POPULAR singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan took time out from his recent UK tour to have a classical jam session with talented British based musicians at the University of Oxford music room named after him. They included guitarist and singer Rushil Ranjan and ace keyboardist Rekesh Chauhan, who played harmonium. “Exchanging musical notes with Rahat Fateh Ali Khan opened up a whole new musician in me. We both have a colossal love for our roots in classical music, so we were able to take rare compositions by his uncle, the great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and explore musical phrases with each other. I was incredibly touched by his humbleness,” said Rekesh.
NEW ZAFAR SHINES
A STANDOUT star from the latest season of popular music series Coke Studio is exciting newcomer Danyal Zafar. The singer showed all the star quality of his elder brother Ali Zafar with his appearances. His impressive turns on the series included the duet Muntazirwith Momina Mustehsan. Danyal is currently working on his debut album and aims to start releasing new material by the end of the year. The dashing youngstar will definitely be one to watch on the music scene and don’t be surprised if he follows his brother into acting.
ROMA’S MODERN FEEL
SINGER Roma Sagar told me romantic Bollywood songs have inspired her latest song Be My Lover and that she wanted to create something with a modern feel. That is why she got Bollywood lyricist Kunwar Juneja to write the song. Talking about what was on the way next she said: “I have a few projects ready and am just deciding which one to release next. It definitely will be something upbeat and feel good, as this is the frame of mind I am in currently. I may have to ask my fans what they would like.”
KHAN’S SECRET’S OUT
THE super secretive Aamir Khan is furious that this grainy glimpse of his hotly anticipated movie Thugs Of Hindostan has been leaked. Despite being blurry, it shows a medieval type look that has been compared to Game Of Thrones. The actor has now put up a ring of steel and beefed up security for the remainder of the shoot. The drama, also starring Amitabh Bachchan and Katrina Kaif, will be released Diwali 2018.
FAST FOOD SNAP
ALTHOUGH everyone is talking about Riz Ahmed’s historic win at the Emmy Awards, one of the standout moments happened after the event was over. Instead of going to a flashy party or five star restaurant to celebrate comedian Aziz Ansari went to a fast food burger joint and queued up with his Emmy award, which he got for writing. When fans asked him for a photo, he said “of course, let me go get the Emmy”. The comedian received his award for the superb Master Of None, which is available on Netflix.
A MEETING OF MINDS
ACTRESS Priyanka Chopra had a fan girl moment when she met Malala Yousafzai at a high profile event recently and praised her on social media. The Bollywood star described the young Nobel Peace Laureate as smart, incredible, inspiring, encouraging, funny and anundeniable force to be reckoned with. Priyanka also said of her: “You are a role model to all the girls and boys that want to make this world a better place for the future.” Talking of Priyanka she has a number of Hollywood films on the way and will start work on Quantico season three soon.
THE US president Donald Trump and billionaire businessman Elon Musk went to war on social media.
Geert Wilders brought the Dutch government down after less than a year. Nigel Farage scrambled to hold his Reform team together.
Populism is a potent political force – but this week demonstrated the power of populist politicians to destabilise themselves too.
A Trump-Musk break-up always was more a question of when, than if, given the egos involved. Musk criticised Trump for his large spending bill. Trump threatened retribution against Musk’s companies – knocking a sixth off the Tesla share price. Musk declared Trump would not be president without his money. “Such ingratitude,” he tweeted. Trump acolyte Steve Bannon declared that he wanted to see Musk deported.
Musk is the Citizen Kane of our times. Even having the biggest media megaphone of the age and the highest spending did not guarantee political success. Trump came to see Musk as a political liability, as growing mistrust of the erratic billionaire’s motives offset the power of his money.
Musk is much more toxic in Britain than America. That story can be told in three words – familiarity breeds contempt. Most people had no firm opinion of Musk before he bought Twitter three years ago. YouGov shows disapproval of Musk rocketing from 60 per cent to 70 per cent to 80 per cent over the past year.
Most British Twitter/X users feel he made the platform worse. No other platform did so much to amplify the misinformation and hatred that fuelled the racist riots. Reform voters had been the only pro-Musk segment post-riots, but Musk’s attack on Farage for refusing to embrace Tommy Robinson split the Reform voters against him too.
