OF CABBAGES AND KINGS | Racism, Prrejudice In UK Aimed At Muslims, Hindus & All Non-whites | Farrukh Dhondy

“The past is graphic map in my mind

Consciousness’ finger traverses it to find

The mountains of foolishness, the oceans of kind,

The treasures I should have cherished --

And foolishly left behind!”

From Prancing Pran Singh, by Bachchoo

Decades ago, during my stint as a freelance Brit journalist, I and my photographer partner Andrew were the only two, through utter luck and the patronage of George Harrison who spotted me wearing a kurta and beads with long black hair and a beard, to be escorted by him through the police lines into the Hilton Hotel to report on the first meeting between the Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Phooph! (Endless sentence? You think you’re Henry James? --Ed. Ah, so you do read books also --fd).

Gentle reader, that’s another story -- one day -- or you can pick it up in my autobiography entitled… (No advertising, I’ve warned you --Ed. Sorry yaar -- slip of the sales-pitch --fd).

My article about their meeting was obviously exclusive and published in a weekly called The Listener. Some weeks after publication I was invited to a cocktail party by the editor, at which a gentleman spoke to me over a drink and introduced himself as the Professor of English at Leicester University and, after some conversation about my interests, offered me a scholarship to do a thesis on Kipling. Right time, right place, as always in my short and happy life? I went to Leicester from London to find a room in the city.

I naturally went to an estate agent and was directed to several addresses. At each of these I was told by the person who answered the door that the accommodation was no longer available. At most of these locations it was evident to me that the rooms may have been available, but the renters didn’t want a non-white person on their premises.

I travelled from London to Leicester a second time, tried a different estate agent and came up with the same racist refusals. In fact, one landlord quite candidly said that he didn’t mind “your type” but the others in the bed-sitter building would object -- and sorry!

I went back to the estate agent and shouted some choice phrases and walked out, wondering what to do. A few yards down the road, a young girl, one of the secretaries at the estate agent who had followed me, stopped me. She said that she had a lot of Asian friends and the only way I would get any place in the city was to go to the “Asian district” and check on the notice boards outside newsagents where rooms to let would be advertised. She told me where this district was, and I went. Sure enough, after a few phone calls from public phone booths, I was conducted by two young white lads to a house which they had renovated and offered me a room and a half under the staircase with a yard which they had equipped with a kitchen and a bathroom. I happily took it.

I recall this 1969 episode because this week the right-wing rag, The Daily Telegraph, published a diatribe against a spate of advertisements offering rented accommodation to “Muslim” tenants and others offering flats or whatever accommodation to “Hindus”.

Since my Leicester rank racist experience, there has been a change in the law. The “Equality Law” of 2010 prohibits any kind of discrimination on grounds of race, religion or other characteristics.

The Smellygraph was hysterical about these “Muslim” and “Hindus” only ads: “Landlords are illegally advertising for ‘Muslim only’ tenants across London and the Southeast”. It’s article also bragged about its success in getting Facebook to withdraw a page featuring ads which specified “preferring Muslim boy” or stating that one double room is “suitable for a Punjabi boy”.

The brilliant public-serving, investigative and satirical magazine Private Eye took the Smellygraph to task.

Private Eye noted that the Smellygraph had vociferously attacked the Equalities Act in three editorials when in 2015 a “Christian” bakery was prosecuted under it for refusing to serve a gay man. Private Eye also traced the Smelly’s 2011 editorial condemning the Equalities Act after it had been used to prosecute a Christian bed-and-breakfast owner who refused a gay couple a double room. The Smelly declared: “The law is eroding our right to a set of beliefs”. Hyp-something… not ending with “opottamus”?

All power to the Eye for exposing the irony of the ultra-right propaganda sheet.

In the same article which “condemned Muslim and Hindu only” ads, it hadn’t noticed -- or did, but failed to mention -- that “Christian Flatshare London”, advertising 9,200 places for rent on Facebook, features advertisements specifying “Christians only” and “Christian brothers” -- which may mean excluding “Christian sisters”?

The Eye has, in the issue from which I quote, concentrated on this one feature about discrimination in rented places, even though the Torygraph has several regular articles and contributors who dedicate themselves to specifically anti-Muslim opinion and features.

The Smelly shares several columnists with the weekly Spectator, another rabid platform for anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-asylum seekers, anti-what-they-demonise-as-“The Left”. By this phrase they mean anyone who do not share their vituperative viewpoint -- and in the case of at least three of their regular columnists -- Toby Young, a poseur who pretends to champion “free speech”, Douglas Murray, an ultra-right cry-baby, and Lionel Shriver, an American “novelist” -- hypocritical bile.