The Raj Reversed

Slowly, even if too slowly, White British citizens are now figuring out that it is okay to queue up to vote for Indian candidates to represent them in Parliament. For an Indian or a Black in Britain to become the equivalent of a Colin Powell in the US is still a very remote possi -bility. But across Britain, in constituencies with South Asians and in constituencies without, Indians have taken on what must once have seemed impossible odds to lead the British in their land.

So far, much of that success has come via the Labour ladder. The party, which still looks on course to win the election, will probably send more South Asians to Parliament than the two it has at present. But in all parties, British people of Indian origin are pushing open doors to step in where their parents feared to tread. 바카라 accompanied a few on their campaign trail:

Keith Vaz, Labour MP, Leicester

Ahuge speaker on the roof of the van drives slowly by the sari stores and chaat houses, blaring out: "Dil hai chhota sa, chhotisi asha..." The elections are on and this is the theme song for Labour MP Keith Vaz's campaign in Leicester's Belgrave area.

About a third of the 275,000 residents of Leicester, which is officially twinned with Rajkot, are South Asian. And their vote has to be won on their terms. Then again, two-thirds of the 70,000 voters of Leicester East are White. And so, as Vaz enters White Leicester, he flips the tape to "Things are getting better all the time". They certainly are for Vaz, who looks set for a third term as MP, and possibly his first as minister.

Vaz, whose family comes from Goa, interrupts the songs to announce himself as candidate for the May 1 polls. Two suited men in the backseat hold dozens of pink balloons for children—the time-tested way to the hearts of vote-holding parents. Some mums and children appear and Vaz is quickly out handing balloons to babies—with baby talk to match—and party stickers for their mums.

Further up, a White couple stops the van. "My kitchen is subsiding and no one from the council has come in the last 10 weeks," the man says. Vaz click-clicks his mobile, and is on the line to his office. "But we need you to vote, Mr Ryan," he says before moving on.

Back in his office, Vaz points to records of the 20,000 cases he has taken up among the 70,000 voters. He pulls out one that says Broom Street. "Hundred houses here, and I have taken up the case of 75 of them," Vaz says. With that kind of intensive campaigning—extended over five years—to compete with, the Tory candidate's chances don't seem to be in the vicinity.

Piara Singh Khabra, Labour MP, Ealing Southall

Ascore of Sikhs crowd the campaign office of Piara Singh Khabra, Labour MP for Ealing Southall. It would look a lot like a scenefrom an Akali office in Khabra's original home town Hoshiarpur, if it weren't for the fact that the chief opponent here is John Penrose from the Conservative Party. But Khabra, who is campaigning for a second term as MP, doesn't consider him a rival. "It is not a question of winning but of margin of victory," he says.

In the last elections, Khabra had won with a comfortable majority of 7,000 in a constituency of 82,000 voters. This time round, he wants to better that feat, and already speaks of Penrose with kindness, even a dash of forgiveness. "After all, he is young and inexperienced," says Khabra.

In Southall, the experience of growing up in Punjab helps. Among other things, it helped Khabra beat off a challenge for nomination by Keith Vaz's sister Valeria at the last election. But there is some amount of poll-time bravado in writing off Penrose. The constituency is not all Southall, much as the men at Khabra's campaign office would like it to be. Like Keith Vaz in Leicester, Khabra has to campaign strongly among the two-thirds of his constituents who are White. And there is nothing like the sort of ease seen at this campaign office in any of Khabra's support offices in Ealing.

The Ealing part of the Ealing Southall constituency is affluent and very White. "Some 100 White Labour supporters have taken time off work to help my campaign," says Khabra. One reason for Khabra's heavy campaign in Southall is to offset votes he will lose in Ealing where the local council has a Conservative majority, even though all the members elected from Southall are Labour. Election is time for an Ealing to say something about a Southall.

The busiest campaigning a candidate can do in Southall is to stroll down Broadway on weekends talking to the shoppers who overflow the pavements. It helps to be an incumbent. "They all know me, I have been MP for five years." Khabra is better known in South than in Whitehall even if his supporters here, like his colleagues in Parliament, make him seem a quiet sort of man.

Khabra, who is 73, studied at Punjab University and taught in Hoshiarpur before coming to Britain in 1959 where he joined Labour. Didn't he always say he was a socialist? Like the party leadership, he has now dropped the old Socialist talk with ease. "Everyone has a right to change, why not we?"

Shailesh Vara, Tory candidate, Birmingham Ladywood

SHAILESH Vara speaks well. He has a soap box to stand on, a mike to speakinto. It would be nice if he had an audience as well. Shailesh is the Torycandidate in Birmingham Ladywood constituency, and he has been instructed tosacrifice himself before Claire Short, the Labour MP who won this seat with aminor avalanche of a 20,000 majority at the last election. The Tories had tofield somebody this time, and an aspiring young Asian does not say no to thebosses.

Shailesh sees a future with the Conservative party if not in thisconstituency, this year. At the annual party conference last year, he was askedto open the debate on economy. Shailesh seems awed by the memory of it. "Iwas given full six minutes before an audience of 6,000, and TV camerasbroadcasting live. I spoke for five minutes and 59 seconds, I was applauded 14times through my speech and had a standing ovation at the end."

Those were the minutes. Now he drives to the central square to speak aboutthe virtues of the Tories. He aims his hand-held speaker at passers-by, but theywalk past.

When he is not working for a future with the Conservatives, Shailesh Vara isa solicitor. His accent is right, his style smooth. If the Tories ever gave hima seat where he has a chance, who knows where he might end up.

