WINDOW ON U.K.

First for South Asian-origin in British Cabinet

For the first time, a South-Asian origin Muslim woman, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, has been appointed to serve in the British cabinet.

Yorkshire-born Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, 39, will serve as Minister without Portfolio in David Cameron's 23-member Conservative/Libral-Democratic government which includes Britain’s first female Muslim to sit at Cabinet, but only three other women. Only two run government departments, the mark of influence and power. Twenty-two Cabinet members are white, and at least 16 went to top universities Oxford or Cambridge.

Warsi, a lawyer by profession, was born in Dewsbury to Pakistani parents and later read law at Leeds University and has trained with both Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service and the Home Office Immigration Department. She is the daughter of bus driver Safdar Hussein, who migrated to Britain some 50 years ago from his home village of Pukka Khoo in Gujjar Khan, south east of Rawalpindi.

Baroness Warsi was also the first Muslim woman to sit on the front bench of a British political party in July 2007 at the age of 36. She is the Conservative Party's co-chairman and minister without portfolio (party fundraiser and close friend of David Cameron, Andrew Feldman, is the other co-chairman but he will not be attending cabinet).

Straight-talking and combative - she describes herself as a "northern, working-class-roots mum" - she gave up her job as a solicitor in 2004 to stand for Parliament in her home town of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, losing out to Labour's Shahid Malik.

She was also a special adviser on community relations to then Tory leader Michael Howard before becoming the party's vice-chairman. She succeeds Eric Pickles in her new role.

Shyam Bhatia from London writes in a special to The Tribune, "Although Warsi’s admirers in the UK describe her as a liberal prepared to stand fast against those Islamic extremists who preach the politics of hate, her social and political outlook is liable to come across as confused. For example, she is a self-declared campaigner for women’s rights, yet she herself had an arranged marriage at the age of 19. She has also been alleged to say that she enjoys wearing the burqa when visiting Pakistan.

"Her influence on British government policy, especially when it comes to foreign policy issues like Kashmir, has yet to be measured. But one delighted Pakistani website quotes her as saying that although she lives in the UK, her heart remains in Pakistan. NRIs to whom I have spoken are inevitably concerned about how Warsi’s inclusion in the British cabinet could affect London’s bilateral ties with both New Delhi and Islamabad. But those prophets of doom who anticipate a tilt in British government perspectives away from India should also consider what would have happened if the Labour party had stayed in power.

"There is ample evidence that the Labour Party was reviewing its previous unqualified support for India on all key issues. One measure of that changing perspective was provided earlier this month by Dennis MacShane, a Labour MP and former Minister of State in the Foreign Office."

In an article written for one of the daily English broadsheets published from London, MacShane noted how “Pakistan has to put up with a condescension and patronising sneers from a pro-Indian establishment in London, India's failure to create peace on its border with Kashmir rarely if ever gets criticised.”

He goes on to argue that “India should do more to bring stability to the region by seeking to become part of the solution to Kashmir instead of remaining part of the problem.”

MacShane’s words echo those of former Labour Foreign Secretary David Milliband, who many foresee as a future Labour Prime Minister. "Resolution of the dispute over Kashmir would help deny extremists in the region one of their main calls to arms and allow the Pakistani authorities to focus more effectively on tackling the threat on their western borders,” Milliband wrote in a magazine article while the Labour party was still in power.This is the same Milliband who had a disastrous visit to India last January. He was “aggressive in tone and manner” during his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and patronising in meetings with Pranab Mukherjee. Veterans of the External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi still wince at memories of Milliband addressing Mr Mukherjee as “Pranab” in their first encounter.

For his part Cameron has written of the need to develop a new special relationship with India. “I attach the highest priority to Britain’s relationship with India,” he wrote shortly after visiting Delhi in 2006. While the details of that special relationship have yet to be worked out, the broader South Asian community in the UK is still trying to digest the implications of the recently concluded General Election.

To start with there are more MPs of South Asian origin (14) than ever before elected to the new House of Commons. Among them are five women MPs, the first time any South Asian women have been elected to a British parliament.

Four out of the five women MPs are members of the Labour Party, including Shabana Mahmood, Valerie Vaz, Roshanara Ali and Yasmin Qureshi. Priti Patel is the sole Conservative. Three of the women are Muslims, the first Muslim women ever to be so elected. After the election results were announced, Oxford-educated Mahmood commented, “The image of the voiceless Muslim woman who cannot leave the house is just not true: they are interested in politics. Parliament is for the people all of the people and the ethnic minority population should claim it.” But there is still more to be registered in the record books.

Valerie Vaz, a non-Muslim woman MP elected from Walsall, is the sister of fellow Labour MP Keith Vaz. The two of them mark the first time ever that a brother and sister have been elected to Westminster on the same party ticket.

Another political record has been created in the shape of Paul Uppal, the newly elected Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West that was once thought of as a whites-only constituency. For many years this was the constituency of the late Enoch Powell, who was associated with the racist ideology of English right wingers that permeated the UK in the 1960s.

So for Wolverhampton South West to be won by Uppal, a clean-shaven Sikh of East African Asian ancestry, is an especially sweet victory.

Before the election there was widespread speculation that in the event of a Conservative victory, there would be at least one brown face in the new council of ministers. At the very least, so it was thought, the Conservatives would need to match Labour’s previous record of selecting three South Asians, Keith Vaz, Sadiq Khan and Shahid Malik, to serve as junior ministers.

That pre-election expectation has now been realised with Sayeeda Warsi’s appointment. On the day she was appointed, Lady Warsi deliberately drew attention to her ethnicity by wearing a pink salwar kameez as she posed for photographs on the steps of 10 Downing Street. Years from now, when more South Asian-origin cabinet ministers would have become a fact of British political life, that image of Sayeeda Warsi in her pink salwar kameez will endure and never fade. 

 [Source: Agencies]