Integrated? Muslim women wearing the niqab while shopping in Blackburn Lancashire:
Heroes: Growing up in India Mihir Bose was taught to revere Mahatma Gandhi but also developed a love for many British things,such as Sherlock Holmes.
Has Britain lost the values that drew me here?
By Mihir Bose
Last updated at 10:53 PM on 5th February 2011
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The week before David Cameron proclaimed the death of multiculturalism, my wife and I got lost driving through East London, not far from where the Olympics will be held. I leaned out of the car window to find a sign that was in a language I could not at first recognise. It was certainly not English.
Then I realised it was Bengali, the language of my parents. Although I speak Bengali, I have never been taught the written language.
For a moment, I had the bizarre thought that we had strayed into the east end of Kolkata – and, as in Kolkata, there was also an English sign and we eventually found our way. But that whole episode illustrated the multicultural mess we are in.
Integrated? Muslim women wearing the niqab while shopping in Blackburn, Lancashire
Local authorities, like my own Hammersmith and Fulham Council, distribute literature in various languages. For good measure, they also employ a call centre in India to check whether I have received their free paper. Doctors’ surgeries have signs in languages other than in English. On the ground, multiculturalism is alive and kicking. It will take more than one speech to kill it off.
We have muddled our way into this situation and for more than 20 years have ignored warnings to do something about it.
Back in the late Eighties, a judge in a case sentencing a Pakistani immigrant ordered him to learn English. His remarks caused an outrage.
When I wrote an article praising the judge, I was showered with abuse. To me it was a no-brainer. After all if you do not want to speak English and be part of this society, then why come here?
That was the choice I made more than 40 years ago. I grew up in India which had just won its freedom from Britain. I was part of the first generation of free Indians for centuries.
Heroes: Growing up in India, Mihir Bose was taught to revere Mahatma Gandhi (left) but also developed a love for many British things, such as Sherlock Holmes
We were brought up to revere Mahatma Gandhi, the man who had made Indians believe they could look anyone in the eye. But we also accepted the good the British had left behind.
For me Britain was a land of magical symbols. I grew up dreaming of scoring a century at Lord’s and a Cup Final goal at Wembley, and with Just William, Biggles, Sherlock Holmes, Somerset Maugham, P. G. Wodehouse, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
You could say I was part of a small minority of the English-educated Indian elite that was taught to believe that a news item was true only if it had been broadcast by the BBC World Service.
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But it says much for a country that can generate such a belief, so much so that Rajiv Gandhi, in 1984, only accepted his mother Indira had been assassinated when he heard the broadcast of Mark Tully, the BBC’s legendary man in Delhi.
My migrant’s road was different from that of most. I did not come here fleeing oppression, nor to seek my fortune. I decided to make my home here because I believed that this was a fairer society where I could achieve my goal of becoming a writer more easily than in India. I have never regretted my decision.
The tragedy with modern Britain is that it seems not to care any longer for the qualities that make it so special and that drew me and many others to this country.
Not just tolerance and kindness – India has that as well – but a sense of fair play and justice, giving everyone a chance. These qualities are unequalled anywhere else in the world.
Of course various racial and religious groups, particularly the Muslims, must accept this country. But this country must help them – not by pandering to them but by broadcasting its own virtues.
For too long it has given the impression of not just being ashamed of them but ignorant of them.
Unless Britain rediscovers its pride in its values this wretched multiculturalism will never die.
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