Inside a fallen empire

COUNTER COLONISATION

I

n 2007, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of India’s independence, the UK hosted the ‘India Now’ festival. At its inauguration, a huge replica of the Taj Mahal floated down the river Thames in London. ‘India Now’ aimed to celebrate the best of India with an explosion of ragas and Bollywood beats and various events, exhibitions and street festivals. Around 200 cultural organisations were involved, including some of London's best known museums and galleries. Some 10 lakh people took part.

The event wanted to promote everything that is good about multiculturalism in a country where the Indian diaspora has a significant presence. Its contribution to Britain is tangible. Many second and third generation people of Indian descent have made their presence felt in all areas of British society, from business, politics and cinema to the arts and media.

It is no exaggeration to say that the ethnic Indian community in the UK punches above its weight in many respects.

Before the British Commonwealth Immigration Acts of 1962 and 1968, Indian nationals had an unrestricted right to enter the UK. Many settled in London and cities like Bradford, Leicester and Birmingham. By 2007, the ethnic Indian community stood at 13 lakh, out of an overall UK population of 6 crore.

Indian ‘mela’

One of the most obvious geographical starting points for a discussion about what some like to call India’s ‘quasi-colonisation’ of the UK is London’s Brick Lane, fondly known as ‘Banglatown’. The area became a place to settle for Bangladeshi seafarers and dockworkers during the 1920s and 1930s. From 1947 onwards, it became a centre for thousands of other South Asian immigrants and their families. In London, there are also many other areas that are home to large populations of South Asians, including Hounslow, Southall and East Ham.

Other British cities have their own ‘little Indias’ as well, including Rusholme
in Manchester, Handsworth in Birmingham and Hyson Green in Nottingham. Leicester’s Diwali celebrations are legendary and are often said to be the biggest outside of India. Leicester is a small city with around 3 lakh inhabitants, but it boasts a staggering 22 Hindu temples, 28 mosques, 7 Sikh Gurdwaras and a Jain temple.

Indian culture therefore has a broad presence across the country. In fact, last week saw the Indian Film Festival of London, hot on the heels of the London Mela and the Glasgow Mela. From Blackburn to Bradford and far beyond, countless other events occur up and down the country throughout the year to celebrate the culture of the subcontinent.
However, in the UK, you don’t have to attend a South Asian mela, meander around Birmingham or Leicester, or go to the local Indian restaurant to be found on every high street in the country in order to get a feel for India.

Fast communications, mass media and easy travel conspire to influence trends, fashions and perceptions like never before. People across Britain are affected by many things Indian, whether Bollywood music, henna painting or food, which have become part of British popular culture. Indeed, a number of surveys have indicated that ‘curry,’ chicken tikka in particular, is Britain's favourite dish. These days, naan bread and samosas are almost as British as ‘fish’n‘chips’.

Who is the big brother?

Shilpa Shetty's appearance on Big Brother in the UK a few years back and films like Slumdog Millionaire or Monsoon Wedding also impact the British pysche quite heavily. When the average Brit thinks of India these days, thanks to the media, there is a good chance he or she will think of poverty, glitzy song and dance film performances, call centres and India’s IT industry. Of course, interest increases in all things Indian whenever a Bollywood blockbuster or superstar achieves prominence in the UK. Marketers subsequently have a field day promoting and cashing in on the latest fad, whether jewellery, music, dance or some other facet of Indian culture.

It’s not that everyone in the UK has suddenly become overwhelmed by Indian culture and has turned into a raging Indophile and wants to travel to India or delve into the cultural traditions of the country. They don’t. In a use-and-throw consumer culture, ‘brand India’ tends only to scratch the veneer of public consciousness, which has an ever diminishing attention span and yearns to be titillated by the next fetish to be commodified and shoved down the throat by an all pervasive marketing industry.

If the Brits possess cosy notions of South Asian exotica and an associated universe of easily accessible supermarket packaged chicken korma meals, melas, mehendi, market stall bangles and bindis and freshly cooked basmati, there is something harsher about India that Brits find a little harder to swallow, namely the outsourcing of UK jobs and India’s increasing impact as a rising economic power.

People are acutely aware that in India there is a huge reserve army of cheap, well educated labour waiting in the wings to do their jobs. No sector seems safe from outsourcing. While there is little hostility towards India itself over this, the UK government and big corporations are often blamed for selling workers’ down the river, or to be more precise, their jobs to the lowest bidder in the subcontinent.

At the same time, Indian firms are buying up prominent parts of British industry. The direct investment agency ‘Think London’ states that, after the US, India was the biggest foreign investor in the UK’s capital city between 2003 and 2007. Moreover, the two biggest acquisitions for India globally have involved the UK —Vodafone’s $11 billion acquisition of Hutchison and Tata’s $12 billion acquisition of Corus.

Tata also owns the legendary UK car brands Jaguar and Land Rover. In 2000, Tata bought another well known UK company, Tetley Tea, one of the largest overseas acquisitions by an Indian company at the time.

A special relationship

While some may like to suggest we are heading for an Indian Raj, with Britain being subservient to India, Lord Navneet Dholakia of the Liberal Democrats Party told the British upper house of parliament in 2009 that Indian companies are not coming to the UK to establish Indian rule. In his view, they can help show a way out of the dire economic predicament in which the UK currently finds itself. Dholakia’s light-hearted comments came after figures released by the British government showed India is the second largest investor in Britain. Business projects created or brought in by Indian investments number 108 — behind the US’s 621 and ahead of France’s 101.

But let’s not get carried away. The UK is the largest European investor in India and the fourth largest internationally with around $6 billion of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) stock in 2008. Indian FDI stock in the UK stood at $5.32 billion at the end of 2008. Things are almost on an even keel. As long as the elites in both countries continue to rake in profits, you’ll not see either having a panic attack any time soon. The trick for both countries will be to keep the bulk of their respective populations in line if or when their jobs disappear over the horizon in a cut throat world of easily moveable capital and low cost labour.

In attempting to come to terms with the loss of its empire, Britain has for a long time been engaged in an ongoing conversation with itself about its place in the world. Indeed, to some extent, India is integral to this debate. The discussion is laced with confusion over the UK’s national identity and notions of ‘Britishness’ and is further complicated by the backdrop of multiculturalism as a result of the mass immigration that occurred from South Asia and elsewhere.

As if to underline its fading power and identity crisis, the UK also has to get to grips with the possibility of its former colony out-muscling it as a key global player. Some Brits may thus regard India with a hint of envy, but, given the historical links, such envy may be overshadowed by an even greater sense of loss.

As a fallen empire, Britain has been happy to align itself closely with the US and become a client state. Perhaps in doing so, it is trying to fool itself that it can still wield significant influence on the world stage. In terms of the UK’s bond with India, British politicians talk of a ‘special relationship.’  The same politicians however also often talk of Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the US. But that is more illusory than real.

Despite the obvious cultural ties and colonial past, maybe the ‘special relationship’ with India, an association often referred to as an ‘equal partnership,’ may turn out to be mere illusion too. As India continues to gain global economic influence, it might well be that the UK will eventually need India more than India needs the UK.

That’s certainly how things have turned out in terms of Britain’s relationship with the US, another of its former colonies. Who is to say it couldn’t happen again –  with India?