While it’s interesting that Indians were the Jews of Africa, the only cite I could find implies that only 16% of British Indians are from Africa. And given that a lot of them had their property confiscated, I’m skeptical that they could be skewing outcomes to the extent that we see.
The Wiki cite says that 16% of British Indians were born in Africa. But it also says that 46% of British Indians were born in the UK; many of those will have been born to parents who were themselves born in Africa. If we’re looking at the educational and social heritage of of British Indians, and the advantages and disadvantages that it confers, then the proportion whose origins lie (relatively) economically and educationally advantaged East African Indian community is the important figure, not the number actually born in Africa.
This is GQ and I’d request you to back this up with a cite.
Again is this your personal opinion or can you produce a cite for this? I am not aware of wide-scale hatred of profit making companies in the US or Europe. Also, I am not aware what you mean by profit-taking class. Isn’t that the point of any endeavor - making profit ? Is there a loss-taking class ?
My cite is discussions with a fellow who grew up in Nyasaland who described several Asian families in exactly that situation - they all tried to export their wealth, occasionally someone got caught and the government took everything. (In case you suspect bias - his parents were white mining engineers, no dog in either side of the fight)
My cite is several discussions with a pair of brothers whose whole family were kicked out of Uganda a few years before I met them. The older one described the auto accident - he was serious. if he hadn’t gotten out of there, the soldiers would shoot him with no repercussions, Asians were hated that much. And many similar attitudes.
So I heard eyewitness testimony from people who lived there. Feel free to enlighten me that they were, as a class, enlightened social activists.
Maybe you’ll start by citing Wikipedia -
Ok, you ask that I show that generally the profit-taking classes are disliked. Ignoring the archetypes, Scrooge and Shylock(racist too); start with the Occupy Wall Street protests which made “the 1%” a household term. Lest you think “but that’s a bunch of nutbars!” Look at the stereotyped greedy, money-before-everything characters through popular American culture, genera;;y portrayed as bad.
“It’s a Wonderful Life” - especially if you’re a banker.
“Silkwood” -kill anyone who threatens their profits
“Erin Brockovich”
“Titanic” - save the first class people first.
“Take This Job and Shove It” song and movie - say no more
“Jerry MacGuire”, “Wall Street”, “Wolf of Wall Street”
“The Terminator” and sequels, the evil corporation carelessly building killing machines for profit.
“Skyfall” even James Bond is fighting big corporation trying to monopolize water.
“Up” Evil developer will do anything to force old guy out of house…
So many examples of this. I’m suggesting this is a particularly general stereotype. Maybe it’s envy, maybe greed is a necessary trait for some forms of financial success.
And oh, yeah - some guy in one book I read overturned the moneychangers’ tables and whipped them out of the temple; and remarked “it is easier for a loaded camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Those are the only numbers I was able to find. Since this is your claim, it would be nice if you could back it up. It would also be nice to see a cite that they were ‘economically advantaged’. I have no doubt that some of them were, but I’d like to know if most or all of them were. The Ugandan Indians for instance, seem to have been turned out with a notice of 90 days, and their property and businesses confiscated. The British office of statistics mentions that most East African Indians came to Britain as refugees, not a word that drums up visions of economic security.
Also, do you have any evidence that the Indian community from India is as badly integrated/unsuccessful as the Pakistani/Bangladeshi community?
So…no cites then?
They had to leave in a hurry, often abandoning much or all of their property, sure. But poltical refugees generally get on better in their new life than people migrating to escape poverty.
Indians leaving Africa didn’t have to leave behind their education, their qualifications, their experience and attainments, their command of the English language and the other advantages accruing from their (relatively) privileged status. And in at least some cases, they would have been able to bring some economic assets. All in all, this would enable them to hit the ground running in the UK, compared to an economic migrant with minimal education, a minimal grasp of English and minimal previous contact with the British commercial and official classes. And this is the kind of advantage that you would not be surprised to see persisting for a generation, or even more.
I haven’t made that claim.
On the numbers, I can’t tell you what percentage of British Indians are of East African origin, but it is signficantly more than 16%. Of the 46% born in the UK, nearly all will have been born to parents or grandparents who were born either in India or in East Africa. Because the born-in-India community is longer established (they came largely in the 50s and 60s; the born-in-Africa community in the 60s and 70s) I suspect the born-in-UK community breaks slightly more in their favour than the raw numbers would suggest. But this is guesswork.
Ok, that’s plausible. If you can point me to evidence that Indians coming to England from Africa as a group were better off in Africa than the Pakistanis/Indians were in Pakistan/India, I’ll accept your point. My understanding was that Indians were originally take to Africa as indentured labourers, and I don’t automatically accept that they all became economically well off in succeeding generations. The kind of discrimination they faced there could easily have stemmed from some visible successes.
If you can establish that, there will in fact be some degree of confounding if we look at Indian/Pakistani populations without appreciating this distinction.
