Kernels of multiculturism - Makings of Londonistan

ManMohan Luthra
The Statesman, 5 December

A decade after the American Civil Rights Act, the British legislated against discrimination in 1976 and established the CRE. The equalities legislation has evolved over a period to include measures against religious discrimination and incitement, to the dismay of many intellectuals who feared backdoor censorship in what they see as play-banning and book- burning tendencies of the new post-war brown Britons. The CRE’s last gasp report takes a shot at the systemic failure of the government departments to set an example to complying with its inclusion schemes and argues that for Britsh- born Black and Minority Ethnic Groups life chances are still hampered by more subtle discrimination that replaced the explicit racism of the 1960s.

It also alerts people to the possibility of increasing segregation and the emergence of parallel lives between ethnic groups. The systemic discrimination focus, however, fails to note that over the last decade both social mobility and inequality in the UK has been on the decrease and the public has anxieties about the rapidly changing profile of metropolitan Britain.

It also fails to take into account the cultural and historical baggage of certain communities that can also be damaging in terms of overcoming discrimination and grasping opportunities, besides the impact of such tendencies on indigenous attitudes. In one sense, in India, the Sachar Committees approach to analysis as to why the Muslim community lags behind in India is far more sophisticated.

Over 40 years, since the mid-60s, immigration from the Indian subcontinent there has never been a major civil strife, though there have been battles of the young people with the British police.

Even during the post- London bombing period, the British people conducted themselves with dignity and there was no major backlash against Muslims. Minorities feel reasonably secure in the UK as a relatively free, liberal entrepreneurial society with a reasonable social and health security network and with a booming economy. There is no shortening of queues to come to Britain or enter it without papers via Europe nor are there any major signs of exodus by the settled migrants.
There is reasonable integration of minorities at the political level, the media, the city and local government and the private sector unlike France, a neighbour with a much larger ethnic population. Different communities have been successful at different rates in terms of establishing a middle class, achieving an entrepreneurial contingent and exploiting educational opportunities with the Indian community and the Chinese community which is doing particularly well
Some French intellectuals have interpreted the London bombings as an indication of the British failed multiculturalism and lately it has become fashionable to knock the concept. Even the CRE Chair argued that some regressive values and human rights breaches within the ethnic communities have gone unchallenged. Liberalism has been shown while debating on wife-beating or cliterectomy of women and dowry abuse.
More recently, the likes of Martin Amis, celebrated British author, has attached the concept and Yasmin Alibhai, a journalist, has argued that multiculturism is backward looking and divisive. There is some truth in it but the scale of such abuse is small and the critique could have been done without throwing the baby with the bath water and confusing the British population that has accepted multiculturism, albeit not without pain. The notion that pluralism should be welcomed and tolerated is something that necessitates the birth of the idea of multiculturalism. Pluralism is a child of true- grit liberalism.

Multiculturalism fosters the notion of celebration of cultures. The totality of cultures cannot be damned because of some of its strands. Each culture has some value ~ so one has to think before making a stereotypical judgment about the people who belong to such cultures. Each culture also emphasises that no individual culture should carry the burden of all the communities’ misdemeanours. This has been helpful in challenging the backlash in the past when there was Khalistani terrorism and now Islamist terrorism. The case for multiculturism was over-stated in its historical context to challenge the naked eurocentricism and ethnocentrism of the 1960s and 1970s. In multiethnic societies, multiculturalism is not a choice but a standard and etiquette ~ a mindset for co-existence if not integration. Combined with the notion of racial equality, it becomes an effective tool for challenging the systemic ethnocentric view of society and discrimination.

Imported from the USA and aided by corporate sectors, the concept of diversity usurped it (widened it to include other excluded groups, for instance, disabled and women ) and stripped it of its politics. In a corporate context, it emphasises the notion of valuing difference and harnessing it for competiveness and customer connectivity ~ a classic examples would be the disabled character in Lagan whose disability is used effectively.

India’s corporate sector could learn a great deal from the UK and the USA as it remains dominated by the well-heeled urban elite.

