what i said about british pakistanis a long time ago

jul 31st

i can take some credit for recognizing that the british pakistanis were a class apart quite some time ago.

here's an excerpt from what i wrote on sept 4, 2001, yes, even before 9/11: http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/sep/04rajeev.htm

Despite all the noise made by the 'South-Asia'-wallahs, there is no monolithic culture that encompasses the entire subcontinent. The Muslim cultures of Pakistan and Bangladesh are worlds apart from the composite Indic (Hindu-Buddhist-Jain-Sikh) culture of India. This is evident from the recent race riots in the industrial northern towns of Britain: grim places like Bradford, Barnsley, Oldham, some of which I have had the dubious pleasure of visiting because my sister, a doctor, used to work there.

What is happening in Britain? It is as close to a controlled social experiment as it gets. There is a clear distinction between ghettoized Pakistani- and Bangladeshi-origin, ill-educated, unemployed youth who are rioting in the streets and upwardly-mobile, well-educated, bankers, lawyers and other professionals of Indian origin. As I suggested some time ago in my column, 'Why I am not a South Asian,' Indian-origin Britishers resent being lumped in with these delinquent Pakistani/Bangladeshi types, and they are now vocal about it, too.

With good reason. There is a large gap. The British Indians, like Jewish immigrants in the US, respect education and have strong family values that encourage hard work; they rise through sheer determination and effort. British Pakistanis, like some inner-city blacks and to an extent Hispanics in the US, have become a permanent underclass, hopeless and self-destructive: for often the businesses they destroy through rioting are their own.

According to The Economist of July 14, 2001, 'As well as being the most segregated communities, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis suffer some of Britain's worst poverty and unemployment, and do among the worst in school (Indian pupils, by contrast, do the best).'

Why this gulf between the Indians and the Pakistanis/Bangladeshis? If you were to listen to the 'South-Asia' bleeding-hearts pontificating, you'd believe there was this great commonality between Indians and other subcontinentals. I, on the contrary, have maintained for years that I have absolutely nothing in common with Pakistanis. The experience of the British subcontinentals is scientific support for that sentiment.

The Indians and the Pakistanis originally came to the United Kingdom subject to the very same handicaps: those related to racism and discrimination. Indeed, the British tend to be more racist and obnoxious towards Hindus rather than towards Muslims, because at the very least they can understand Islam, it being quite the twin of their own Christianity, whereas Hinduism is a bewildering and chaotic Other.

Furthermore, we saw during Partition the British desire to help Pakistan: they gave away to Pakistan, against all logic, the Hindu-Sikh-majority city of Lahore; and in Gilgit, British-led Gilgit Scouts raised the Pakistani flag despite its being part of Jammu & Kashmir that had acceded legally to India.

In any case, British subcontinentals toiled away for years, but their destinies could not be more different. The Muslims tended to have far more babies, not to educate their children, and to easily become fundamentalists: for instance there is the curious case of British Pakistani Aurangazeb who 'innocently wandered over the Line of Control into India,' which is Orwellian doublespeak meaning 'terrorist infiltrator.' The Hindus and Sikhs, on the other hand, prospered and moved out of the ghettos in the grimy industrial towns. The obvious difference: religion.