Outsiders are coming to Leicester to cause tensions among the city’s south Asian communities, sources have told Eastern Eye.
In the past three weeks, police arrested 47 people following violence in the city. Last weekend (16-17), they arrested 18 suspects, and some of those were from outside the city, sources said.
“We saw last night a group of people from other cities come to our city to disrupt and cause harm,” said the temporary chief constable, Rob Nixon.
“We will not stand for this unrest in our city.
“There is an extensive policing operation on going, acting on information and reports of gatherings and offering community reassurance.”
On Monday (19), a 20-year-old man was jailed for 10 months after his arrest during the disorder. Amos Noronha, of Illingworth Road in Leicester, pleaded guilty to the possession of an offensive weapon.
Nixon said, “Be reassured, we are working to keep you safe and to arrest and bring to justice those that are causing harm in our communities.”
Keep calm
Eastern Eye has learned that the city’s Labour mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, wrote to faith communities urging them to keep calm.
“We in Leicester have built relations which are deeply rooted and very robust,” he told Eastern Eye.
“We have to draw on that experience now to ensure that people in Leicester remain calm and focused and not allow others to use lies to disrupt our city.”
Unplanned protest by groups of young men in East Leicester on Saturday (17) evening (Photo credit: Twitter)
Claudia Webbe MP, who represents Leicester East, said, “These acts of aggression and provocation are by and large from a minority of fringe elements led and inspired by extremism and right-wing ideology which is rearing its ugly head in the UK and here in our peaceful city of Leicester.
“Their focus is to incite religious and racial hatred, and which are deliberately designed to cause fear, alarm and distress and in order to provoke a reaction.
“This kind of right-wing racism and fascism has no place in society and the communities of Leicester stand united against it.”
Faith groups
Leicester Council of Faiths chair, Fayyaz Suleman, said, “Leicester has no place for any foreign extremist ideology that causes division.
“Our message to anyone that sows disharmony between us is clear 'we will not let you succeed.'
“We together call upon the immediate cessation of provocation and violence - both in thought and behaviour.”
Leicester East’s former MP, Keith Vaz told Eastern Eye people are “genuinely surprised and shocked” by the disorder.
In the aftermath of the riots in the north of England in 2001, independent advisers who investigated their causes held up Leicester as the model of multicultural integration.
“It still remains the case that we’re a beacon of multiculturalism,” said Vaz.
“Whatever the trigger was that caused these disorders, nobody knows the complete picture of how they started.
“We need to engage with the communities, address these issues and remind everybody of the huge cultural tapestry that is Leicester.”
Sources in Leicester blamed India’s cricket victory over Pakistan in Dubai’s Asian Cup on August 28 as the catalyst for the violence.
But other reasons, also unconfirmed, are circulating among the communities.
The DP World Asia Cup T20 match between Pakistan and India at Dubai International Stadium on August 28, 2022 in Dubai (Photo by Francois Nel/Getty Images)
India’s response
Videos on social media appear to show groups in masks burning a flag with Hindu symbols.
It prompted immediate condemnation from the Indian High Commission in London.
“We strongly condemn the violence perpetrated against the Indian community in Leicester and vandalisation of premises and symbols of Hindu religion,” it said in a statement.
"We have strongly taken up this matter with the UK authorities and have sought immediate action against those involved in these attacks.
“We call on the authorities to provide protection to the affected people.”
Hindu sources in Leicester said that message was “unhelpful because the violence affects all faith communities, not just ours”.
Muslim civic and religious leaders condemned what they described as “deplorable and atrocious behaviour”.
Former president of the Leicestershire Asian Business Association, Jaffer Kapasi, told Eastern Eye, “We must maintain peace, harmony and calm, which we have cultivated for 50 years, whatever the cost.
“I’m prepared to pay from my own pocket to replace the Hindu flag which was damaged, and I think the whole Muslim community should pay together.
“It’s taken us ages to build those relationships, and we need to make sure everyone’s respected, whether they are Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Christian.
Police officers in action in East Leicester (Photo: Twitter)
A spokesperson for Leicester’s Council of Faiths told Eastern Eye, “We are concerned about the escalation between groups of individuals with particular agendas and grievances.
“We urge people to be calm and united against any form of excitement.
“We also call for vigilance and cooperation with the police with any information on the perpetrators.
“Faith leaders are united in our resolve to overcome this tense situation.
"More needs to be done to engage with the leaders of these extreme groups to establish dialogue and come to a resolution.
“There is no place for this in Leicester and we are confident that we will overcome this.”
Analysis
by Barnie Choudhury
I have lived in Leicester for more than 26 years, and as a Hindu I have friends from all religions.
Our children have gone to school together, they have played together, and now they work together.
It is the way it has always been and stems from a shared history, shared culture and shared respect.
In fact, we never ask about our faith. We never ask about our ancestry. And we never discuss our personal politics.
