the education of exploitation

17.09.2026

Why complain? It will impact your career and potential employers (Suffer the injustice).

Never call it out.

Just now, travelling home from visiting my girlfriend, I saw a post by a working class student with a PhD. He was complaining that his supervisors had never told him about the hidden curriculum in a PhD, how to become part of the academia industry. He saw them as irresponsible. He couldn’t get any work, research related or not. He was living on benefits.

And underneath? Someone, probably an academic, had told him to shut up because it might affect his chances of employment.

Shocking. Academics are supposed to tell the truth. Not suppress it. They are supposed to be ethical. Not characterless.

But what I read is not surprising. In my culture, as I am half Sikh, we are taught that it is just as much of a sin to stomach injustice as to be unjust. And here we have this advice from these so-called academics, this advice to be silent and silenced by oppression, discrimination and prejudice. To stomach the injustice. To never attempt to call it out and change it.

What is this evidence of? That education in this country is an education of exploitation. They see working class (and male, ethnic) doctoral students like I was as cash cows and nothing else. To have our cash extracted out of us and then discarded. One could trace this to when they started charging students for fees in this country. One sees it in how they treat foreign students that come here in the hope of having a better life.

I will point out that I did everything that I was supposed to do to become a university professor. I had four degrees including my PhD. I published my doctoral thesis as a book. I went to several postgraduate conferences and presented. I organised a postgraduate conference. I wrote for websites for English Literature, including one run by the university. I taught in after homework clubs, with refugee and migrant adults learning English, in primary schools and secondary schools as a doctoral student. Yet all they wanted from me was free labour and my money. They didn’t want to give back anything in return apart from the piece of paper with the qualification which didn’t amount to anything and could not get me any work.

Because this is the tragedy. They take our hope and monetise it for their own benefit. Without caring for us. Knowing that they are going to crush all of our dreams because we are not like them.

And if you say it? Then it is us that are the villains, not them. It is us that are unjust. Not them. It is us that should be shunned. Not them. It is a system of injustice and exploitation. Because in an education of exploitation, if you do not exploit, then you are not worthy of joining the gang. Yes, they see us as unworthy, rather than them. This is the education of exploitation.

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.

FLOWERS – FLORA IN CONTEMPORARY ART & CULTURE

12 February – 5 May 2025, the Saatchi Gallery

Review by Dr. Suneel Mehmi. Images courtesy of the Saatchi Gallery with permission granted to reuse. This is an unpublished first draft for the Plant Curator website – https://plantcurator.com/

https://www.saatchigallery.com/exhibition/flowers-flora-in-contemporary-art-amp-culture

An inspiration for the ages and a fount of creativity, flowers have been the originating force, subject and detail of the masterpieces of all cultures. A colossus of endeavour and love, the flower exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery celebrates the contribution – and the omnipresence – of these unparalleled objects of beauty up to and including the present moment. The achievement? To have made a discriminating incision into the ubiquity of the flower in art so that the satisfactory slice can be served up – and digested.

Ranging across two floors which house large-scale installations, technically innovative videography, paintings, graphic design, textiles and photography, over 500 unique artworks and objects form the display. Organisation across this wealth of material is found in nine sections which deal with topics such as fashion, books and film, and representations of the flowers in the work of emerging contemporary artists.

In one room, we find the bespoke installation piece by Rebecca Louise Law, made up of over 100,000 dried flowers that have been salvaged from the wasteful society. A creation of sublimity from rejection which can be viewed from the floor or from above in the balcony. Another space has been transformed into an innovative and interactive digital projection by French artist Miguel Chevalier where we move the flowers and, in turn, they move us. A virtual garden of the imagination.

There is a mixture of justifiably perennial sources of delight such as Boticelli’s Primavera and the designs of William Morris alongside the unknown and uncontemplated work of others around the globe. Highlights include the 3D bronze sculpture of Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ by Rob and Nick Carter, where the viewing experience of the artwork is renewed (and given another dimension, if the pun is forgiven), Anna Von Freyburg’s gloriously coloured textile interpretation of a Dutch still life painting, Vivienne Westwood’s sensational floral costumes and Ann Carrington’s collection of finds in silver and cutlery for her shining and awe inpiring sculptures of remodification and metamorphosis.

What the exhibition succeeds in doing well is to sting the monkey of the mind so that she flickers across the branches of the canopy, forever at all moments looking for new paths of exploration and into new thoughts. There is so much beauty, so much food for thought.

What struck me in particular was the constant oscillation and the influence of the flower on the female body and the female body on the flowers. And how this dynamic has been woven into art and culture. Women have been understood as flowers, however we may interpret that equation. The exhibition suggests that works such as Mucha’s ‘La Rose’ give the woman flower the aura of power, the transcendence of a domestic role. In Gary Hume’s ‘Two Blooms, Grey Fields’, we are advised to see human faces in the flowers, a coupling of minds.

Another theme that emerged was the relationship between violence and the flowers. Sometimes, ‘flower power’ was an antidote to the oppressive state and the military as we see in photographs, such as Bernie Boston’s image of George Harris sticking carnations into gun barrels during the demonstrations against the Vietnamese war in 1967. In Wole Lagunju’s reinterpretation of the violence of ‘Judith with the Head of Holofernes’, we see flowers from the cultural iconography of the Yoruba which invigorates a postcolonial approach to real history.

As with all subjects of art, it was interesting to see the pull between the abstract representations of flowers, such as Damien Hirst’s ‘Valium’ and the figurative brilliances of art such as Janet Pulcho’s ‘The Dream of Love’ which was painted last year.

To end the exhibition on emerging voices was infinitely pleasing. A demonstration that the fascination with the flower and its beauty drives contemporary art and will be the future for art for time to come.

Immensely enjoyable and productive for a creative mind, ‘Flowers’ at the Saatchi Gallery is a big and delicious fish to have caught and to feast upon. I spent three hours in each of the spaces hoovering everything up. Beautiful variety, stylish presentation of the pieces, the experience was like an entry in the kaleidoscope of the senses. I learnt much, I contemplated much, I hungered much for the beauty of some of the pieces. My overall impression was of a shining, irresistibly coloured flower which emerges from the dark to cast its wonder upon a world of hearts.