study and competition

10.09.2026

Why do we compete? Evolution tells men that we have to compete for women. Society forces us to compete for resources such as money. And in education? In education, the competition is for prestige. Getting the best marks. Publishing in the most reputable journals. Making a name for oneself.

I have always seen education as a competition. Generally speaking, a competition which I win.

At school, we got prizes for the ‘A’ Levels. I won all of them for my subjects. When we had the prizegiving, everyone was surprised that they kept on calling me up onto the stage to receive yet another prize. I won an essay writing competition for classics from Oxford in my ‘A’ Levels too, whether Aristophanes was funny or not. The prizes were always books. A particular luxury because my parents wouldn’t buy me or let me buy books and I was a bookworm. They thought that books were to be read free from the library.

While I got good results at university, what got me through my PhD was my competitive edge. I am a competitor. And competition brings out the best in me. The pressure produces diamonds. An example is a Scrabble game I played against a computer Grandmaster from a couple of days ago. This computer intelligence was about two hundred points in front of me. But I never give up. In the end, the computer Grand Master only just about managed to beat me.

It was this philosophy of competition that motivated me throughout my PhD and the subsequent publication of my doctoral thesis. The way that I saw it, France had its turn, Germany had its turn, now it was my turn. India’s turn. Punjab’s turn. It was us that were going to be the top thinkers now. I saw myself as a top scholar.

And what have I learnt about this competition that is education and academia? I have learnt that just because you are more intelligent, more hardworking and more talented than others, just because you have better arguments, that does not mean that they will rate you as the winner in this competition. Because we are Indian, they marginalise and silence us. Because we are ethnic minority men, they will not be persuaded or listen to us. Because we follow our own agenda, we are ostracised.

No matter how much we achieve, they will never rate us. We can see things that they can never see and they will not value our contributions. We can write beautifully, have profound insights and broach the most original and important topics. And yet, we have to work and live outside of the institutions and pay for our minds. Because we have a foreign name. Because we are different. Because we are difference.

In fact, the sad reality is that the only scholar I can genuinely compete against is myself. To outdo what I have done before. Yes. I say it. The others do not count. They do not count. They write out of a system of privilege. They are blind and deaf. In the same way that they and their community have not rated me, I do not rate their community. I do not see them as a meritocracy and in no way do I see them as superior to myself. I return my injuries with interest.

In fact, I am much better than them because I have genuine freedom. Independence of thought and agenda. Freedom from their racism, navel-gazing, sycophancy, conformism and hypocrisy. I am truly an independent scholar. And they? They are not.

Frida and Whistler at the Tate: The Weirdness of the Artist

09.09.2026

The ambition? Two exhibitions in one day. Two of the most famous artists in the world. Two artists, I have to admit, that I do not have a particular affinity for.

It began with the Frida. Almost immediately, I noted what the tenor of the exhibition would be. Because there was not much of her work, they were going to pad it all out with other artists and photographs and imitators and those inspired by her. Her style has never appealed to me but the exhibition was keen to show why she was so iconic. She appealed to the women, the feminists, the LGBT+ community, those with medical issues, etc. She was capitalism’s darling as an artist.

I’ve always thought that as a woman artist, much of her reputation rested on her suffering. Because the public wants the artist to suffer. I know it by my own fortunes. They want us to have no money and suffer and suffer and suffer. This, they believe, gives good art. The most iconic artist in this regard is Van Gogh.

Frida was weird. The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, 1938 which depicts a young woman falling from a building was something she intended for the young woman’s mother instead of an idealised portrait. Can you believe it? Where was the compassion for the grieving mother? Frida rubbed in the circumstances of the tragic death instead. The woman lies at the bottom in a blanket of blood. This is what Frida’s art is: trying to show reality. Yet she is associated at the same time with the surreal, the out of ordinary and both realms collide on the spectacle of suffering.

The feminist credentials of the exhibition were iffy, considering she is a feminist icon. We wondered whether the nude intimate photographs of Frida should have been on display. They were private things that she had not authorised to be shown in her lifetime. Shouldn’t Frida have been given ownership of her own body as a woman? Again, Rivera’s work was displayed alongside hers. Wasn’t the aim of the feminists to argue that these women artists that lived in the shadow of their husbands were just as good? Wasn’t it the feminist aim for the art of the women to be seen aside from and apart from the art of their husbands? I found it weird given the context, even though I do not see myself as a Western feminist at all.

