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Britain`s Asians - upwardly mobile lot: Daily Excelsior
Srinagar, Feb 08: White Britain finds its nearly two million brown Asians confusing. Who are they?
Srinagar, Feb 08: White Britain finds its nearly two million brown Asians confusing. Who are they? Plump-cheeked Mr. Patel or Mr. Singh, delight of the colour supplements, proudly surveying the rows of cars, houses and privately educated children with which his hard work has been rewarded? Angry Muslims with beards and banners demanding death for Salman Rushdie? Tired women in backstreet sweatshops, their homes barricaded against racist attacks?
Each political camp picks-and uses-its stereotype. For the right, the entrepreneurial Asian is a lesson to all. In a message to the first issue of a new magazine, Asian Business Margaret Thatcher commended Asian shopkeepers, saying "I remember as a child how hard my parents had to work in their grocery shop." The left lumps Asians in with West Indians as blacks (an adjective that most Asians indignantly reject) oppressed by the white system.
Both sides are right, both wrong. Some of Britain’s browns are doing nicely, others not all so; and the disparities between Asian rich and poor are increasing. Nothing is special in that. But the Asians are far more diverse than the natives in their languages, cultures and background, whether geographic or economic. No wonder generalisations are hard to sustain.
Britain has long experience of Asian businessmen. The earliest colour supplement candidate was one Deen Mahomed, from Bihar, in eastern India, who arrived in 1884 as servant to an army officer, went into the steam-baths and herbal-cures business in Brighton and was appointed shampooing surgeon to George IV.
Most of the sub-continentals came in the 1960s, encouraged by news of labour shortages in Britain and pushed by poverty at home. Many were peasants who had never seen a city in their own country, let alone Britain; many were illiterate even in their own language. From Pakistan came Kashmiris, Punjabi Muslims and few Pathans; India provided mainly Punjabi Sikhs and Gujaratis. When Pakistan split in 1971, Bangladeshis started to arrive.
The newcomer went to big cities like London and Birmingham, and to Manchester, Leeds and Bradford, where the textile industry wanted cheap workers for the kind of jobs that whites had started to turn their noses up at. What West Indians did for the public sector, sub-continentals did for the private sector.
The Asians who came from East Africa in the early 1970s were quite different lot-well-off refugees from black-African rule, not fugitives from poverty. In 1969, 65 per cent of Kenya’s Asian workforce was white-collar, and more than a third of those were professionals or managers. Much the same was true in Uganda. It was as if Tunbridge Wells had been kicked out of Britain and taken refuge in the US.
For the businessmen, the first stop was the corner grocery, then the newsagent or chemist’s shop. From the single shop, they acquired chains, or bought and sold property. Ready to offer the all-night service that white proprietors would not, they bought up small hotels–the many around. Victoria station in London is nearly all Asian-owned–and then big ones.
Mr. Nazmu Virani arrived from Uganda in 1972. He started off doing night shifts in a Black & Decker factory. Nobody would let a shop to his family because they had no trade references; so in desperation he simply rang the doorbell of a landlord and persuaded the man to give him a chance. Today his company, Control Securities, has 23 hotels, 550 pubs, and acres of office and industrial space. At pound 83 million, his assets put him 81st on a Sunday Times list of Britain’s richest.
The Vohra family owns, among others, the Washington Hotel in Mayfair and the Rubens in Victoria. Mr. Jeswinder Singh owns the Edwardian Group of hotels in London. Mr. Shantoo Ruparell, a prominent Asian solicitor, recalls one of his clients buying her first hotel for pound 140,000 and weeping as she left the office, because she had put all she had in it. Now, he reckons, she is worth "at least pound 30m-40 million."
Mr. Arunbhai Patel, a Gujarati from East Africa who in 1987 bought the Finlays chain of 282 newsagents, explains the Asians’ eagerness for property. They choose it, he says, because they do not like handling over their cash to other people to manage. Their holdings are likely to increase, he reckons: "There was a time when the property auctions were dominated by Jews. These days, 80 per cent of those attending are Asians."
This Mr. Patel was the outstanding success among the thousands who run Britain’s corner shops until he came a cropper: Finlays has just been put into receivership. Though down he is not out, and there are plenty of others on their way up.
British banks have learned to recognise a good market in the Asians. Barclays gets some clients because of its extensive business in East Africa. Nat West won some because it had a (white) ex-Kenyan manager in London who knew the refugees when they arrived. The State Bank of India and the Bank of Baroda get Indian business. British Asians’ own banks – Equatorial Trust, Mount Credit Corporation and Roxborough Financial Services – are growing.
