Sohaya Visions and Mukul & Ghetto Tigers are two arts companies set up by diasporic South Asians in the UK, the former in 2017 in West Sussex, the latter in 2011 in East London. 

 

Although the leading artists have backgrounds in India and Bangladesh, such national parameters mean little when diasporic experiences compel a collective need to tackle larger injustices against people of different racial or ethnic identities in the Global North. 

 

Their collaborations with other artists involve those from Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani backgrounds - either born in Britain or in South Asia - as well as a variety of other artists in the UK context. Foremost in their minds is their intention to celebrate and reinvent South Asian heritage and culture through song, dance, drama, film and the digital arts, so as they can serve the objective to tackle intersectional inequalities. 

 

Their 2020 drama film production, Lalon: Heart of Madness, showcased the poetry and songs of the eighteenth-nineteenth Bengali Baul renowned for his revolutionary zeal against religious, caste and gender discrimination. As Lalon stated, ‘In the ancient temple women were the prime priest, respect women for the shakti she holds.’

 

Vocalists, Sparsh Bajpai, Delwaar Hossain Dilu and Sadia Chowdhury, sing through the warp and weft of a story about a woman, Luna, and her struggle between independence and betrothal. Inspired by the philosophical songs of Lalon, she discovers the strength to resist social stigmas and the slut-shaming of a free-thinking woman as ‘a mad and bad woman’ in the eyes of the world.