This TED Talk features sociologist Chaitan Bhatt, recorded live at TEDx Exeter 2015.

I'm Chaitan Bart, and when I give my name, I'm often asked, where are you from?

And I normally say, London.

But of course, I know what they're really asking. So I say something like, well,

my grandparents and my mum were born in India. My dad and I were born in Kenya, and I was brought

up in London. And then they've got me mapped. Ah, you're a Kenyan Asian. I've worked with one of those.

And from my name, they probably assume

that I'm a Hindu. And this sort of fixes me for them. But what about the Christians and the Muslims

and the atheists that I grew up with? Or the socialists and the liberals, even the occasional Tory.

Indeed, all kinds of women and men,

vegetable sellers, factory workers, cooks, car mechanics,

living in my working-class area,

in some profoundly important way they are also a part of me

and are here with me. Maybe that's why I find it hard to respond

to questions about identity and about origin. And it's not just a sort of teenage refusal to be

labelled. It's about our own most identities, the ones that we put our hands up to, the ones that we cheer for, the ones that we

fight for, the ones that we love or hate. And it's about how we apprehend ourselves, as well as others.

And it's about identities we just assume that we have without thinking too much about them.

But our responses to questions of identity and origin have substantial social and political importance.

We see the wars, the rages of identity going on all around us.

We see violent religious, national and ethnic disputes.

And often, the conflict is based on old stories of identity and belonging and origins.

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