- Wednesday, January 15, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
The recent disorder on the streets of Leicester affected the entire city and not just its Hindu and Muslim communities, a professor at the University of Leicester has said.
Police continue to probe the violence that hit the city’s streets for many days after a cricket match between Asian arch-rivals India and Pakistan in Dubai, UAE, on August 28. Nearly 50 people were arrested and more than 100 cases were being investigated. Police patrol was still underway and residents living in the affected area urged for calm.
Dr Chris Allen, who works as an associate professor at the university’s School of Criminology, said in an article for The Conversation that he believed that the entire city had suffered because of the ugly clashes that made the headlines across the world. Videos and images had surfaced on social media that sent across dangerous messages of communal disharmony. Faith leaders had to chip in to appeal for peace.
In his piece, Dr Allen said that the situation was complex.
“Since late August, the city of Leicester in England has seen violent confrontations between groups of Hindu and Muslim men. The situation escalated on September 17, when about 200 Hindu men marched through a Muslim-majority area of east Leicester. Wearing masks, hoodies and balaclavas, they chanted “Jai Shri Ram” (meaning “Hail Lord Ram”), a phrase synonymous with Hindu nationalist violence in India.
“In response, groups of Muslim men gathered in the area. A flag was forcibly removed from a Hindu mandir (temple). Bottles and other missiles were thrown. Further violence ensued the following evening when the outer wall of a mosque was graffitied and a Hindu flag was burned. Leicestershire Police called for calm and at least 47 people have been arrested.
“City mayor Sir Peter Soulsby has announced an independent review into what caused this disturbance. Mr Soulsby reportedly expects the review to make immediate headway. My research into unrest in Bradford in 2001 shows that an official response that sacrifices complexity in favour of quick solutions only serves to attribute blame at the expense of real understanding.
The professor, who cited the 2001 disturbances in Bradford where up to 1,000 young men of South Asian and Muslim heritage clashed with the police after a banned march by the far-right National Front in the city, said while the city’s Muslims were largely being blamed, the “sustained and deliberate provocation of white far-right groups” was ignored.
“So too, like almost every other disturbance involving minority communities, a host of social, political and economic factors,” he said.
“In Leicester, no single group has, as yet, been blamed. However, there is a similar reluctance to dig into the complexity of the situation. Though proactive in communicating information about its policing of the disturbances, Leicestershire Police has referred, not specifically to Hindus or Muslims, but to “the community,” he said.
“On September 20, Hindu and Muslim religious leaders issued a joint statement, describing Hindus and Muslims as “a family” who share a city that is “a beacon of diversity and community cohesion”. It echoed the increasingly popular explanation that the trouble was instigated by outsiders, bolstered by media reports that eight of the 18 people arrested on September 18, 2022 did not reside in Leicestershire. ‘We together call upon the inciters of hatred to leave our city alone,’ the joint statement said. ‘Leicester has no place for any foreign extremist ideology that causes division.’ Mr Soulsby made the same point when announcing the inquiry, saying that it would be necessary to investigate whether the disturbances were “motivated by extreme ideologies imported from elsewhere”.
“Some will assume this to be Islamist extremism. Despite there being no evidence to support such an assumption, research shows that a key trope of Islamophobia is the conflation of all things Islam with extremism. The mere involvement of Muslims will be evidence enough for some to jump to such a conclusion.
“Research shows Hindutva sentiment has been on the rise in Britain since 2014. This far-right ideology promotes hatred towards all non-Hindu religious minorities and Muslims in particular.
“Despite this, local media has begun to distance the city’s established Hindu communities from blame. Instead it cites wide claims that Hindu nationalism has been imported into the city by recent migrants from India.
“For two decades, Leicester has presented itself as the most ethnically harmonious city in Britain. This differentiates it from cities such as Birmingham or Bradford, which have seen disturbances involving ethnic and religious minorities. Blaming outsiders and imported ideologies has the potential to protect Leicester’s reputation.
“Mr Soulsby has reportedly said to be baffled by the violence. To believe that such things could never happen in Leicester suggests either wilful ignorance or collective denial at the level of the city’s leadership. To ensure that all the different people that make up the city, as well as the problems they face, can be both understood and responded to, this needs to change.
“The review offers a crucial opportunity to actually understand what is happening. There needs to be a full recognition that communities are not homogenous. Whether in Leicester or elsewhere, neither Muslim nor Hindu communities are one-dimensional or singular.
“There also needs to be a recognition that the problems experienced by religious communities are not necessarily religious. Their lives are impacted by socio-economic and socio-political factors that transcend ethnic and religious identities,” the professor said.
Further, the impact of the global on the local cannot be overlooked, as the influence of Hindutva in Leicester, as elsewhere in Britain demonstrates. To take this into account is not to apportion blame. Ignoring it, however, won’t help us fully understand what is happening,” he added.
