No handshake can hide hostility Indians face on Britain’s streets

Before trade talks, Narendra Modi must urge Keir Starmer to reckon with Britain’s treatment of Indian migrants.

Ahead of United Kingdom Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s India visit, we must ask: What does it mean to dream of a future together when the past and present injustices remain unaddressed?

Britain speaks of a ‘Vision 2035’ partnership with India, yet the question that must precede trade, technology, and energy is one of moral reckoning. What does it mean to promise friendship while Indians continue to face hostility on Britain’s streets and in workplaces? Prime Minister Narendra Modi must ask these questions, holding Britain accountable for the treatment of Indians on its soil.

Colonial hierarchies did not vanish with Independence. They linger in subtle exclusion, in the machinery of labour policies, in the ways communities are policed, judged, and rendered invisible. Britain extracted not only wealth but dignity, opportunity, and narrative. Goods worth trillions of rupees were taken, yet the echoes remain in the lived realities of Indians in the UK today. Structural racism, Islamophobia, and social invisibility are the unpaid interest on that debt, accumulating quietly in hospitals, offices, and streets across the UK.

Just days before the September 13 far-Right marches, a British-born Sikh woman in her twenties was subjected to a racially aggravated rape in Oldbury. During the attack, assailants reportedly shouted, “You don’t belong in this country, get out.” In August, the Indian Aroma restaurant in East London was set ablaze, injuring five. In Peacehaven, a mosque was attacked and set on fire.

These are not anomalies. They reflect a society that has yet to confront the legacy of empire, a society still deciding who belongs and who does not. The far-Right Reform UK is allegedly shaping government policy strategically, and instead of resisting, the Labour government flows in the same river, letting hostility and exploitation run unchecked.

The people most vital to Britain’s functioning are often its most invisible. Indian doctors, nurses, care workers, and service staff work long shifts, often taking on multiple jobs, holding institutions together, caring for locals while away from their own families, and filling roles few others will. Their labour is treated as an expectation, not respect earned. Essential yet precarious, indispensable yet undervalued, they bridge gaps in public services, sustain care that would otherwise collapse, and support communities that deny them recognition and security.

New Labour immigration policies proposing voluntary hours on top of already gruelling work echo modern slavery. Extra hours are framed as owed, without recognition or recompense, reflecting historic exploitation. This expectation is neither neutral nor fair. It is racist and xenophobic, targeting immigrants while exempting the wider workforce. Even highly qualified Indian professionals face this scrutiny. Discrimination is structural, identity-based, and linked to colonial and racial hierarchies that have long devalued Indian lives.

The country remains, in Starmer’s own questionable words, an “island of strangers”, yet it is these same strangers who sustain it. Migrants are often betrayed by unscrupulous agents, promised legality only to be trapped in illegality. Britain punishes victims rather than traffickers. Justice demands rehabilitation, protection, and recognition, a moral responsibility the State continues to evade.

Divisive politics is being used to pit Hindus against Muslims in the UK, exploiting age-old communal anxieties. Figures like Tommy Robinson are manipulating historical fear and stereotypes to create tension between communities, amplifying hostility, and justifying exclusionary policies that mirror the colonial ‘divide and rule’ logic. As social cohesion fractures, collective grievances are ignored, and communities are turned against each other, echoing patterns of control that once underwrote the Empire. Fear of deportation, restrictive visa conditions, and limited legal support leave many Indians hesitant to speak out. Women, often bearing the brunt of both workplace and community discrimination, and internal divisions by language, region, caste, or religious practice, further fragment communities, making collective action nearly impossible.

History is not behind us. It lives in every insult, attack, and policy that undervalues and isolates Indians in the UK. Vision 2035 cannot exist without justice in 2025, which requires protection, structural reform, and acknowledgement of past and ongoing wrongs. Anything less is colonial extraction in new clothes. This reckoning is ethical, not just political. Britain owes its Indian residents recognition, dignity, and safety, a society where their labour and presence are valued, and reparations for those imperilled by hate and exploitative policies. It also has a moral obligation to implement affirmative action beyond reparations.

No trade deal, technological collaboration, or handshake can replace recognising humanity. Britain cannot lead or partner while those who sustain it are treated as disposable. Vision 2035 is meaningless if Indians in 2025 remain at risk, their labour exploited, their dignity denied.

Justice must come before ambition, because history and humanity will not forgive avoidance of accountability. The rhetoric of the Commonwealth rings hollow when Indians are harassed, assaulted, and even burned in the country that claims shared heritage.

Pragya Akhilesh Crosdil is a trade unionist.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)