For The Tribune | October 24, 1976
Republished in The Statesman | January 2, 1977
We were standing at the bar sipping pints of bitter. The pub was rather special. Indian owned and Indian patronized, "The Oxford" stood in the seedy harbour front area of Southampton. The area around it was peopled by working class Indian immigrants. We were there because I had persuaded my host, to show me this symbol of the Indian presence.
The pub was as run down as the general area. There were no comely barmaids behind the counter to joke with; a couple of Sikh youths took the orders. A juke box in the corner blared loud Indian music from Lata to Punjabi folk tunes. For snacks, there were Indian salties of various kinds.
One by one the men drifted in; cheap macks and Lenin like peak caps proclaimed the factory hand. The odd Sikh who still sported a beard and turban also looked somewhat bedraggled. The starch in his pointed turban and in his spirit seemed to have been washed out by the climate and the country. Both dropped a little.
Soon the pub was full. Drinks were offered and exchanged. Little discussions started, warmed up and became argumentative in typical Indian fashion. These had to spawn at least one quarrel. Four or five men were drinking and talking excitedly at the other end of the bar. Suddenly one of them started shouting at another, "Oe you, what do you think of yourself? Don't get swollen headed, because you have done a few classes in school. What use are they to you here? Was it not I who got you into England? Did I not get you your first job"?
The charge was answered. Soon others joined in to separate the first two. This only led to more arguments. The barmen were unruffled. This seemed a common occurrence. After a while tempers subsided and every one went back to his drink.
In one corner sat three young Englishmen with a couple of Indians. My friend hazarded the guess, that they were some kind of political workers. Soon one of them, who had been eyeing us – we were obviously not part of the scene – came over and started a conversation. They were workers of some kind of socialist persuasion, and were anxious to organize the Indian worker for the defence of his rights. They felt that he was given less than equal treatment, and unless he organized himself, he was going to be in even more trouble in the future.
With a continuing depression in the economy and rising unemployment, the foreign worker was bound to become the target of all frustrations. Said one; "The slogan will be simple: a million unemployed and a million Blacks in the country. Get rid of them and your troubles are over".
They wanted to educate the Indian worker about the falsity of this notion, and to prepare him for the future, which did not seem too bright. I asked them how they were getting on. Their faces showed how poorly. One of them looked around at the arguing crowd around us, smiled sadly and said: "They just don't comprehend the situation as it is developing".
They questioned us, probed a little, and finally made the request; would we help organize the Indian workers? I batted the idea away with the reply that we were just visitors. Disappointed, they thanked us for the chat, and went back to their group, which was obviously engaged in an intense discussion about their future programme.
We drove back to my friend's home in one of the upper class suburbs. They are the only Indian family in the neighbourhood. By a conscious decision they had decided to avoid getting stuck into an Indian ghetto. As far as I was able to see they were accepted and welcomed. Both were in the civil service and led quiet unostentatious lives, in the English fashion. Sensitive to their neighbours with desire for privacy and quiet, they were not in the habit of organizing vast noisy gatherings of their friends and relatives, of which there are a fair number in England.
The neighbours for their part, did them the usual friendly services. One advised and helped him making a little extension to the house; another would sometimes fetch his daughters from school along with his own, and a third might keep an eye on his house while the family was away on vacation.
More than this, no man can ask of another in the West. The couple had no complaints, and were in fact pleased that they had not tried to stick defensively with their own kind. Their view was that if you had chosen to be in England surely you had to become a bit of an Englishman too.
Their living in a White suburb did not in any way restrict their relations with the Punjabi community. They were fully involved in its problems and future prospects. They just did not feel the need to give way, to a siege mentality, and to bunch together in a tightly knit, outward facing apprehensive group. "Why should we?" he argued "If we huddle together we only create for the English a local point on which to focus their apprehensions of the strangers in their midst.
Among our own people: surrounded as they then are by familiar faces, we lessen the desire to understand and respect the ways of the locals – something essential for any migrant to a new cultural environment. Do not our history books accuse the English of having been insensitive to our way of life during the days of the Raj? Is it not possible that we in England may be guilty of the same offence?"
For six days of the week my friend was an Englishman with a civil service job and a quiet suburban life. The seventh he gave to the service of the Sikh community. On Sunday, I was taken to Gurdwara Nanaksar Southampton. A brick built church, sold out by the commercial minded British who had no further use for it, it had been brought up by the practical minded Sikhs, who saw in it an easy and quick way of establishing a Gurdwara. A large Gurmukhi board, and the yellow flag of the faith proclaimed its new owners. Inside the community had wisely put a false ceiling in the high roof. The top floor was given over to religious services; the lower served as a community centre for all the Indian residents of Southampton. Marriages, festive gatherings and political meetings were all held there.