If Frida was weird, so was Whistler. He came across in the biographical details as a despicable and aggressive human being. He had fights with all the men in his life. In his time, when relationships were supposed to be for life, he seemed to go through woman after woman and could not keep faith with them. The display showed how petty and argumentative he was as well.

I’ve never admired his art. The best stuff for me was the White on White series, featuring his then love and muse Joanna Hiffernan. Perhaps because this is about love. Perhaps because it is less experimental than the other paintings in my mind.

Whistler was a rule breaker. He was expelled from Westpoint for breaking the rules. And he appeared to break the rules in art as well. However, the aesthetic is not appealing. The portraits all look unfinished and too faint and obscure. The landscapes are all obscured in the mist as well, although some of the nocturnes look okay. He was good as a realist artist as his early ink sketches show, but even there he was not exceptional.

The Peacock room fiasco where he overextended his artistic licence with a rich patron, which led to a bitter quarrel, shows the personality of the man. He believed that because he was an artist, that he was special and that he could do whatever he wanted. He was arrogant. And you can see this arrogance in his paintings. He made the sitters sit for up to seventy times so that he could control them, keep them immobile and under his sight. The man was obnoxious and on a weird power trip where he wanted to impose himself on everything and everyone. It’s not a surprise that he is so rated in a culture which overvalues arrogance and a supposed exceptionalism. The reason that he broke the rules? Because he thought he was too good for the rules.

belief in study

08.09.2026

Coming from an Indian background, I had a sincere belief that education could change the world. Being educated could change the world. Coming from a Dalit or Untouchable, low caste background, knowing about Dr. Ambedkhar who was from our caste and how he had been the architect of the Indian constitution, I had a sincere belief that education could and did change the world.

Belief in study is a crucially important thing. You have to believe it matters. You have to believe that study will change the world. You have to believe that study will improve your chances in life.

Now, even though I know that none of my studies have done anything for me professionally or financially, because of the racism in this country, I still believe in study. Because that study has given me the ability to do all of the volunteering and charity work I have done as a teacher, curator, as a writer, as a journalist and as a tour guide. It is that study that has prepared me and allowed me to excel in soft power, in enhancing and contributing to the cultural, academic and educational life in London and in changing the world for Dalits in India and ethnic minorities in Great Britain.

The reason that I studied, to contribute to the community and to make the world better through education, that has been achieved. I just did not get anything out of it for myself: the money, the status, the family and children and love.

There is one other belief in study. The belief in yourself. That you can study. That you will achieve. That you will succeed. That you will get top grades. Where does this belief come from?

When I would come home from a test at school and get the best marks in the year, do you know what my grandfather would say to me? It wasn’t a congratulation. He would say that he expected me to get full marks on the exam and I hadn’t. This was the level of expectation. My primary school teachers? When I would finish all of the work in class, they would give me extra work to do. Reading comprehension exercises. They gave me prize after prize for my work. The kids in the lower classes told me that the teachers would present my work to them as a model to imitate. The same thing happened during my GCSEs. Everyone saw me as the model student. The one to aspire to. This is what they expected from me. My PhD supervisors? They told me that my project was important and original. My second book which is in first draft form, described as absolutely breathtaking, important and highly original and innovative by the four people that have read it, highly respected researchers and academics. I know that this book will change the world.

This belief has been built by everyone around me. I know the importance of my scholarship and of this mind that has been forged by my grandfather, the voice of the Indian Independence movement. It is this belief that has taken me through double the amount of A Levels of most people, six, and through five degrees, with First Class Honours in English Literature and a Distinction in Art History, as well as graduation in the top 10% of a Law degree at the elite university LSE. A PhD on top of that. Achievement after achievement. Success upon success. Results delivered every time.

It is this belief that sustained me working seventy hour weeks in work and volunteering and then studying for an Art History degree at the Open University on top of it. It is this belief now that has told me that I can do a Master’s in Art History with the Open University and I am expecting myself to get a Distinction again.

