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\n\t\t\t\t\tFebruary 15, 2025 02:15 PM IST\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tFirst published on: Feb 12, 2025 at 01:52 PM IST\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Kurtas, salwar, imitation jewellery,\u00a0gol gappe, jackfruit hanging from hooks. Is this Sarojini Nagar market? The thought may fleetingly strike you before beating just as sudden a retreat when you see the prices. It\u2019s Whitechapel in London, nowadays known more for jalfrezi than Jack the Ripper. You\u2019ll see one of the biggest mosques in Western Europe, and a bit further down the road, an underground \u2014 literally \u2014 Somalian restaurant with Old Delhi vibes where you can eat something biryani-esque off a shared plate. There\u2019s the proverbial Brick Lane and, perhaps inevitably, a fish-and-chip shop called Jack the Chipper.<\/p>\n
In this cultural khichdi, there\u2019s nothing particularly out of place about a sign displaying the local tube station\u2019s name in both English and Bengali. Nor is there anything surprising about an MP from Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform Party complaining about it. Elon Musk sticking his oar in is practically a given. On the surface, there\u2019s the old debate of integration versus multiculturalism \u2014 should minority groups assimilate fully into the dominant culture, or can these cultures thrive alongside each other? But what\u2019s interesting here is the deeper cultural politics underlying it \u2014 that of the British, or rather, English right\u2019s war on London. Think Londonistan, add a couple more decades of anti-immigrant, anti-multicultural politics culminating in Brexit, and the knotty question of English-versus-British identity.<\/p>\n
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Set against the nativist imagination is London\u2019s historical reality: That of a bustling port city that has always hosted travellers from across the oceans, some of whom settled down \u2014 from the legionaries and traders coming from the Mediterranean region, who rubbed shoulders with the Britons in Roman Londinium, to the Jewish and Lombard merchants of the Middle Ages to the East India Company\u2019s lascars. There were those who played important roles in British society and politics, from William Cuffay, the son of a formerly enslaved Black man from the West Indies and an Englishwoman, who settled in London and became a leader of the Chartist movement in the mid-19th century, to myriad Irishmen and women of all social strata. Whitechapel and East London more broadly have their own history of working-class Irish immigrants who came in the wake of the Potato Famine, as well as Eastern Europeans and Russian Jews \u2014 all of whom contributed to the melting pot before the Bangladeshis.<\/p>\n
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