Twitter/X is a tinderbox – the irresponsibility of its ownership exacerbates the real and present danger it presents during any future flashpoint. Yet Musk’s relationship with Trump was a significant impediment to tackling this. The platform uses its relationship with the Trump administration as a shield, threatening the UK or EU governments if they intervened. The Trump-Musk break-up could offer a new opportunity to at least make the platform uphold its duties to remove unlawful content. It is awash with rape and deportation threats – which the Twitter/X’s broken complaints system usually defends. That is a breach of the platform’s legal duties to provide an equal service to women or to ethnic minorities.
Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf
The government recently announced its preferred candidate for the EHRC [Equality and Human Rights Commission] chair, Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson, who will now face parliamentary committee hearings. MPs should ask her whether the regulators’ legal powers apply when major platforms breach their duties.
The Washington social media war of words was in stark contrast to how Nigel Farage handled a twitterstorm within the Reform party.
His party chair, Zia Yusuf, declared it “dumb” for the party’s new MP to be asking the prime minister last week to ban the burqa. Yusuf then quit, declaring that trying to make Farage prime minister was no longer a good use of his time.
Farage gave a strikingly unTrumpian response. He empathised with the racism that Yusuf has faced as a Muslim public voice – though attributing much of it to ‘Indian bots’ deflected attention from the racism within the online right.
Farage’s emollience was rewarded. Yusuf declared his resignation was a mistake. He even implausibly claimed he would probably vote to ban the burqa himself. He told the Today programme that Reform would deport 1.2 million illegal migrants – a patently impossible pledge, even if there were that many people without secure legal status. Yusuf moving towards the party’s base might signal an ambition to be a Reform general election candidate.
Farage handled the crisis with skill: reinforcing his rejection of the overtly racist fringe, while hardening the party line on integration. Yusuf was not offered his old job as party chair back. He will volunteer, instead, as chair of a “DOGE” [Department of Government Efficiency] taskforce, named in tribute to Musk.
Reform have talked up Yusuf as having “professionalised” the party from a low base. Yet the DOGE initiative could hardly have begun more unprofessionally. Yusuf declared a ‘gotcha’ moment – claiming to have found Kent County Council spending £87 million a year on recruitment advertising. This was an absurdly false claim. Former Kent County Council leader, Roger Gough, pointed out that Yusuf had simply not understood the document. Kent was raising revenue by hosting a national framework, yet Yusuf had attributed any possible spending across England as profligacy by the council.
Whether his mistake was unwitting or more cynical, it resonated by confirming the biases of Reform’s supporters. How long it takes Yusuf to retract his mistaken Week One headline claim is now a simple good faith test of whether the DOGE process attempts to be at all credible.
Yusuf is presented by Reform as the professional among populists – that may demonstrate just how untested the party’s credentials to provide a potential government still are.
Sunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration.
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Priya Mulji with participants at a Thailand retreat
I turned 43 recently, and it was the best birthday of my life. Special for so many reasons. For the first time since my twenties, I spent my birthday abroad. (In case you were wondering – Phuket, Thailand.)
Last year, I impulsively booked myself onto my friend Urvashi’s mind, body and soul expansion experience. Since then, life has taken some unexpected turns – including being made redundant from my day job – so this trip could not have come at a better time.
Before leaving, I was apprehensive. I had never been to East Asia. Would I like it? Would I get on with the other women? Should I really be going on a two-week trip without a job? What vaccinations would I need? Would the street food give me Delhi belly?
I need not have worried. Within the first day, all my fears melted away. The group of women on the trip were inspiring – each there for her own reasons – and across the week, I connected with them in unique and beautiful ways.
We ranged in age from 37 to 53. Some of us were single, others married with grown-up children. Some were high-flying execs, others unemployed.
But there was no sense of hierarchy – no “I’m better than you.” Just acceptance.
It was a trip of firsts. I got up at 5.30am on my birthday to do a four-kilometre mountain hike to see the Big Buddha. I got in a kayak and floated in the middle of the ocean, despite being a terrible swimmer. I took a Thai cooking class and finally learned how to make some of my favourite dishes.
But the biggest lesson from this impactful trip was this: it is so important to find people who bring good energy, who listen without judgment. Surround yourself with those who offer wisdom and support, not force their opinions on you. Who remind you that you are respected. That you are loved.
