'doing wrong' and capable of doing only one or the other at once. Implying that questioning - not even criticising - the groundwork beneath a PR gesture, is somehow selling everyone out to the racists, is rather low.

I'll try and return soon to elaborate on the problem of anti-Muslim sentiment among British Asian Sikhs (and Hindus), and consider the misunderstandings that fuel it.

Considering Amy Chua

If the name 'Amy Chua' doesn't resonate at all, then hopefully the words 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother' will.

For anyone still scratching their head, Amy Chua is a Harvard law professor who has written a book called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. It's caused a fair amount of controversy because, as this Guardian piece notes, it 'makes case [sic] for ultra-strict Chinese parenting':

The Tiger, Chua explains, is "the living symbol of strength and power", inspiring fear and respect. And as a "Tiger mother" herself, she assumed the absolute right to dictate her children's activities and demand rigorous academic standards of them at all times, ridiculing them if necessary to spur them on to greater efforts.

Except - as was quickly pointed out, but perhaps not quickly enough - the book is not actually a parenting guide, but a memoir. Even the article cited describes it as 'an autobiographical study of the failings of western parenting by Yale law professor Amy Chua'. Which is pretty objectionable since, as this interview with Chua and her family (three days after that article above) shows, the book could more accurately be described as being about the failure of Tiger parenting:

The book bares all about how the parenting model worked for her older daughter Sophia, now 17 and heading off to an Ivy League college, but backfired dramatically for her younger girl, Louisa, or Lulu, who is now 14.

Besides offering some important clarification, the interview also threw up some interesting points for consideration. Obviously, since the book hasn't even been published yet, I haven't read it - but on the basis of what I know so far, I'm-a get my lit-crit on. First off, QUOTES! We are told that:

At its heart, Battle Hymn is an account of the psychological warfare between a "Chinese" mother and her "western" daughter

Is it really that simple though? I'm going to follow the Golden Notebook method: mention a few other striking details, and then elaborate (super-striking bits in bold, of course):

"My husband kept warning me and my sisters kept warning me. But I guess it's part of my personality. A little bit rash. For me, so much of my book is making fun of myself through the words of my children. And some people get that. Other people read it straight. My older daughter said, 'Mummy, you put only the most extreme stories in. People don't realise how much fun we had'."

What Chua didn't put in the memoir, she says with a hint of regret, is all the good times. "All the way through, Jed was bringing balance to the family, insisting that we were going to go on family bike rides and to Yankees games and apple-picking and water slides and bowling and mini-golfing, so we socialised a lot actually …" ("My mum has a touch of the dramatic, and she's much nicer in real life," Sophia says to me later by email. "She lets me go to rap concerts with my friends and do archaeological digs in our backyard – not very 'Chinese' activities!")

Chua's description of her intentions certainly sounds more in keeping with the mode of writing a memoir - and acceptable - than what most people initially assumed. From the first article I linked to:

Chua argues that western parents. with their emphasis on nurturing their children's self-esteem and allowing free expression, have set their children up to accept mediocrity. "Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently," she says.

You might say 'On what basis do they assume strength? On the basis of projection?' This certainly seems supported by the claim that: 'The Tiger [...] is "the living symbol of strength and power", inspiring fear and respect. The 'Tiger mother' is strong, ergo their offspring must also be strong. All of which begs the question: why would a parent project? With due reference to the character of Erica Sayers - aka Natalie Portman's character's mum - in the just-released film Black Swan - parents often project because they see their child as an opportunity:

the heroine's mother (Barbara Hershey) is an ex-dancer who gave up a career to raise a daughter in whom all her hopes are invested.

Indeed, Chua describes childhood as "a training period, a time to build character and invest in the future." However, I couldn't help wondering if the culture clash with Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is less to do with the cultural clash between Chua and her younger daughter, and more to do with the cultural clash within Chua herself. As Chua remarks in the interview: "When I show this book to immigrants and immigrants' kids, they were like, exactly, this is how it is. It's funny, they relate, it's not controversial for them." Indeed, I was alerted to the existence of a Tiger Mother meme generator via a Facebook link, which included comments from people on their 'Tiger' parenting experiences. I was also put in mind of how I related to my black and Asian secondary-school friends more than a white friend who complained about her parents setting a curfew for her to return from going out with her boyfriend - I wasn't allowed to date, let alone go out on my own after 8.30! There are groups on Facebook making fun of Punjabi, Nigerian and all number of strict (generally ethnic-minority) upbringings - but I would hesitate to describe such groups and their members as celebratory. Perhaps for some people there is a celebratory element, but I can't help thinking the key is in Chua's remark that 'it's funny, they relate'. We often need to relate, and to laugh about, certain experiences in order to create distance from them, and reassurance, for ourselves.