But it does undercut your contention somewhat. Even if we accept that Indian-African-Britishers are different, they are only at most 30% of the Hindu population, which is underrepresented in the prison population by a significant amount. (Although I’m beginning to wonder if that’s a particularly good metric. What’s the deal with so many Buddhists in jail? They’re overrepresented even more than the Muslims)
Indians did initially arrive in East Africa as indentured labourers, largely in connection with the construction of railways. Indentured labourers were in some ways little better than slaves (and, indeed, the system had been devised to replace slavery). But when the construction was completed, the great bulk of them returned home. The ones who remained on tended to be, e.g, those who had become foremen or gang leaders, and who were offered positions railway officials, junior clerks and the like, and thus began their slow climb up the socioeconomic ladder. Excluded from farming by colonial policy, but well-positioned to deal with the Arab traders who were already trading into Africa across the Indian Ocean, the sons of railway workers became police constables and peddlers. Their sons became shopkeepers, traders and administrative civil servants. (They were barred from the higher ranks of the civil service.) Their sons became import/export agents, factory owners, doctors and accountants.
OK, this oversimplifies and it also appeals to stereotypes. But the fact is that the Indian community in East Africa, starting from fairly humble origins, cut off as it was from the option of farming, and with access to an international network, was well-positioned to take advantage of the growth in trade and commerce that resulted from colonial policy, By the middle-twentieth century they dominated the small business and sole trader sectors in Kenya, Uganda and neighbouring countries. That’s not to say that every East African Indian was prosperous, but as a community they were educated, they spoke English, they had international connections and they had aspirations.
And they were resented. As far as the African community was concerned, they were the brown-skinned NCO class of a white-officered army of colonial occupation. The prejudicial stereotypes that md2000 mentioned may have some degree of accuracy or none at all, but they were certainly genuine - as in, md2000 is right to present them as evidence of how the Indian community was widely regarded. Idi Amin may have been psychotic, but his policies resonated with a large section of the Ugandan population, and this is why.
Yes, they probably account for not more than about 30% of the British Indian community, but that’s enough to raise average levels of prosperity, educational attainment, etc quite a bit. They’d also be well-positioned to support and assist Indian-origin British Indians who might have come from less privileged backgrounds, and to play a disproportionate role in providing leadership, example and encouragement within the community. (Whether they do this or not, I can’t say. My only claim is that it’s not implausible.) This are factors that might account for the relative success of the British Indian community, by comparison with the British Pakistani community and the British Bangladeshi community.
Another factor that would be worth exploring is whether the Indian-born Indian migrants to the UK themselves enjoyed any socioeconomic advantage, by comparison with the Pakistani- and Bangladeshi-born immigrants. In fact, the ONS report to which you link in post #25 says (on page 31) that they did.
The high point of migration from India was in the 1950s, i.e. within ten years or so of Indian independence, whereas the high point of migration from Pakistan and Bangladesh was in the 60s and later. It’s pure conjecture on my part, but it may be that the migration from India was leavened by some proportion of Indians who had connections with Britain through having worked in the Indian Civil Service or other colonial institutions, and who left because they found their relative loss of privilege in independent India uncongenial. Again, in terms of education and attainment these would have been better positioned than pure economic migrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan in the 6os and later.
Finally, with regard to the prison statistics in particular, the obvious factor that everyone has overlooked so far is demographics. The British Pakistani and British Bangladeshi populations both have a markedly younger profile than the British Indian population, and than the White British population. Imprisonment rates are strongly age-correlated, so you would expect British Pakistanis and British Bangladeshis to be overrepresented in the prison population.
I remember going to university and meeting lots of Asians who had been thrown out of Uganda a few years before. They were the sons and daughters of the middle classes and they were very wistful about the life of privilege they had to abandon when they were forced to leave Uganda. The UK was forced to take about 70,000 of them very suddenly. A few years later I worked with a lady who was a social worker who formed part of the reception for the refugees. I said that there were news reports of the refugees being stripped of all of their money on leaving Uganda. She said, some, yes. But she always remembers an old man who seemed to have difficulty carrying his umbrella. She tried to help him by offering to carry it, he snatched it back and a few gold bars fell from it. I think it is safe to assume that a fair number of the Ugandan Asians made it to the UK with sufficient funds to get established in business. They certainly had the education, they were the professional technical class. They prospered very much in the UK.
Here are some recollections on the 40th anniversary of their expulsion.
http://lordpopat.com.s72754.gridserver.com/parliament/debate-ugandan-asians
Contrast this with the Pakistani community who were often from a very modest backgrounds recruited from the textile producing areas of Punjab and Kashmir. They are were generally working class. They also has a very socially conservative cultural tradition and did not see much benefit in integrating with the British working class community. They tend to keep one foot on the old country and marriages are arranged between cousins.
These are two completely different patterns of immigrant experience. Usually it takes a couple of generations for integration to happen and it happens at different rates in different communities. Immigration into the UK was not the same as in the US, Canada or Australia. It was originally intended as a short term measure to address a labour shortage. This was the pattern across a lot of western Europe in the 1960s and it is interesting to compare the experiences of other countries with their immigrant communities.
