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I would like to request a pass on this discussion post because I attended Malhotra's talk. Thank you!

In movies like Bend It Like Beckham and East is East, melancholia exists as an impediment to the nation. Specifically, I would like to explore how characters who fail to let go of “lost” objects also fail to contribute to the nation economically. George Khan’s refusal to let go of Islam in East is East turns him into a violent patriarch who abuses his assimilated children for failing to hold onto the same object. The audience recognizes that Islam is already lost, and his refusal to acknowledge it only drives him further into his own melancholy. Mr. Bhamra, by contrast, can ascend his melancholic status by admitting that racism (to the logic of this movie) is a personal hangup that he needs to let go of. In doing so, his daughter is freed from becoming melancholic herself and can integrate into English society by playing football.

One way these two characters differ is in their contribution to England’s economy. Mr. Bhamra is seen wearing his work uniform on multiple occasions, including in his first and last scenes. Without saying anything, the audience is made aware that he is a working citizen. Conversely, Mr. Khan does not seem to be much of a worker at all. In an argument with his English wife (at the 19:45 mark), it is made clear that while he owns the shop that brings their income, it is his wife who runs it, not him. Where the redeemable immigrant economically contributes to the nation, the irredeemable immigrant is portrayed as freeloading off his English wife’s labour.

The only other character we see in a work uniform in Bend It Like Beckham is Pinky, though she does not work as much as she tries to make it seem. In one scene (at 27:33), Pinky is making out with her soon-to-be husband in a car parked outside of an airport. Her flight attendant’s uniform is partially removed, and Indian music plays over the radio. Though this secret liaison is a transgression of her family’s expectations, it nevertheless confirms her ultimate desire: to have a traditional Indian marriage to this man. This is a desire that, as Ahmed explains, is ridiculed by the narrative when compared to Jess’s desires (Ahmed 136). This is represented metaphorically when, in the same scene, a plane zooms by the car. If Jess is like an airplane symbolizing happiness by going “up and away” to freedom (Ahmed 137), then Pinky is the parked car limited by her traditional wants. Added to this is the fact that she indulges in these desires while she is supposed to be working at that same airport. Again, the character whose source of happiness is rooted in their home country's traditions fails to contribute much to their host country's economy.

Pinky and Mr. Khan embody what Mill sees as wrong in the native. To him, they “experience pleasure from the wrong things in the wrong way” and are “in need of redirection” (Ahmed 126). As long as their sources of happiness are linked to the “lost” object that is their home country’s culture, then they impede the nation. Jess and Mr. Bhamra, by contrast, are redeemable contributors (by working as a security officer (?) and playing professional football, respectively) because their sources of happiness are derived from playing sports in an integrated English context. Though I am not certain that these were conscious choices made by the writers of these films, this was just how I interpreted these details within the context of Ahmed’s concept of “melancholic migrants”.

Debates over what constitutes “authentic” Indian food can sometimes veer into elitism. As Brian Spooner argues, authenticity is a concept that is “determined by the choices and desires of persons seeking to establish, or strengthen, an elevated social position” (Buettner 156). Indian restaurants emerging after the 1980s in Britain claiming authenticity were doing so to contest the many “inauthentic” and “cheap” restaurants made popular in the preceding decades by working-class South Asian migrants, who created and served foods like chicken tikka masala. Attached to the notion of “authentic Indian cuisine” came attempts from elite Indian restaurant owners to separate themselves from working-class Bangladeshis and Pakistanis in particular, as well as Muslims (169). Attempts to achieve culinary “authenticity” also tend to be rooted in nostalgia for an imaginary and unchanging homeland (Mannur 28). Like what Madhur Jaffrey promotes in her cookbook, the value of an Indian dish is often determined by how closely the cook replicates a “traditional” recipe, with deviations making it fraudulent or diluted in quality (30).

