Born In The UK, Not Of It

TRADITIONAL wisdom tells you that British-born Indian youth are the lost generation, neither here nor there. Forget it. They're more into mixing than mixed up. If two-worldism is good enough in India, it is good enough in Britain. There could be a difference, though. There are no quantitative surveys to back this, but Indian youth in Britain seem to look more to India while Indian youth in India look more westwards. That at least seems the current conviction here, that they in India are losing out on India. And so Indian youth hit the top of the British charts with Bhonsle and Rafi; in India they lend their ear westwards for the music styles of the day.

British-born Indian, Indian-born British, British-like Indian...the lines blur a bit. If globalisation is what this is all about, then Indians and the British, Indianness and the British will always have a special relationship, whatever governments say or leave unsaid. Interestingly, to worrying parents preservation of Indianness begins as preservation of virginity (Brits lose it at an average age of 16.4, and falling). But Indians who 'fall' early remain Indian. In home after home one hears the same story—adoption of a British lifestyle in early university days, some uncertainty, and then they come back.

Oh yes, they come back. Asian youth are different to begin with, but not that different. And then distinct by choice, but when they so choose. Take Anuja, a successful barrister, wig and all. Scottish, an English actress asks her? Yes, says Ahuja. Indian parents, British birth, Scottish accent, a London practice. An Indianness that does not seek to submerge others, or itself.

Norman Tebbitt, that old Anglo-Saxon, produced the Tebbitt Test: Indians who become British citizens must cheer England in cricket. At a Lord's Test with India a banner went up: "I've failed the Tebbitt Test, And I'm proud of it." In the stands Sunil says he'd like Mark Ramprakash in the England team "but I'd like India to win".

Indeed, the English can make some British people feel very Indian. In the fashion of the ABCDs (American born confused desis), this is the world of BBCDs. But confused they are not, no more than the culture-straddlers of south Delhi and south Bombay. The world of the BBCD is a world of its own. It is from this world that they speak, and sing—and in white Britain and in Indian India people listen. Lives are as mixed as the music, and like the music they can be made of fine stuff.

East and Western East are twain, but they often meet. The accent may be Jamaican, or even unplaceable, but the voices are Indian. India is not losing them yet just because they were British-born.