Because, however racist this world is, however professionally unrewarding it has been to amass all of this education, I still believe that education can change the world. That I can educate myself and change the world. Because Suneel is not Suneel. Suneel is the community of the Oppressed, the Dalits. Suneel is the dream of the Indian Independence, freedom and dignity that my grandfather was raised upon. Suneel is the hero that my grandfather dreamed of. We educate ourselves and others for someone. The one that prayed for us to come into the world.

succeeding in study through distraction

06.09.2026

A small council house. That’s where I grew up. So small that any noise filled the entire house. And my bedroom? One wall was missing. Because the front room upstairs had been converted into a bedroom and it had a balcony and not a wall. The room itself? I shared it with my brother. I never had my own bedroom until I was eighteen.

All evening long, after school, the stereo would be going off. My brothers were playing hardcore gangster rap on it. Downstairs, the TV could be blaring.

In this environment, in which a middle class white person could never find any time for study or focus, you found the straight ‘A’ student that is now known as Dr. Suneel Mehmi. The student that got the best results in his sixth form.

Despite the distraction, despite the noise, despite the challenge, I got top grades. I would sit there at the desk in spite of everyone and everything.

Here, you found a student that had dedication, hard work, focus, determination and self belief. I believed that I was the most intelligent. And therefore I was the most intelligent. And moreover, I had a genuine love of learning.

One phrase follows me around my whole life. Our family came from the Untouchables in India, the lowest castes. We were Dalits. We were denied an education as part of our oppression. And my grandfather, who a rich man had plucked out of poverty and sent to university, where he became the top student and top athlete, he had told me this story. That our people, the Untouchables, we would stand outside classrooms, study with no light in the dark, study with nothing to become Big Men. Like Dr. Ambedkhar who was the architect of the Indian Constitution.

Again and again that story assails my mind. And I remember it as the detail he told me, that we had to stand and study while others were sitting. In other words, we faced adversity while others had every comfort and privilege. We had hardship and suffering. Others had the ease and luxury of being taught. They were spoilt. We were not.

This is the supposed level playing field of education in the United Kingdom. It is with this distraction and noise that we, the working class, we the sons of immigrants find ourselves in, the world in which we study.

And yet, despite everything, we succeed. I am the holder of five degrees including a PhD. I have published a book and articles, curated in museums and for websites, written journalism, poetry, reviews and articles for website upon website. You cannot kill talent. You cannot drown it out. You cannot kill the focus of a superior mind.

We don’t have excuses. We have achievements. I graduated in the top 10% of a degree in Laws at the elite and world-class university, the LSE. While working part time at Pizza Hut. I did an English degree in two years with First Class Honours. I remember skipping classes to work part time. While working 70 + hour weeks over the past four years, I got a First Class Honours Degree in Art History. When I did my PhD, I was working part time as a teacher, volunteering in a museum and at after school homework clubs for children, as well as volunteering as an English teacher for refugees and migrants.

And you that’s reading this. You who will like any underdog story. I know you will not like this story. Because when it comes to the real underdogs, the Dalits, the Untouchables, the working class ethnic minority male, this story means nothing to you. Because this is not a sob story. This is the story of resolution. This is the story of the Dalit that shared his grandfather’s dream, that shared Dr. Ambedkhar’s dream: to have education for our people.

academic racism

06.09.2026

As the recent Arday case has highlighted, racism is structural to Western academia and to academic culture. But I already knew this.

I got six ‘A’ Levels with five As and a B, with the maths exam just 1% below the A grade. I did the most ‘A’ Levels in one go that anyone had ever done at my sixth form while working twenty hours a week at Pizza Hut. I passed my Cambridge interview and they pooled me. But they still didn’t let me in. In my school, the only ones that applied to Oxbridge and didn’t get in were the Indian kids. All of the white boys got in. This was my first experience of racism with Western academia.

When I finished my PhD, I got my doctorate published as a monograph. This is difficult. Not only that, but I got articles into top journals. Completely by myself. I didn’t have anyone that could read the drafts. I didn’t have a support network. I did it completely by myself. And yet, when I applied to university professor roles for two and a half years, I didn’t get one single interview. Not one single one.

No one helped me with any professional opportunities. I spent the time in the PhD presenting at conferences, organising conferences, writing for academic websites that my university was superintending. I volunteered in teaching with adults and schoolchildren. I did everything possible. And yet, because no one would help me or give me any opportunities, I am not a university professor. My university would not let me teach any classes no matter how much I raised the issue. And therefore, I cannot apply to anything because they all ask for higher education experience.