This has implications for how fusion foods and foods created by Indian diasporas are perceived by both Indians and non-Indians. Being Indo-Caribbean, my cultural foods are default “fusion foods”. Whether a result of my mixed heritage or just the social intermingling of different peoples in Guyana, I grew up eating curry as much as I did eating West African cook-up, Chinese fried rice, and other dishes that do not have names but are reminiscent of all three origins. Long being considered the “bastard child of the nation”, diasporas are often measured in relation to the “homeland” and are defined by their inability to perfectly replicate their cultural modes (Mannur 42). Shani Mootoo articulates this dissonance between Indo-Caribbeans and India in her book “Out on Main Street”. Mannur provides an excerpt where the narrator is demeaned by a clerk for her inability to give the “real” names of the Indian sweets she wants to order, using instead the terms she knows from Trinidad (43). By asserting herself and her language, “she refuses to publicly affirm an exclusionary, chauvinistic version of citizenship that devalorizes and delegitimizes her experiences” as a diasporic Indo-Caribbean (44).

Though foods like chicken tikka masala is arguably a product of assimilation–arguments that I do agree with in many ways–I also see it as a testament to the strength of diasporas. Is it not admirable that despite their cuisine being seen as malodorous and unhygienic (Buettner 150-151), these migrants nevertheless found a market? As Buettner argues, Asians in Western restaurant sectors are not just passive actors being absorbed by a larger British cultural force. Trying to establish themselves “among a white population that was initially skeptical, if not outright hostile” to their presence required clever business strategies that would allow them to manoeuvre these unwelcoming spaces (147). Like Bengali migrants in the United States who capitalized off Orientalist stereotypes to peddle their wares, these South Asian restaurateurs were doing what they could to survive in the colonial capital. To say that foods like chicken tikka masala are merely tragedies in the history of South Asian cuisine, in my opinion, erases the efforts of the working-class migrants of the mid to late twentieth century.

Like chicken tikka masala, my mother’s curry would fail to be considered “authentic Indian food” by many standards and could easily be dismissed as another byproduct of colonialism pulling diasporic Indians away from their "real" cuisine. But I do not think so-called authenticity denotes quality. I see her curry as the result of a rich and unique history that survived across oceans, with new spices and flavours added along the way to reflect its changing environments. And it just tastes good. Is that not enough?

In the first chapter of Terrifying Muslims, Rana explains that “‘Hindu’ was a catchall term in late-nineteenth-century America for those from the Indian subcontinent”, applied regardless of religious orientation or lack thereof (Rana 42). Though Arabs were sometimes understood as a distinct group (racialized as “Syrians” coming from the late Ottoman empire), both Arabs and South Asians were also categorized as “Mohammedans”. This historical conflation between these brown Asian ethnic and religious groups continues in the twentieth century. For instance, Balbir Singh Sodhi was murdered shortly following 9/11 because he was mistaken as a Muslim Arab. Despite being Sikh, his visual appearance made him the target of anti-Muslim racism. Husain brings up similar attacks that happened to three South Asian immigrants by a man who called himself the “Arab Slayer” (Husain 1). As Rana explains, the racialization of Islam through social identification occurs “via a combination of identifiers, such as dress, behaviour, and phenotypic expression” (Rana 27). The lived realities of non-Muslims perceived as Muslims demonstrate, in one way, how anti-Muslim thought and action can be understood as a form of racism rather than religious discrimination alone.

Heems conveys a similar idea in Soup Boys. In separate verses, he says that “they’re throwing stones at the Mosque”, and later that “they’re throwing stones at [his] parent’s house” as well as at “the temple”. The people throwing stones (literally and metaphorically) care little about the difference between Hindus and Muslims. This is reinforced by the clip shown at the beginning of the interview, in which Obama is asked if he decides who is targeted by armed drones used to combat terrorists. He dodges the question by saying that he prioritizes American lives. These drones, just like the stones thrown, end up hitting a wide array of people that extend beyond their intended target.

I also find it interesting that Heem chooses to call the Hindu place of worship a “temple” rather than a mandir. I have often heard people refer to gurdwaras, mandirs, and sometimes mosques interchangeably as “temples”. This word choice adds to the homogenization of these religions and peoples that Heems points out in this song. He is, then, “in touch with these goons getting stoned at the mosque”, considering that he too is a goon getting stoned at the “temple”. He relates his experiences of racism to that of Muslims, using the term “stoned” as a double entendre for also getting high, something he seems to do to cope with the violence his community experiences both at home and abroad.