How brown is white Britain?

By Dominic Casciani
BBC News Online

If integration is a two-way process, how interested is white Britain in Asian cultures? And what do Asian cultures make of it?

Bollywood chic: At a tea dance near you?

If you could measure integration of the UK's different peoples and cultures - how would you do it?

For decades politicians and sociologists have talked about how Britain integrates its minority communities - but how much does integration go the other way?

Asian culture is big in Britain at present. Asian beats and rhythms are in the charts - Britney Spears recently got herself some eastern riffs thanks to UK record producer Rishi Rich.

And the Anglo-Bollywood, all-singing and dancing Bride and Prejudice, directed by Gurinder Chadha of Bend It Like Beckham fame, is proving a box office hit.

But does this count as integration into Asian culture? Or does Britain want to go further than tucking into its modern national dish of chicken tikka masala?

Last weekend Birmingham's NEC hosted Mela 2004, an enormous Asian lifestyle show attended by some 15,000 people on Saturday alone.

Mela (meaning fair) is a mixture of entertainment and shopping - the entertainment being the Bollywood stars flying in for autographs, and some of the leading names in Brit-Asian fashion and music.

White minority

When Hrithik Roshan, the curiously modest superstar of Indian cinema (think Tom Cruise meets Hugh Grant) turned up, things went just a little bit mad.

Superficial integration is not a bad thing, I don't have an issue with that. How could someone understand entirely different cultures and identities without being part of them? Simone Bienne

But while the target audience for this major commercial event was naturally Asian, would people with no cultural connection turn up?

A back-of-the-envelope count revealed perhaps up to 3% of the visitors were non-Asian - the overwhelming majority of these being mixed race families on a day out.

But it was hard to spot any white visitors who had apparently gone entirely under their own steam, the exception being a youth group from Portsmouth, there to learn about Asian cultures.

But it's not necessarily worrying if the integration stops at food and fashions on the streets, says Simone Bienne, a young Channel 4 presenter who was hosting the day's fashion shows.

"Superficial integration is not a bad thing, I don't have an issue with that," she says.

"How could someone understand entirely different cultures and identities without being part of them?

"The British don't really like fanatical Christians, so how can they really understand a culture such as Islam where the religion is a very important part of life?"

Mainstream interest

Simone says she has seen a rise in mainstream interest in Asian culture as television controllers have become bolder in what they show.

Actor Ameet Chana sees changes in the treatment of Asian culture

She applauds her own channel's commitment in screening last year's drama Second Generation - a story of young, mixed relationships struggling with generational and cultural divides in fashionable London.

The BBC's record, she says, is more patchy - although Radio One has made friends in the Asian club scene by championing DJs Nihal and Bobby Friction.

Ameet Chana, of EastEnders' fame, who first made it big in Bend It Like Beckham, has seen changes in how white Britain is treating Asian culture.

"I hope and feel that what's happening at the moment is here to stay," he says. "We had some stuff in the 1960s and 1970s, especially with the Beatles experimenting with all the Ravi Shankar twang.

"Today things are different. I have a niece in west London and her school celebrates Diwali [Hindu festival of light] and Ramadan [Muslim holy month] which is completely different to when I went to school.

"What it has taken is a bit more open-mindedness - but it has to be handled carefully."

And he tells of his ambivalence about white people dressing up for a Bollywood-themed work party.

"There's an edge to that. If had been a Rasta-themed party, dressing up as a genuine Rastafarian, and mimicking a man's religion, that would have been pretty offensive.

"There's a fine line to be walked here and I think that any integration of a culture means knowing how to respect it."

Where respect has become a crucial issue is in mixed race marriages - nowhere are the cross-cultural connections more important.

Wedding changes

Rita Chandarana, a wedding organiser from Leicester, says her firm has seen more Asian couples wanting traditional English weddings - and mixed relationships going for unique combinations of two cultures.

Rita Chandarana: "Comfortable with our cultures"

"Weddings are very special and have to be handled carefully," she says.

"If a mixed [white-Asian] couple come to us, we don't know the politics behind the relationship, what the parents think, how the religion is being handled and so on. It's a sensitive business. The easiest things to integrate are always the food and fashions.

"Today we are all much more comfortable about our cultures and if you are different, you don' have to feel as self conscious about it.

"We see that in our weddings, couples going for a lot of mixture in their ceremonies and celebrations, producing very eclectic unique events."

And those eclectic ties remain the strongest evidence of Britain's interest in adopting other cultures.

Take that chicken tikka masala again. Given it was devised purely for the British palate, in a British curry house, does that make it as Asian as fish and chips?