Britain and India have an inescapably problematic common history of colonisation, subjugation, mutual migration, and now, unsteady partnership. And with this week marking India’s 75th year as an independent nation, it is worth reflecting on British-Indian diaspora’s relationship with their country of origin.
In 2010, then-prime minister David Cameron hailed UK-India relations as the ‘New Special Relationship’, attempting to establish a firm political-cultural alliance based on this shared past. Cameron attempted to woo Indian prime minister Narendra Modi with 60,000 people — predominantly British citizens of Indian origin — packed into Wembley Stadium for the November 2015 ‘Team UK-Team India’ rally.
The moment underlined just how seriously the UK took India, the most populous parliamentary democracy on earth, as a strategically important partner for the UK.
A Summer 2021 survey of social and political attitudes among British Indians revealed that the they are far from being the monolithic bloc they looked like on the day Modi visited Wembley Stadium. They are not always as interested as British politicians are in UK-Indian diplomatic relations either.
Tory supporters and Hindu voters are the most upbeat over Narendra Modi’s performance as prime minister of India. Older, foreign-born British voters of Gujarati Hindu origin — especially those holding a strong preference for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — are especially interested in UK-India relations.
But this is not the same for all subgroups and only a small number of British Indians rate UK-India relations as a top political priority. Indeed, when compared with UK-India relations, British Indian voters are more likely to say that the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the European Union (EU) is their most important political issue on a personal level.
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