That does not mean we talk merely about the weather. Like most people, we put the world to rights regularly, and when we disagree, we agree to disagree.
In the time I have lived in this city, I have never felt there were no-go areas among south Asian communities.
As a family, we get our groceries from wards with a Muslim majority. We have always felt safe.
We, along with our Muslim friends, will eat in restaurants where the majority are Hindus. We have never experienced bigotry.
This week, I have been interviewed by several media outlets, asking for my insights into the “sudden disorder” and “why the mayor and police were caught off guard”.
This is because in 2001, I witnessed the segregation of parts of England along the fault lines of race; reported on the rise of right-wing extremists; and chronicled the explosion of violence in the north of England.
The fact is that the tensions in Leicester should not have come as a surprise to anyone.
Although we have lived harmoniously side by side, it does not mean that everything is fine and dandy.
My experience from more than 50-years in this wonderful country is that anything can light the fuse which sparks incendiary violence. No-one seems to need an excuse.
I know it is easy to say this in hindsight.
But I have been talking about the influence of politics from the Indian sub-continent coming to UK streets for more than two decades.
We saw that when the Labour Party - under Jeremy Corbyn - criticised India for its administration of Kashmir at its 2019 conference.
We saw that during that year’s general election when Hindus used WhatsApp to tell colleagues that ‘if you voted for Labour, you could not a true follower of the faith’.
We saw that during the Batley and Spen by election in July 2021.
Labour sent leaflets of former prime minister, Boris Johnson, shaking hands with his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, with the words “Don’t risk a Tory who is not on your side”.
And we saw that in May’s local election when Harrow council in northwest London, which was Labour controlled since 2006, lost to the Conservatives.
Sources told me that it was because Hindus had campaigned along religious lines.
Yet no-one, not our political leaders, not our civic leaders, and certainly not our religious leaders, wants to acknowledge, never mind discuss the possibility, that this is a bad thing.
And things will get worse before they get better, and things will get better, I am sure.
Why? Because in 2010, the English Defence League held a march in Bradford. It was from the same play book as the British National Party, the National Front and Combat 18 of 2001.
Agitate enough and wait for it to kick off.
Only this time, community elders asked their youth not to bite.
Women put themselves in harm’s way, acting as human shields between EDL and Asian youth, to prevent a repetition of a decade earlier.
To their credit, the Asian communities showed huge tolerance and huge maturity, and the danger passed.
Like then, sources are blaming the youth of Leicester for no longer listening to their elders.
The battle between young and ageing bulls is as old as time itself, but we have a new danger we did not have before.
In 2001 social media was not as influential. Today, a myth is half-way around the world with the truth not only unable to catch up but giving up completely.
It is worse than the wild west because our thoughts, beliefs, anger, no matter on what they are based, have an outlet with the click of a button.
We do not think about the consequences.
No-one can be 100 per cent certain why things kicked off in Leicester.
Sources have told me it was a cricket match. Others say it was outsiders who do not understand the city or its relationships.
It is easy to blame the far-right Hindutva, just as it easy to blame Islamists.
The answer is probably more nuanced, with the real reasons buried, waiting to be discovered like a prospector mining for gold.
It is easy to blame, yet it is far more difficult to accept and take responsibility.
I am clear these tensions will go away. I am confident wiser heads will prevail.
But I do not see this happening unless the different groups speak with one another continually, with soft voices, respect and tolerance.
Them performing liveNajmuddin Saifuddin Qawwal Group
The cast of Marriage Material in key moments from the play, including Avita Jay, Kiran Landa, Omar Malik, Irfan Shamji and Anoushka Deshmukh
Sathnam Sanghera’s 'Marriage Material' adapted into bold new play on conformity
The play Marriage Material at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera’s novel of the same name, which first came out in 2013.
She is lucky to have Iqbal Khan direct Marriage Material. The play, a co-production with the Birmingham Rep, is set in the late 1960s. Mr and Mrs Bains (played by Jaz Singh Deol and Avita Jay) run a corner shop in Wolverhampton. Their younger daughter, Surinder (Anoushka Deshmukh), is 16, her sister Kamaljit (Kiran Landa) is just a bit older.
They have a neighbour, Patwant Dhanda (Irfan Shamji), who, as we shall soon see, is not a very pleasant man. In fact, he comes across just as racist as Enoch Powell, who represented Wolverhampton South West for the Tories from 1950 to 1974.
It will be recalled this was a time when Sikhs working on the buses were told they couldn’t wear a turban. That was a hard-fought battle that had to be won.
The Bains, meanwhile, simply want to get their girls married off.
Nothing new here, I thought.
What makes the tale different is that the plot twists and turns down the generations. Mr Dhanda, who has the makings of a paedophile, makes a pitch for one of the girls when Mr Bains dies early in the play. “A life with no man in the house is no life,” he informs the newly widowed Mrs Bains.
