File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_1996/96-12-06.070, message 224


Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 16:04:07 +0800
From: salil-AT-singnet.com.sg (Salil Tripathi)
Subject: Re: black british writers


Thanks Dr Walia for your note.

>South Asians are classified as blacks in U.K.

Interesting! Didn't know that.

>Hanif Kureishi's father is Pakistani and mother is white British.
>Pakistanis and Indians are classified as Caucasians by physical
>anthropologists. This makes Hanif Kureishi all Caucasian, not half
>Caucasian as you suggest.

You are right. I stand corrected. I was trying to be cautious and p.c. and
refer to Hanif's mother in terms other than 'white'. Clarity is always the
best policy!

>A few years ago, I interviewed Hanif one-on-one for the San Francisco
>Review of Books, when he came here to promote his book "The Buddha of
>Suburbia." He is medium-brown complected. Of course, in U.K. he would be
>classified as black.

Yes, I met him in 87 for a story in Bombay, and he enjoyed running up huge
bills that he said "Maggie Thatcher will have to pay" -- he was on a
British Council junket to India and Pakistan. He looked Parsi to me, if you
know what I mean.

>During this interview he mentioned that when he visited India and Pakistan
>on a book tour in the company of several white Britishers, both he and they
>were amused that in restaurants the waiters would always serve the whites
>first.

Well, the street urchins in Bombay thought he was "white" all right; when
we stepped out of the Taj Mahal Hotel for a photo shoot, they followed him
saying "Saar, dallar change?"

- Salil




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