The rags to riches stories are impressive; though often the ragged period was brief. The Viranis, for instance, were one of the wealthiest families in Uganda, already owning property in London. They took though jobs when they arrived because they did not believe in spending capital. Yet past wealth or success only partly explains success today; many now doing well were not so before.
Helping each other helps. All Asians belong to a community. Hindus have castes, sanctified by religion; Sikhs, whose religion is more egalitarian, prefer not to call them castes, though they differ little; a Pakistani Muslim has his beradari, a patrilineal kinship group.
Mr. Ruparell is president of the National Congress of Britain’s 110 Gujarati organisations and a former president of the Lohana community, the second largest after the Patels. There are around 40,000 Lohanas in Britain. "We usually have 2,000 people at our weddings, but that is only because there isn’t room for the others." Mr. Ruparell cites a Lohana sub-postmaster who was held up in 1987 for embezzling pound 30,000. As his lawyer, Mr. Ruparell said he would have a better chance of getting a lenient sentence if he paid the money back. The man had already spent it. Within two days members of the community had lent him the money.
Closeness, Asians point out, means competition. If the community meets regularly at temple, mosque or gurdwara, everyone knows how everyone else is doing. There is pressure, not always comfortable, to succeed. Not that all succeed alike. Both Indians and Pakistanis, according to census figures, are socially mobile: 57 per cent of whites and 54 per cent of West Indians stayed in the same class from the 1991 census to that of 2001 only 42 per cent of Indians and 37 per cent of Pakistanis. But while a few more Indians moved up than down, more Pakistanis moved down than up. And 19 per cent of Pakistanis became unemployed, against 14 per cent of Indians, 8 per cent West Indians and 5 per cent of whites.
Racial prejudice has helped keep them down. Any survey of job applications shows that an Asian has less chance of getting an interview than does white person. Ironically, racism may also have helped other Asian’s success. Some businessmen say they started up on their own partly in order to avoid discrimination.
Despite the Asians’ economic and social diversity, one thing is common to nearly all of them: their separateness from whites. Their shops and restaurants may have white customers, but Asian business is pretty self-contained. When Mr. Nazmu Virani wants to sell property, he goes straight to a mosque or temple – "just as the Jews used to go to the synagogue to do their business". The clients waiting to see Mr. Ruparell and Sikh partner in their Ealing office when the writer called were all Asian. The majority, attending state schools, have to put up with the present in the daytime and the past at home.
Each political camp picks-and uses-its stereotype. For the right, the entrepreneurial Asian is a lesson to all. In a message to the first issue of a new magazine, Asian Business Margaret Thatcher commended Asian shopkeepers, saying "I remember as a child how hard my parents had to work in their grocery shop." The left lumps Asians in with West Indians as blacks (an adjective that most Asians indignantly reject) oppressed by the white system.
Both sides are right, both wrong. Some of Britain’s browns are doing nicely, others not all so; and the disparities between Asian rich and poor are increasing. Nothing is special in that. But the Asians are far more diverse than the natives in their languages, cultures and background, whether geographic or economic. No wonder generalisations are hard to sustain.
Britain has long experience of Asian businessmen. The earliest colour supplement candidate was one Deen Mahomed, from Bihar, in eastern India, who arrived in 1884 as servant to an army officer, went into the steam-baths and herbal-cures business in Brighton and was appointed shampooing surgeon to George IV.
Most of the sub-continentals came in the 1960s, encouraged by news of labour shortages in Britain and pushed by poverty at home. Many were peasants who had never seen a city in their own country, let alone Britain; many were illiterate even in their own language. From Pakistan came Kashmiris, Punjabi Muslims and few Pathans; India provided mainly Punjabi Sikhs and Gujaratis. When Pakistan split in 1971, Bangladeshis started to arrive.
The newcomer went to big cities like London and Birmingham, and to Manchester, Leeds and Bradford, where the textile industry wanted cheap workers for the kind of jobs that whites had started to turn their noses up at. What West Indians did for the public sector, sub-continentals did for the private sector.
The Asians who came from East Africa in the early 1970s were quite different lot-well-off refugees from black-African rule, not fugitives from poverty. In 1969, 65 per cent of Kenya’s Asian workforce was white-collar, and more than a third of those were professionals or managers. Much the same was true in Uganda. It was as if Tunbridge Wells had been kicked out of Britain and taken refuge in the US.
