Play revisits racial history of Southall
SOUTHALL HAS BEEN DESTINATION OF MANY MIGRANTS FROM PUNJAB SINCE ’50S, WITNESSING RACIST INCIDENTS, RIOTS
LONDON : Much has changed since the 1976 murder of teenager Gurdip Singh Chaggar and the 1979 riots in Southall that form the backdrop of acclaimed writer Hanif Kureishi’s political play Borderline, but its continuing relevance in the age of Brexit was highlighted here on Thursday.
A two-hour engaging reading of the 1981 play at the Royal Court Theatre revived memories of the time when Indians and Asians faced much racism and worse. Those attending the event included Kureishi and many who were involved or affected by the disturbances. Shot through with powerful themes of identity, integration, cultural conflict, fascism and feminism, Borderline laid bare the many levels at which the diaspora has engaged with everyday life, including the divide between the values of parents and their Uk-born children.
Weaving the themes together through dialogue and situations still familiar to an Indian-asian audience, Kureishi’s perspectives expounded through the characters brought non-white and non-english experiences into mainstream British theatre for the first time when Borderline was staged in the early 1980s. Kureishi recalled the process of writing his first play and its difficult context, but regretted the demise of political theatre over the years. Southall has been the destination of many migrants from Punjab and South Asia.