Still Game star Kohli has spoken of his dismay over the Scottish flag being recast as “a right wing totem.”
The actor, who shot to fame as shopkeeper Navid Harrid in the long-running comedy series, said the sight of lion rampant and saltire flags being hung from lampposts is “depressing” and “tragic.”
Sanjeev was speaking as he launched Glasgow Tellyfest, a hub for developing new TV projects in Scotland, which opens tonight.
The star has written, filmed and plays all parts in Coconut, a comedy drama inspired by the experiences of his immigrant parents, and his own time growing up in Glasgow in the 1970s and 80s. The term is a slur used by some to denote “a person who is brown on the outside but white on the inside” said Sanj, adding that he was called a coconut because he preferred rock music to bhangra.
“I was into different things, my Punjabi was terrible,” he said.
The 54 year old hopes the story can help challenge thinking around perception of immigration in some parts of Scotland.
Sanjeev said: “It felt really important during the World Cup to see the saltire being reclaimed by the Tartan Army, reclaimed from whoever funded putting them up in lampposts in Maryhill thinking they could be used as a right wing totem.
“If I went into town in the 1980s and nobody called me a name that was unusual.
“I was never harmed physically, and I’m not bleating about it now, because it’s just the way it was, but that’s not to say that wasn’t racism.
“Then ten years later, if someone said something like that in 1990, it was a big surprise. So it was very much a curve.
“I was the generation that was born here and there was always going to be a learning curve. So it feels very weird that the curve has gone off again. It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic, so regressive, people actually doing ‘seig heil’ on marches.”
The former Rive City actor, who will feature in the new series of Edinburgh-based streaming hit Dept Q on Netflix next year, told how a pal was racially abused by young men on the street in Glasgow.
He said: “There were guys in balaclavas, in Glasgow doing ‘bud bud’ accents to her and her son. Is it 1977 again?
“If someone feels annoyed because a so-called incomer is getting a counci house ahead of them, that’s no excuse to say ‘bud bud ding ding’ to a random brown person you don’t know, and who was born here.
“That’s out and out racism, and that’s depressing. It feels like they have had license to behave like that again, and I thought those days were gone, buried and cremated. I never thought we’d go back to those days. Why would we?”
Sanjeev Kohli played all roles in Coconut (pic: Claire Duffy)
Sanjeev hopes Coconut can help forge a new path for film and TV makers in Scotland, bypassing the need to go through traditional pathways to get pilot projects made, having been frustrated by the commissioning process in Scotland, despite success in London for his BBC Radio 4 comedy series Fags, Mags and Bags.
Coconut is the debut project for Glasgow Tellyfest’s Damn Few initiative, which organiser Claire Duffy, an author and producer, hopes will attract submissions from all ends of the industry spectrum in Scotland.
He said: “This is telling the story in a TikTok style, taking to camera as myself but playing the parts in a flashback. On TikTok, you can be your mum, your dad, your son if you put a hat, a shawl or shorts on.
“It feels like a way we can go to other streamers and show them this is what we are doing in Scotland.”
And he added that the proliferation of broadcast platforms is good news for authentic Scottish voices.
Sanjeev said: “I speak to a lot of Scottish actors in London who say they just don’t know what to do with them, they ask them to ‘tone it down a bit’.
“The whole thing about good art is it comes from truth, it’s authentic and for me to be authentic I should be able to speak in my own accent. There’s no pressure for that now because almost everybody watches TV with subtitles.”
Glasgow Tellyfest launches tonight. Check out glasgowtellyfest.co.uk