Culture and religion, a folk version of religion as opposed to a literal interpretation, are difficult to disentangle. The well-educated clergy of Britain, after reformation, have been good at debating religion openly, throwing up an intellectual leadership. On the whole, Britain in 60 years has historically kept religion out of politics and succeeded. The intellectual view has been that unlike the USA, we don’t do God here and with education, a part of British population may cling to vague ideas of spiritualism but on the whole, the Church has been struggling to get the punters in. Aversion to jingoism also has been part of the culture leading to muted nationalism. This influenced the early identity formations with communities from the sub-continent using the term British Asian as a broadbased secular term to define themselves.

Muslim intellectuals in the 1980s advocated dissolving the alliance with the rest of the Asian communities well before 9/11, by arguing that their religion was the overriding identity. The state endorsed this view by creating religious categories in census, despite unease among the British population.

Later, because of this, the work of Islamists among the young, new hypen-nated identities like British Muslims have emerged as some of the Indians, including Indians Muslims, distanced themselves from Pakistani Muslims.

The strident demand for halal meat in schools, building big and large number of mosques and temples and creation of separate schools is recreating a Christian identity that did not exist before.

Multifaith education was encouraged in the 1980s, leaving it to schools to set up advisory committees to shape the curriculum and worship practices. Some laidback polices of the local planning authorities means that we have more than 500 mosques, temples and gurdwaras not always built in spacious grounds or in the right places and not always co-existing happily, cheek by jowl with their white neighbours who tend to move out of these areas, leaving ethnic concentrations behind.

Feudal cultural strands have been brought in by immigrants in the form of honour killings of women, forced marriages and forced veiling of children. Cliterectomies, Press claims about weeping Hindu god statutes and protestations to save TB-infected bulls, as well as the demand for open burials ~ all these contribute to the feudalised and extremist image of the Asian communities and adds to the nascent and residual pool of UK’s racism.

The British over-estimate the number of settled migrants many times the actual figure of seven per cent, the same percentage of British support the Bangladesh Nationalist Party which restricts its membership to "indigenous Caucasians" and advocates the repatriation of ethnic minorities to their ancestors' countries of origin.

About 41 per cent of the British think there are too many people of other ethnic communities living in the UK (Cabinet Office, 2001). In the case of people of Indian origin perceived to be a relatively successful community, all these observations combine with burning brides, dowry crimes, corruption, displays of wealth (weddings) and almost crippling poverty in India to undermine the glamorous projection of Incredible India.

Yet, as with India, the adaptive nature of British culture is evident from the adoption of curry almost as a national dish, yoga as a norm in the gym and the co-option of the Bhangra beat in mainstream music and a fascination for Bollywood ~ all appear to thrive at the same time.

When asked about the willingness to marry across into a culture, the British are three times more willing to do so than people of Indian origin ~ the ethnocentric bigotry of the Indians does not bode well either. It is not that the British population is immune to fads of religion. Recently, eminent biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Delusion of God and in a series of documentaries has attacked the growth of the culture of superstition and ignorance amongst the British. Yet, paradoxically, in a country overwhelmingly agnostic, Buddhism and Islam are the fastest growing religions. Islamists needle the European leaders ideologically with the desire to establish an Ulmah and scholars like Roger Scruton (The West and Rest ) have argued it is the text and ideology of Islam rather then its interpretation which is responsible for extremism, though the same could be said of the Old Testament. The Islamist group, albeit small in number, fuel the British population’s fear that there are many sympathisers.

All is not lost. In the case of the Muslim community, value transmission has taken place, British Muslims, as compared to Muslims of other countries, have better views of us than their cousins and diasporic connections; 49 per cent of British Muslims (but 22 per cent of Pakistanis) think Westerners are respectful of women, 56 (versus 24) think us generous, 48 (against 13) tolerant.

Yet there is fear that enlightenment values are under threat as it is not only the violent extremists, (Post-Rushdie book burning, Sikh case on the play Izzat, the killing of a documentary maker in Holland and the support among the British Gujarati community for the likes of Mr Narendra Modi) others, too, are using political clout and undermining hard-won local freedoms.