Ashok Kumar, Labour candidate, Middlesborough South

AT the first sign of an Indian journalist, Jalandhar-born Ashok Kumar burstsinto Punjabi greetings. There's normally not another Punjabi to be spottedwithin miles of this seaside constituency in the north-east of England. ForKumar is an unusual candidate: an Indian-born candidate in a practicallyall-White constituency.

It isn't easy, as he well knows. Kumar won a byelection here just before the1992 elections, in what was seen as a warning snub to John Major. He lost theseat, then called Langbaurgh, to the Tories in the general election on April 9,1992. Both elections were marked by some of the most overtly racist campaigningseen in recent times. Local Tories went for the colour of his skin, and JohnMajor could do nothing to stop them. The Tories have had their White MP for fiveyears now, and Ashok Kumar is once again challenging them in the redrawnconstituency, now Middlesborough South and East Cleveland.

And are these old problems surfacing again? "Only a very little, nothingmuch," says Kumar. Bolstered by a large band of White Labour supporterswearing badges with 'Kumar' written on them, he isn't letting the occasionalracist bring down his spirit or his campaign. It helps that he is nothing if notendearing and that he has the smile to blunt barbs.

Ashok Kumar graduated from Imperial College in London and is now researchscientist with British Steel in Middlesborough. He is member of the SteelIndustry Managers Association. But politics seems to fascinate him, at least asmuch as his profession. He has been a member of the Labour party since 1972, andis an elected member of the Middlesborough Council.

The campaign team keeps a careful silence about his Indian origins. The briefcurriculum vitae circulated about him begins with his membership of the Labourparty, not with his birth outside England.

These are English ways that Indians learn to accept. Piara Singh Khabra'scurriculum vitae begins with an announcement of a diploma in teaching from aLondon institute, with not a word about Punjab University. Likewise, AshokKumar's official story begins with the English stamp upon him. It's hard enoughbeing an Indian in an English election without emphasising the India factor.

And so, Labour is emphatically downplaying Kumar's Indian-ness. Claire Short,a Labour MP who wants India to quit Kashmir, chaperones Ashok Kumar on anelection walkabout on market day in the little town of Guisborough. Short, whohelped set party policy on India, has a clear message about her candidate: AshokKumar is not part Indian, he is all Labour.

OUT from the shadow of former MP Max Madden emerged Marsha Singh, only towalk straight into trouble. Bradford West is the constituency with the strongestPakistani vote, and he won the nomination for the seat as an Indian. Not thatMarsha Singh calls himself Indian. "I am Bradfordian and I amBritish," he says. But the Pakistanis of Bradford have a way of seeingthings differently, as he soon found out.

The Conservatives, on the other hand, read the signs early and put up aMuslim candidate, Mohammed Riaz, who had defected when he saw he was gettingnowhere with Labour. The Tories fig-ured that Muslims would rather vote Muslimthan Labour. The subcontinentals carry their ways with them, and the Britishknow exactly what to do with them.

Marsha Singh was born in Punjab, but brought over to Britain when only twoyears old. He has never been back to India. The Pakistani campaign has nowdefined his Indianness. About 20,000 of the 72,000 voters of Bradford West arePakistanis. They were the bedrock of support for Max Madden who subsequentlybecame the harshest critic of India in the House of Commons. But today, Maddenrefuses to support Marsha Singh's campaign. Pakistanis who supported Labour forover a generation now seem to beswitching in thousands to a Muslim candidate,even if the flag he flies is an unfriendly blue. So, what was a safe Labour seatnow has Marsha Singh worried. "There are calls from the mosques every dayto vote for the Muslim candidate," he says. "They are goingdoor-to-door asking the men and women to vote Conservative." Marsha Singhcan't match that reach. A few Muslim friends have arranged meetings in somehouses for him. Other than that, he has little access to the Muslim vote."I am having to try very much harder than I expected to," says MarshaSingh. And he is now turning to White voters to fight off a Muslim tide againsthim.

NIRJ Deva's family moved from Rajasthan to Sri Lanka, and he moved from thereto Britain. A Tory since his first days as a student in the '70s, Deva narrowlywon Brentford and Isleworth in 1992. But this time, Fate seems loaded againsthim. He has that look of hollow confidence that candidates in his position sooften wear.

In an election where the electorate is only about 70,000 or so, candidates donot presume to call rallies. They do sometimes present themselves at meetings,more to be scrutinised than to make speeches. At the Hounslow multi-culturalcentre, Deva had an audience of about 25, down from the 30 or so who lunchedwith Labour candidate Ann Keen an hour earlier. An hour with 25 people is timewell spent when campaigning on this scale.

The meeting did not go well. A couple of Labour plants saw to that. Devaspoke of the difference between a civilised society and a tolerant society, ofthe need for Britain to be the first, not the second. Subtle stuff, but somehownot right for Hounslow. "Accept me, do not patronise me, that must be theidea," he says. That, according to him is the best and can be offered onlyby the Tories. You could hear the doubts in the silence.

His historical references aren't going down too well either. "The Indiannation of more than 300-million people was ruled for 150 years by less than30,000 English men and women," Deva tells the Indians gathered at thecentre. "It was a statistical impossibility but it happened. We are notgoing to allow that to happen here." Labour leftovers from an earliermeeting begin to pop questions. What equal opportunities? Why the newimmigration crackdown? Why were letters to his office not acknowledged? Devaexplains and apologises. The 25 or so are listening, dismissively it seems. Andas the campaign trail progresses, poll pundits try to figure how many more SouthAsians will make it to Parliament this time. When they think how many less, theythink Deva.