Brown Historical past, the Instagram Spotlighting South Asia’s Hidden Tales

It’s no secret that social media has modified how we be taught, talk and self-identify. The web has due to this fact turn into a fertile floor for concepts concerning the previous, current and future to crystallise and unfold. For higher or worse, many elderly, analog myths of historic storytelling not resonate amongst a globalising inhabitants armed with a smartphone. New communities are gathering on-line to rewrite the script. Silence is breaking.

Spurred by this evolution, over the past 5 years, a collective awakening has occurred amongst folks with South Asian heritage. The seventieth and seventy fifth anniversaries of the bloody Partition of India in August 2017 and August 2022, respectively, have sandwiched a shift. The eldest era who skilled Partition firsthand in 1947 – when India was carved up by the retreating British institution to create West Pakistan and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) – are ageing, forgetting and, at worst, passing away, typically taking their unstated, private tales a couple of barely-documented interval of historical past with them. 

Sons, daughters and grandchildren are asking questions and sharing solutions. In the meantime, technological innovation has allowed the aged to look at or hearken to documentaries or dramas that depict their reminiscences on demand, and video name their family in different continents, all from the nice and cozy consolation of their armchairs. Pals and households as soon as violently separated by a border are sharing recipes, photographs of misplaced ancestral farmlands and inherited gossip on WhatsApp and Fb teams. A gentle provide of journalism, literature and academic initiatives on the suppressed legacies of empire, energised by louder calls to decolonise public house and college curricula for the reason that summer time of 2020, grows each month. As cementing divisions between South Asia’s non secular communities play out internationally, these progressive efforts to study and from the previous replicate a ray of hope.

Contributing in the direction of this explosion – arguably embodying it – is Ahsun Zafar, an engineer based mostly in Toronto, Canada. In September 2017, Zafar set-up an Instagram web page documenting his personal journey of self-discovery about his household’s roots. Brown Historical past quickly gained a eager viewers from others taking inspiration from his efforts. The web page now boasts over 600,000 followers and has solidified into a good public picture e-book, instructional platform and archive of postcolonial storytelling. Alongside every day posts on Instagram, Zafar now edits an everyday e-newsletter, publishing submissions from his followers throughout the globe, runs a store promoting merchandise, and hosts his personal podcast of interviews with authors and thinkers. Right here, I caught up with him concerning the journey to this point.

Ciaran Thapar: Hello Ahsun. How did Brown Historical past begin?

Ahsun Zafar: I want I might say that I’m a genius and I deliberate all of this, however actually, I used to be turning 30 and I simply needed to be taught extra about my place on the earth. So I began to learn extra books about my roots. Then I began an Instagram account, and I might put up no matter I discovered that day. It was actually a dialog with myself, nevertheless it began to draw followers … quickly I used to be getting messages from folks thanking me, and saying stuff like, ‘I’ve simply had my little one, and I don’t know what to show them about my historical past, so your web page helps rather a lot’, or ‘my dad is actually previous and I don’t know what to speak to him about, and I go to your posts as a dialog starter day-after-day, and that is serving to us to bond.’ It obtained emotional, which made me wish to maintain going.

CT: However you quickly began publishing different folks’s tales, too. How did that begin?

AZ: Sooner or later I wakened and the web page had grown by, like, 15k followers, and I realised that Riz Ahmed had performed a shout out. I might put up twice a day for various audiences: one viewers awake and one other sleeping. Then I began to get messages saying, ‘Hey, why don’t you discuss my folks?’ or ‘hey, I’m from this minority group on this space, and we communicate these languages, why don’t you discuss us?’ I needed to clarify that I’m only one man, I can’t do each story justice! So I began to answer, ‘Why don’t you inform me your story? Your mother and father’ story?’ And I might get submissions from folks about how their mother and father met, or how their grandparents survived Partition. It went from a web page to a group. I believe it’s one of many solely pages on the earth the place you’ve got all of South Asia coming to at least one place, from completely different sides of the border in India and Pakistan, studying historical past. Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, all being a part of the identical conversations. That’s one purpose I believe Brown Historical past is so particular.

CT: Your first put up was in September 2017, inside weeks of the seventieth anniversary of Partition. Why was this such an necessary milestone?

AZ: If you happen to learn [the work of comparative mythologist] Joseph Campbell, the ‘hero’s journey’ would possibly start, however the hero doesn’t turn into a hero till he realises who he’s, and the place he comes from. When he learns, that’s when he turns into a superhero. In all our lives, individually, we don’t correctly begin our journeys till we all know the place we’re coming from. Everybody involves that in some unspecified time in the future. 70 years after Partition, I believe the worldwide South Asian group reached a stage the place we’re attempting to determine the place we got here from.

CT: Why do you suppose this historical past wants filling in?

AZ: When my mother and father settled in Canada, they have been busy with survival. They didn’t care about a lot else. However rising up, I used to be attempting to determine myself. Now we’re established, we’re making a living, we get how the world works. So we’re questioning, what’s subsequent? There needs to be extra to life. We’re asking questions. We’re above water, lastly, demanding extra.

CT: Many household tales are inherited by front room conversations, however not a lot is written down.

AZ: Precisely, however now we have a voice on the web now. There are extra South Asians talking up. I believe now that we’ve established ourselves, wherever we’re on the earth, we’re watching British and American TV and beginning to query elements of historical past, what tales we’re being instructed. We’ve realised one thing is off. It’s made folks search extra information and knowledge.

CT: What’s the foremost factor you’ve discovered from operating Brown Historical past?