The new migrants from eastern Europe are hardworking and have kept inflation down, created a café culture, kept the hospitality and construction sector afloat and British bathrooms well-repaired. They have also brought in human trafficking and gang killings with the rich ones from Russia buying parts of London, pushing up prices to sky-high levels. There is, however, in practice less acceptance of the abstract argument put forward by British intellectuals that immigration is good for the economy.

Melanie Phillips, a journalist, in her book attacked the laidback British policies on immigration in the name of multiculturalism as responsible for turning London into Londonistan ~ an observation often repeated by Indian friends who visit London.

The argument about diversity and immigration as key drivers of economic development has been won by policymakers, a point highlighted with Britain retaining a competitive edge in winning the Olympics-hosting opportunity. At the same time, rapid immigration from eastern Europe has put pressure on the instant access to a welfare state. The ease of movement has been abused by terrorists and a balmy army of desi commercial clergy being driven in their BMWs preaching feudal values and dated interpretations of religions.

This instills the fear among the British that religion is being connected with militant politics ~ a notion exposed by former extremists in their publications. The British have an aversion to this connection rooted in their psyche since the Enlightenment period and the experience of Northern Ireland. The British working classes have been fed the notion of fairness that spawns not irrational nativism about contributing before claiming welfare benefits ~ even the established immigrant communities grumble about the pressure on local services by outsiders.

Add to this the paranoias of foreigners buying local football clubs, streets of London and the perception that many jobs are going to India. Big religious festivities on high street blocking traffic, loud speaking on the tube, absence of an observing body, space rules, queueing ~ all the habits including public spitting in addition to rapid import of tuberculosis incense the local residents. Yet many turn up in hundreds to support the Indian Mela and the Notting Hill Festival to celebrate diversity.

Repeated British attitude surveys suggest continuing support for counter-racism measures amongst a significant part of the population, particularly the young.

Though the spatial ethnic segregation is decreasing, albeit slowly, as the Whites move where the Black and Brown people settle, there is increasing social contact at work between ethnic groups, off-work integration is not increasing even among the young.

Market-driven housing segregation is partly a function of free market and affordability and partly the need to be near kith and kin. This leads to segregation in schooling.

The demand for approvals of faith schools has sparked a debate about the state utilising its funds to fund new-faith Hindu, Sikh and Muslim schools, a development lamented by people like Professor Gundara. He argues that state-sponsored segregation is not justified on the grounds of race or religion as separate is not equal.

Fostering cohesion for integration has become a dominant discourse in public policy over equality with often poorly thought-through suggestions by local authorities of abolishing mother-tongue teaching and bilingual translation and redeploying resources aimed at tackling discrimination.

In its 30-year of post-war multiculturalism and fair society experiment, Britain has become a tossed-salad society as opposed to a melting pot ~ rather similar to the USA. Nevertheless, it is a society with high-levels of security, reasonable political and economic integration for its minorities with varied affiliations to the country.

Major questions remain. Is integration achieveable or is peaceful co-existence a realistic goal? Looking at India and Canada, the latter is more likely, at least for a few generations. Some British ethnic communities such as Jews in the past century and more recently the Caribbean communities with strong cultural similarity with local cultures have biologically integrated. The census figures suggest that intermarriage is increasing more speedily among educated Asians.
What the more difficult question for the policymakers in the UK need to struggle with is should the ethnic minorities integrate within what the conservative party has called a broken society with a crises of values.
A related question is what British identity the ethnic communities should aspire to, given the ephemeral, situational and fluid as well as historically hyphenated nature of such an identity. There is some evidence that minority youth tend to define British identity in terms of values such as compassion, fairplay and rule of law and its tolerance as opposed to other physical or jingoistic manifestations. This may be the key to future development as these are universally desirable values.
Can policymakers manage the diversity economic advantage of the UK without increasing disharmony, welfare costs and without compromising its tryst with liberalism?

(The author, an international consultant on diversity management and cohesion, is the author of Britain's Black Populations.)