For anyone feeling lost, unloved, or unsure of how to navigate life, know that your tribe might be out there, waiting to meet you in the most unexpected of places. I found a new sisterhood in just one week. So take a chance. Step out of your comfort zone. Do something you never imagined doing.
I will leave you with the words of Usha, who was on the trip: “We are all devis in our own way.” I dedicate this column to Jaymini, Leena, Nina, Usha, Iram and Rinku – for helping me in ways they may never fully understand.
And to my darling Urvashi, thank you for bringing us all together. You created magic. You gave me the best birthday gift I could ever have asked for.
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Britain faces challenges in changing attitudes around diversity
IT HAS been five years since the biggest anti-racism protests in a generation – but how far did they have a lasting legacy?
The protests across America after the murder of George Floyd spread to Britain too. There was no central organisation, nor a manifesto of demands, as students and sixth formers took to the streets.
This was the time of the Covid pandemic in which two-thirds of NHS staff who had tragically lost their lives were ethnic minorities. But placards declaring “racism is the real pandemic” risked mixing metaphors to deadly effect. So the Covid context reinforced a generational divide.
The UK protests of 2020 were a cross-ethnic movement primarily of black, Asian and white young people – though there were many older armchair supporters. Indeed, a third of ethnic minority Britons felt they had participated, primarily by voicing online support.
The Black British are four per cent of the population, compared to 13 per cent in America – about a quarter of visible minorities in the UK. Most of the larger British Asian group felt supportive of the anti-racism protests too. Cricketer Azeem Rafiq felt it was why his challenge to racism in Yorkshire cricket finally cut through.
The protests mobilised – and polarised. Online arguments were especially heated, but offline conversations could be more thoughtful. Quite a few people were in listening mode that summer.
Britain is not America was the core point for those critical of the protests – yet I found those who took part often quick to acknowledge that. America’s gun problem gave racism in policing a different intensity of urgent threat. But too much focus on transatlantic differences could underpin complacency about real challenges to face up to in Britain too.
Once the statue of Edward Colston was pulled down in Bristol on June 7, history and statues became a central theme. A year later, ahead of Euro 2021, footballers taking the knee became the symbolic focal point.
Boris Johnson’s government commissioned a review of ethnic disparities, but the Sewell report generated a starkly polarised debate with its optimistic counter-narrative about Britain leading the world.
The argument was about language – what it meant to be ‘institutionally racist’ – with the report’s incremental proposals on issues such as curriculum reform, policing data and online hatred barely discussed.
As the pattern of opportunities and outcomes on race in Britain becomes more complex than ever, the politics seems ever more binary. The Tories chose three more leaders – our first Asian prime minister, who preferred that not to be noticed too much; and the party’s first black British leader, a vocal critic of all things ‘woke’.
In opposition, Sir Keir Starmer declared the protests a ‘defining moment’ and issued an awkward photograph of himself taking the knee in his office alongside his deputy leaders.
Efforts to weaponise that image against him fell rather flat.
Labour pledged a new race equality act but tried to say as little as it could about race. The party had an electoral strategy of taking ethnic minorities for granted – a product of its exclusive geographical focus on the people and places who were not already Labour.
Shedding minority votes on both its left and right flank complicated the party’s nascent thinking about whether or how to respond.
In government, the party was reluctant to draw attention to its legislative pledge. It is now consulting on those measures so quietly that very few people have noticed.
Beyond one strong Starmer passage about last summer’s racist riots at the Labour conference, no leading voice in this government has found an appetite or voice to make a substantial argument about race, opportunity or identity in Britain today.
The anti-racism protests galvanised but polarised. It is the identity politics of Donald Trump which set America’s agenda now – ironically taking affirmative action to absurd lengths, but only for deeply unqualified Trump loyalists. Because Britain is not America, most people would reject emulating the Trump effort to repeal any mention of diversity or inclusion here.
But finding forward momentum is more challenging.
Those suspicious of the sincerity of corporate declarations of support for the Black Lives Matter movement felt vindicated by their flipping as the political weather changed.
UK corporations are often seeking to continue work on inclusion while side-stepping polarised political controversies. National charities lag behind the public and private sector.
