BRITISH ASIAN RACISTS
AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE? RACISM, RELIGION & COMMUNALISM
(30 July 2002). By Arun Kundnani, Extract reprinted by permission of the IRR.

Communal tensions in British Asian communities are on the rise. Conflict between Sikh and Muslim youths and Hindu and Muslim is becoming a more common occurrence in Asian areas. And the tensions on Britain's streets are increasingly tied to events abroad, not least the US-led 'war on terrorism' (and, more recently, the upsurge of the conflict over Kashmir).

There are less violent signs, too. In January 2002, Sunrise Radio - Britain's 'leading Asian radio station' - took the bizarre step of banning the word 'Asian'. This was the culmination of a long campaign by groups such as the UK branch of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) that want to dissociate themselves from Muslims in the public mind by dropping the secular term 'Asian'. Although the term has always been problematic, this campaign is premised on the idea that racist whites could be persuaded to exclude Hindus and Sikhs from their hatred and focus instead solely on Muslims.

The tendency took on a disturbing twist after September 11 when many South Asians in America became victims of revenge attacks. Some Sikhs, instead of marching with Muslims and calling for an end to any revenge attacks, marched separately with banners saying 'we are not Muslims', as if American Muslims were any more valid as targets for revenge than they were. Then in January 2002, for the first time ever, the British National Party (BNP) managed to convince a tiny faction of Asians, the Shere-e-Punjab grouping, to co-operate on anti-Muslim propaganda.

As a new generation of British Asians, born in this country in the 1960s and 1970s, comes to occupy more positions of influence in our communities, it is the future orientation of British Asian life that is at stake. Will we be divided and separated by religion or will we be able to find a place in our lives for both our own faith and an understanding of others' faiths, within a secular framework?

THE BNP AND SHERE-E-PUNJAB

The BNP has had ambitions to pit Hindus and Sikhs against Muslims since Nick Griffin's successful leadership bid and the subsequent 'rebranding' of the party. The focus is now on Islam as Britain's primary enemy and the party claims to have abandoned its policy of forcibly repatriating all non-whites. Of course, the 'media-savvy' reinvention of the party is a sham. Yet for some on the fringes of the Khalistani movement (which calls for a separate Sikh homeland in the Punjab), hatred of Muslims is so strong that even the BNP can be seen as a potential ally. This is ironic as, in India, the Khalistani movement has traditionally seen Muslim separatists as friends while the enemy has been a central government perceived as Hindu.

The BNP has worked with two Sikhs, Rajinder Singh and Ammo Singh, who have co-operated on the production of a CD entitled 'Islam - a threat to us all'. Rajinder Singh has also appeared in the BNP magazine, Identity, in which he voices opposition to Britain's 'liberal immigration policy' and congratulates the BNP for its stance. He also urges British voters to support the BNP in the name of those Sikhs who were 'silenced forever by the Sword of Islam' in the 1947 partition of India. While Ammo and Rajinder Singh call themselves 'leading figures', in reality, they represent only a marginal fraction of British Sikh communities.

ISLAM AND THE 'WAR ON TERRORISM'

Many Asians were shocked by Rajinder Singh's open support for the BNP. Yet anti-Islamic feeling is becoming increasingly acceptable across society, especially under the guise of the 'war on terrorism', and anti-Muslim elements in all communities have found renewed confidence in the wake of Bush's 'You are either with us or against us' rhetoric. Hindu nationalists, both in India and the UK, believe that their own Islamophobia has now been vindicated.

In addition, Hindus and Sikhs have shown little solidarity with Muslims during this period of heightened anti-Muslim feeling, quickly forgetting their own experiences of racism. As Shabana Najib, a community worker in Derby, points out, "'anybody who has experienced discrimination should have empathy for others who are going through it, not to pity them or sympathise to a great extent, but just to understand the pain.' Instead, each community is asking itself, 'what have they ever done for us?" This has led to much of the common ground between Muslims and Asians of other faiths being stripped away.

THE NEW PURITANS

Since September 11, all the media attention has been on Muslim fundamentalists in the UK, such as Abu Hamza al-Masri, of Finsbury Park mosque, and Sheikh Omar Bakri, leader of the Al-Muhajiroun group, who have become household names. Yet for all the pages devoted to their 'links' to al-Qaeda, little effort has been made to place their antics in the wider context of British Islam and point out how small their respective followings are. Nor has much thought been given to what the appeal of groups like Al-Muhajiroun may be to the small number of followers they attract. The constant media coverage has given the impression that these tiny groupings are, in fact, more influential than they are, thereby flattering their own apocalyptic pretensions.

