Musician and teacher Arjun Desai moved from India to Dublin eight years ago.
The Dublin riots of November 2023 led Arjun Desai, a musician and teacher from India, to question his place in Ireland. But he felt the benefit of good friendships as pals looked out for him in the aftermath of the violence. He’s still here.
Desai had friends who were attacked in the run-up to the riots, but he never expected unrest of the scale and intensity that fateful night in Dublin.
“I think it had been seething for a long time and was the perfect storm,” he says.
“I had doubt and was uncertain about whether I would be happy to continue living in Ireland.”
At the time, Desai was working as a music and computer science teacher at Alexandra College, South Dublin and a performing musician, playing venues across the city.
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He grew up in New Delhi, arriving in Ireland in 2017 to pursue the jazz and contemporary improvised music performance programme at DCU. He previously studied engineering in India for a bachelor’s degree.
He says that moving here wasn’t easy as he didn’t know anyone. “I felt quite isolated at first and would go on long walks by myself or visit busy parts of town to feel less isolated.”
While studying he worked as a car-wash cleaner in Malahide and in a shop in Ballymun. “I often found that even if we did not speak the same language or have the same level of English proficiency, having music or art as ways that we expressed ourselves meant that we could still understand each other.”
Desai came to love his life in Dublin. He went back to DCU for teaching qualifications and became a computer science and music teacher.
“My dissertation was about enabling gender equity in second-level computer science education as I noticed that many more boys than girls were choosing to study computer science in secondary school. I wanted to find out why that was and how it affects society as a whole.”
Desai worked at Alexandra College for a year and then moved to a school in Marino, north Dublin, where he now works. In the meantime he met his girlfriend Naoise, an Irishwoman who works in healthcare.
“It wasn’t very romantic,” he says. “We met through a dating app.”
Desai says that although there was “a lot of dark and antagonistic energy” on the day of the riots, many people asked after him to make sure he was okay.
“I felt lucky to have such good connections. My friend Barry gave me a lift out of his way after work the night of the riots and Daniel, another friend who had previously been my flatmate, accompanied me home from work the next day to make sure I arrived home safe.”
Despite his doubts, Naoise was “a strong pull” to stay in Ireland.
“There were moments where I might not have felt as strong a sense of belonging. I have grown close to her family, they are very kind and understanding. Naoise and I cook Indian food or watch Indian films whenever I am homesick.”
Overall, there were enough positive reasons to stay.
“My work is important to me. Working in a historically diverse area and teaching students who have vastly different backgrounds from each other means that it is my job to teach students to treat each other with kindness and respect. I chose to study music as I believe in art as a medium for resistance, art can break cultural and linguistic barriers.”
Of his New Delhi childhood, Desai feels a sense of serendipity.
“I went to a school which was run by Irish Christian Brothers. It was called St Columba’s and I believe that there is a school in Ireland which has the same name.”
Born into a middle-class family, he had a fairly conventional upbringing.
“Though I was largely insulated from India’s class divide, the caste system is so prevalent in society that I could still tell that it was there. Coming to Ireland, I didn’t notice a class divide at first. There is a class divide here but not to the same degree as in India,” Desai says.
“I have lost friends over this,” he says, without further explanation.
He worries about the consequences of Irish inequality. “My friends from Dublin’s inner-city have a deep sense of being forgotten about. Far-right agitators use migrants as easy targets for people to direct their rage at. It’s the perfect out as then they can say that it has nothing to do with government policies, which might not have people’s best interests at heart.”
Of India at this time, he says the atmosphere has “taken a turn towards a sense of religious fundamentalism”.
“There has been the systematic persecution of people from ethnic minorities and atrocities committed in the name of religion. There was an episode recently where people suspected of eating beef were lynched and other acts of violence were committed, as things are turning out they are emboldening the far right.”
One reason for Desai coming to Ireland was that he felt a sense of solidarity between the two countries because of the history of occupation and imperialism.
“Irish people are familiar with the freedom struggle and that was very important to me. My grandparents had to flee Lahore, in what is today Pakistan, for India in 1947 because of the British partition of the Indian Raj,” he says.
“A lot of people lost their lives during partition. I definitely have some generational trauma from that but I believe that the history of humanity is the history of migration.”
Today, he is happy and settled in his life here. “I’ve found Irish people to be very warm and welcoming and share a lot of cultural values with myself. The sense of humour is familiar to me.”
He doesn’t see himself leaving any time soon as he has come to call Ireland home.
His contract in Marino has been renewed, although his work permit is taking some time to come through.
“The principal and staff at my school are very supportive of me but there is a loophole in the work permit process, which means that because the job was never advertised on a particular website, I might not be allowed to take up the job.
“My TDs have been very supportive and have issued letters on my behalf and I am currently appealing to the Department of Justice.
“I want to continue serving Irish education, write a new album of music and maybe pursue further studies to get a doctorate.”