But I do not blame myself. I blame these racists. It surprised me that the supposedly intellectual people in this country were racists. They pay lip service to a meritocracy and to diversity and inclusion. But they are the most racist of all. They will never accept you amongst themselves. They keep the opportunities for those like themselves.

Because this country is what it is, people say to me that it is not racism. It is just a very competitive field. But then I watch people with less academic achievement than myself getting roles. And what is the difference between me and them? That they have the right colour skin and that someone there helped them and gave them a chance. Without someone giving you an opportunity and a chance, helping you on your first steps, you cannot do anything.

And I am resentful. I spent a decade or so of my life becoming a researcher. I worked very hard. I made sacrifices, big sacrifices. I could have got married young. I could have started a family. I could have amassed wealth working. And this is how they treated me.

So when you’re making your little comments about how the woke culture has overtaken academia and that it is not based on talent, this is just a reminder about how this academic structure treats us ethnic minority men. How it shapes our lives. When you’re making your little comments because your white privilege seems threatened, this is the reality of what it is. This voice that is so powerful has had to find channels outside of academia to be heard. That’s how inclusive and great academia is in this Western world.

thoughts – 04.09.2026

Often, in the past, I’ve kept a thought diary. Just like I’ve kept a stories diary. I have been concentrating on writing diaries and fiction recently, as well as theatre, art and film reviews. When one is a real writer, one can write anything. In any case, I will share some of my thoughts from today, a tiny proportion from this mind that keeps on thinking, thinking, thinking…

Why do racists see us as closer to nature? Because they hate and revile nature. Being in harmony with nature and one with it should be seen as a goal. Instead, anyone that is not a white man is seen as too at one with nature, like us and women.
Why does realistic art only arise in certain cultures? Can it be the case that stylisation and abstraction, imagination and distortion, these are the intuitive way that we understand the world?
What if there was nothing? No universe? Nature abhors a vaccuum. Is nothingness stable? Is it capable of being sustained? Does there have to be something?
Why has primitive art been characterised as powerful and an antidote to the west? Is the West attempting to absorb the power of difference through it rather than learning from it? Is this simply a power play?
Why didn’t Da Vinci share his knowledge? Why do we learn about his thoughts on trees many centuries on? Was the academic infrastructure not there? Was he unconcerned with what others thought? Why create and think if you cannot bring it to the people? Was Da Vinci selfish?
Henry Moore’s titles use language as a direct reference, such as ‘Hole and Lump’. He did not want fancy titles, just words that pointed to things. Is this is a naive view of language? Or did he not want his direction to overtake the interpretation? Moore was not a realist. So why did he use a ‘realist’ vocabulary in his titling, that in which A is referred to as simply A? As though language is not an intervening web? Was this a creative act or a distinctly uncreative act?
A community is something that you have to make. It is not something that simply happens.
I have sculpted my brain. Just like I sculpt my body with weight training. And the weights for the mind? They are words and ideas. Which are therefore part of the forces of the universe, of physical reality…
I am the product of Salman Khan and the fitness revolution. Khan is a Hindi film actor that become a masculine body ideal with his body building. The fitness revolution is still sweeping the Indian film industry.
What is the philosophy of failure? One thinks of Batwara 1947 failing even though it had the right ideas about harmony across religions and nations. It is good to fail when the world around you is full of hate, prejudice and suspicion. They did not read the public mood. The mood of monsters, not men.
How do you read the public mood? Do you have to be one of the people to read it? Or view it as one removed, through a glass darkly?
Why do some people not have an opinion and struggle to think? Everything they say comes second hand from someone. That is why people call me original, why I have been described as an original thinker through my five degrees. I think things through by myself and am therefore exceptional.
I have had the training to believe that I can change the world. My grandfather worshipped Dr. Ambedkar who revolutionised Indian law as one of us, an Untouchable and Dalit from the lower castes. He is the one that taught me. That is where this confidence comes from.
Funny how research institutions like academia and museums are happy for ethnic minority men like me to do unpaid work but they never offer paid opportunities or more pay for our labour. It is toxic and exploitative industry if you have the wrong colour skin. Arday managed to do it and they came for him in the end. That is the real story there.

