What a coincidence that the heads of both Great Britain and Scotland are from South Asia. The Mayor of London is also a Muslim and his parents are also Pakistani.
But what few people know is that South Asians in British politics did not get this status overnight, but behind it there is a whole history of their political struggle, which dates back to 130 years ago in 1892 when Dadabhai Naroji became the first Indian to be elected as a Member of Parliament. But their journey was not easy.
Dadabhai Noro Ji’s Struggle
Dadabhai Navroji was born in 1825 in Mumbai to a Parsi Gujarati family. In 1852, he founded the Bombay Association, the first political organization of Indians during the era of the East India Company. In 1855 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy at Elphinstone College. He was also the first Indian to hold this position.
But shortly after that, he turned down his professorship and took a job in the UK at Coma & Co, a trading company with an office in Liverpool, which was the first Indian company to set up a trading office in the UK. .
After three years he set up his own trading company called ‘Dadabhai Noroji & Company’ which traded in cotton. Along with this, he was also appointed as a professor of Gujarati language at University College London.
In 1867, he founded the East Indian Association, which aimed to provide information to the British public about Indian problems. In 1885, this association was merged into the Indian National Association, which later emerged as the Indian National Congress, which went on to fight for India’s independence.
Dadabhai Nauruji returned to India in 1874 and was appointed Dewan, or Minister, to the Maharaja of Baroda. Later, Dadabhai also became a member of the Legislative Council of Bombay.
But Dadabhai Noroji believed that his destination was the British Parliament, where he could raise the voice of India’s rights. Keeping this in mind, he once again went to the UK and there he participated in the Dar-ul-Awam elections several times.
In 1886 he contested the Holburn London constituency on a Liberal Party ticket but lost. To which then Prime Minister Lord Salisbury said that it was a purely English constituency that was not prepared to elect a ‘black’ person.
But the effect of this was that the popularity of Dadabhai Nooruji increased in the British press and he was declared as the ‘Old man of India’. In Britain he became known as a social and liberal leader. In 1892, he became the first Indian to be elected Member of Parliament from Central Finsbury, another constituency in London.
They also took an oath not on the Bible but on the Persian testament ‘Aosta’. Few people also know that the founder of Pakistan, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, made his formal debut in politics with Dadabhai Naroji as his assistant. He also ran Dadabhai Naoroji’s successful election campaign in London and remained active as his subordinate even after winning.
Dadabhai lost his seat in the next election, but his freedom struggle did not diminish and he was elected as the President of the Indian National Congress in 1906. Leaders like Gandhi also called him a beacon. He is called the father of Indian nationalism, who wrote several books on the British Crown’s withdrawal of money from India and the growing poverty in India.
His first book was Poverty of India in 1876, while his book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, published in 1901, was considered a bible for Indian nationalists, and it was the same book that sparked hatred of the crown and freedom among Indians. Awakened passion.
He died in 1917 but he made history. He is not only considered to be the first elected Indian member of the British Parliament, but he was also a founding leader of the independence movement.
Sophia Dilip Singh and Shah Parji
After Dadabhai Naroji, the name of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s granddaughter Sophia Dilip Singh, who played an important role in the movement for women’s suffrage in Britain in the early twentieth century, comes into British politics. The British Postal Department also issued a commemorative stamp in his name in 2018.
Shah Parji Saklatwala, the nephew of Indian industrialist JN Tata, was also a Parsi, elected Member of Parliament on a Communist Party of Great Britain ticket in 1922.
A wave of political awareness in the South Asian community
Councilor Muhammed Akhbi was the first Asian to become Lord Mayor of Bradford in 1985. He opened the door to community in the halls of politics. However, critics at the time said that the Lord Mayor was a symbolic position and that the real powers rested with the chief executive of the council, and that whites would never want a black to hold such an important position.
But the following years proved this point of view wrong when the doors of the British Parliament were also opened to ethnic minorities. Lord Nazir Ahmed, who belongs to Pakistan, was made a member of the British Parliament. Until 1996, only four members of Parliament were South Asian, but this number has increased from 25 in 2010 to 41 today, which is 6.3 percent of the total members of parliament.
According to a report by the British House of Commons, by 2021-22, the proportion of South Asian population in the population over 16 years of age in the UK is seven percent, while 87 percent of the population consists of whites. The remaining six percent are made up of blacks and other ethnic minorities.
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In 2019, the percentage of representation of ethnic minorities in the House of Commons is 10% and their total number of members is 66. Out of which the largest number of members i.e. 41 belong to the Labor Party, 23 to the Conservative Party and two to the Liberal Democrats.
Interestingly, more than half of the members are women. As of September 2022, 55 members of the House of Representatives also belonged to ethnic minorities, which constituted 7.3 percent of the total members of the House of Representatives. In 1919 Satendra Sinha of India became the first Lord from Raipur.
