A British-Indian actor's hilarious Punjabi videos on Instagram are opening up conversations on race and identity
A young Jassa with his grandfather, Ujagar Singh Ahluwalia, in Moga, Punjab
British actor and director Jassa Ahluwalia's Instagram page, @officialjassa, is an assortment of travel clicks, handsome selfies, on-the-set candids and pictures from the personal family album.
The most recent addition to this ever-growing collage are short, hilarious videos, where Ahluwalia is seen engaging with his turban-wearing uncle, played by himself, in Punjabi. "Oye Jassa!" uncle yells. "Sat sri akal uncle," is how Ahluwalia always replies. Their repartee is not unusual - typical of any vibrant Punjabi household - except that Ahluwalia is white. This discordance in what you see and hear, doesn't feel quite right. This is reflected in a comment by one of his Instagram followers: "Weird seeing him speak it."
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Jassa Ahluwalia
Ahluwalia, 28, a second generation British-Indian, whose father is Punjabi and mother from the UK - he was raised mostly by his Indian grandparents who taught him the "old-school Punjabi" he speaks - grew up not thinking so much about his mixed heritage. "My mother also learnt Gurmukhi, and often used Punjabi words to discipline us. She wanted us to have that understanding of our Indian side. It came from a very sincere place."
But a couple of years ago, during a visit to India to attend a Punjabi wedding with his father, something about his identity started to gnaw at him. "When I was at the wedding, I was eating, dancing and taking part in the celebrations, like anybody else in the family. But, I still remember this young girl, around three or four years old, who was watching me while I was doing bhangra on the floor. She was just staring with deep fascination. I think she couldn't comprehend who or what I was, because of the way I looked. That was the moment when I felt alienated [from my Indian-ness]," he recalls.
That's also how the idea of the hashtag, #bothnothalf, which now accompanies his social media posts, where he talks about his family history, came about. "I had grown up thinking, I was half-British and half-Indian," Ahluwalia says in a telephonic interview. But half also implies that people of mixed heritage are not whole and cannot claim full ownership of their history, he adds.
The videos, he says, started on a whim. "For a long time, I was trying to figure out how to share my Punjabiness. It's a big part of who I am. As an actor, in the UK too, I was starting to feel frustrated about the lack of opportunities that draw from my experience. There is an ongoing shift in the UK to tell stories that represent all kinds of British audiences, but I get the impression that I am not the right kind of diverse, because I don't obviously look like what I am supposed to, according to my heritage. Hence, there are a lot of stories that I feel excluded from and that can be frustrating at times. People have a very narrow idea of what identity might be. I wanted to put something online, where I could point out and say, 'Look, I am really Punjabi. I am not lying.'"
While he has never found trouble passing off as English, he does admit that his sense of brownness intensifies when he is in all-white company. An off-hand remark about Indian accents - something that white people wouldn't think twice joking about in the company of their kind - could make him feel uncomfortable. But his videos, each with nearly a lakh views, have opened the door for more conversations around race and identity. What it has also done is made Ahluwalia explain himself lesser. This week, he was invited to present an award at the Punjabi Film Awards in London, and he didn't have to let anyone know why he deserved to be there.
His passion for cinema also means that Ahluwalia would love to be part of Bollywood. "India and my identity is a huge part of my heritage, and I want it to be a huge part of my future and my work as an actor and filmmaker too," he ends.
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