The problem for Muslims generally is that groups like Al-Muhajiroun, which revel in negative publicity and lace their rhetoric with anti-Semitism, homophobia and calls for jihad, have dominated the public representation of Islam. Their presence in a town can be devastating. In Luton, the local 'branch' of Al-Muhajiroun attracted national headlines in October 2001 after two men from the town, who had gone to fight for the Taliban, had been killed in a US bombing raid on Kabul. Al-Muhajiroun, which has just six members in Luton, organised a 'demonstration' in memory of the two. Although only ten people turned up, racism against all the town's 20000 Muslims increased. Once again, the majority was forced to suffer for the actions of a tiny minority because of a lazy racism that lumps all Muslims together.

BRITAIN'S HINDU RIGHT

Hinduism is often thought of as a religion that is inherently tolerant and humane, yet Hindu communities too have their small minority of active fundamentalists, who often escape scrutiny because of the religion's reputation for peacefulness. Few are aware of the history of Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) in India: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which was formed in the 1920s on the model of Mussolini's Brown Shirts, or the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), thought responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Muslims in Gujarat earlier this year. In Britain, the offshoots of these groups present themselves as cultural and social organisations and downplay their political agenda. But hostility to Muslims is never far away.

As in India, the Hindutva movement in Britain operates through a number of linked organisations, each presenting a different face for different purposes. The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), which is a registered charity, describes itself as a cultural organisation 'right at the core of being British and Hindu', according to spokesman Manoj Ladwa. Although he claims HSS has a 'distinct identity in the UK' from its Indian equivalent, the RSS, he accepts that it shares 'common roots and beliefs' with the Indian anti-Islamic paramilitary group. The well-known charity Sewa International which, according to Ladwa, is 'managed by HSS' shares an address with HSS, as does the National Hindu Students Forum, which has a fluctuating membership in the low thousands.

The support for groups like HSS and VHP in the UK rests on a mixture of elements. As indicated above, for many economically successful Hindus, Hindu chauvinism aims at dissociation from less well-off Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities which are seen as giving Asians a bad name. This snobbery feeds into wider fears of Islam as a fundamentalist religion and is supported by the idea that Muslims have historically been 'invaders' of the Hindu homeland.

Perhaps because of the VHP's deeper roots in the Hindu community, perhaps in anticipation of the backlash that would follow, the VHP did not follow Shere-e-Punjab in an alliance with the BNP. When Nick Griffin heard Hasmukh Shah, a VHP leader, denounce Muslims following the riots in Bradford last July, he turned up at Shah's office seeking an alliance, but his overtures were rejected.

AUTHENTIC VOICES?

The growth of groups in Asian communities that promote violent hatred of other faiths raises difficult questions. Should they be treated in the same way as white extreme-right political parties, like the BNP?

One practice that needs to be urgently challenged is the tendency of 'multiculturalist' policies to take an unthinking approach to 'minority' representation. Under the guise of multiculturalism, leaders of communalist groups can easily become accepted as authentic representatives of Asian 'culture' as part of the British establishment's attempts to manage race relations. As a result, the most reactionary elements in our communities are being given undue influence.

Not only do we need to take more responsibility for the tacit support we give to people who claim to speak on behalf of a particular faith, we also need to develop strategies to give young people a greater sense of empowerment, to provide alternatives to the easy and simplistic sense of belonging offered by religious gangs and fanatics.

AIK SAATH

The Aik Saath project, which emerged as a response to the Sikh-Muslim conflicts in Slough in 1997, aims to do just that. The project recruited youth leaders who had previously been involved in violent incidents and taught them 'conflict resolution' and team-working skills that they then passed on to their peers. Gradually, the project developed in them the confidence and knowledge to challenge religious division and break down the fear and insecurity that surrounds these issues. Religion could then no longer be used as an excuse for violence.

The Institute of Race Relations is precluded from expressing a corporate view: the opinions expressed are therefore those of the authors.

Click here to read the unabridged article 'Unholy Alliance'.

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