The far-right English Defence League plans to march on 28 August through Bradford in West Yorkshire, a city still largely segregated along lines of race. Local residents are agitated and fearful that the march could reignite the tensions of the 2001 race riots. According to the last census, 22 per cent of Bradford’s population is of Asian origin, mostly Pakistani. As I walked among the sari shops and supermarkets in the Horton area, it was obvious why the city has earned the name “Bradistan”.
Altogether, there are nearly a million people of Pakistani origin in Britain, and an estimated 70 per cent of these have links to Mirpur or the surrounding area. Mirpur, located in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (known as Azad – meaning “free” – Kashmir), is one of the country’s least developed regions.
There is little education, and it was the last part of Pakistan to be connected to electricity. Before mass immigration in the 1960s, many relied on subsistence farming. As they moved from a rural region to the industrialised cities of northern England, villagers attempted to re-create their old lifestyle. Ishtiaq Ahmed, spokesman of Bradford’s Council for Mosques, says: “As a minority, you close ranks and don’t move forward so fast for fear of losing or diluting your identity.”
The Mirpuri community particularly emphasises clan loyalty, or biraderi, manifested in marriage to first cousins. Studies suggest that 60 per cent of all Mirpuri marriages are to a first cousin, with a substantial proportion of the remainder being between more distant relatives. While other south Asian immigrants tend to work outwards from the family unit through marriage, Mirpuris reinforce existing connections, producing intensely bound communities. The notion of honour, important to many cultures, is reinforced by double or triple ties of obligation – a potential mother-in-law could also be an aunt. This can lead to forced marriage and, in extreme cases, honour killings.
In Mirpur, such marriages secure the status of the biraderi against other clans, and also allow the family to retain its land and property. In a transnational context, they permit people to give their families access to better opportunities. “It’s really one society that exists between the two places,” says Sean McLoughlin, senior lecturer in religion, anthropology and Islam at Leeds University. “There are constant circulations of money, people and ideas.”
Data suggests that up to 10,000 transnational spouses enter the UK annually. Significantly, this means that even in the fifth generation, many children have one parent who is non-English-speaking. “These two people essentially come from totally different worlds,” says Zaf Shah, a young Mirpuri professional from Bradford whom I meet at a coffee shop in the centre of the city. “It’s difficult to make a happy union. What is Mum going to teach the children about the culture here, when she knows nothing about it?”
School’s out
Shah draws attention to educational underachievement. While other Asian immigrants excel at school, Pakistani teenagers – particularly boys – struggle. “The first immigrants were people with low skills, from a farming background,” Khadim Hussain, a local councillor in Bradford, says. “They were more concerned about making a good living through hard work than education. That continued, though it’s changing now.”
Valuing immediate earning power above staying in education to secure a better-paid job is a familiar narrative, as much tied to deprivation as to ethnicity. However, it does mean that Mirpuris have remained primarily concentrated in the lowest tier of jobs and housing, though many of those to whom I speak in Bradford stress the emergence of a professional class.
The transnational connection extends beyond marriage; there is a culture of importing imams from Pakistan. For young people born and brought up in Britain, it is a struggle to connect with Urdu services or religious instruction that consists of rote-learning Quranic Arabic.
“I’d like to ask these imams: ‘How do you understand a society that you’ve never identified with?'” says Shah. “How can you understand the challenges young people are facing, or help them to become more involved as Muslims in their societies?”
Phil Lewis, a lecturer in peace studies at Bradford University, expands on this. “The mosques aren’t working for them, home isn’t working for them. These kids are in moral free fall – who are their role models?”
The same frustration is expressed by some young, tracksuit-clad Mirpuri men on a run-down street in Bradford. “I’m a Yorkshireman,” Saeed, aged 19, tells me. “I get angry with my parents when it’s all about ‘back home’ and sending money there. I’m proud of my heritage, but this is my home. I’ve only been to Pakistan twice.”
Another risk – though one that must not be overstated – is extremism. All four bombers behind the London attacks on 7 July 2005 were from Yorkshire, and three of them had Mirpuri backgrounds. “These recruiters use your weakness – and that’s Islam,” says Shah, who works with the police on counterterrorism.
Honour crime
It’s no less complex for young women. Other Pakistanis frequently accuse Mirpuris of confusing culture with religion. Stemming from a lack of education, this manifests itself in cultural norms – such as the primacy of honour, or the mistreatment of women – being accorded religious significance. I speak to Khadijah, 18, in an empty playground as she looks after her younger sister. She hopes to enter Bradford University this year. “I can make the distinction between Islam and patriarchal culture,” she says. “But your average lad on the street won’t worry about which bit comes from scripture. It’s loaded in his favour.”
These concerns are common to many British Asians. So, what makes other British Pakistanis view Mirpuris as a distinct group? Those from Karachi or Islamabad use the term “Mirpuri” pejoratively, and adverts on online dating sites such as muslimsingles.com often stipulate “No Mirpuris”. Many Mirpuris prefer simply to call themselves Azad Kashmiri.
These attitudes can be explained by the huge disparities in development between urbanised and rural areas in Pakistan. Lewis points out that Mirpuris might struggle in Lahore, never mind British cities. Their achievements here – inroads into government and the law, a measure of success in business – are therefore notable.
But as a generation of Mirpuris entirely socialised in Britain reaches adulthood, the community faces a crisis of identity. Traditions are evolving gradually, but change is painful. And integration is never a one-way street; a woman casually called me a “Paki” when I asked for directions, a small example of the white population’s hostility. Yet as Shah points out: “Social exclusion exists, but it’s not an excuse. We need to understand our own community before we start blaming society.”
Samira Shackle
The Mirpur migration to Bradford
Mirpur, with a population of roughly 96,000, is the biggest city in Azad Kashmir, a rural region that suffered enormous bloodshed during Partition and was left without any proper water supply. So, how did so many people from this impoverished region come to be living in the UK?
Britain enjoyed a long economic boom in the period following the Second World War. During this time, there was an acute shortage of labour in the textile mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire and the foundries of the Midlands. The British government encouraged cheap, unskilled migrant workers from the ex-colonies to come to Britain to bolster industry.
Then, in the late 1950s, the Pakistani government began building the Mangla Dam – a huge project aimed at solving the problem of Mirpur’s water supply. However, the dam flooded much of Mirpur District, submerging the arable land that farmers relied on. Thousands were evacuated.
By way of compensation, some of the displaced were offered passports, and many more people travelled to Britain. More than half the population of some villages moved to settle in British industrial towns. This history of dispossession was compounded in the UK in the 1980s with the collapse of manufacturing industries in which the first generation of immigrants had worked.
Samira Shackle
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