Routledge Revivals: Colour, Culture, and Consciousness (1974)

Immigrant Intellectuals in Britain

Bhikhu Parekh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351270700
• Subtopic: Minority Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1974, this book gives a detailed and thoughtful examination on immigration in Britain, specifying the experiences of non-white intellectuals. In the first section – Viewpoint – each contributor, who was born and raised outside Britain, articulates and analyses the tensions generated by the conflict between his own native culture and that dominant in Britain, and the way in which, and the degree to which, he has coped with them. Each contributor observes English culture, elucidating its distinctive characteristics, and analysing the extent to which he feels sympathetic to them. In the second section – Response – distinguished philosophers, sociologists, and students of English character respond to the problems raised by immigrant intellectuals in their essays. This book is indispensable to everyone interested in creating a peaceful and culturally rich society in Britain.

PART ONE

Viewpoint

1 Another Kind of Minority

DILIP HIRO

I remember the first time I met a white man: it was in Kalol, a small town north of Bombay. He was a Dane, an employee of a European firm in Bombay, who had travelled to Kalol on business. I was introduced to him as a government overseer, my position in life then, but I did not say much to him. I could not. I was too awestruck. That happened more than a decade ago: but, if the same situation were re-created today, with another government overseer in my place, it would happen again. I am not speculating. I am basing my statement on evidence as I found it during my visit to India last year—my first since I left it. I noticed the nervous pleasure mingled with excitement that overcame Indians, mostly urban middle class, when they came into contact with white men or women.

Why is this so? Because of the historical experience of the blacks¹ having been ruled, until recently, by the whites; and because of the current fact that the white world is rich and technologically advanced whereas the coloured world is poor and economically backward. Given this, it is easy to understand why being white in a coloured society is an asset which a white person can start capitalising on the moment he enters a non-white country; and the reverse is true when a black arrives in a white country. In other words, present attitudes regarding race and colour are rooted mainly in the history of colonisation of the non-European world by Europe.

The colonisation process was closely tied up with the development of the economies of European nations from feudalism and commercial capitalism to fully-fledged industrial capitalism at the cost of keeping the economies of the non-European colonies at a pre-feudal or feudal stage or, at best, allowing these to progress towards commercial capitalism. This progression, or stagnation, was reflected correspondingly in the change in social values, or absence of it. Both these points are pertinent to the subject under study—the relationship between whites and blacks in contemporary Western societies.²

The whites (in West Europe) today constitute advanced capitalist societies whereas the blacks, i.e. the ex-colonials, who have settled among them, have come from societies which exist in pre-capitalist environments. In short, what divides these two groups is not only race but also the widely different historical experiences and contemporary socio-cultural backgrounds.³ The following points need therefore be borne in mind: we can understand the present only in the light of the past; industrial capitalism is an advancement over feudalism and commercial capitalism; and social values are closely related to the stage of economic development of a society. I state this at the outset because these points underlie practically all that I am about to say (descriptively or analytically) about my experiences, as a black man, in Britain and America.⁴

I was born in Sind, a province of the present-day Pakistan, in a middle middle-class family. My father was a civil servant, and a property-owner—agricultural land and buildings. As a group, we, the Hindus in Sind, valued education which, among other things, meant learning English. There was indeed a premium on learning English and being fluent in it.⁵ My father, for instance, encouraged me to read The Sind Observer every day in order to improve my English. We also prided ourselves on habitually wearing trousers or ‘knickers’, that is, not wearing the traditional dhoti or pyjamas. We often sat in chairs and ate rice with spoons: very wisely, we did not attempt to eat chappatis with such implements as forks. That was about the extent of our anglicisation while we were in Sind.

Then came independence and the creation of Pakistan in 1947, and our migration to India, to an outer suburb of Bombay. I went to live in a college hostel in Bombay. Residence in a metropolitan city hastened the process of superficial anglicisation. My use of English, both as a source of information and as a medium of expression, increased, and, more importantly, for the first time, I was exposed to films in English, mostly made in Hollywood. These became my window to the West.

Thus seen, Western society appeared orderly and efficient. Even the violence that was depicted seemed, to me anyway, clean and intelligent. Rationalism seemed to permeate the Western world which was not the case with the society in which I then lived. The Western people seemed generally affluent and well-mannered. They looked beautiful, especially the women—vivacious, exuding vitality, health and sex, their bodies an inexhaustible source of sensuous pleasure. What was particularly meaningful to me, a young man starved of female company, was that women in the West, whether married or not, were individuals in their own right, free to make their decisions; free to mix with men, to date, even to copulate—an unimaginable situation in the feudal society in which I lived and where women remained, and still remain, essentially ‘property’.

Of course we had left the feudal Sind and were now living on the outskirts of the commercial-industrial city of Bombay but we had not been there long enough for our family structure, or social attitudes, to change. These remained feudal. Our families remained close and tight-knit where ideas of individualism and individual development, independent of parents and brothers and sisters, were simply unknown.⁶

Our flight from Sind, and property, had turned us into paupers. I had therefore to share the burden of supporting the family of six school-going brothers and sisters while simultaneously pursuing full-time studies at the university—an overworked existence, full of worry and anxiety. This burden remained with me as long as I was in India. It was all a part of being a ‘dutiful son’, ever ready to meet his never-ending obligations towards parents, brothers and sisters, and near-relatives.

