My Culture & Ethnicity

• Our culture and ethnicity plays a large role in our lives as this is what defines who we are and where we come from. Through our culture we are given a set of values, beliefs and traditions which are set for us to follow. Every individual has a different ethnicity and is part of a different culture. Our culture and ethnicity defines who we are today.

My Culture & Ethnicity • I am Indian – Panjabi and my

culture/background addresses back to the North-West of India the Panjab. Most Panjabi’s such as myself are still traditional through various ways such as the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the language we speak, the music we listen to and the decisions we make in life.

I know that Panjabi’s feel very strongly about their culture and the image it shows to other ‘outsiders.’ As there is a constant pressure to keep our traditions alive for example not to forget our language, Panjabi.

My Culture & Ethnicity

• To Panjabi children it is always stressed that we should never forget our mother tongue, Panjabi.

• In Sathnam Sanghera’s ‘the Boy With the Topknot.’ In chapter one Sanghera is having a conversation in Punjabi with a Punjabi taxi driver (Sathnam’s Punjabi is very poor). Here Sathnam says that the driver is probably thinking ‘idiot, doesn’t know anything about his culture.’

My Culture & Ethnicity

• It is not only about being able to speak Punjabi, but in Indian culture it is vital that you eat Indian food and that you know how to cook it. In the film Bend It Like Beckham Perminder Nagra who plays the character Jess is constantly pressured by her mum to learn the various roles of running a house and one of them being able to cook the food.

Bend It Like Beckham

My Culture & Ethnicity

• Accademically I feel that Indians are pressured by their parents to get high marks and aim for a job with a large income. I feel that they do this as they want what’s best for their children as most of the parents are not British born individuals and are from India so they do not want their children to go through the stress of not getting a education and having a poor job

My Culture & Ethnicity• For the British born Indians I feel that as this generation grows our

traditions are dramatically changing as we are surrounded by a society of multi-cultural individuals and are adapting to western ways, the pressure of remembering key things about our culture is slowly dying as being surrounded by different cultures changes our perspectives of how we see some things.

I feel that everyone’s culture and ethnicity is an important thing as these different cultures have all struggled to get to where they are now. As generations grow although our views on certain things are changing and we feel that some traditions aren’t necessary, I still feel you should know everything about your culture even if you are not going to follow it. As without our cultural traditions and our ethnicity we wouldn’t be who or where we are today.

-“Know where you come from, but don’t let it stop you becoming who you want to be.”