The Sunday gathering was an occasion to pray a little, and to exchange news about home and of course the Punjab, in the doings of whose people they were intensely interested. For the women it was an occasion to have a decent gossip, to relieve the tedium of the long lonely week. The children were able to have a romp among familiar faces and surroundings. Leaders and well wishers of the community, like my civil service friend, used the occasion to educate the gathering about the problems facing them in this new promised land, and the ways of meeting them.
And, of course, every one could freely indulge himself for a while in the full and uninhibited use of his lusty and picturesque Punjabi. The Gurdwara has been the main social and psychological prop of the Punjabis abroad. No wonder they organise one even before they have a home. Today the distinctive yellow flag flies in practically every town, from Southampton in the South to Scotland in the North, and Wales in the West. And of course the Gurdwara also means hospitality: food, shelter, and help for a man in distress is freely given.
The Punjabi loves sports. Every village in the Punjab has its kabbaddi and wrestling matches. In England for a while their style was cramped. The struggle for existence left no time for sports. The traditional games also seemed difficult to organize in a somewhat hostile climate. But now they are somewhat better established, their love for games is beginning to assert itself. Once again the Gurdwara is the institution around which this activity is being organized. Their Managing Committees vie with each other in organizing kabaddi, wrestling, and sports meets.
Almost every week the Punjabi papers carry invitations for every one to participate in such gala occasions. Ignoring the bitter cold winds, they insist on turning out bare bodied, shoeless and in shorts to grapple in fiercely contested kabbaddi matches between inter-city teams.
In wrestling they had already found places in the British Olympic team for Munich. The Munich games in fact presented the strange sight of Sikhs representing India, Kenya, Malaysia and the U.K. In football too, our boys are beginning to get into junior league teams. One day one of them is sure to play for a team in the top English league. The English too are great lovers of sports, and some times I feel that perhaps a better understanding of each other by the two communities, will emerge on the sports field.
When I first visited Southall in 1967 life was much harder for the Indian immigrant. Most had jobs in factories – those too of the worst kind working in steel foundries, or the one connected with rubber. Though Southall had Indian owned shops, these were the exceptions rather than the rule. Eight years later I found a visible change and improvement. Many have moved upward in the social and business ladder. Most of them concentrated on the retail trade. The Southall Broadway is almost entirely Indian owned, and might legitimately be renamed the Southall Chaura Bazar. They sell everything from gold to household provisions and saris. The Indian owned shop is not found in Southall only; one runs into them in all odd corners of the country. I know a couple doing excellent business selling spices to the Dons in Cambridge.
The Indians' biggest conquest in England has been of the Englishman's palate. Yorkshire pudding and bully beef have given way before the onslaughts of rasmalai and murg masallam. There is not a town which does not boast an Indian restaurant.
Cambridge mourned the passing of the Taj Mahal opposite St. Johns like a minor tragedy. Many go to Southall of an evening for the pleasure of eating at the ‘Maharaja’. Many of the Dons were less concerned with my academic pursuits, and more with the idea of finding through me, if possible, a Maharaja for the city.
In the academic world too there has been a change. Time was, when Cambridge boasted of the presence of scions of rich Indian families, or the progeny of the I.C.S. Today all that has changed. Barring the odd one, the rich and the famous, no longer find it easy to keep up the family links with the University. The reserve bank see to that. But Indian students still populate the banks of the river Cam. I asked one at a reception where his home was? Back came his reply, Sheffield. I sought an explanation. He was a native of Britain, and was there on a country council grant, like any other student.
I know of sons of Indian working men, who were in the best public schools, including Eton and Harrow. In fact the Indians’ attraction for these two schools in particular fed on folk memories of Nehru and Churchill is touching. Having put a son in there, the Jullundur farmer feels he has well and truly exorcised the Devil of English superiority. And he is not far wrong. The Eton or the Cambridge man, black or white, still carries an invisible key to British society in his pocket.
But the hope for understanding acceptance and harmony of the vast majority lies in the State owned schools. I visited the one in Southall.
The head was English, the most popular teacher, a fully turbaned bearded Sikh from Amritsar. He taught a class that had British, Indian, Pakistani, and African students. His students accepted his appearance and his way. To educate them about each other’s cultures he made them do bhangra as well as rock-n-roll. How they loved to be dressed up in turbans and silken jackets. He organised them into doing little pictorial presentations about the cultures they come from. The child’s mind is open and receptive. It carries no barriers, as the old do. And it is here that dedicated teachers, English, Indian, African – all together – are trying to build an open, free and equal society for the Britain of tomorrow.
Seeing how the children of the Southall Schools representing all communities and continents, run free and friendly in the School grounds, I have no doubt that in the long run they will succeed.
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