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A Love-Hate Relationship
Why, in British public life, do we almost never speak about Empire?
It was a question that struck me again recently as I was watching the news with my parents. Another day in Parliament with Theresa May embroiled in the continuing chaos around Brexit.
Having migrated to Britain from Kenya and India more than 40 years ago, I still find it perplexing that they both voted to leave the EU in the 2016 Referendum.
Responding to their disillusionment on May’s attempts to deliver Brexit, I asked them whether they would still vote in the same way again, knowing what they do about all that was to follow.
“Yes,” they both said without hesitation. “It was still the right thing to do.”
That the Brexit vote was, in no small part, about Empire for Commonwealth immigrants, and their love-hate relationship with its legacy, has long needed discussion in British society.
Although non-white groups were generally more pro-Remain than white British people, “ethnic minorities showed a non-negligible level of support for leave, which was twice as high amongst Indians as amongst other minority groups”, according to an one report on the matter.
The relationship of Britain’s long-standing immigrant communities with the Empire is a complex one. At once, Britain’s colonisation has created a patriotic allegiance in immigrants who see themselves as ‘British’ – more British than the British – rather than as migrants, while at the same time demanding reparation and recognition for all the damage Britain inflicted on countries such as India.
In many ways, Brexit is the story of Empire. An unfinished, untold story on which the sun won’t set for a very long time.
A Family Affair
Swaraj, the first name of my father, means ‘self-rule’ and was a term used by Mahatma Gandhi to describe India’s quest for independence from hundreds of years of British rule. My grandfather gave him the name as he was born in August 1947, the month and year India finally achieved self-governance.
Raised in Nairobi, Kenya, until he was 18, my Dad spent two years in India, before coming to Britain in 1967 aged 20. His family, Indian Punjabis, had originally migrated to Kenya to build the railways in the country for the British.
While recognising the violence of colonisation, my father enjoyed growing up under British influence.
“I liked the way of life when I was in Kenya under the British rule, everything was run properly, all the