Rajeev Balasubramanyam, a novelist, writer and workshop leader. Aki Nawaz, a British rapper and musician, part of the Islamic rap band Fun-Da-Mental. Yasmin Ali-Bhai Brown, a well known journalist who is a regular columnist with the Independent. Suhayl Saadi, a novelist, stage and radio dramatist based in Glasgow, Scotland. Chaired by: Anjan Saha, a London based writer, musician and arts consultant.

Rajeev Balasubramanyam

As communities are seen to protest against the work of writers for being inauthentic or not representing them in a positive light, the question arises, do artists represent any community?

This notion of artistic representation initially arises, according to Rajeev, when a community is not visible in the arts, when there is just the odd film or novel portraying them. This was the case earlier, for South Asians in Britain. Today, Rajeev argued, having seen “twenty five Bend it Like Beckhams and nothing else” visibility is not the problem, ideology is.

The frustration that people feel today is no longer because the only representation of them is negative, but because all the representations of them are the same, because just one narrative, one ideology is getting through. “People only get angry when they don’t see their particular ideological position manifested in parliamentary politics or in artistic representation.”

According to Rajeev, alternative narratives are out there, but are with the small publishers. The example he gave was of Manzu Islam’s Burrow, a novel about which Sukhdev Sandhu wrote “Monica Ali isn’t the first person to write about the Bangladeshi communities who live in Brick Lane.” Unlike Brick Lane however, Burrow, published with Peepal Tree Press, had no marketing, no publicity and sold no more than five hundred copies.

As far as Rajeev is concerned, the fault lies with large publishing houses who only publish one narrative. “Don’t blame the writer, blame the system for setting such a narrow range of co ordinates. Don’t blame Monica Ali, blame the system that prevents Burrow from being out there.”

Writers who write outside the ideological consensus must “form links with agents and publishers and get into the mainstream. I don’t think the small presses are going to have the clout required to bring about an ideological change in Britain. For there to be an ideological change…our ideologies need to enter the mainstream.”

In the end, Rajeev remained optimistic; “as long as we continue to demand intelligent cinema and literature, there won’t be a problem, the consensus will break down. There will be a problem is we stop treating cinema and literature as yet another commodity to fill up the hours of the day.” He finished with: “the writing’s there, but it’s up to us as consumers to force the publishing industry to change.”

Aki Nawaz

Aki began by agreeing with Rajeev that there are a lot of people working on the fringes of art. “The mainstream may be presenting Bend it Like Beckham but we’ve been bending a lot of things unlike Beckham for a long time and will continue to bend them.”

However, while Rajeev spoke of the need for writers with alternative ideologies to come into the mainstream, Aki appeared to have made a conscious decision to reject the ‘mainstream;’ “I don’t even claim myself to be a musician. I don’t want to work within the parameters that the music industry sets, that the political arena sets. I’ve had enough of it.”

Expressing his frustration, after years of being seen as the ‘other,’ Aki spoke of the colonial mentality of those at the realms of power; a mentality which has been appropriated by Black and Asian communities who “have always been submissive and apologetic.”

Widening the debate, Aki spoke of current British politics; of a multicultural policy which has been imposed on minorities, of the thousands who have been killed by Britain in the Iraq war but are not seen to count, and of the need for people to speak out against a political system which “tells us we can only speak in these parameters, in these conditions.”

They’re so many artists who are scared to go over the line…We’ve got some very important issues before us and we’re talking about the slaughter of human beings. For any artist to even think about his own ego and not put himself forward is doing a disservice to the whole notion of what art is supposedly about.

Art, as far as Aki is concerned, is a political weapon and artists have a duty to make a political statement. His conception of art also places the artist in a particular role as spokesperson and defender of his community, which is how Aki perceives himself and his work;

I could have taken that road, to look at our community and be totally critical. But I’m going to stick up for our communities. Because there’s enough people out there who are encouraged to be against our community. So I take a position. I know how Sikh people felt about Bezhti because I felt the same about Salman Rushdie…Me personally, my art says I will attack the establishment, but where something means something to somebody, whether it’s a Hindu or Jew, if it’s something which is dear to their heart, I don’t need to go there.