That patchy response may explain why one institutional legacy of the protests is the effort of high-profile black Britons, such as Lewis Hamilton, Raheem Sterling and Stormzy, to create their own foundations.
Five years on, the legacy can be hard to discern. The core message of the anti-racism protests in Britain was that the progress we have made on race has not met the rising expectations of the next generation.
It will take more confidence among institutions of political, economic and cultural power about how to act as well as talk about race and inclusion – or those rising expectations risk remaining frustratingly unmet.
Sunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration.
Hollywood actor Kumail Nanjiani has returned to his stand-up comedy roots with a major tour of his show Doing This Again. He is set to perform at Union Chapel in London on September 20. Once the tour concludes, the stand-up special will stream on a major platform. The multi-talented star also has several upcoming projects, including roles in the high-profile films Ella McCay, The Wrong Girls and Driver’s Ed.
Kumail Nanjiani
DYNAMIC DRESS
Unlike most Indian celebrities who wear expensive designer gowns on the Cannes red carpet, Simran Balar Jain chose to do things differently. The social media influencer wore a striking outfit featuring a symbolic silhouette of one woman lifting another. Her hand-sculpted gold metal corset, made from recycled materials, conveyed a powerful message of collective empowerment and sisterhood. She also shared engaging behind-the-scenes vlogs from the film festival.
Simran Balar Jain
SOCIAL MEDIA SPOILER
The Sixth Sense (1999), directed by M. Night Shyamalan, was a spectacular success thanks to its unexpected twist ending. If the film were released today, it would not have had the same impact – social media users would have quickly given away the big surprise. Bollywood comedy Housefull 5, like many modern-day murder mystery films, is likely to face a similar problem when it is released next Friday (6).
Within hours, social media users, vloggers and influencers will reveal the identity of the murderer, which will undermine one of the film’s main selling points
Mumtaz
STREAMING SITE STINKER
It is utterly tragic to see how Netflix has become a dumping ground for substandard Indian content. Whether it is acquiring disastrous box office failures or greenlighting dreadful original productions, the clueless streaming platform seems to attract horrid Indian projects. A prime example is the recently premiered series The Royals, which is shockingly poor. The cringeworthy drama, headlined by Bhumi Pednekar and Ishaan Khatter, is best avoided.
Five years from now
BAD BOLLYWOOD IDEA
Instead of using their platform to call for peace, most celebrities in India and Pakistan have either remained silent or acted as cheerleaders for bombings that have claimed lives on both sides of the border. Some C-listers in both countries have even used the ongoing conflict to generate cheap publicity. Perhaps the worst response has come from those already looking to cash in on what is ultimately a human tragedy. Bollywood producers and stars rushed to register the title Operation Sindoor and now plan to profit from a film named after India’s missile strike on Pakistan. If past films are any indication, the conflict will likely be exaggerated on screen, featuring caricatured villains and misinformation – further inflaming tensions rather than promoting understanding.
Janhvi Kapoor
PHALKE FILM BIOPIC
The dream team of actor Aamir Khan and filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani will reunite – after record-breaking hits PK and 3 Idiots – for a biopic on the father of Indian cinema, Dadasaheb Phalke. The film will trace his journey towards making India’s first feature film, Raja Harishchandra, in 1913. Meanwhile, acclaimed director SS Rajamouli is planning a separate film on the same subject, with superstar NTR Jr in the lead role. This follows the 2009 award-winning Marathi film Harishchandrachi Factory, which was India’s official entry for the Academy Awards.
Dadasaheb Phalke
HOLLYWOOD BUBBLE BURST
For Indian celebrities, it often seems that anything made in America is labelled a Hollywood project – even when it has no connection to a major studio. That is why reports of Kangana Ranaut making her “Hollywood debut” with the forthcoming film Blessed Be the Evil are rather absurd. A closer look reveals that it is an independent production, co-written and directed by the relatively inexperienced Anurag Rudra. Ranaut will reportedly star alongside a couple of Z-listers in this psychological horror drama. The only genuinely entertaining aspect of this film might be watching the clueless individuals bankrolling it eventually discover just how notoriously difficult Kangana is to work with. That is why I predict this project will either be shelved or flop badly — if it ever gets completed at all.
