Burnt Roti

Title: Burnt Roti	Dates: 2016-present
Periodicity: Annual (irregular)	Price: £10.00 (reprints £5.00)
Circulation: –	Place of Publication: London, UK

Burnt Roti is a magazine that captures the conversations around South Asian culture and identity that were not being represented in mainstream magazines. This challenge to the mainstream is embodied in the publication’s title and reflects its editor Sharan Dhaliwal’s playful subversion of normative gender roles, particularly in relation to South Asian femininity. Roti is a flat bread that is made at home, often by women and is a staple of the South Asian diet. In interviews, Dhaliwal has described her mother’s attempts to teach her how to make the perfect roti. Realising that she did not want the life she was being prepared for, Dhaliwal deliberately burnt the roti, an act of defiance which she describes as her first form of activism.

Sharan Dhaliwal talks about the origins of Burnt Roti

Burnt Roti‘s Mission Statement

Burnt Roti is a platform for South Asian creatives to showcase their talent, find safe spaces and destigmatise topics around mental health and sexuality, amongst others.

Key Campaigns

Issue 3, on Anti-Blackness in South Asian communities includes essays on the Dalit Panthers, the term ‘BAME’, solidarity at work, inter-racial dating and Pakistan’s Sheedi community.

Issue 4 is by and for South Asian trans and non-binary people and issue 5, the final issue, focuses on ‘Brown Tories’.

Burnt Roti also features interviews with Bollywood stars, musicians, comedians, make-up artists, photographers, novelists and poets.

Crucially, Burnt Roti‘s website features a directory of South Asian creatives, available for hire.

Magazine Aesthetic

Burnt Roti is ‘heavily laden’ with the traditions of South Asian culture as Dhaliwal points out when discussing the front cover of the first issue. This cover combines contemporary South Asian queerness (two figures in bed, back to back, embracing mobile phones) with a strong sense of heritage and tradition. The patterned turquoise bedspread that covers the couple, the pink peaked diadem that frames the image, the mehndi pattern behind the paired figures as well as the oversized earrings worn by each, draw on the motifs and styles associated with the long history of South Asian textiles. Even the faces of the figures are patterned, signifying the ways in which the culture and history of the South Asian diaspora is woven into the lives of individuals and communities. Vivid colour is also a distinctive feature of Burnt Roti as is evident in this first issue with its orange backdrop, and issues 2 and 4 where orange and fuchsia pink are the signature colours. The most recent issue, on ‘Brown Tories’ offers a comic contrast by shrouding itself in the colours of the night.

Cover of *Burnt Roti* issue #0, May 2016

Historical Contexts

Founded in 2016 and published during the period that saw the UK’s first British Asian Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak (2022-24), Burnt Roti emerged at a particularly fraught and divided moment in British politics. The debate around whether the UK should remain in the European Union and the ensuing Brexit referendum in 2016, highlighted a resurging nationalism (evident across Europe, the U.S. and the global South) and a nostalgia for Britain’s lost empire (Linda Colley, The Financial Times, April 22, 2016). It was in the context of the ‘politics of Englishness’ the ‘invisible driver’ of the Brexit vote, that Dhaliwal created a magazine celebrating the vibrancy of South Asian British culture while also calling out politicians, including politicians of South Asian heritage, for fanning the flames of nationalism with policies and headlines designed to demonise immigrants, migrant workers and asylum seekers (Satnam Virdee and Brendan McGeever, ‘Racism, Crisis, Brexit’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 41, No. 10, pp. 1802-1819, p. 1809.

Editors

Sharan Dhaliwal

Printers, typesetters, publishers and distributors

Ex Why Zed

Business model

The magazine is largely funded by Dhaliwal herself but has received sponsorship from Natco, a food brand that donates all its profits to a charity called the Human Capability Fund and the London-based Indian restaurant, Dishoom among others.

Connections to other feminist magazines

gal-dem was extremely supportive when Burnt Roti was starting up providing advice, guidance and support and gave Burnt Roti a promotional boost by including it in gal-dem‘s take-over of the V&A in October 2016.