This subservience of oneself to others was an integral part of one’s existence. One even allowed oneself to be married off, by one’s parents, more as a means of enabling them to forge an alliance between families rather than a consummation of one’s love for someone of the opposite sex. Or, seen from the parents’ point of view, it was their ‘duty’ to marry off their children, a duty which, in the case of a son, they got ready, to perform only after he had secured a job. Now I had a job, first as a government overseer, in Kalol, and then with a foreign firm, in Bombay. I thus became eligible for marriage to be ‘arranged’ by my parents.

I detested the very idea of ‘arranged marriage’ even though, in my case, the final say was to Have rested with me. That was a poor consolation. I wanted to date girls just the way I had seen it done in Hollywood movies and knew to be the custom in the West. At the same time I was despairingly aware that this was beyond my reach. Had I been a member of Bombay’s westernised rich class it would have been different: but I was not. I could barely manage a middle-class existence. There was thus, sadly, no chance of translating my romantic ideas into reality. So, I concluded, I should be where dating is—in a Western country, in Britain.⁷

By then I had acquired more than a cursory interest in understanding Western life, an interest that, in part, was engendered by reading Somerset Maugham’s novels and short stories. Also I wanted, desperately wanted, to free myself from the repressive, restrictive embrace of my family. Moreover, I argued (mainly with myself), a few years in Britain, followed by a few years in America, would help me in my profession, which then happened to be engineering. So I left for Britain.

In retrospect, I can say that the following factors led me to travel to Britain: economic deprivation at home; a desire to improve my professional status; intellectual curiosity about the West; and a spirit of adventure, sexual and otherwise. One or more of these may be seen as the reason(s) for migration, to Britain, by the people of the Indian sub-continent.

On arrival in England, I decided, as a matter of policy, not to work in London; it was only in a provincial town that I felt I could come to grips with the real England.⁸ I had an introduction to a firm in Stockton-on-Tees, which my employer in Bombay represented in India, and used it. The Stockton company offered me a job which by no means matched my qualifications and experience, but I accepted it, mainly to keep myself away from London. Luckily, this firm had a hostel of its own: so I did not have to knock on doors for accommodation.

I did have my share of racial discrimination, however. I went to a private dancing class in town to enrol, but was refused. That really shook me. I remember walking away from the place, in anger and hurt, going here and there, without purpose or aim, walking, walking, until I was too tired to walk, and then taking a bus to the company hostel. After that, the occasional ‘black bastard’ whisper or shout, thrown at me often by teenage boys, seemed almost innocuous.

The first few weeks in Stockton were hell. A most dramatic change had occurred in my life. Except for the language spoken, English, everything was different from what I had been accustomed to: the weather, buildings, food, work, people, the very atmosphere. The buildings looked, and were, grey and sombre, tightly shut, with only a few people about in the streets, a total contrast from the situation in Bombay. At the office, instead of designing, which I used to do back home, I was now engaged in drawing, a tedious, boring job. The food I ate was monotonous and insipid. So were the people around me—at work and in the hostel—all British, all white. Their extreme formality and reserve intimidated and depressed me. It was always cold, with the sun shielded by clouds, grey and threatening. In the midst of white people I felt alien, inferior and exposed. More, I felt paralysed, not physically, but mentally; and yet, for all the trauma that this experience caused me, I would, given the same chance again, opt for it without a moment’s hesitation.

There was of course an easy way out—into the outstretched arms of fellow-Indians in town, some of them employed by the same firm, who constantly flashed their friendly smiles at me. If nothing else, this would have cushioned the cultural shock that I was then suffering; but I refused to compromise. I stood firm by my original resolve to come to grips with Britain and the British people. For this, the company hostel was to prove an ideal place. Here I listened to the conversation in the lounge, often listless and sparse, which acquired some life when local housing and house purchase were considered from various angles, and became positively animated, even heated, when football was discussed. Both these subjects bored and puzzled me, and still do. Politics and political parties, which interest me, seldom figured in these conversations and, when they did, they were discussed, cursorily, at an emotional, yet superficial, level.

As a group, those at the hostel—all of them middle middle-class, white-collar workers—had little or no feeling for the non-European world, although some of them, finding themselves sitting next to me in a pub, would often make feeble, rather pathetic, attempts to talk about India. With very few exceptions, they all shared a notion that the British, called by some Higher, Nobler Deity, gave the ‘natives’ railways, hospitals, schools and roads, and what is more, taught them how to administer their countries, an altruistic mission that the British had willingly and honourably accomplished. I found the idea, and the smugness with which it was conveyed, preposterous and infuriating. I reacted to this rather noisily which caused no more than a ripple of mild irritation and amusement among my British acquaintances. At first I was puzzled by this. But later I realised that a Briton dreads to make a scene and that he seldom, if ever, loses his nerve or temper, a victim of self-imposed repression. I also learnt to translate British reactions, or lack of them, and to understand the nuances of British understatement and circumlocution. When someone said, ‘I wouldn’t go near the door’, he was actually saying, ‘You better stay away from that door’. Stockton proved delightfully generous in providing me with opportunities to understand the British character but woefully short on meeting my need for female company.

