Azizoor Rahman comes to Oxford Street

Thirty-one year old Azizoor Rahman (name changed) is from Maulvi Bazar in Bangladesh and is living in East London for the past 10 years. I caught up with him at Oxford Street to hear the story of his migration from Bangladesh to the United Kingdom.

It was Rahman's first trip to the Oxford Street. I offered to buy him a Cappuccino, but he refused stating that it goes against his religious and cultural beliefs. I was taken aback but not surprised. Over the past 12 years, I have come across many people, in the United Kindom and in other European countries, who think that learning English tantamounts to surrendering to the West and the values it propagates. I must admit though, that Rahman was the first person I came across, who thought that having a Cappuccino from the Starbucks would compromise with his beliefs.

Rahman went to a Madrassa in Maulvi Bazar and his journey to the West was made possible as Imtiaz Chowdhury (name changed) wanted his daughter to get married to a fellow Sylheti.

Chowdhury's daughter was born in East London, went to a school in the area, yet she can't speak proper English and is totally isolated from the worldview of an average Londoner. Rahman is proud of his wife "as she shunned western values despite living in London all her life".

Rahman and his family, with two children, live in social housing in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and survive on benefits dished out by the government. Neither Rahman nor his wife work and Chowdhury, who runs a restaurant, help them meet both ends.

"You are only 31, have two kids. Why don't you go for a job?", I asked Rahman.

"I can't work here as I do not know English. Neither do I want to work with the westerners, as that would liquidate my values", he replied.

I wondered if one is so sensitive about his values, why did he come to London in the first place.

Rahman is not a unique case though. He is one of the many, spread over the whole of the United Kingdom, who constitute a social underclass and have been let down by the system, a false sense of expectation from the West, and above all by themselves mainly due to their vexed perception of self respect. Most of them lack the skills to survive in a modern society and clamour for a sense of identity as they negotiate the wider world. Probably, this struggle for an identity makes Rahman so sensitive about what he terms as his 'religious and cultural values'.

Such underclass occupies the social and physical spaces in places like White Chapel in East London or Southall in West London and elsewhere. White Chapel seems like any dusty town of Bangladesh and Southall resembles an extension of Karol Bagh in Delhi. It is not only specific to the South Asians and can be seen among most of the ethnic minority communities in Britain, who prefer to live in enclaves which are misunderstood for social and cultural integration.

Despite tall claims of social cohesion and racial integration by successive British governments, such underclass exists in Britain. The constituents of this underclass are physically situated in the West but psychologically find themselves in the places they come from. Even after living in the United Kingdom for generations, many Sylhetis, Punjabis and Gujaratis do not see themselves as part of the British society. This is where the British state has failed. The failure of the state to include this underclass in the wider social functioning has created patches of darkness within the western claims of modernity and enlightenment.

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Email: tirthankarb@hotmail.com