Rishi Sonik also belongs to Pakistan
In this handout photo released by the British Parliament, British Prime Minister Rishi Sonic gives answers as Prime Minister during a question-and-answer session at the House of Commons in London on October 26, 2022 (AFP/Jessica Taylor / British Parliament)
Although the representation of ethnic minorities in the British Parliament is still somewhat less than the proportion of their population, on the other hand, it is also a fact that the British Prime Minister Rishi Sonak is also related to an ethnic minority.
His grandfather hailed from Gujranwala who migrated to Kenya before partition from where Rishi’s father migrated to Britain in 1960. Similarly, the parents of the Lord Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, also migrated from Pakistan, whose son had the honor of becoming the first Muslim Mayor of London.
Recently, another history was made in this sequence when the Scottish Parliament elected Hamza Yusuf of Pakistani origin as the First Minister and he became the youngest youth and the first Muslim to hold this position. His parents are also from Mian Chinna area of Punjab.
New generation, new ambitions
The halls of British politics are currently teeming with politicians from ethnic minorities, particularly those from South Asia.
But is it just a coincidence that just two decades ago they felt themselves and their race unsafe in Britain and believed that Britain was unsafe for them because of the dangerous rise in racial prejudice after the September 11 attacks? has gone
However, in the years to come, this impression has been refuted. It is true that Muslims still rank first in incidents of racial discrimination. According to figures released by the Home Office, there has been a 26% increase in religiously motivated hate crimes between March 2021 and March 2022. Muslims are its biggest target and account for 42 percent of religious hate crimes committed against them.
Jews are second in this list with 23% of the crimes committed against them. On the other hand, the representation of Muslims and ethnic minorities in the leading political parties has also increased.
Dr Muhammad Ali is the head of ‘Quest for Economic Development’, an NGO in Bradford dedicated to the effective participation of ethnic minorities in the mainstream.
Talking to Independent Urdu, he said that when he founded QED in 1990, he had no illusions that one day in his life there would be a non-white being part of the government or Then he will also become the Prime Minister. Today, not only the British Prime Minister, but also the heads of the two major parties in Scotland are from ethnic minorities.
Hamza Yusuf’s grandfather had migrated from Mian Chanu (AFP).
Anas Sarwar, who is the son of Chaudhry Sarwar, has been the head of the Scottish Labor Party since 2021, while Hamza Yusuf has become the Prime Minister after becoming the head of the ruling party at the age of 37.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan also belongs to a Pakistani family. “This is all a win for Britain’s diverse society, but they still face many challenges in winning the battle for equality,” he said in a statement. Currently, 66 members of Dar-ul-Awam belong to ethnic minorities, while if their proportion in the population is seen, their number should be 85.
‘Similarly, there are still obstacles in their way to key management positions in the UK. England and Wales have the highest unemployment rate among Muslims at 6.7%. But after recent successes I am hopeful that equal opportunities will make ethnic minorities a vibrant part of the mainstream.’
Wajahat Ali Khan is an analyst and journalist who has been reporting on community activities for the past three decades. He told Independent Urdu that the South Asian ‘community got these achievements when our new generation started participating systematically in local and national politics here, unlike the tradition of their parents, and the mainstream political parties had a It also provided them with ample opportunity while keeping prejudice or hatred at bay, and that is the beauty of British parliamentary democracy.
Among the proud Pakistanis of Pakistani origin at that time are Sir Anwar Pervez, Lord Zameer Ahmed, James Khan, Sajid Mehmood, Natasha Khan, Zareq Ghafoor, Saeeda Warsi, Hanif Qureshi, Tariq Ali, Zain Malik, Mashael Hussain, Martin Bashir, Aamir Khan and The names of Salma Yaqoob are included.
30 members of Dar-ul-Awam belong to Pakistan and India, while there are around 250 councilors whose parents or relatives belong to Pakistan. Ahmed Shehzad, a former councilor from London and former mayor of Brent Council, told Independent Urdu that ‘behind the recent successes is a story of long struggle. He founded the Black Asian and Minority Ethnic BAME in the Labor Party, which aimed to That ethnic minorities who support the Labor Party should be represented in Parliament and local councils should be increased.
I was elected its first chairman. We have established 23 sub-branches across the UK, which has resulted in increased BAME representation within the Labor Party.’
Masood Iqbal has been practicing as an immigration law specialist in Janjua Yorkshire for the past 30 years. He completely denied the impression that Muslims or ethnic minorities face any institutionalized prejudice in Britain.
He said that on the day of the London attacks, he had three appeals in court and all three were decided in his favour.
He said that the Indian community is ahead of us because they were integrated into the society here as soon as they arrived, while we built our separate mosque of one and a half bricks, due to which we had to sacrifice two generations to integrate here. fell All the fault lies with our first generation.
‘Now the third generation is standing side by side in all sectors of the UK and raising its flags of success and our women are playing a leading role in this.’