Indeed Chua talks of her own Chinese parenting:

"For my senior prom, my father finally said I could go – as long as I was home by 9pm! That was around the time that most people were heading out [...] When I was little I was so mad at them all the time. Why can't I do this? Why are there so many rules?"

It's worth noting also that Chua's husband, Jed Rubenfeld, is Jewish-American and that she 'grew up with her two sisters in the midwest, the daughter of first-generation immigrants from the Philippines.'

Now, only anyone who's from a diasporan background can really understand this - but first-generation immigrants (as I know all too well), classically, become stuck in the mindset of the country they left when they move. They will often see themselves as representative of that national community - e.g. 'We are Indian... This is how Indians behave' - when in actual fact they are simply representative of how that country was when they left it. The country itself will change - in the cases of India and China, that has been incredibly rapid, massive change - in their absence and if they are not aware of how time-specific their vision of it is, fail disastrously to live up to their expectations of it when/if they try to return. This 'dislocation' is a well-mined theme in literature (just consider Chanu in Brick Lane, who, once his ambitions fail to be realised, begins to retreat into and promulgate the superiority of Bengali culture to his family before actually 'going home' near the novel's end). How exactly diasporans come to be that way I can't say, but disappointment, disillusionment, racism, segregation and isolation are pretty big factors. All too often, feeling themselves cut off, immigrants want to create a 'home away from home' and the weight of representation of a distant, land, people, language and tradition is inevitably offloaded onto their children's shoulders.

I wonder if this is the hidden story in BHotTM. The point I was trying to make earlier (rather clumsily) is that Chua's book reaches for what is essentially a stereotype - both in the 'Tiger mother' symbolism, a stereotype of 'Chineseness' which sounds like it comes straight out of the corniest martial-arts flick and the stereotypical figure of the Strict, Non-white Immigrant Parent that is familiar to so many. In her own words, the book is a parody of herself, but it also seems to be a parody - and an interrogation - of what it means to be second-generation Chinese-American. Pressure is often piled on diasporan ethnic-minority women to be 'mothers of the nation' (i.e. marry within our own communities) because whilst the patriarchal beliefs that reduce a woman to being worth less than a man are still present in the US etc., the social structures are not in place for controlling women's access to men who value them differently (not necessarily always higher, unfortunately). You can't use shame, guilt and fear in the same way to police people's behaviour. Indian society, in contrast, is still effectively self-segregating on a gender basis in many areas and generally a man and woman are only seen together in public if they are married or related. Maybe Amy Chua's parents were didn't-bat-an-eyelid-fine with her marrying a Jewish whiteboy, but I would be very shocked if they were. 'Marrying out' as the very term itself implies, suggests an attempt to escape, or reject, the culture/community/whatever of the parents - whether that's actually intended or not.

Besides this, there is the interesting fact that Chua's parents are Chinese - but they moved to the US from the Philippines. Given that Chinese =/= Filipino, this means that they had either moved to the Philippines before Chua was born, or were themselves the children of Chinese immigrants to the Philippines. This would potentially put Chua not one, but two, removes from her 'Chinese heritage'. Those of us who are second-gens know personally how bizarrely the relation to the 'motherland' can impact our lives, and as I've said earlier, it's been a frequent theme in literature. The question of 'what it means to be Chinese/Indian/African/whatever' often creates a great deal of expectation and fear since we are expected to simultaneously perform the identity and make sense of it. Goodness Gracious Me offers a sublime (and hilarious) example of what I mean. I wonder if Chua's monstrous, ridiculous 'Chineseness' is the product of a double displacement - the further you are from the 'motherland', the more you must 'represent' so as not to lose your sense of self, which is often traumatised by the act of submerging oneself within a new, frequently hostile space - 'Chineseness'-as-parody. I would speculate that because the self is more 'socially formed' in India and China (many tend to grow up without the kind of time or space for introspection, which is essential for self-awareness, due to tradition and poverty among other things), immigrating to Western Europe or America is that much more traumatic than it would be for, say, an Australian making the same move. The conditions under which the self develops are no longer there, and so for identity to be maintained, you have to work that much harder - and thus you can become a parody. Hence the phenomenon of children of immigrants who are more conservative/bigoted than their parents - something I have personally experienced and is also apparently a factor in the emergence of 'home-grown terrorists'... This also used to be observable on a class scale in the UK and arguably still is, to some extent, though much less so.

