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So I wanted to talk a little bit about what's been going on in Leicester in the UK in recent weeks. TL;DR: Sectarian violence imported from the Indian subcontinent bubbles over into a UK city that has previously been deemed an example of "good" diversity, with the potential for much scarier and wider violence in larger cities if the police/community don't get it under control.
I'll start by saying that one of the central aspects of the South Asian religious squabbles we've seen in recent years has been misinformation and biased reporting agitating and stoking tensions. This time it isn't any different, and that makes it difficult to decipher exact timelines. I'll be going off what I've seen from "reputable reporters" in the UK, but take everything with a slight pinch of salt.
I'll do a brief timeline of events, then some background on Leicester and South Asian community dynamics in the UK, and then some brief thoughts- I wanted this post mostly to be informative to a non-British audience, rather than me spouting polemical.
Quick important context: Leicester is a mid-sized British City (approx. 370k 2021 pop.) in the East Midlands. It has historically had a very large South Asian (or just Asian in the UK) population, which until recently was nearly entirely Indian (i.e. Hindu or Sikh). In the 2011 census this stood at 93k Indians, or 28% (almost certainly larger now). In the last 30 years or so the Muslim (Pakistani/Bangladeshi/Middle Eastern) population has grown- very difficult to get exact numbers but maybe up to 20% of the population (in 1991 probably about 1%). More on this later.
So on the 28th August India played Pakistan in a Cricket match. This was what you might call a big deal- there's obviously a massive rivalry which gets carried into Cricket, both countries' national sport. After the match, groups of fans of both countries gathered in the city centre, in what seemed to me a mirror image of the post-match behaviour we saw in London after the Euro 2020 football final- crowd dynamics, young amped up men, hooliganism etc. There were reports of some scuffles, apparently Indian fans chanted "Death to Pakistan", there were anti-Muslim slogans, and a (probably Sikh) man was attacked.
This died down relatively quickly, but within a few days, Hindus began sharing videos on WhatsApp of gangs of men attacking property and people in Hindu areas of the city. Some flags were taken down (as far as I can tell, orange Hindutva/BJP-type flags). Videos of some of the men having knives (all too common in the UK now) also circulated. The implication was this was Muslim men attacking the Hindu community.
These messages then started spreading on the ubiquitous WhatsApp groups that the diaspora communities use. The line seemed to be that Muslim gangs were targeting Hindu households, especially those with religious symbols. This was possibly retaliation for or simply escalation of the behaviour seen on the 28th August. Hindus then started saying they needed to gather and protect those households and areas under attack, and at the weekend groups of Hindu men started to mobilise and appeared on the streets in the areas that had been targeted.
That began a tit-for-tat retaliation/escalation, where Muslim activists (usually social media "influencers", young "community leaders", 99% men) turned up on the streets to film the large gatherings of masked up Hindu "protectors", to then post the videos online for a) clout and b) to get Muslims to mobilise. There are lots of videos of Hindu groups chanting nationalist slogans like "Jai Shree Ram" on the streets, usually with masks, hoods etc. Police are struggling to manage the situation, and are using tried and tested crowd control tactics which are more often used for groups of football fans (the similarity is striking). This doesn't involve much actual intervention however to avoid violence and try and keep the group calm.
Muslim groups are then filmed protesting the Hindu crowd's actions (and police inaction), which moves on to causing trouble by removing flags outside Hindu temples. Flag burning videos also circulate (veracity uncertain). All this serves to just inflame Hindus in the UK (WhatsApp again...), but also in India. The right-wing strongly pro-BJP media in India latches on to these tit-for-tat exchanges where it is framed as Hindus being attacked by Muslims- to the extent that the Indian GOVERNMENT has called on the UK to sort it out and stop the "persecution".
This is all inflamed by the Muslim activists/social media influencers coming in and making soap-box speeches, of a radical Islamist, anti-Hindu nature. Again, pretty much everyone involved in this is young-ish men.
This weekend (17th September) the WhatsApp disinformation machine went into overdrive, with claims of Mosques/Temples being attacked/burned (not true as far as I can tell). Mobs are now in the low hundreds rather than the roaming gangs that we saw previously. Police struggled to contain it and made a series of arrests (around 50 in total). Whilst I've been writing this, a man has been jailed for 10 months (which is a very fast turn around) for possession of an offensive weapon. Hopefully this is a sign of the authorities cracking down in order to prevent this spiralling further- we saw similar tactics after the 2011 London riots.
So that's the timeline up to today. The risk is that this is not contained within Leicester, and escalates to places like Birmingham or London, where there are both large numbers of Muslims and large numbers of Hindus. In one sense it has already escalated past Leicester, thanks to the wonders of modern media, and there have definitely been people coming in from nearby Midlands cities (Birmingham/Nottingham) to "protect" their community (mostly Muslims from what I can tell).
Some further demographic context is probably useful at this point. In 2011 there were roughly 800,000 Hindus in England (relevant subpart of UK), 420,000 Sikhs, and 2,700,000 Muslims. Most of the Muslims in the UK are Pakistani/Bangladeshi, with more recent arrivals from MENA.