To Kill a Mockingbird Review – Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird

04.09.2026

While this play was well acted and well composed, and I enjoyed it, it is a fact that the legal culture of the West is completely defunct. I have been arguing this throughout my higher education life. Where is the proof? The book and the play ends on a lie. It ends on concealment. It ends on silence. And this is what it presents as justice. The book and the play destroy the voice of a poor woman. They present the poor oppressed woman as a murderer and liar, a perjurer. As a villain. It is these things that I have been arguing and fighting against my whole life. Because I have raised not in the legal culture of the West, but in the legal culture of Punjab. Where we are open, honest and where the poor oppressed woman is our goddess, our hero.

The legal ethics are questioned. Even in the play itself, Atticus Finch, the lawyer hero, he is criticised by Calpurnia who is the Afro-Carribbean help that he gets for his attitude to racial justice, his expectation that she be grateful to him for doing what any just man should do.

The play could be seen as an attempt to reconcile racists and the left, just as in the book itself. With that magic mantra to try and crawl into someone’s skin before you judge them and respond with violence. The law is contrasted with mob violence and lynching, the lawyer with civilisation and those that move outside of the law with brutality and oppression. The sad thing is, that it is the law that is oppression. Clearly, for example, Atticus represents the father figure who orders around his grown son as The Law. He is patriarchal oppression masquerading as love.

It was good storytelling. But with the wrong message. It was good acting. But the actions and the words were not good. But what happens with this wrong ending? The audience were clapping and cheering away. There were standing ovations. It is the Western legal culture.

They injected comedy into the play, just as there was comedy in the book. It was genuinely funny at times. They had good bit parts that were played and structural in getting us into the story and feeling something. The accents were good. It was very powerful too, particularly the performance by the actor that played Tom Robinson.

A major theme of the play is that a man will have his dignity. There were some liberties taken with the original play, including a fight scene featuring Atticus which derailed the message of pacifism somewhat and shows that the law which he represents is just naked violence which tries to conceal itself, duress and coercion.

This book, I studied it in school. I got an ‘A’ grade. Maybe it even inspired me just a little to study law and fight for the oppressed, although my main inspiration was from Dr. Ambedkar who my grandfather worshipped, as well as Indian films like Damini with my favourite actor, Sunny Deol. But I have moved on from this Western legal culture in the book and in this play. A well executed wrong message about the law is how I see it. An exposure of what is corrupt in Western law. This is what I’m fighting against.

children of immigrants and mental health problems

03.09.2026

We live in a society that creates a massive amount of stress, which sabotages health. And, as per usual, most of this stress is put upon immigrants and the children of immigrants.

The immigrants are made to jump over a number of bureaucratic hurdles which stop many of them from ever escaping from the jaws of poverty and becoming settled in life. The children? They watch what the state puts their parents through. They are made to understand the horrible sacrifices that their parents had to make for them in leaving their countries and families and friends behind, the expectations their parents put on them, made to feel all these heavy weights, this crushing weight of expectation that they will live the better lives that their parents tried to give them.

As a result, the children of immigrants have an increased risk for depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and other mental health problems.

I am one of these children of immigrants. My feeling about the unique cause of this stress is a lack of love. This is what it comes down to.

When you are the son of immigrants, it becomes very clear that no one loves you. That no one cares for you. You are rejected by the country that your parents come from. They see you as an outsider. You are rejected by the country that you are born in. They see you as an outsider. You are rejected by the other children of immigrants. They also see you as an outsider.

Permanently, you are a stranger.

One of the charities that I volunteer at tries to make strangers into a community. Because being a stranger causes isolation and alienation, atomisation. But what can you do when the community will never let you become anything else but a stranger?

The mind gives way. Humans need a community of some sort. When there is no community of any sort, it is the time for mental heath issues to creep in. For stress to overtake the system. And stress asks for a cure.

When you are the child of immigrants, you get no belonging anywhere. In fact, you are always asked to choose what culture you will be in without ever being accepted in any culture. Without belonging to any culture.

How do you cope with this stress? With the constant stress of decision making without the rewards of being accepted, recognised or loved? You have the pressure of always creating your own identity, always being seen with suspicion, never being understood. You have the pressure of being rejected from work, relationships and friendships because you are perceived as a stranger.

When people meet me for the first time, they make comments like you don’t look Indian. People guess that I am of different ethncities. There is the radical uncertainty as to what I am and where I come from. This is the radical uncertainty in which we live, the children of immigrants. No one will let us have an origin and an identity. No one is sure who we are. Everyone sees us as a stranger. And love? She is hard to find in a universe of ice.