Posted November 2025

Today, I find myself standing at the edge of a chapter that has taken three years to write—but, in truth, it began decades before I was even born. As I prepare for my viva, ready to defend the work that has consumed countless late nights, early mornings, and moments of doubt, I realise that this milestone is not mine alone. It is woven into a much larger history—one shaped by the resilience of British Asians who fought, often quietly and courageously, against the forces that told them they did not belong.

Completing a thesis is never merely a matter of printing pages and binding chapters. Behind the polished academic language lies the messy reality of research: the painstaking accumulation of evidence, the intellectual wrestling, the relentless pursuit of clarity, the drafts that didn’t quite work, and the breakthroughs that arrived unexpectedly. The title of Doctor, should I be fortunate enough to earn it is not simply an accolade. It is a testament to endurance, to curiosity, and to the stories I had the privilege of unearthing.

Because at the heart of this research are people. People whose voices were once pushed to the margins of British history. People who fought racism not for fame, or recognition, or academic interest, but because they had no other choice if they wished to live with dignity in the country they called home. Men and women who endured hostility on factory floors, discrimination in schools, slurs on the street, and barriers in the workplace. Families who held on to hope even when society withheld acceptance.

Their struggles were often quiet revolutions, acts of resistance carried out through persistence: opening businesses in places where they were not welcomed, campaigning for equal rights, challenging discriminatory policies, and building communities that refused to shrink in the face of hostility. They laid the groundwork for generations that would follow. For people like me.

To write about their lives has been a responsibility, one I have felt deeply throughout this journey. Each interview, each archival discovery, each story, these became the lifeblood of the thesis. They grounded the academic theory in lived experience, reminding me that research is never abstract. It is an act of remembering, and sometimes, an act of justice.

As I prepare for the viva, I stand not just as a researcher defending arguments, but as someone carrying these stories forward. Whatever the outcome, the fact that this work exists, documented, analysed, and acknowledged already feels like a victory. A small contribution to a larger narrative that has too often been overlooked.

My hope is that this thesis becomes more than an academic exercise. I hope it becomes a reminder of the power of community, the necessity of resilience, and the importance of claiming one’s place in a country still reckoning with its past.

This milestone is personal, yes. But it also belongs to every British Asian who ever refused to be written out of the story. And in completing this chapter, I honour them, not just with words on a page, but with the gratitude of someone whose path was made possible because they chose to stand firm when the world pushed back.