Why "Singh Song!" shouldn't be sung...

Earlier this month, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the 'Racial Equity Network Dinner 2025' in Birmingham. It was a great evening to both celebrate the wonderful achievements of people of colour within education, but also acknowledge some of the persistent and significant challenges that are still alive and well and impacting pupils and colleagues today. One of these challenges was the challenge of 'belonging': where pupils of colour can see themselves in their schools, teachers, and curriculums. Inspired by what was seen and discussed at the event, I'm taking a break from my normal sort of blog to explore this idea of 'belonging' and, in particular, my beef with the poem "Singh song" taught widely in GCSE English literature.

I came across this poem through sheer happenstance a number of years ago, when I walked into the staff room and there happened to be a GCSE anthology laying open with this poem showing. Any other day I would have walked past it, but seeing the word "Singh" caught my attention and, in excitement at potentially seeing myself represented, I rushed to pick up the booklet and read the poem. But what I was left with minutes later was a mixture of sadness and rage I don't think I've ever felt before or since. Was this really the best that our school system had as a way to represent me? I dug further and found many "analyses" of the the poem, but couldn't help but wonder how many of those were written by the very people the poem was about? What happens when we analyse a poem without being able to relate to the subject of the poem? What happens when we have conversations about a person instead of including them in the conversation?

So I'm writing this because of the call to action that was presented to us last week to help our pupils and colleagues feel a sense of belonging in our schools, and to offer a perspective that is absolutely critical to critiquing this poem, and yet has remained largely absent from the discussion.

Fighting stereotypes?

In this clip Nagra (the author) shares what motivated him to write the poem. He says that there's a stereotype about Indians in Britain being shopkeepers, or lawyers, or doctors, and that his parents were shopkeepers (as were my grandfather and parents for a short while too) and he wrote this poem "to celebrate that rather than be embarrassed by it". Which leaves me slightly confused as to what exactly we're celebrating?

Firstly, it's worth exploring why so many Indian/south-Asian families in the UK have their origins in corner shops. Doing this reveals the systems of racism that prevented my (and likely his own) predecessors from entering more meaningful employment which they were often qualified for, yet were systematically passed over for their white peers, forcing them into working/owning corner shops.

Secondly, Nagra explains his writing by offering a binary choice of countering stereotypes by portraying Sikhs are something farfetched (he gives the example of astronauts), or leaning into them. Yet, he goes on to describe situations that most people from a Sikh background would describe as completely farfetched: I'm unconvinced a son regularly abandoning his responsibilities would last very long in his job and I'm even more unconvinced that a Punjabi immigrant would have a romantic conversation with his partner in broken English as opposed to his actual mother tongue. This point also has another lens, which is what it actually means in an English lesson.

The reason that first read of the poem angered me so was because I put myself back in my 16 year-old shoes and imagined the horrible emotions I would have experienced listening to my white English teacher put on a fake Indian accent to read this poem. I would have felt mortified, embarrassed, furious. I would have looked around at my almost exclusively white peers for some solace that wouldn't have arrived because they couldn't relate, and instead be left with the anxiety of how this poem might be used as breaktime "banter" with me. But one thing I definitely wouldn't have felt was a sense of belonging or pride in this "portrayal" of my people.

The Caricaturising of "Singh"

The above also leads into my final point about why, in my opinion, despite his motivations being to address the stereotypes Nagra instead furthers them. "Singh" was a name gifted to the Sikh people by our Gurus, a way of removing the shackles of the oppressive caste system that exists in Indian society. This gift is given to Sikh men who choose a particular path in life, one which involves adopting a certain appearance and way of living. The name has a deep meaning and a rich history, any of which Nagra could have chosen to portray.

The Lahore court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh

Instead, Nagra turns the name into a punchline in the title and then portrays this caricature of a person whose customers complain and whose wife swears and laughs at her parents-in-law. Crucially, Nagra cannot speak to this lived experience as he hasn't chosen that particular path in life. He doesn't have an accent, nor have the appearance bestowed by the Gurus when gifting the name 'Singh'. I want to be clear that this is in no way a personal dig at him, but instead it's asking the question of how valid is it to portray an experience that we haven't lived through ourselves? And in particular to then go on and say that we're doing it as a way of empowerment?

So, why do I write this? I write this to give my perspective on this poem. I write this as a request to English teachers to either provide alternative poems that actually portray a more authentic experience of what it means to be Sikh/Punjabi in the UK, or at the very least to approach this poem with much more criticality. Nagra set out to tackle stereotypes, and yet I'm left feeling like he may have actually furthered them. He doesn't tackle any of the root causes of this offensive stereotype and instead portrays this caricature of a shopkeeper as a hapless, lustful man with a thick accent, whose existence is entirely unrelated from the author's own life. For me, the missed opportunity of something better weighs heavy.

All feedback welcomed, you can send me an email on asgill@inspired-learning.org.