by Ziauddin Sardar (Granta, £20)
In Pakistan, a balti is a bucket. In Britain, it's a dish served in Pakistani restaurants. So it is, as Ziauddin Sardar spends the first 30 pages of this book explaining, emblematic of British Asian identity: it's not British, it's not Asian, it's British Asian. That's a trivial insight, but I mention it to warn the reader that Sardar—a major Asian and Muslim commentator, a columnist for the New Statesman, a maker of programmes for the BBC and Channel 4—often spends a long time presenting arguments that no one disputes.
One other general assessment: Sardar can't write. He renders interesting people into dull, overused adjectives. For example, the smart women that he meets are invariably "slim" (the slim women are invariably "smart"). And, once he has listed his four adjectives, all that remains of the people he introduces is the dull dialogue he gives them. As Sardar quotes himself asking, "Where does Afghan-ness feature in your mental makeup?" No one talks like this, and no one ought to write like this either.
The purpose of Sardar's book is to examine the British Asian experience in different places in Britain—Glasgow, Leicester, London—and through different periods of time. One of his central themes is that British people and Asian people have interacted for hundreds of years, something he illustrates with examples from his own family history: the tale of a grandfather, for example, who served in the British army. British Asian, Sardar wants to say, is a well-worn identity, or, to put it another way, the balti has been cooking for a long time.
The one issue that Sardar senior's experience does illuminate is loyalty. Sardar says at several points in the book that there is a difference between citizenship and belonging. British Asians, he suggests, have been offered enough to secure their acceptance of the terms of citizenship, but they feel no belonging. Crucially, he believes that this is the fault of British society. He is no doubt right that some racism remains in British society, but he is switching terms when he makes this argument. The corollary of citizenship is loyalty. Loyalty is what you give in return for the rights of citizenship. By avoiding the term loyalty, and talking about belonging instead, Sardar is trying to put the onus on British society to create belonging, rather than on British Asians to offer loyalty.
But why is it wrong for British Asians to offer loyalty? Sardar's grandfather did exactly that by serving in the army during the Raj, even though there wasn't then the political equality that exists now. Does Sardar have a distaste for British cultural identity? Yet the cover of his book features the Union Jack and he enjoys balti, in the British sense of it.
The problem is that Sardar doesn't want to say anything critical or challenging about the British Asian experience. He repeats instead a sort of mantra: that British Asian identity is diverse, and that it requires protection and support due to racism. This is infuriating because there is so much else to say.
He comes close at times. He visits Glasgow and writes briefly about Asian gangs there. But he quickly suggests that these formed as a response to racism. This is offered without any evidence at all. He may be right, but he ought also to comment on how the gangs encircle the Asian community and deny freedom to women in particular. I have lived in Glasgow and I know of several examples of these gangs intimidating and harassing Asian women who have sought to form relationships with non-Asians. The gangs are also involved in crime, both opportunistic and organised. It's a whitewash to say that they are self-defence organisations. Indeed, I have heard anecdotally that some of their most profitable criminal enterprises are in partnerships with white Italians or Catholics. They don't defend Asians: they combine with gangs of other ethnicities to rip them off.
Similarly, Sardar almost talks about arranged marriage in an interesting way. He goes to a charity event where he observes "young men eagerly eyeing young girls" and "young girls gawking and laughing at young men." He states, correctly, that many arranged marriages are nowadays initiated by the couples themselves, with the parents coming along at the end to do their part. But he fails to explore how this transitional institution of part-arranged, part-romantic marriages is creating real difficulties. Asian couples are getting married with romantic aspirations that their parents or grandparents did not have. Yet that generational divide means they lack personal insights into how to make a marriage work once the romance fades. And, because dating and cohabitation before marriage still aren't established practices in Asian communities, couples often get married on the basis of only a very brief romantic experience.
Sardar's misty-eyed observations about young Asian men also obscure their widespread exposure to pornography and prostitution. The combination of romantic naivety and aggressive sexual fantasy among young Asian men is bound to create problems in many modern Asian marriages. And then there is the very real gap in educational attainment between young Asian men and women. Even women from traditional families are now going to university in large numbers (though they will often still settle for local, low-profile jobs rather than press on to leading jobs in big cities). Men, on the other hand, are doing badly; some are drifting away into gangs, while others rely on being able to take over the businesses their grandparents and parents have developed. This mismatch in achievement may redress the balance of power in Asian communities in favour of women over time; but it may also create resentment among men and a new conservatism among fathers.
These are fascinating and important issues to explore, but Sardar doesn't bother to do so. It's impossible that he doesn't know they're there, so it must be that he doesn't feel it's right to talk about them. It would undermine his politics of grievance. Yet these are Asian problems, caused for Asians, by Asians.
Instead, Sardar spends a long time discussing the aftermath of the 11th September and 7th July terrorist attacks. I've been asked whether, as an Asian and a Muslim, I support the terrorists—and I agree with Sardar's suggested response to such a question: "By what you ask you define how little you know, how unwilling you have been to listen and engage with people [like me] who have been flourishing as a part of British society." But I would like him to make equally brackish statements against those British Asians who feel justified in evading taxes because it's not really their state, or who propagandise every arrest of an Asian gang member as further evidence of institutional racism.
The final problem with this book is that there are no white people in it. It is deeply unconvincing to read about the importance of diversity and the failure of British society to accommodate Asian difference if there is no discussion of the impact of large-scale immigration on the host British community. Offering clich(c)s about how the British have embraced Asian food doesn't count. I don't believe that postwar immigration has been traumatic for British identity, but I can imagine, for example, that an elderly white man might find it odd and even disheartening to watch a young black woman wear an Olympic gold medal with pride over her British athletics uniform. It's a British success, everyone tells him, yet he can't imagine the life that this young woman has led and so he realises that the pride she has acquired about Britain relates to something very different to what he has. That's not racism—but Sardar, or anyone trying to describe modern British identity, should be interested in it.
