How India Civilised Britain

“IN BRITAIN, we are very proud of our diversity,” declared Treasury Minister James Murray.

He was responding to a remark during a speech at the Republican National Convention by JD Vance who could be America’s next vice president. “What is the first truly Islamist country to get a nuclear weapon?” asked Vance. “And we were like, maybe it’s Iran, maybe Pakistan. And then we finally decided maybe it’s actually the UK since Labour took over.”

Is Britain, as Vance said, only half in jest, becoming an Islamic country? Obviously not. But its character is changing, perhaps irreversibly.

Several British cities have Muslim mayors. Sadiq Khan, London’s mayor, won a third term on the back of London’s

Muslim vote, not his performance. On Khan’s watch, crime in London has ballooned. Young men on e-bikes speed along the streets of central London stealing mobile phones and watches. Stabbings are common.

British cities like Ipswich now have Hindu mayors as well. And Mohinder Midha became the first Dalit, and the first woman, to be elected mayor of the Ealing Council in West London.

So is Britain, as Treasury Minister Murray said in reply to Vance’s remark, actually truly diverse?

More than 18 per cent of Britain’s population comprises non-white ethnic minorities. Around 13 per cent of the new Labour-led House of Commons are MPs from ethnic minorities.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s cabinet, however, is less diverse than former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Tory cabinet. The four big ministries were held by ethnic minor­ities: home, foreign, defence and finance. In the new Labour cabinet, only one (Foreign Secretary David Lammy) is from an ethnic minority. Nonetheless, Britain has become one of the West’s most diverse and inclusive countries. Its long associa­tion with India as a colonial power has forced it to accept diversity following two centuries of economic plunder.

So how did India civilise Britain?

When the British arrived in India, they encountered an ancient civilisation in decay. As they conquered state after state, kingdom after kingdom, it dawned on Britain’s colonial administrators that they were dealing in India with something they had not encountered elsewhere.

In the thinly populated territories of North America and Australia, British colonists were content to massacre small indigenous populations and occupy their land. In India, with a population in the mid-1700s of nearly 200 million, they could hardly do that.

Fortunately for the British, India was fragmented in the 1700s. The Mughal Empire had crumbled. The Marathas had failed to capitalise. A power vacuum arose. The British filled it.

Over the next 190 years, the East India Company (EIC) paid large sums of money to the British Crown from the taxes it extorted from Indian traders, farmers and artisans. The revenue helped finance Britain’s Industrial Revolution and build its infrastructure, including bridges, roads, city centres and, in 1863, the world’s first underground Metro network, the London Tube.

As India bled, Britain prospered. Indian colonial revenue allowed Britain to emerge from Dickensian poverty into the world’s wealthiest nation. India by then had been re­duced to among the world’s poorest nations.

But during the long association with India, the British changed, impercep­tibly at first. They had arrived in India as colonists with guns, not visas. After Independence, they could hardly stop Indians from entering Britain with visas as lawful immigrants.

Over decades, the number of non-white immigrants in Britain has grown to a point that diversity is now a default option. London’s white population is already below 50 per cent. Of that, nearly half are non-British white Europeans. British whites now comprise less than 30 per cent of London’s population.

In London and Leeds, images of police retreating in the face of violent mobs have sparked fury on social media. Many echo Vance’s remark that Britain is appeasing Islamists. Worshipers taking over London roads on Fridays is a common sight.

Hindu migrants who have remained largely peaceful despite provocations from Muslim and Sikh extremists are now seen by average Britons in a new light: hard-working, law-abiding and godfearing.

Vance’s Indian-origin wife Usha Chilukuri has drawn attention on both sides of the Atlantic. A practising Hindu, as former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was, Usha said in an interview: “My parents’ Hindu faith made them great parents.”

Vance added that Usha’s “Hindu beliefs” had a profound impact on his spiritual and personal development.

Britain learnt its civilisational lesson in diversity from India.

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