Kangana Ranaut
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Diplomacy competes for attention in a crowded news cycle.European Council president Antonio Costa, Britain’s prime minister Keir Starmer and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen with members of the Royal Navy in central London last Monday (19), during a summit aimed at resetting UK–EU ties
THERE is just too much news. The last month probably saw more than a year’s worth of events in more normal times – a new Pope in Rome, continued war in Ukraine, escalating conflict in Gaza, and the relief of India and Pakistan agreeing a ceasefire after a fortnight of conflict.
Domestic and global events that might once have dominated the news for a week can now come and go within hours. The biggest-ever fall in net migration – 2024’s figure half of 2023’s, according to Office for National Statistics data released last Thursday (22) – did not even get a brief mention on any of last Friday (23) morning’s newspaper front pages. It would have been a very different story if net migration had doubled, not halved, but falling immigration risks becoming something of a secret.
On the same evening as the UK-EU ‘reset’ summit, the UK government issued its strongest criticism of Israel in living memory. A joint statement with Canada and France described conditions in Gaza as ‘intolerable’, the language of Israeli ministers as ‘abhorrent’, and its expanded military operation as ‘egregious’. Germany did not join the trio, yet Chancellor Merz’s explanation that Germany would exercise more restraint in its criticism of Israel than others, for historical reasons – made his own calm but stark warning about breaching international humanitarian law more striking.
Israel had strong diplomatic support after the October 7 Hamas attack, but has never been this isolated. The administration of US president Donald Trump has not joined the public criticism, but is much cooler to Benjamin Netanyahu than in Trump’s first term, with sharp private clashes over diplomacy versus war with Iran.
Trump’s second term has turned the Oval Office into a reality politics show, giving the president the ‘main character’ energy he craves. He is at war with the courts and universities at home, last week seeking to ban all international students from Harvard.
America’s allies must second-guess his impulsive unilateralism on security and trade. The February clash with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky sent shockwaves around the world. Trump is now frustrated that conceding so much to Russian president Vladimir Putin achieved nothing – except losing leverage. Repeating the trick last week, ambushing South African president Cyril Ramaphosa with fabricated footage of a racist conspiracy theory about the genocide of white farmers, had a weary familiarity. There was sympathy for Ramaphosa at home and abroad. Trump lacks any evident tariff strategy, simply hiking and suspending rates to maintain surprise. Business expects little stability while the Trump presidential gameshow runs.
Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has the opposite instincts and personality to Trump, believing in a rules-based world order – both on principle and in Britain’s enlightened self-interest as a middle power. Starmer’s challenge is to show that cooperation can work – for security, trade and boats in the Channel too. Whitehall sees progress in a volatile world in the trade deal with India, mitigating some of Trump’s car tariffs at least, while prioritising the UK-EU reset.
The ‘Brexit betrayal’ headlines had little impact on public opinion, where there is broad pragmatic permission to pursue closer UK-EU ties within current ‘red line’ commitments – ruling out single market membership, at least this parliament, to avoid a return to Brexit trenches.
Despite fierce clashes at Westminster over the value and cost of the Chagos Treaty, that seemed one controversy too many for most people to process.
The Starmer government’s juggling of events saw its biggest domestic Uturn, heeding criticism of its plan to means-test the winter fuel allowance for pensioners.
The irony is that this became the government’s most famous decision because chancellor Rachel Reeves did not just include it in her first budget, but led with it as a symbol of ‘tough choices’ for fiscal responsibility. Backbench pressure to reduce child poverty by scrapping the twochild cap on welfare has been accepted too. These U-turns send the government back to the drawing board after its first year.
This summer and autumn, it must not only revise plans for spending and taxation, but also articulate a public narrative – a strategy that explains what the government’s choices amount to, and why. A comparative strength of populist insurgents is that they offer a simpler story about a complex world than their mainstream rivals.
News fatigue is rising across countries, according to Reuters Institute research conducted over the past decade. Around four in 10 people are avoiding the news – for a variety of reasons. If everything, everywhere, all at once remains the theme of politics and global affairs, the risk is more people will simply switch off.
Sunder Katwala
Sunder Katwala is the director of thinktank British Future and the author of the book How to Be a Patriot: The must-read book on British national identity and immigration.