Mr Dhanda has a wife but she has returned to India so he considers himself to be a free man.
Surinder’s English teacher from school, Miss Flanagan (Celeste Dodwell), who is also head of the fifth form, tells Mrs Bains about her daughter: “I don’t want to embarrass you, but she is bright. Ridiculously bright.”
She adds: “Mrs Bains, I think it would be a pity if Surinder didn’t stay on at school.” The initial response from Mrs Bains is not encouraging: “Too much education makes people’s brains get mixed up, they don’t sleep at night…”
But she is finally persuaded that Surinder should be allowed to stay on for a while longer before being married off.
Mr Bains was very old school. When Surinder confides she would one day like to be “a somebody”, he is amused that “my daughter wants to be a somebody”.
“Like you,” she tells her father.
Mr Bains consoles his daughter: “We will find a somebody for you to marry.”
At the point of a possible marriage, however, Surinder is sweet-talked by chocolate salesman Jim Wilson (Tommy Belshaw) into running away with him. They share a love of literature, and he calls her “Sue Bains”. But the relationship does not end well.
Once she has left, Surinder is written off as “dead” by her family. The story that is circulated is that she was only 16 when she was killed in a car crash. That’s better than to let on that she ran off with a white man.
By the time she is reconciled with her sister towards the end of the play, a great deal has changed. Kamaljit married Tanvir Banga (Omar Malik), a young man who helped out in the Bains’ corner shop. When the two sisters meet again, Tanvir has also died. But he and Kamaljit had a son, Arjan Banga (Jaz Singh Deol doubles up for this role after the death of Mr Bains). He has come home after his father’s death to help his mother who is still running the family corner shop.
Meanwhile, Mr Dhanda’s business has prospered. He now has a son, Ranjit Dhanda (the role is taken by Omar Malik after Tanvir’s death), and he is nearly as unpleasant as his father.
Arjan has an English fiancée, Claire (Celeste Dodwell). In London, Arjan worked as a creative director. But after deciding to stay in Wolverhampton to help his mother, he decides he cannot marry Claire because she is white. In other words, Asians are not free of racism, either. Happily, at the end, the couple are reconciled.
As for Surinder, she parted company with Jim Wilson after realising he was all talk, depended on her for money and had failed to earn a penny from his literary pretensions. She had prospered, though, as a hotel owner and had been transformed in time into a well-groomed businesswoman. After being tracked down by Arjan, she decides to return to her roots in Wolverhampton and help Kamaljit run the family corner shop. Perhaps 50 years had passed during the passage of the play.
Being subjected to racism turned some Asians into racists themselves. The word goreh (white person) is repeatedly spat out with venom. Maybe it is worth remembering the play’s audience isn’t exclusively Asian – white folk are watching as well. And maybe some of the toilet humour ridiculing white people, which always makes me cringe, could be cut out.
In Sanghera’s novel, there is a quote from Enoch Powell’s speech in November 1968: “The West Indian or Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact, he is a west Indian or an Asian still... he will by the very nature of things have lost one country without gaining another, lost one nationality without acquiring a new one. Time is running out against us and them. With the lapse of a generation or so we shall at last have succeeded – to the benefit of nobody – in reproducing ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’ the haunting tragedy of the US.”
In Marriage Material, where the acting is marvellous (apart from Mr Dhanda’s Indian mannerisms and accent being overdone) we do travel across a couple of generations.
There is a scene when Tanvir rejects Mr Dhanda’s vision of creating a little Punjab in Wolverhampton.
Mr Dhanda wants to take over the Bains’ corner shop and is putting pressure on Tanvir to sign the papers. He says: “In this country, money is the path to freedom.”
“Sign, please,” he instructs Tanvir. “We must make sure our children learn to behave nicely, according to our rules.”
He insists: “We maintain our identity so we can be ourselves.”
Tanvir disagrees: “We can be us here. With the goreh.”
Dhanda warns him: “Then we will be inviting chaos.”
Tanvir’s comment is telling: “You sound like Enoch.”
Kamaljit, who is expecting a baby with her husband Tanvir, says: “I would like my child to grow up knowing the history of the Gurus and to read the Granth Sahib. And to love their culture.”
Tanvir tells his wife: “I would like my child to go to the finest schools, to cheer for England in the World Cup and eat Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday.”
Kamaljit sets out a dream that has perhaps come to pass with many third and fourth generation British Asians: “Maybe our child can do both.” Much, much later, in a throwback to the past, we learn of Surinder’s O-level results: “Biology A, Chemistry A, English Language A, English Literature A, French A, History B, Latin A, Mathematics A, Physics A…”
Kamaljit tells her younger sister: “Never mind about the B.”
And that is quintessentially Asian. Their acting is outstanding.
Marriage Material is at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until June 21, and at the Birmingham Rep from June 25-July 5