In the distant land, horns toot as vibrations from sanai echo across the empire. Noise is one way to separate the west from its foreign counterparts. The Song, 2022 by Bani Abidi shows this concept well.
In our latest event, we screened The Strangers Home, 2024 by James King, a film commissioned by Thames Festival Trust. It deserves the big screen and surround sound—an eerie mood swept viewers into a world shaped by identity, censorship, and fake news.
One moment that stood out was a simple newspaper cutting, now a powerful node in the symbolic order crafted by the ‘other’ to present South Asians as lesser-than. It showed an abstracted group of global majority children, captioned:
The great majority…of the children…are of every conceivable hue
Originally published in a national newspaper, this cutting highlights how media participates in knowledge production—framing and shaping reality.
I’ve experienced something similar. During an interview at my youth centre, we spoke about class, gentrification, and community resistance. But in The Guardian, my words were reduced to the headline ‘gangsta’—a lazy stereotype, flattening us into the tired narrative of Black kids not working.
Through this work, we’ve gathered cultural leaders from East London—representatives from SOAS, Museum X, UEL, UCL, and local groups from Tower Hamlets and Newham. It was a profound moment of generational knowledge-sharing. Elders broke bread with younger generations. We plan to keep building in this spirit.
The walking trail took place in the Royal Victoria Docks. While heritage protections remain, only two landmarks connected to South Asian histories have survived. A bitter reminder came at the trail’s end—a walk to a phantom landmark, empty of meaning.
We must acknowledge the work of Johnny Ringwood—an advocate for dockworkers and their stories. I received news of his passing today. Rest in Paradise. He played a key role in commissioning Les Johnson’s Dockers sculpture, which still stands in front of the Excel building. While it sheds light on aspects of the docks’ history, it leaves out South Asian workers—underpaid, overworked, and largely forgotten.
This conversation is one of heritage. South Asian seafarers deserve a protected landmark in the Docklands. One existing gesture is Lascar Avenue, which presents the illusion of heritage. In the image below, we find its Urdu root—Lashkar. Scholar Asif Shakoor has called for the road sign to be changed, restoring the word before it was anglicised into Lascar.
During the conversation, Dr Georgie Wemyss introduced a set of useful books which extend the discussion:
Ayahs Lascars and Princes by Rozina Visram
Across the Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers by Caroline Adam’s
Chains to Lose Memoirs of Dada Amir Haidar Khan
Sons of the Empire Compiled by Yousuf Choudhury
Globalising Labour: Indian Seafarers and World Shipping by G. Balachandran
Two standout organisations emerged from this research. Swadihata Trust created the first walking trail in my area, and The Travelling Archive produce high quality field recordings from Bangladesh.
For this event, we also 3D-scanned a model ship created by Artist Researcher Remiiya Badru. These scans later featured in the promotional poster.
Up Next
The team are working towards digitising the current trail, offering a new way to engage with the research
More events, a large programme involving Remiiya’s walking trail
Continued support for the battle to memorialise south asian seafarers throughout the docklands, London
Digitising the current trail to offer a new, interactive way to engage with the research
A full programme built combining Remiiya’s and Asif’s walking trail
Continued advocacy to memorialise South Asian seafarers across London’s Docklands
It was incredible to be part of this group last week. I read the book 'seven seas and 13 rivers' 30+ years ago just after a youth trip to Bangladesh but other than that had never come across other information on these histories. I found Asif's research and family story profoundly moving and inspiring. I would love to find out more about your work, Remiiya's walks (Sandra's Museum X) and Asif's research if there are more ways to find out more.