A male migrant can often connect, literally and metaphorically, with the host society by establishing contact with its female members. The woman in such cases becomes more than a sexual mate: she becomes the agent who eases the man’s entry into a new social order. However, I was not seized with such analytical thoughts then. All I knew, and knew it well, was that I needed female companionship. Although I managed to get a few dates, and finally a girlfriend, it was not easy.

The size of the place had something to do with it: the smaller the place, the greater the chance of it being known that you, the girl, were going out with a ‘coloured bloke’; and most girls simply did not wish to be so labelled. Most of them did not mind a dance or two in public dance hall, a brief contact, with a ‘coloured bloke’; but nothing more. I knew this from personal experience. Often a girl would be delighted to dance with me⁹ but would turn down flat any suggestion for a date. Sometimes when a girl came out with me she felt rather brave about it, and I could sense it, and when, even after a few dates with her, the girl did not invite me to her house, I realised that most likely her parents did not approve of her (unconventional) behaviour. All this was very sobering, and depressing too. It was certainly far removed from the romantic notions that I had entertained while in Bombay.

I visited dance halls frequently and began to view them as open markets, acutely sensitive to the law of supply and demand. Early in the evening, when there was an excessive supply of women, a man could dance with any woman he wished; but later, after the pubs closed and men, light-headed with drink, came pouring in, the situation changed. Towards the end there was a scramble among men to find a girl to escort home. It was, to put it mildly, a highly competitive situation where, whether you were a man or a woman, you were constantly scrutinised and judged.

As for me, for the first few months, my critical faculties were, to say the least, underdeveloped. All girls appeared beautiful to me. There was an apparent confusion in my mind—something that I shared with most people from the Indian sub-continent—of equating fair skin with beauty. To me, then, being white meant being beautiful. I was still too dazed by the clear, white skin of a woman to examine her facial features and figure. It was only after many exposures to a bevy of young women in dance halls that I began to distinguish the plain-looking from the merely presentable, and the attractive from the really beautiful: but I still failed to notice their class background (not that it mattered then, or does now). Accent was no guide. Many of them with a standard accent often had a working-class background.

The social situation improved when some months later I moved from Stockton to Hull, a city with a university and two teacher training colleges. It was here, in an academic environment, that for the first time in England, I found I could, without much effort, get along with young men and women. At last I seemed to have found a niche. It was also in Hull that I began attending the monthly meetings of the Tribune Club: this partially satisfied my political curiosity and interest.

I have always been interested in politics. I began reading a daily paper at ten, and delivered my first public speech (at an open-air rally) at twelve. I sympathised with the nationalist Congress Party and was against British imperialism. By the time I left India I was a social democrat and, as such, held the British Labour Party in high esteem.

One of the first things I did on arrival in Stockton was to write to the local Labour Party agent suggesting a meeting. He never replied. I remember going to a half-day seminar organised (on a Sunday) by the Workers’ Educational Association in Middlesbrough. While we were being served ‘high tea’ I told my neighbour at the table, a young trade unionist, that I admired the Labour Party because it had synthesised the noble principles of democracy and socialism. He was frankly puzzled by this abstraction. ‘The Labour Party agent’s office’, he said, ‘is around the corner’. My respect for the active supporters of the Labour Party suffered a severe blow.

Nonetheless, during the 1959 general election, I did some envelope-licking and voter-slip-writing for the Labour candidate for the Hull West constituency. What impressed and puzzled me was the precision with which the candidate and his canvassers could count their supporters: almost every voter’s political loyalty was known! This robbed the electoral process of suspense and excitement, making it quite dull. The ease and speed with which party machines were geared into action indicated to me that elections in Britain were an old, established, and therefore an unexciting, ritual.

The overwhelming reaction of the voters seemed to be boredom mingled with a touch of cynicism. The election meetings in Hull were thinly attended, except the one addressed by Hugh Gaitskell. It was an effort to draw even fifty people to listen to the local candidate. This was a contrast from the situation prevalent in India where even a mediocre politician could draw a crowd of 100,000. I was, of course, aware that television and popular newspapers in Britain had made political meetings unnecessary whereas, in a largely illiterate India, rallies are often the only means of political education. But, despite the professional smoothness of their presentation, the party political broadcasts on British television were far from popular.

How was one to explain this disinterest in politics? One could simply, and sweepingly, say that British people were apolitical per se, a statement that would be impossible to square with historical facts. A more tenable explanation was that, during the late 1950s, British people did not feel an urge to express themselves politically because, for the vast majority of them, the fundamental problems of food and shelter had been, more or less, solved. This amounted to saying that our socio-political behaviour is rooted in our economic existence, a viewpoint that I, gradually, came to regard as both profoundly important and widely applicable.

This viewpoint, combined with a historical approach, enabled me to properly understand such social phenomena in Britain as orderliness, punctuality, punctiliousness and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART ONE: VIEWPOINT
• PART TWO: RESPONSE
• Index