When I was 15 friends told me I was pretty ‘for an Indian’. It took another 15 years for me to see myself as beautiful. Here’s what changed…

My friend thought she was paying me a compliment, but her words were some of the most hurtful I’d heard.

Full of sincerity, she told me: ‘Radhika, you’re really pretty for an Indian.’

That was the moment, aged 15, when I realised that no matter how much I tried to fit in, I’d always be seen as ‘less than’ because of the colour of my skin.

I’m British Indian and, for most of my life, I’ve hated being Indian.

That is not an easy sentence to write. It makes me feel deeply sad that this is how I felt for so long. But it’s true.

For more than two decades, I tried to put as much space between myself and my ancestry as I could.

It’s only in recent years, as Indian culture has become more ­fashionable, that I’ve also begun to embrace it.

I’m a first-generation British Indian, born in London. Both sets of my grandparents came from ­Gujarat, eventually moving to Uganda, where my parents were born. 

They both came to England as children, but never stopped ­reminiscing about their idyllic childhoods in Uganda, complete with zebras, monkeys, amazing food and a strong Indian community.

Meanwhile, I grew up in leafy North London where hardly anyone in our neighbourhood was brown. 

My parents still tried to bring me up with our traditions, having a shrine to the Hindu gods in our house, celebrating Diwali and often speaking Gujarati at home.

As a child, I loved the fun of ­dressing up in Indian clothes and doing religious rituals. But as I got older, things changed.

At secondary school, the differences between me and my (mainly white) peers went from being something that we were barely aware of to ­becoming — sometimes painfully — obvious.

As is the case with teenage girls, the most important thing was to fit in. We strove to ­emulate the heroines of our time: Kate Moss, Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar and anyone from Friends.

But the white beauty standard of the early Noughties meant I would never be seen as beautiful. Even though I had the ‘right’ body type, I didn’t have the ‘right’ features or skin colour.

When she was a teenager, the most important thing was to fit in and Radhika would never dream of putting a picture of herself wearing Indian clothing on social media 

My difference was highlighted by our school uniform — not the official blazer and skirt, but our unofficial one: tan ‘skin colour’ tights, fake tan, Mac foundation and lots of bronzer.

Ironically, everyone was trying to make themselves look browner, but none of these worked on my skin. If ever I tried — such as wearing ‘nude’ tights that looked oddly pale on me — my classmates would make jokes about it.

I had to fake laugh at a lot of jokes during those years — about Indians and their smelly curries (even though I never brought in curries for my packed lunch), Indian accents (even though I did not have one) and my ‘Indian big nose’ (this I did have).

I didn’t even recognise it as casual racism at the time. It was so normalised that even though it made me feel hurt and angry, I didn’t feel I had the right to say anything. 

I was also so keen to fit in that I didn’t want to draw more attention to my difference by speaking up. Instead, I just laughed along with the jokes, hoping that way we could move on faster.

But all the comments took their toll. I internalised that shame and spent the rest of my school and university years trying to anglicise myself as much as possible.

I’d still wear Indian outfits and sarees for family weddings and religious celebrations, but I hated how the clothes made me feel ­different. 

I was so used to seeing myself in things from Topshop and H&M that when I was in sparkly chiffon with a bindi on my forehead, I felt like I wasn’t my real self.

I would never have dreamt of putting a photo of myself in Indian ­clothing on social media.

And I’d spent so long trying to be more like my white friends, that I now felt like an imposter at Indian events, too.

In her late 20s, Radhika began to see that her Indian culture was officially in vogue and it started to change how she felt about my identity

I also stopped speaking ­Gujarati. I’d been speaking it less since my last remaining grandparent died when I was 12, and my parents spoke perfect English.

Naturally, my family were ­disappointed. They couldn’t understand why I was so against our culture. Back then, I’d plug in my headphones and retreat into my moody ­teenage self whenever they tried to talk to me about it.

As I started to lose my ­Gujarati, my mum begged me to keep it up with lessons. ‘If you stop, you’ll lose it forever and you’ll regret it when you’re older,’ she warned me. I told her I didn’t care. 

But now I’m in my early 30s, I can see she was right. I’m fluent in ­Spanish and ­Italian, but I can hardly speak any Gujarati – my own parents’ mother tongue.

Just as she ­predicted, it’s ­something I now regret. But at the time, I’d felt like my Indian language and ­culture would hold me back, rather than help me.

Sadly, everything I experienced in wider society seemed to confirm my views. In my 20s, I would avoid putting my ethnicity on dating apps, noticing that when I did so, I received fewer matches.

When I once did an experiment to prove this, creating two profiles with the same images of me — one called Radhika and one called Rachel — Rachel received double the amount of ‘likes’.

I was so used to minimising my Indian identity that when I was in my late 20s, I was shocked to realise that being Indian was no longer seen as negative.

 The turmeric and hot milk my mum used to make me when I was little was now being sold as a trendy turmeric latte for £4.50.

Yoga — something my mum and I had been doing together since I was ten — was now the most fashionable activity among white women. And Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai was being labelled as the ‘most beautiful woman in the world’.

It helped that her boyfriend didn’t just accept her for being different — he loved it about her, falling in love with her culture as he fell in love with Radhika

My culture was officially in vogue and it started to change how I felt about my identity.

Perhaps this shift would have happened anyway as I got older and cared less about what other people thought about me, but it was certainly a factor.

And it helped that for the first time I was in a serious relationship. My (white New Zealander) boyfriend didn’t just accept me for being different — he loved it about me, falling in love with my culture as he fell in love with me.

Slowly, I started to see myself through his eyes, and the two of us even went backpacking through India. 

To my shock, the locals didn’t think I was Indian until I told them my name. Apparently, the lightness of my skin, the balayage in my hair and the clothes I wore meant I didn’t look recognisably Indian.

It was something I would have loved to hear in my teen years, but now it just felt wrong.

I’d spent so long trying to be less Indian to fit in, but now I was in India, I didn’t fit in either because I wasn’t Indian enough.

I felt lost between my two ­cultures. I’d abandoned myself trying to be just British rather than British Indian. I knew I didn’t want to go on like that.

When I came home, I decided I was sick of such a white-focused beauty standard. So I launched a body positivity movement to ­celebrate big noses called #SideProfileSelfie.

It went viral and, suddenly, my social media feeds were full of beautiful women with strong profiles, helping me shift my own definition of beauty to include big noses like my own.

For the first time — exactly 15 years after I’d been told I was pretty ‘for an Indian’ — I saw myself as beautiful.

Around the same time, I used my writing to explore my identity. I’d published two novels in my early 20s, and I’d made the protagonists white, because I’d never read a book with a brown-skinned heroine. But when I hit my 30s, I made sure my novels starred British Indian women.

Radhika has now published a book called Here To Slay (pictured) for her teenage self – and on the front cover her heroine, Kali, is proudly wearing traditional Indian clothing

Now, I’ve published a book for my teenage self, which came out yesterday. It’s called Here To Slay and is inspired by Buffy The ­Vampire Slayer, except my 16-year-old heroine isn’t blonde; she’s British Indian, named after the Hindu goddess of death, Kali.

My Kali goes on a journey to embrace herself in every way — her skin colour, her sexual ­identity and her Indian origins — all while fighting literal demons. 

Most importantly, I made sure the front cover shows Kali proudly wearing traditional Indian clothing.

It’s taken me a long time to fully love myself, but I refuse to go back to being ashamed of who I am. I love my skin colour, my origins and my identity –— and I hope that the new generation of young British Indian girls never has to feel the way I did.

• Here To Slay by Radhika Sanghani (Knights Of, £9.99).