AZ: We get our historical past from damaged conversations that we hear. However that additionally goes with our mother and father’ and grandparents’ histories. We solely see bits and items. Then we watch a Bollywood film that’s conservative and one-dimensional, and it’s simple to put that film into our mother and father’ historical past to make sense of it. However studying historical past correctly means that you can humanise your elders. There has all the time been dancing and relationship, and folks having crushes and goals, and being rebellious, too. So now I see my mother and father and grandparents in a distinct mild: as advanced, flawed folks attempting to make issues work. Probably the most viral photographs that I’ve shared was, on the face of it, a basic mommy-meets-daddy story. However the picture was of this couple about to kiss. And for some purpose, simply due to this picture, a black-and-white Nineteen Forties picture of this husband about to kiss his spouse … it actually blew up! If we noticed a photograph of a white couple about to kiss, we wouldn’t care, however as a result of they’re brown, it breaks our inflexible picture of the previous. It wakes us up.

“Studying historical past correctly means that you can humanise your elders. There has all the time been dancing and relationship, and folks having crushes and goals, and being rebellious, too” – Ahsun Zafar

CT: Inform me about one other noteworthy Instagram put up you’ve shared.

AZ: In a single story, there may be this stunning lady who’s married to this man who was abusive, and he or she was caught of their home. So in a second of revolt she sneaks out, goes to a images studio carrying her best-looking gown and takes a photograph of herself. Her son despatched it to me. Then he despatched me a second story afterward, a passport picture, the place his mum left her marriage behind. So the 2 photographs and their tales turned a sequence. These tales present you ways fragile life is. Typically there is no such thing as a lesson or that means. Dangerous issues can occur anytime. It reminds you to understand what you’ve got.

CT: How do you select story submissions?

AZ: I attempt to not contact folks’s tales. I repair spelling errors, or if it’s too lengthy I work with them to give attention to one half. So I information them, however I wouldn’t write it for them, until they’ll’t communicate English. It’s their phrases, it’s their standpoint … it makes the historical past a bit extra private and touchable. Once we examine Partition, we’re used to information and figures and information, which might make it one-dimensional. However once you hear a perspective about it, the historical past turns into extra actual and humane. It’s necessary that we begin to see one another as people, not information, not simply these folks from the opposite aspect of a border … and I by no means share tales about the one that submitted it themselves. One of many guidelines for the reason that starting is that Brown Historical past has been an anti-social media Instagram web page. Folks inform different folks’s tales, not their very own story. The youngsters inform their elders’ tales. Another person holds the microphone.

CT: It’s an incredible manner of preserving household histories.

AZ: It is likely to be the one manner. Typically we’re too late. So many individuals are like, ‘Man, I want I requested my grandparent this query.’ However I’ve seen somebody inform a narrative on Brown Historical past about their grandparent being from some village, after which different folks can be like, ‘Oh my god, my grandparent was from that village, and I by no means knew about that!’ Our historical past isn’t on paper as a lot as folks suppose, and it’s slowly been disappearing as a result of the Partition era is slowly dying away. However when folks inform their very own household story, it fills within the holes of different folks’s tales.

CT: I see Brown Historical past as serving to these of us who is likely to be distant from our late grandparents’ pasts study and really feel extra linked to them.

AZ: Just lately, somebody submitted a Partition story. They mentioned how their grandfather was 11 years previous when it occurred, and his mother and father put a tattoo of an Om on his hand to point that he’s Hindu, and one other tattoo on his different hand to indicate who he was, in order that if he ever obtained misplaced he may very well be positioned. And once I posted that – a photograph of an previous man’s hand with a pale Partition tattoo – hastily folks began commenting ‘my grandfather has this tattoo’, ‘my grandmother has that tattoo’, ‘that’s what meaning!? This complete time I had no clue! I requested my grandmother about it, however she wouldn’t inform me.’ After which I began receiving all these photographs of grandparents with hand tattoos. For Muslims, it was a half-moon tattoo to characterize Islam. So there was this complete tattoo tradition on youngsters throughout Partition. It reveals you ways wild it should have been. Mother and father knew that there was an excellent probability their child would get misplaced. Who is aware of how a lot different data we don’t know? That we are going to by no means know? Who is aware of how a lot is misplaced? It’s unhappy.

CT: What’s your intention once you share a put up?

AZ: I wish to suppose I’m tricking folks out of their biases with my tales. Tales are nice methods of getting data into folks’s brains. If you happen to have a look at American historical past, at homophobia and the Aids scare … it didn’t change from figures and information and science. It modified when tales of homosexual characters got here out, when Will & Grace got here out. It humanised the homosexual group and confirmed that homosexual folks have been simply common folks. That’s the place the concern began to slowly dissolve. And we’ve come to this point since then. With Brown Historical past, I’m attempting to inform tales about common people who different folks can establish with. Hopefully, that adjustments folks’s thought processes. Like, you realize what, Pakistanis suppose the identical manner we do; Muslims suppose the identical manner we do. They’re simply people like us. I’m not attempting to shove something down anybody’s throats. You’ll be able to’t argue with historical past. No matter persons are studying of their life about one mind-set, once they come to the Brown Historical past web page, it’s about attempting to problem that.

CT: What has modified within the final 5 years?

AZ: It will sound a bit unhappy, however I believe now I’m wanted much less … There are extra folks on the market who can categorical how they really feel about Partition by themselves. They’ve the center to share tales now, in articles, by drawing, portray, or writing poetry, and also you don’t need to be a longtime creator to do it. Younger persons are popping out and saying how they really feel. Persons are stronger and extra assured.

CT: What’s your imaginative and prescient for the way forward for Brown Historical past?

AZ: My dream could be a TV present or a film. However that is the primary of its sort, so I don’t have a lot of a blueprint. I’m simply attempting to see how I can continue to grow.