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Britishness IV: Indian Britons – Food for Thought

Kevin Massy - 11/8/2005

The first-time lunch guest to the Brent Indian Community Centre (BICC) in West London is left in no doubt regarding what not to expect on the menu.
“The consumption of alcohol or meat including eggs and fish is strictly prohibited throughout the whole building,” declares a prominent sign in the Centre's reception room. As well as the prohibitive and cautionary, the walls display a range of notices on everything from the "Asian Pensioners Luncheon Club" meetings to tabula classes and photocopying services – all written both in English and Gujerati. An musty aroma of spices hangs in the air, and ladies dressed variously in saris and Levi’s wait at the entrance talking to each other in a language other than English.


I have come here this rainy Saturday afternoon to see Naginbhai Mistry, the chairman of the BICC, to get a view on Britishness from a representative of the Indian community – widely known in Britain as "Asians", and by far the UK’s largest ethnic minority group. According to figures from the UK's Office for National Statistics, nearly half a million Indians live in the south east of England – more than three times the number of any other region in Britain – and of these, the vast majority are concentrated here in the west London boroughs of Brent, Ealing and Harrow.

An image of the Hindu god Shiva presides over the door leading to the main part of the BICC, through which a stream of energetic children are beginning to issue to meet their waiting parents, and begin the weekend in earnest.

“Please sit and have a breath,” says Mr Mistry graciously, a luxury that he cannot afford himself as he rushes backwards and forwards under Shiva’s doorway, sidestepping the traffic of oncoming children.

Having coordinated the arrangements for the following day’s outing to the seaside, Mr Mistry invites me in to his office and apologises for the wait. He is an elderly man – “sixty plus” is the nearest to an actual figure he will disclose – with bright eyes and a peaceful, august demeanor. As a founder and full-time volunteer at the BICC, he is instrumental in its everyday workings, and talks enthusiastically about its “multicultural and multi-faith activities” in beautifully clipped sub-continental English.

“The BICC was set up initially for the Asian community, but after ten years we managed to persuade everyone that we should open the door to anybody who wished to integrate with the Asian community,” he explains. “The drama classes we provide are attended mostly by ‘whites’ – if I may be permitted to use that word – and the IT classes are also mixed with increasing numbers of Chinese people coming.”

He says that the centre operates only two rules – those already emblazoned on my memory prohibiting meat and alcohol on the premises. “There is the same treatment for everyone,” says Mr Mistry. “As long as people obey these simple rules, the centre is open to them. It is not exclusively for Asians.”

During the week the centre is run as a part-time supplementary school, providing maths and English classes for kids of any racial or religious background with special needs. At the weekends it is used for community-oriented events and for extra-curricula classes.

The group of children I had seen earlier, he tells me, were the “Mother Tongue” class, which meets every Saturday morning to learn Gujerati, the native language of the majority of British Indians in this part of the country.

“We take children from five years old and teach all the way up to GCSE level,” he says. “By teaching them the language, we hope that they will one day be able to read the [Hindu] scriptures and books in their original form, and it is also a preservation of their cultural identity and heritage. The course is very popular – at the moment we have over one hundred pupils.”

He says that most of the class learn Gujerati at home to varying degrees, and then come to the lessons to resolve any problems they have with the language, and “polish” their skills.

The staff at the centre must use English and Gujerati together to be able to teach the children, as for most of them, English is their first language.

“The majority of the children’s parents are first generation and consider themselves to be Indian, or ‘Brown English’,” says Mr Mistry. “But they see their kids, who have been born and brought up here, as being fully British.”

Although the majority of the adult members at the BICC do not consider themselves to be British, he says they are happy to live as loyal, law-abiding citizens as long as they can preserve elements of their Indian heritage.

“It is fine for everyone to say that newcomers to this country should give up their culture and exclusively adopt the British way of life, but you can’t forget that we have been brought up in a different culture. We can’t just wipe that out. We are here to stay, we have nowhere to go, and if we are going to stay we deserve equal rights, and to keep our own culture and talk in our own language.”

At odds with Trevor Phillips, he believes that integration can be achieved within a multicultural framework as long as people employ a degree of tolerance:

“I may not believe in Jesus Christ and you may not believe in Hare Krishna, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t sit at the same table.”

This simple philosophy is reflected all around him. His office walls display a picture of the Queen, another image of Shiva, and – perhaps most tellingly – countless photographs of people in the centre working and playing together.

“This centre is proof that the old culture of racism in the UK is slowly dying away,” he says. “People are saying that they don’t want to be part of a racist culture any more. In the next ten years this movement will flourish.”

However, while this model of harmony endures within the centre, Mr Mistry says that there are still many obstacles to overcome before Britain as a whole can claim to be an inclusive society with a common national identity. He admits that there is a level of acceptance of racism among Indians of his generation, which future generations of British Indians will not tolerate.

“I was recently speaking with a TV journalist who told me that she had instructions not to interview non-white people on camera,” he says dispassionately. “Although I may be fully entitled to be interviewed – I may have been born here and know the language perfectly – they will ignore me because I have brown skin. That is going to be a problem. My children are asking ‘why?, what’s wrong with brown skin?’”

He also notes that the issue of immigrants’ loyalty to the nation has been under the spotlight more in the last few years than at any time since he arrived in the UK in 1968. In the aftermath of 9/11 he says that the life of an immigrant from the Indian sub-continent has become significantly harder.

“Very often and especially recently when people hear the word ‘Asian’ they automatically think of Muslims.” There is, he says, a degree of resentment among members of the Hindu Indian community towards what he calls "British Muslim fanatics" who have brought a bad name to the Asian community.

Mr Mistry’s stance on the Britishness issue is epitomised in his attitude to Norman Tebbit’s cricket test, which suggests it is the responsibility of immigrants to support their adopted – rather than native – national sports team. Less vitriolic than Mr Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain (see part III of this series), he answers the question of national loyalty and integration with a question of his own.

“What about Nasser Hussien?” [The recently retired highly successful England cricket captain who was born in India], he asks with a triumphant, but benign smile. “I suppose Mr Tebbit should open his eyes.”

Cricket is clearly a passion of Mr Mistry’s, and he is encouraged to give me a lengthy synopsis of the state of the English county league, not least in its role in providing a forum for racial integration and shared identity.

“There are so many Indian cricketers coming up,” he states proudly. “If you look at Surrey and a lot of the northern sides, there are plenty of Asians coming through.”

While he concedes that there are not many Asians in the British football system, he is not too concerned.

“My children will see to that,” he says.