I am slow to take insult. Either this Mayor is British, or British Pakistani. I don’t mind which. I am after all British Indian. Priti Patel, as the Prime Minister pointed out is British Indian. So let’s assume the Mayor of London is British Pakistani. Nothing wrong with that.
But just because he is British Pakistani, does not mean he has to visit Pakistan after India. There is a reason British politicians have not visited India and Pakistan in one trip. To equate the two countries is an insult to Indians.
Just because the Mayor of London is British Pakistani, is no reason to put British interests secondary to his Pakistani origins. If you want to visit Pakistan, do it on a separate trip. It is good for London and Britain that the Mayor of London is Pakistani. British Pakistanis have not had much to be happy about, especially with child sex grooming being predominantly a British Pakistani affair.
This mayor is role model for British Pakistani school children who typically underperform virtually every category of school child. But a visit to Pakistan after a visit to India on the same trip is not in British foreign policy interests. It stands the danger of damaging UK-India relations.
And before some do-gooder of a liberal bleeding heart says ‘how can we move on if we do not forget’ – well tell that to the victims of the Pakistani bombings at the Taj, that the Mayor went to pay homage to. Ironically, he is the first major politician of Pakistani origin to do so.
I am not seeking to stir up hatred. Far from it. I am seeking to stir up some respect. Respect for the fact that deaths happen in India weekly at the hands of Pakistani backed terrorists. That India is the more important country to Britain and her interests to Britain should come before the ethnic origins and allegiances of a Mayor, and a Mayor should not be forming foreign policy, regardless of political ambitions to be leader of his party and Prime Minister in due course.
Although British Indian myself, my first allegiance has to be to Britain. I like so many Indians wish Pakistan well. In a week when Donald Trump tweeted about the problem of Islamic Fundamentalism – he doesn’t need to tell British Indians. They are all aware Islamic Fundamentalism can tear a country apart – can create out of one nation, two countries, because Islamic Fundamentalists wanted an Islamic Republic within the country.
Read that again. What else would you call a group of individuals who wanted to carve out of their own country, an independent nation, Islamic by Constitution? Fundamentalists; an allegiance to faith before nation is fundamentalist. That is what happened in 1947. India is history’s warning to all democratic nations of the world.