The final point, which is both separate and related, is to do with birth order. A recent study, splashed all over the papers, added to a growing body of research on the effect of birth order on personality in finding that second-born children are more rebellious and adventurous than their older siblings:

"These findings are consistent with the idea that firstborns conform more, while second-borns are more likely to rebel."

It was Chua's second daughter who broke her Tiger resolve. In the interview, it is her eldest daughter who defends her, and who makes this comment:

"When we were younger, I thought my mum favoured Lulu, but as I've got older, we've become so close. It's not really the focus of the book, but my mum and I are incredibly similar. She understands me and always knows what I'm thinking."

The patient, obedient first-born, unable to rebel against the authoritarian parent due to having been made an example for the younger sibling... harbouring her own resentment about her mother, but wanting overwhelmingly to have her conformance to the established order rewarded, before finally having her conformance approved and rewarded... Funnily enough, this sounds not unlike what Chua said about her childhood:

"When I was little I was so mad at them all the time. Why can't I do this? Why are there so many rules? But looking back now, my parents gave me the foundation to have so many choices in life. After I left home I had a choice of who I could be, a choice of careers, a choice of schools, so I deeply believe in the model."

Chua, too, was an older sibling - she mentions a younger sister with Down's syndrome. She would therefore have been under the pressure to 'represent' that is unique for first-born children and her belief in the 'Tiger' parenting method (she is rather aptly described as having a 'missionary zeal' for it) comes quite naturally, as a result of her having accordingly been 'rewarded' as a dutiful oldest child with more intimacy and attention from her parents. I don't know if her younger sister is married, but assuming she's not - it's worth wondering what kind of pressure that might have created on Chua as a potential 'mother of the nation.' It seems as though the 'Tiger parenting' offered her a ready access of Chineseness - it must be mentioned also that in many Asian cultures (and I'm sure this is to some extent true for the Chinese) - motherhood is the only real source of power a woman has - which is why this kind of parenting may take on a certain glamour. It becomes a perversely macho act, because it enables a woman to stray from the path of pleasing femininity and be angry, vicious, violent and resentful - i.e. have the freedom to be a real, fallible person like a man - but directs all that energy towards a socially-sanctioned purpose and cages her in a domestic setting. There is also an oddly macho note to those who talk about 'surviving' upbringings like Chua's and the frequent one-upmanship as people compare stories.

Chua got to experience both the macho pleasure of enduring such a childhood - and the macho pleasure of being the matriarch - and what's truly significant is not her belief in the Tiger method, but the fact that it failed. I can't help being put in mind somewhat of the trend among young, predominantly white middle-class women for 1950s-style retro domesticity - but of course, often when they are actually living it, they get real quick. As Chua herself acknowledged, she was only really able to do the 'Tiger mother' thing because her husband acted as a balance, and then it became exhausting and alienating and she gave it up. If you aren't from a massively poor background, and you're not in an unequal relationship, being raised within a society that is relatively open, free and accepting... in short, if you're not particularly frustrated or thwarted in any way, the usual drivers for the Tiger model aren't really there. So why else might it appeal to somebody? One reason would be paying homage to one's own parents, acknowledging their sacrifices and honouring your relationship with them - which I think is what Chua, in dutiful-firstborn mode - was trying to do. When you strip away the motivating factors I've mentioned, it makes it hard for Tiger parenting to work - but it also exposes what I feel is the key reason that it is felt to work, which is devoted, full-on love and attention. First-borns, and only children, generally get that love and attention full-on, and so it's no wonder that Chua would turn to the way of the Tiger - but equally, love and attention don't need to be, and generally aren't expressed, brutally. As Chua herself says: "I have many regrets … I have a head full of regrets. I worry that by losing my temper so much and being so harsh and yelling so much that, by example, I will have taught my daughters to be that way, and I'm now constantly telling them not to do that." The interview describes the book as her 'atonement' and breaking the rule of silence that's all too common in Asian families to atone publicly is pretty significant. She describes the writing of the book as being like 'family therapy', but I wonder if it doesn't also serve as a sort of cathartic therapy for herself, allowing her to both pay tribute to her parents and assert herself as separate from them at last?

So there you go - discipline, sustained love and attention, good; pseudo-spiritual authoritarianism and all that that entails, not so good. There is a real, ambivalent person at the heart of the Tiger Mother after all - and that's enough Amy Chua!