For the businessmen, the first stop was the corner grocery, then the newsagent or chemist’s shop. From the single shop, they acquired chains, or bought and sold property. Ready to offer the all-night service that white proprietors would not, they bought up small hotels–the many around. Victoria station in London is nearly all Asian-owned–and then big ones.
Mr. Nazmu Virani arrived from Uganda in 1972. He started off doing night shifts in a Black & Decker factory. Nobody would let a shop to his family because they had no trade references; so in desperation he simply rang the doorbell of a landlord and persuaded the man to give him a chance. Today his company, Control Securities, has 23 hotels, 550 pubs, and acres of office and industrial space. At pound 83 million, his assets put him 81st on a Sunday Times list of Britain’s richest.
The Vohra family owns, among others, the Washington Hotel in Mayfair and the Rubens in Victoria. Mr. Jeswinder Singh owns the Edwardian Group of hotels in London. Mr. Shantoo Ruparell, a prominent Asian solicitor, recalls one of his clients buying her first hotel for pound 140,000 and weeping as she left the office, because she had put all she had in it. Now, he reckons, she is worth "at least pound 30m-40 million."
Mr. Arunbhai Patel, a Gujarati from East Africa who in 1987 bought the Finlays chain of 282 newsagents, explains the Asians’ eagerness for property. They choose it, he says, because they do not like handling over their cash to other people to manage. Their holdings are likely to increase, he reckons: "There was a time when the property auctions were dominated by Jews. These days, 80 per cent of those attending are Asians."
This Mr. Patel was the outstanding success among the thousands who run Britain’s corner shops until he came a cropper: Finlays has just been put into receivership. Though down he is not out, and there are plenty of others on their way up.
British banks have learned to recognise a good market in the Asians. Barclays gets some clients because of its extensive business in East Africa. Nat West won some because it had a (white) ex-Kenyan manager in London who knew the refugees when they arrived. The State Bank of India and the Bank of Baroda get Indian business. British Asians’ own banks – Equatorial Trust, Mount Credit Corporation and Roxborough Financial Services – are growing.
The rags to riches stories are impressive; though often the ragged period was brief. The Viranis, for instance, were one of the wealthiest families in Uganda, already owning property in London. They took though jobs when they arrived because they did not believe in spending capital. Yet past wealth or success only partly explains success today; many now doing well were not so before.
Helping each other helps. All Asians belong to a community. Hindus have castes, sanctified by religion; Sikhs, whose religion is more egalitarian, prefer not to call them castes, though they differ little; a Pakistani Muslim has his beradari, a patrilineal kinship group.
Mr. Ruparell is president of the National Congress of Britain’s 110 Gujarati organisations and a former president of the Lohana community, the second largest after the Patels. There are around 40,000 Lohanas in Britain. "We usually have 2,000 people at our weddings, but that is only because there isn’t room for the others." Mr. Ruparell cites a Lohana sub-postmaster who was held up in 1987 for embezzling pound 30,000. As his lawyer, Mr. Ruparell said he would have a better chance of getting a lenient sentence if he paid the money back. The man had already spent it. Within two days members of the community had lent him the money.
Closeness, Asians point out, means competition. If the community meets regularly at temple, mosque or gurdwara, everyone knows how everyone else is doing. There is pressure, not always comfortable, to succeed. Not that all succeed alike. Both Indians and Pakistanis, according to census figures, are socially mobile: 57 per cent of whites and 54 per cent of West Indians stayed in the same class from the 1991 census to that of 2001 only 42 per cent of Indians and 37 per cent of Pakistanis. But while a few more Indians moved up than down, more Pakistanis moved down than up. And 19 per cent of Pakistanis became unemployed, against 14 per cent of Indians, 8 per cent West Indians and 5 per cent of whites.
Racial prejudice has helped keep them down. Any survey of job applications shows that an Asian has less chance of getting an interview than does white person. Ironically, racism may also have helped other Asian’s success. Some businessmen say they started up on their own partly in order to avoid discrimination.
Despite the Asians’ economic and social diversity, one thing is common to nearly all of them: their separateness from whites. Their shops and restaurants may have white customers, but Asian business is pretty self-contained. When Mr. Nazmu Virani wants to sell property, he goes straight to a mosque or temple – "just as the Jews used to go to the synagogue to do their business". The clients waiting to see Mr. Ruparell and Sikh partner in their Ealing office when the writer called were all Asian. The majority, attending state schools, have to put up with the present in the daytime and the past at home.
The children’s reactions, according to a white observer of Bradford’s Muslims, fall into four categories. A tiny minority want to abandon Asian ways altogether for western ones; an equally small number go off t