One thing is for sure, immigration from the India, Pakistan, Africa and the Carribean had a profound affect on the UK culture which was a pretty much a monoculture. before the big immigration boom of the 1960s.
After some difficult times at the beginning, a consistent policy of multi-culturalism has been followed by most governments since the 1960s. Pakistani voters are very important in many towns, but the often cosy political consensus regarding community relations which has prevailed for years has been shown to mask some serious social problems.
There is a big rethink of UK social policy at the moment about how best to tackle abuse networks operating inside these communities and what to do about wannabe jihadi Rambos.
My own sense is that African-Indian and Indian communities would not interact to a very large extent. Those African-Indians I’ve met and interacted with tend to consider themselves as being from Africa, not India. Their families had been living in Africa for multiple generations by the time they left.
One factor that I’ve dug up and can provide a cite for is the economic activity of women.
The Indian number in that graph is ~35%.
Another aspect of the demographics and prisons - generally, the lower class is heavily overrepresented in prisons. This is evident in the overrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics in the USA and aboriginals in western Canada. There are various reasons why the poor are more likely to end up in prison. No surprise if the lower class in Britain, whatever the ethnic makeup, is also so represented.
Another interesting point is the discussion of the issue by Richard Feynman, IIRC in his book “Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman”. He is visiting some Caribbean island (Barbados?) and asks the cab driver to show him the parts the tourists don’t see. During a tour of these areas, the cabbie mentions that here are blacks and Asians starting in similar circumstances, but the Asians seem to do much better economically. Why is that?
Feynman speculates one difference is that the Asians immigrated with their culture intact, respect for the elderly, family support, and education and learning being a core part of the Indian subcontinent. Black slaves, on the other hand, were ripped from their culture, had it beaten out of them, any family or clan ties were broken, and never given any culture to replace it. Asians came from a culture that respected work, and blacks learned that work and reward had no connection.
So I guess the question is, to what extent would the difference in cultures affect the rural Pakistani vs. urban Indian population? Plus, as mentioned earlier, the African refugees mostly arrived 30 or 40 years ago, mostly had decades of education and integration with colonial white society.
To be fair, though, Canada has had massive immigration from both India and Pakistan, and does not appear to have the same issues to the same extent. People work hard, and eventually blend in somewhat. In a neighbourhood of $400,000 houses, I count 4 east Indian families in the dozen nearest houses (plus some Chinese, Filipino, and a few white people). They are doing well. Maybe we just haven’t had as much immigration as England.
Bearing in mind the old saw about plural anecdotes, my (white) parents lived in Uganda until Amin started getting really crazy, and everything they’ve ever told me matches 100% with what md2000 is saying. They had indian friends, neighbours, colleagues and employees and the impression I got is that the top layer of indian society basically overlapped and intermingled with the white expat/colonial society. Accountants, restauranteurs, dentists, merchants, etc. etc. While whites were widely resented, Indians seem to have been widely hated. Part of this may have been down to the ‘colonial NCO’ aspect, partly cultural, partly socio-economic.
Two specific things I recall being mentioned many times:
Being active in the retail and merchant trades, many small general goods stores were owned by indians and in small towns it would not be uncommon for there to be only one retail establishment, and it would be owned by an indian. The (african) locals often lacked transport and would have to sell there whatever they had to trade, and buy whatever they needed - at prices set by the shopkeeper. That’s a situation ripe for resentment which was exacerbated by the occasional instance of playing loose with weights & measures or otherwise taking advantage of the local lack of education (e.g. the old magnet under the scales trick).
Being big on extended families, the indian community would often have very large weddings, regular sunday picnics etc. where large numbers would gather and, naturally, for the occasoin wear their best clothes, their best jewellry, bring the nicest car in the household, etc. This was not perceived well at all by the africans who saw it as a flaunting of ill-gotten wealth in front of those whose country had provided that wealth.
As for the 90-day thing - while I doubt the exact details were anticipiated, by the time that happened I think anyone with half a brain would have spent some time thinking about how to GTFO when it all hit the fan. When that order was issued my mother had already left the country as they didn’t feel it was safe for her to drive to work through army checkpoints which regularly had freshly executed corpses lying in the ditch next to them. Everybody knew someone who had been robbed or murdered or had their house raided and/or burned. People were liquidating at pennies on the dollar and had already shipped what they could overseas.
And there certainly were plenty of smart ideas for getting money out of East Africa and into India. My favourite one - India had very high tarrifs on shoes, and any shipment where they tarrifs werent paid were auctioned off. One guy would buy massive quantities of shoes, and send all the left ones in a container to e.g. Calcutta, and a week or two later all the right shoes in a container to e.g. Bombay. Then he would not bother turning up to pay the tarriff and collec the goods, but instead wait for the auctions. Who’s going to bid on 5,000 left shoes, other than the guy who knows where he can get the right shoes?
Lastly - I personally know only a few people from ‘African Indian’ families but they seem to regard themselves more as a vaguely african-flavoured subset of a global Gujarati community. They talk about their (many many) relatives in Australia and Canada and Zambia and Tanzania exactly as they do the ones back ‘home’ in India.