A Growing Resentment Of My Own People Manifests Inside Of Me
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman speaks at a policing conference (Photo: Brandon Hattiloney CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr)
The Vice President of the United States of America’s first name translates to ‘lotus flower’ in Sanskrit. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is of Punjabi descent. The Indians are not coming. The Indians are here. The same Indians who Winston Churchill venomously described as a 'beastly people' somehow can't worm and inch their way out of the political spotlight.
The Anglo-Indian immigration story, shared and capitalised by so many of our leading politicians, could have been one of hope. And therein lies the most frustrating aspect. The possibility that if watered and nurtured, these fruits of labour could have counted for something, if they had not eroded the same path that other minorities could have ventured. It cannot be asserted that Indian politicians categorically advocate for racist policies but our most visible representatives continually alienate themselves from their own communities as well as other ethnic minorities.
The beginning of Rishi Sunak’s premiership coincided with the holiday of Diwali. To the majority of the weary British public, this day marked nothing, it represented no end and no beginning. We were washed away with the tide of dissatisfaction, with the bitter truth that unabashed, unelected prime-ministers determine our policies, once again. Later that day, many British-Indians would watch firework displays break apart the black sky with glowing beacons of colour. How else do you celebrate the festival of lights, and externalise its message that good triumphs over evil, that only the most righteous cause is the cause that prevails? In hindsight, this day’s religious significance was the only redeemable aspect.
How hypocritical of some of us to rejoice that day in its fullest, our embrace of warped loyalty rendered us willing to overlook the fact that although this man’s parents may speak the same language as ours - ultimately he does not speak for us. Instead, he speaks with a wretched and tainted passion, and what appears to be the intention of rusting and disintegrating whatever chains of solidarity the Indian diaspora have with other marginalised groups.
It does not take a top political analyst to observe the ideological trends in our Asian representatives. It is abundantly clear that Indian representation in Western politics exists and thrives inside a vacuum of conservatism and with that, follows an eruption of contradiction.
Sunak staunchly champions conservatism albeit not as loudly as the contenders for the US presidency, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. Haley has made her anti-immigrant stance increasingly clear through her signing of a bill requiring police officers to stop individuals suspected of illegal immigration status. Staying in the realm of America, our so-called leftist representation lacks conviction as seen in Kamala Harris’ worrying record as San Francisco’s District Attorney which does little to dispel accusations of pandering to the police and de-prioritising the rights of minorities. She stresses this in her Anti-Truancy Programme, criminalising parents of children who missed 10 percent of the school year ‘without a valid reason’. Schemes such as these do not actively deconstruct the root of truancy, which often stems from existing societal structures. What prevents full attendance involves factors ranging from chronic illness to biased learning atmospheres, disproportionately affecting students of colour.
Vivek Ramaswamy is now the second leading Republican presidential candidate after Donald Trump, keep in mind that this is no win for minorities but a devolution. Ramaswamy refuses to even acknowledge the scale of racism today in America. His referring to Juneteenth, a national holiday celebrating the abolition of slavery, as 'useless' and 'redundant' is testament to the lack of racial awareness held by these diasporic Indian representatives and the forceful separation between fact and fiction they entertain. Ramaswamy is acutely aware of his voice’s significance as the son of brown immigrants, and is more than willing to exploit it in order to essentially immunise racists.
But this symphony of disappointment climaxes in our former Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who ravenously craves the fruition of the distressing ‘Asylum Rwanda Plan’, ultimately drawing more parallels with Enoch Powell than with Mahatma Gandhi. Though like Gandhi, she does gravitate towards racist anti-Black policies. Braverman’s refusal to call the Metropolitan Police institutionally racist is an explicit rejection of the truth, endorsing a wretched system guilty of continually brutalising Black Britons. What Braverman is doing is not only accommodating discrimination but forcefully creating a space for its development. And in doing so, synonymises the Indian diaspora with bigotry.
The purpose of this political mechanism is to further acclimatise Britain to a new age of regression. To usher in an era unwarped by ‘wokeism’, the definition of which distorts daily and swiftly. What we are seeing unfold is not only the manipulation of identity politics which is just another tool in both the right and left’s arsenal but the continued weaponisation of Indian racial identity. Braverman and Sunak have condemned the drive that propels a multitude of immigration stories. They do this whilst reaping the fruits of the very same principles of hope these journeys are grounded in. At this year’s Conservative Party Conference, Braverman referred to an oncoming ‘hurricane’, characterising immigrants as ‘uncontrolled and unmanageable’. The strategic repackaging of racist policies, and epithets delivered by an Asian woman are somehow meant to lighten the blow as if the sharp blades of oppression can ever be blunted.
The truth is that it is beyond disappointing to watch in real time, a people gradually lose their once instilled will to liberate. My representatives are hellbent on distancing themselves from their own diaspora as well as other marginalised communities. By constantly trivialising the pursuit of racial equality, in both an American and British context, Indian politicians enforce the myth that racial discrimination is but an old story, the words of which are faded and forgotten.
This could not be further from the truth.