South Asian Heritage Month. 2024

Free to be me.

Every year, for one month, the South Asian diaspora collectively celebrate their heritage, tradition and roots, hence the name ‘South Asian Heritage Month’. It is a space for our voices to be heard, for our cultures to shine, a beginning to challenge misrepresentations of us as a community, and for anyone outside looking in to understand us. This year, alongside all of this, is year to contemplate on being free, specifically being free to be me.

This year’s theme ‘free to be me’ struck a chord. With global trends such as the rise of the far right, women’s rights being curtailed, and the value of humans diminishing, being free to be who we want to be seems to be a demand in this world not a condition of being human. I realised that there is a cost to our azadi. There always has been.  I interpret azadi not as freedom but being free and having no constraints on who we want to be.

The question I have surrounded myself in the lead up to this campaign has been who has sacrificed so that I am free to be me.

My great grandparents? Who under British colonial rule fought alongside other soldiers in world war II. My grandparents? Who left their families and community behind only to be abused in a country who was in need of workers to help build itself again. Or my parents? Who pursued careers to survive in the racist terrain they were brought up in, closed from parts of society because their skin colour and food didn’t align with the ‘norm’.  

With each sacrifice has meant I have inherited a freedom that my family was once denied – being free to be me. Yet paradoxically, or may be not, I feel free to be me not because I have the space to be free but because of my heritage.

I have not just inherited a new profound freedom, but I have inherited a past, a culture, filled with poetry, food, embroidery, spices, colour, clothes, songs, a community and so much more that has shaped me into being the person I am today.

I am free to be me once I am immersed in my roots.

The past may be filled with sacrifices, but it is my past which guides and nurtures me on the path I am on today.