What makes Leicester unique is that it is the only major city in England which has more Hindus than Muslims. The Hindu population of the UK is concentrated in north-west London (to be fair the Boroughs of Brent and Harrow are 100k strong in their own right, and are both Hindu>Muslim) and in Leicester. Other centres of the Asian population in the UK (East London, Birmingham, Bradford, South Yorkshire, Lancashire) are very much Muslim (i.e. Pakistani or Bengali) rather than Hindu.
As I said earlier, Leicester is rapidly becoming a city with large Hindu AND Muslim components, rather than a Hindu centre. Leicester also has a large black British population (~7%). Leicester has been one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the UK for a while now, and was also upheld as an example of "good community relations". However, these community relations were between white Brits/Eastern Europeans/Indians/blacks until fairly recently. The massive increase in the Muslim population of the city has changed this balance, and introduced a usually unseen (in the UK) dynamic of minority v minority, rather than the usual ethnic conflict (majority v minority).
The Muslim population in the UK is growing rapidly, partially due to immigration, but predominantly due to birth rates. Indians (often East African Asians in the UK) have usually been a) wealthier and b) more assimilated than the larger Muslim population. They also have birth rates which are closer to the national average.
I'm not going to go into depth on the rise of Hindu nationalism, but suffice to say that it has made it over into the UK via WhatsApp, and is one of the larger factors behind the escalation. It is easy to see a picture here of the only "Hindu" city in the UK quickly becoming more and more Muslim, with presumably an inevitable overtaking in the near future, and rising anti-Muslim sentiment amongst Indians (including the diaspora) and how that may result in what we're seeing happen on the streets.
This post has got too long so I will stop here, but there are some really interesting and complex dynamics at work on top of this core story. The key ones are in my view:
-Importation of South Asian sectarianism into Britain
-Relative population growth rates and migration
-Rise in Hindu nationalism/RSS/Hindutva
But there are also a ton of other stories going on- some unique to this, some that have been bubbling away for a while in the UK:
-WhatsApp and instant communication and their role in spreading misinformation/radicalisation
-Media bias (lack of reporting due to the Queen's funeral)
-Stoking of tension by online influencers for "clout"
-Knife crime/gang violence imported from London, often via internet culture and music
-Mob mentality/masculinity, and the similarities with football hooliganism
-Islamic extremism, or at the very least anti-integration/orthodoxy
-Inability of the police to manage crowds (yet again)
-Wariness around ethnic minority/sectarian issues from the authorities.
Hope this was of some interest- as I said, be careful of sources if you want to read more into this- twitter is a good place to look to see real reactions from those involved and how both sides are adamant that the other side is 100% at fault and it is clearly an anti-X attitude.
Missing point
Obviously I missed the other large dynamic- reaction from right-wing/anti-immigration groups. Historically the anti-migrant right in the UK has had issues with the Muslim population predominantly, although Hindus also experience plenty of general racism. Usual stuff about migrant control, importing violence etc. already being seen and likely to grow if this drags on.
Since the rightward turn in India, there is also a dynamic around alliances between anti-Muslim European politics and anti-Muslim Hindu politics. This doesn't seem that much of a leap, as historically Muslims=Labour (left) voters, Hindus=~Conservative (right), but more evenly split.
This probably originates in and reflects the poverty/education/wealth disparity between the two groups. Wealthier, middle Class, often East African Indians (those with origins in Gujarati merchant families are a major group in British politics), as opposed to the Pakistani community which largely originates from some backwards rural districts in Pakistan, or refugees more recently. It is an interesting dynamic.
The split became very visible around 2019, when Labour brought up the issue of Kashmir following the removal of its partial autonomy and the lockdownds. I know a few anti-BJP Brit Indians who also got pissed off and voted Tory after that.
This spectator article presents an analysis similar to yours.
Also another anecdote, I've known a few pro-BJP Indians in the UK and US becoming sympathetic to white nationalists. I think this reflects on your earlier point that community relations are only good between Indians and whites, Indians and Muslim South Asian groups at times would rather not interact. The point about the wealth imbalance is on point, what's also interesting though is that Indian refugees from Uganda also seemed to have moved up the ladder since Amin's purge.
Yes that's a good point about Kashmir, I'd forgotten about that.
It's also worth pointing out that community relations between Indians and Muslims in some parts of the population are perfectly fine. Especially second-gen, upper/middle class, there are basically no issues beyond "I can't marry you as our parents wouldn't approve."
I also found this about Sikh-Muslim clashes in the 80s. As noted in the thread, this was during the height of the Khalistan movement in Indian Punjab. There's a lot of political baggage in the subcontinent, not always easy to shake away. Nevertheless, since the Indian middle class felt absolutely fucked from above and below back in India (where they're both taxed heavily, deal with Malthusian growth rates and there's pressure from below which doesn't sufficiently distinguish between the rich class and middle class in its grievances concerning exploitation), they were more keen to shed their identities once they immigrate. This is largely true in the US but I think political competition with Brit Pakistanis kept it alive in the UK.
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