The British Indian Diaspora and the RAF

I was 17 when I first took the controls of a plane. It was a Piper Warrior Cadet and the flight school was just next to an RAF base in North Yorkshire. The really exciting thing about that was not the exercises where you practice recovering from a stall (where you turn the engines off, and then keep raising the nose, until the plane dips from pointing skywards to pointing in a diving spiral to the ground) or practising emergency landings, or where as you hurtle down the runway the propeller stops as you realise as you’re about to lift the nose to clear the power station chimney beyond the runway, that you were using the empty left fuel tank.
No, the most exciting is when the air traffic controller tells you have a ‘gaggle of fast planes’ coming your way at your ‘12’ and you should maintain a floor of 500 feet. What they are actually telling you is that half a dozen supersonic Tornado fighter jets are about to tickle your fuselage as they pass under you at their ceiling of 500 feet. That is exciting.
So it was at Oxford I applied to join the RAF cadets – only to discover that by then I was too old! My grandfather was in the British Army in the Second World War – albeit his mother – a lady who in the streets of Karamsad, from where Sardar Patel planned the map of post 1947 India, threw bangles at the men who momentarily cowered during police raids in the village during the freedom movement, dragged at gunpoint behind a military jeep for her troubles (Yes, I am the great grandson of Heeraba Patel for those who remember her).
So am especially pleased to be moderating for Asian Voice and the RAF the Climate Change panel - indeed anything with the RAF.
When we think about Libya and the work of the Armed Forces, or Afghanistan, or as I often mention in my Asian Voice column the heritage of the Commonwealth soldiers in the two world wars, you come to the realisation that the armed forces remain even in peace time a place for all Britons, ethnic minorities too.
Our greatest threat in years to come will not come from Libya, or Syria or Iran. It will come from within, our own complacency, our own lack of willingness to serve, to pass the buck to someone else. All great civilisations depend upon their citizenry to have a sense of responsibility. Without it we fail not only ourselves but our nation and the international community of civilised nations.
And if you want to know why people join the Armed Forces, look no further than the insignia of some of the crests – RAF Waddington says it best for me, ‘For Faith and Freedom’. In a multi-faith society – it holds true regardless of your ethnic background.