 LONDON - More than a third of people of South Asian ethnic origin in Britain hardly feel British, according to a BBC survey out on Monday. Some 38 percent of South Asians said they felt only slightly or not at all British, in a poll for BBC Asian Network radio marking the 60th anniversary of the partition of India.
| You don't act so British, either. |
Almost half felt they were not treated as British by white Britons and three-quarters felt their culture was being diluted by living in the kingdom.
| Your culture is supposed to be diluted by living in Britain: if you want to live in an 'undiluted' culture, go back to South Asia! |
More than a third of South Asians surveyed said they agreed that in order to do well in Britain, they needed to be a “coconut” -- a sometimes derogatory term for somebody who is “brown on the outside but white on the inside.”
| If you're going to live in Britain you have to be British. It's a given. British culture is broad and deep, and it's accomodating to a large degree. You can bring to it the best of the parts of South Asian culture. But you have to be British in the end. |
Twelve percent said they considered themselves to be ”coconuts.”
However, 84 percent of South Asians said they were satisfied with life in Britain and nearly half thought they had more opportunities in Britain than in their countries of ethnic origin.
| Which is why you came in the first place. Quid pro quo. |
Half of South Asians and nearly two-thirds of whites surveyed agreed it was too easy for immigrants to enter Britain.
The 2001 census recorded that 2,331,423 people, or four percent of the British population, classified themselves as being Asian or Asian British. That included 1.8 percent of the population who said they were of Indian origin, 1.3 percent who said they had Pakistani roots and 0.5 percent who said they were of Bangladeshi origin. |