Reminiscing with Uncle Pervaiz

The weather shock was one of the first differences Pervaiz noticed, England was a land of mist, rain and smog. Unlike the bright rural pastures of Azad Kashmir. His father, Haji Qurban Hussain Hashmi had arrived a year or so earlier, found a job at a textile mill, bought a back to back terraced house and promptly called his wife and then only child to be with him in this new exciting phase of their lives. He had wanted most of all for Pervaiz, to be educated in this great land and become what all Asian parents want their children to be; a doctor.

Pervaiz reflects on those early days where there were very few families from the sub-continent. Migrants, mostly men came with dreams of prosperity and success in Great Britain, the Mother Country of the Commonwealth of Nations. Many fell into the trap of the ‘myth of return’, that somehow after making lots of money, that they would return to their home countries and live it large on their newfound wealth. However, the challenges faced by these migrant workers both in and out of the workplace, the low wages and extraordinary demands of the families back home made migration into the UK in the sixties a honey trap of mixed blessings. The sense of camaraderie amongst the hard working and loyal migrant workers and the all too often refusal of landlords to let properties to these workers led to the development of savings committees.

Thinking back to the differences between the apparent different people who had come from abroad, Pervaiz states that, ‘the visible minorities became the targets of racist bullying and provocation, and sad to say the phenomenon of ‘Paki-bashing’ became a commonplace occurrence on the streets and in the schoolyards of Leeds and Britain in general’.

So what was the working life like for Pervaiz?

The experience of mass redundancies from the bottom strata of the employment ladder within just a few short years of arriving in the UK sparked a natural aversion and resistance to dependency on employers. So began the move towards a preference to self-employment amongst the Asian communities. Private hire driving, food and catering in the form of takeaways and restaurants, market trading in fashion and fancy goods became the preferred options. Hard work paid off, mentions Pervaiz, the Asian community is now clearly well-grounded in the small business sector of Britain’s high streets.

As time began to pass, Pervaiz began to witness a new generation and that too, the first of their kind begin to place their newly born roots in England. There was a mushrooming of Mosques and Social Welfare Societies established to maintain and further advance the religious and cultural identities. The elders in effect saw that over time the second and third generations born here in the UK, would lose their sense of belonging to their roots. The loss of mother tongues such as Urdu, Punjabi and the Arabic recitation of the Holy Quran would mean a dilution of the traditions and tenets of faith, nationality and culture.